Difficult work

People are involved in difficult work. Often it has not been done before, it’s a permanent prototype, possibly never to be repeated. It might be building the tallest tower, slotting a tunnel under the capital city, decommissioning a nuclear power station, building a bridge over a busy river, maintaining critical water infrastructure or electrifying the rail network; this is difficult work.

Add in the complexities of: pressure, emotion, egos, firefighting, lack of money and resource, not enough time, people and organisations geographically spread, a poorly formed contract, politics, personality clashes, miscommunication, TTF (total technical focus), two hundred and fifty emails a day, the irate boss, culture clashes and setting up from scratch each time and you might begin to imagine that building and sustaining a high performing team is even harder than the work people are trying to deliver.

I am in no doubt that building and sustaining effective collaboration and team working is [the] most difficult work. Though sticking at it, helping people get through their indifference towards the process of team development and then through ‘storming’ and on to ‘performing’ is also [the] most rewarding work.

I also know that this difficult work makes the actual work of building and civil engineering much easier, more satisfying and more profitable for all concerned – people achieve extra-ordinary results when they work together.

And when they learn how to build a team and work collaboratively it lasts a lifetime and it benefits all their projects, not just the one they are working on today. This difficult work is improving the construction industry little bit by little bit. I’m going to see it through!