Guide

Whether you’re communicating to executive decision-makers, the city council, or the general public, you have many stakeholders who need accurate, up-to-date information. Managing the varying levels of communication, the type of information to be shared, and timeliness is complex yet critical to your capital program’s success. To keep a project on time and on budget, effective communication is vital. A PWC report shows that many capital projects go over budget, and only 5.4% are both on time and under budget. Many projects could improve their budget and schedule outcomes by implementing solid communication plans for stakeholders that offer transparency of controls, clear accountability of responsibilities, and a meaningful audit trail.

At the onset of any project, it’s essential to identify who the stakeholders are and how you’ll communicate to them. This will allow you to set up the appropriate controls, workflows, and communication methods in advance. Furthermore, having the right tools in place to manage your stakeholder communication will help deliver quick insights at the program or project level, enable you to make data-driven decisions, and help gain faster approvals.

Communicating to stakeholders like the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), the Mayor, the Governor, or a Chief Financial Officer (CFO), is often very different from communicating to others. Having reliable and accurate data on hand should be a top priority when providing updates. Be prepared to show the overall picture and drill down to the details if necessary.

Understanding your stakeholders’ priorities is crucial so you can align to their goals and objectives. Always be prepared to offer solutions—not only problems—and offer alternatives rather than just ‘yes’ or ‘no’ decisions. Showing the positive and negative consequences of each alternative will allow stakeholders to make better decisions.

Where the public may have a dashboard that shows only scope, schedule, and budget, executive decision-makers may expect to see early warning alerts for project delays, red flags, and outliers in project expenses, etc. Make sure your data is credible so that you don’t get questioned before you can even state your case. Know what story you are trying to tell based on the data you present.

It’s helpful to develop a routine for communicating. Consider starting with the bottom line and then showing how you came to that conclusion. This will help avoid surprises and fingerpointing. Track action items, articulate next steps and timelines for follow-up and take responsibility for the follow-up. Being as clear and on-point as possible will help keep decision-making and status updates smooth. When an executive makes unreasonable requests, be prepared to defend your position in seeking a longer schedule or additional funding or scope reduction supported by your data.

Whether you are working on ad hoc requests for information or routine updates and reporting to the board or city council, be ready to provide the required data by having these best practices in place. At the onset of any project, collaboration is a top priority to determine which data each stakeholder will need. Understanding the level of detail (such as program-level versus individual-project-level, the types of data required, and the frequency) ahead of time will help your organization implement best-practice techniques to communicate effectively (and accurately).

One of the greatest things you can do for your organization to ensure timely approvals is to create workflows to manage processes. Having clear accountability of responsibilities and transparency into the status of project requests will save your organization a tremendous amount of time. The key is that staff must recognize when the board will engage and anticipate their strongest concerns well in advance. Staff members must align with the ‘insider group’ (i.e., executive management) on not just process, but also messaging, priorities, and how to convey scope, schedule, and budget in such a way that the board members can pass on the message to their constituents.

Once you have workflows and know when to engage board members, you’ll be able to provide insight into where a particular item is at any given moment, eliminate guesswork, and simplify communication. Request for Information (RFIs), change orders, and daily reports can all be managed and tracked through well-designed workflows, eliminating the need for back-and-forth emails and streamlining communication.

Having a bird’s-eye view of every project within a program can help you quickly answer questions and provide updates to your stakeholders. Implementing an enterprise-wide reporting solution that is configurable to your agency’s specific needs is the best way to ensure data accuracy. Internal and external stakeholders will benefit from having the most up-to-date information available. Auto-generated reports and graphs will make the presentation of data easy to digest, and project status reports will keep your stakeholders up to speed. And, since board members and council members often represent a specific subset of the public, whether it is a certain geography or a demographic group, having options to filter data on dashboards is an added bonus for your stakeholders.

Relying on emails as a primary data-sharing and communication source will lead to inconsistencies. Implementing solid workflows within a project management system and using one place for all documents and project data will make communication to your stakeholders that much easier (and more accurate). Your staff must understand how the organization prefers to communicate with the board. Be sure to include fellow staff members who may communicate on the same topic so that the board members are not receiving conflicting information or multiple sources of data. Use informal communication before board meetings to avoid surprises in board meetings, which are generally public.

Effectively communicating the status of your projects is more nuanced than three simple steps, but these tips are sure to get your organization thinking about the right tools to deploy to simplify and improve accuracy. Delivering timely, up-to-date information to all your stakeholders can speed up project delivery and reduce cost overruns by 30% to 50%.