Client and Architect Communications: Strategies for Seamless Lab Design

Be sure to view our free webinar on Client and Design Team Communications: Strategies for Seamless Lab Design, featuring author Katie Archard as well as Jennifer Flanagan, associate director, Sanofi; Donna DeFreitas, director and project executive, DC Beane; and Anthony Petone, PE, LEED AP, principal, BR+A Consulting Engineers.

Open communication is a crucial component of a successful lab design project. Image: ARC/Architectural Resources Cambridge

When we ask our clients to describe what defines a successful project experience, one of the first things they cite is the importance of open and effective communication among team members.

While its importance is appreciated by anyone who works on complex lab design projects, establishing successful communication pathways requires everyday discipline and commitment by each team member. Equally important is an elevated level of empathy—the ability to listen to all perspectives and work together towards a great outcome. Everyone wants to get there, of course. But the level of complexity and decision-making can throw obstacles in the way of good intentions.

Based on personal experience designing labs for corporate, academic, pharmaceutical, and medical/health science clients, we know there are always opportunities to strengthen communication among all project teammates—owner/client executives, project stakeholders, architects, engineers, and consultants. Here are a few opportunities to guide lab managers and their design teams.

Before the project: sharing project goals and challenges

RFP and proposal—The RFP process is the first opportunity for empathetic two-way communications. For design firms, there is much less trepidation and ambiguity when the client allows time for a pre-bid briefing and Q+A session, in person or virtually. Even if this briefing is virtual, the interactions with prospective design teams will establish a foundation for future transparency and mutual dialogue. 

For a large pharmaceutical client, the project RFP and briefing included a clear priority for responding design firms to include ideas for designing long-desired collaboration spaces in their new lab building. Image: John Horner Photography

Much can be shared between owner and prospective teams which will clarify any elements of an RFP needing further detail, saving time and focus for both parties. For us, this early communication allows design team members to put themselves into the client's mindset—to understand their aspirations, challenges, and pain points. Learning the ground rules and acquiring insights into the client's expectations allows us to create a custom proposal and provide design options aligned with expressed wants and needs. Where feasible, we also recommend providing invited design teams with two to three weeks to develop thorough proposals.

Interview and selection—Once a shortlist of finalists is established, we believe that a 90-minute interview presentation, including 20 minutes of Q+A time, allows the client to gain a better feel for each finalist's tangible strengths and potential intangible "chemistry" match. The more exposure clients have to prospective design partners, the more comfortable and informed the selection can be.

Creative dialogue: communicating with stakeholders and end users

Kickoff and input sessions—Once a design team is selected and contracts are in place, the project kickoff sessions and stakeholder input conversations begin.

A general guideline at the beginning of a project is to involve as many end users and stakeholders as possible to gather input. Facilitated interactive listening sessions will ideally include client organization project leaders, the architecture and engineering team, facilities professionals, and end users.

Employee involvement and communication are equally essential to achieve a clear sense of ownership and equity around project decisions. When people are engaged and involved during the planning stage, they learn, they see, and they appreciate having a voice in the decision making.

Depending on the size and local proximity of end users, ARC facilitates participatory workshop-style sessions, whether in person or virtual. Conversations before and after these gatherings helps keep a line of communication open while helping to lead participants toward an informed consensus for the project. Several rounds of input and programming meetings with the lab user groups will offer opportunities for feedback and updating as the planning stages unfold. During these sessions, acknowledging where the user group needs conflict and where they align are vital to the development of the proposed design concepts. These problem-solving conversations will lead to optimal space programming and unify the teams to work together to solve challenges.

Spokespersons as communicators—A valuable communications strategy to facilitate input and create two-way dialogue is to ensure that each lab team or department has a spokesperson to serve as a liaison and ongoing contact person to communicate group needs. The spokespersons should communicate with each other to help ensure that information is shared across groups. Creative solutions for shared resources are likely to emerge when these group liaisons work together.

