Project Resources - Managing Project Resources

So, we've talked about a bunch of the different resources that you have available to you to make a project go from the beginning to the end, and those resources have, there's various criteria about why one is more important than another in a given context. So, understanding the context is important. And just remember that when we talk about the resources for a project, the big thing for us as designers is the people, people with specific skillsets and specific understanding about the situation. But there's also, potentially, a lot of other things. Computer time these days of crunching big models and all that, there's a lot of aspects to that.

Prototyping, are we doing 3D models, are we using 3D printers, CNC printers, what's the way that we're gonna get at our communications system, and do we need to be on a schedule? Is there resources, do we have a limit to how many of those we can do? You know, all the physical models, all of that kind of stuff, it's not just drawing sets, but what other things? These are resources that we have available to us, but they are all resources that we can use up in terms of time availability, in terms of financial resources, et cetera.

Another resource that's kind of key one is this idea of a library. It doesn't mean it's a physical library. It could just mean research of some sort that most projects will need, not just doing drawings, or making models, or something like that. They'll need some time spent actually researching specific pieces of information about product availability, or the best ways to do such and such for this particular kind of client. So, there's research time that has to be involved in all these projects as well.

And so, that is a resource that needs to be scheduled, needs to be paid for, needs to be understood in the larger scheme of how is that gonna work, when will it happen, and how do we make sure that we have enough fee and funding to pay for that research time that we would need in order to fulfill this project? And then, there's sort of the obvious printing and deliverables. I've always found the word deliverable, it's such a bad word that it's almost good.

It's the things that you have said you will deliver, right. So, if we're talking to a bunch of contractors after we've been working with a client, and they're getting ready to bid on something, the deliverable would be the bid set. It's the thing that's expected. That's something that, in certain situations, needs to be physically printed out. Often, these days, you would just send digital versions, PDFs or some such of drawings, maybe even just 3D models, to contractors for them to bid from, but in a lot of very specific scenarios, for example, in government funded projects, that actually doesn't work.

You have to send physical copies. Well, for a regular small institutional building, that might be hundreds of sheets, and maybe you have 10 bidders, hundreds of sheets times 10 bidders, that's actually a significant amount of money. That's something that if you haven't built that into your contract and your fee structure for reimbursables, that can actually cost quite a lot of money and take up a lot of energy and time.

So, we could go on, there's lots of other resources that we could be talking about, but those are the kinds of things to sort of be watching out for when we're talking about the idea of resources at the beginning, especially, of a project. We're trying to figure out what do we need thought the timeline of a project, and when is the appropriate time to be focusing those things? You don't wanna be doing lots and lots of resource heavy people time before you really know what the project is about.

There's gotta be a logic to the flow. You wouldn't wanna use up all your deliverable printing money for the schematic design phase when really the place that's gonna need it is gonna be at the end of CDs. So, it just sort of understanding how these things fit together and making sure that it leaves you open to be able to make a logical overall schedule of the time and a schedule of the resource use as you move through a project.

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