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Storm in GluIQ

September 21, 2017

“Unless there are storms, voyages shall be boring and not adventurous” – Anonymous

Any sea voyage will have to face at least one storm. And so in any project.  After successfully going through a forming stage and learning schwerpunkt – determining the principal objective, GluIQ entered into the storming phase of development.

This month, we’ve started working on graphically representing the process workflows within the construction industry from three perspectives: Project Manager, Architect and Cost consultant.  Many of the processes that we thought were straightforward and made common sense, were not actually so. Often many processes within different phases of the construction industry are interlinked with other phases.

The goal of graphically representing the process workflows, is to understand what the problems are within the workflow and why they exist.

Along with studying and understanding industrial practices, the next stage will involve engagement with stakeholders across the industry. This will help us to understand the tacit knowledge around these problems, socio/cultural/technological issues etc., which evidence themselves with the stakeholders and appear endemic within the industry.

Through the process mapping and stakeholder interviews, it is aimed to identify and correlate the following elements across the phases and information exchanges:

– Non-consumption of existing technology products
– Organisations and individuals who are using work-arounds as the current offer is poor or deficient in functionality
– Mundane, low-interest, highly repetitive tasks
– Are there tools, checklists, protocols, templates etc., that are deemed to be the best currently that we can re-package within the technology wrapping.

Underestimation of time estimation to complete the task led to a delay and has caused additional tension during this “storming” phase.  GluIQ had its monthly project meeting on 5 September and goals were set for next 100 days. A clear emphasis on keeping log books current is as important as sailing – keeping a record of methodologies, decisions and actions.