Laboratory projects integrate highly specialized user needs and equipment. At Dana Farber Cancer Institute’s Cancer Research Laboratory at Longwood Center, group spokespersons worked with the design engineers and architects on a Proteomics Lab layout, design, and equipment specification. Image: John Horner Photography

Assessing equipment, utility, and space needs—Among the numerous ways group spokespersons contribute is by helping the design team understand and gather a complete tally of equipment and utility needs associated with a particular project. This information is needed as early as possible to provide a baseline for design, ensuring that these functional requirements are addressed as efficiently as the project can support.

Constructive communications via programming—The initial project schedule needs to include time for space programming discussions around critical lab program needs and space allocations. For most projects, two to three rounds of programming the project will make all the design decisions much easier, and consensus-based.

During the first session, we listen to the description of initial needs. We interview the user groups about how they work, what their normal day is like, and where growth or change is expected ahead. If they see growth, how will that impact the type of seating needed? We return to the group in the subsequent sessions to show them initial test fit-ups based on what we heard. 

For example, projecting expected growth and resulting group headcounts over the next four or five years is a crucial communication activity during programming. We find that preliminary estimates of future growth will vary widely from one individual or group to another and often need the benefit of objective analysis and consensus-building.

Budget, scope, team collaboration: embracing big communication challenges

Keeping on budget while navigating user-requested changes requires clear, prompt communications to prevent any late-stage reduction of desired project features and amenities. Image: Kent Dayton Photography

Cost control—If there is one universal communication priority spanning all lab design projects, it is the importance of continuous attention to the budget. The magnitude of managing the budget on a lab project is even greater now than ever due to the escalation in materials and construction costs in recent years.

Action items—Fortunately, the challenges associated with labor and materials pricing during the last few years provided helpful lessons and established benchmark practices. Communications around budget and scope decisions will be strengthened by actions that include:

• Reviewing the project's desired scope and space needs at the outset—An experienced design team can suggest options and ideas that can help increase productivity and user satisfaction by making lab, support, and amenity spaces more efficient. The goal should be to "right-size" the project and its building systems and spaces.

• Bringing in the selected construction manager early—We endorse the idea of early collaboration among the owner, architect, engineer, and construction manager (CM). By adding the construction manager to the team during the schematic design phase, a cross-discipline process of vetting the program elements and options will help anticipate cost ramifications and constructability issues early, when changes are far less costly to make.

• Hosting team budget reviews—At each key phase of the project—schematic design, design documents, and construction documents—a dialogue with a full budget review will allow for timely course correction while helping communicate the changes and refinements that will happen over the course of project design. Senior client leaders, group spokespersons, the architects, the engineers, and the CM should be part of these reviews.

The communication benefit of CM involvement includes tapping their knowledge of the local trade contractor market costs, the most significant percentage of the overall project construction budget. If adding the CM can be done later than the schematic design due to the client's procurement protocols, a third-party cost estimator can work with the design team and client to develop a benchmark cost estimate. This estimate may be established as early as schematic design and no later than during the development of construction documents.

One team, one purpose: improving the human dimension

Any successful lab design project ultimately depends on the human aspects—how we listen to others and hold each other accountable around shared goals. Every participant leads by example in this key element of the work. We strive to create a single-team mindset where soliciting feedback and sharing knowledge leads to a sense of collective ownership of the decision-making.

Owner-inspired communications—The client helps shape the human experience by encouraging all team members to engage in the planning and ask questions. The owner/client's approach to team member selection should encourage their design and construction firms to work in harmony as equal partners to work together to solve problems and raise important issues or problems as part of a transparent, all-in-project culture. Part of this approach is to encourage the team to designate key individuals from architecture, engineer, owner's representative, construction management, and end-user groups to maintain vigilant communications with each other and keep this core group plugged into project correspondence.

The outcome of a truly integrated communications strategy, with all its conscious behaviors taking place during project execution, is a lab space that invites creativity and a powerful sense of well-being for its current and future users. The quality of communication during design minimizes the agita and unknowns of lab building while inspiring researchers and project stakeholders to create and discover.

Katie Archard, AIA, LEED AP BD +C, is an architect and associate principal with ARC/Architectural Resources Cambridge. Her work with life science clients during a career dedicated to laboratory design has deepened her appreciation for and approach to collaborative, transparent communications. Katie earned her master’s degree in architecture from MIT and her bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Florida. She can be reached at karchard@arcusa.com.