Workplace Project Management
- Peter Stansfield
- 14 hours ago
- 8 min read
Why organisations need a capable Workplace Project Manager
Most organisations take on a major workplace project once every seven to ten years. A lease expiry forces the issue, the floor is emptier since hybrid working took hold, headcount has changed, or the office simply looks old and tired. Whatever the trigger, the project lands on someone's desk, and that someone has usually never run one before.
Now look around the table at everyone else who turns up. The architect, the tenant rep, the fit out contractor, the cost consultant, the furniture dealer. All experts in their fields, and all doing this every single week. It is a bit like buying a car. You don’t do it very often. The person selling it to you does it ten times a day, has heard every line you are about to try, and is thoroughly charming with it. Nobody is being dishonest, but let's not pretend the table is level.
That imbalance hits immediately at the start of the project, which is exactly when the course gets set. Getting into bed with a furniture supplier offering free floorplans or a designer casting a spell on you with captivating images and architectural language is all very alluring, but step back from the siren call. At this early stage what you really need is boring, structured governance and control. Basically, good old project management discipline. Changing course part way through the project becomes expensive and painful to unwind. The cheapest time to fix a workplace project is while it is still on paper. Once the lease is signed, the design is developed and the employee story is public, every correction costs more both financially and in reputation.
A workplace is not an office building
It’s not? No, an office is a building. A workplace is the combination of the building, the technology and, most critically, the people who use it. A project can finish on time, land on budget and look magnificent in the photographs, and still fail because employees never understood the change and never bought in. That failure doesn't show up in the project report necessarily, but it shows up everywhere else for years afterwards.
This is why a workplace project is really a people transformation project. The physical space and the technology are the enablers. It is also why handing the project to someone internal or external who deals with property, or someone who deals with people, only covers part of what is needed. The role needs enough project management discipline to set the project up properly and then control the delivery. It needs enough change management experience to understand this is a people project, and the skill to bring the people along. And it needs enough workplace expertise to know what bear traps to avoid standing in, to interpret the data, and to drive the workplace strategy, design and fit out. All of that whilst leading a project balancing space, technology and behaviour changes, plus considerable cross organisation stakeholder management and resistance. That blend, in one client-side role, is what I mean by a capable Workplace Project Manager.
Some companies appoint a Workplace PM to run the whole project, but it’s also common for them to pair up with someone from inside the company. Someone who understands the organisation and has sway with senior stakeholders. That partnership can absolutely work, but it is usually done because the organisation suspects an external appointment would take too long to understand its structure, people and culture. In my experience it can be achieved much faster than people think. It’s weeks really. Once you get started and the meetings kick off, it doesn’t take long to meet the right people and soak up the culture, especially when you’re used to fast-tracking that stage as you move from company to company to implement these projects.
The first appointment tilts the whole project
Bring in the wrong capability first and the project leans in the wrong direction from day one. If the first move is design-led, you jump to layouts before the business problem is understood. Property-led, and it becomes a story about square metres and lease events. Construction-led, and delivery takes over before the strategy has matured. HR-led, and the physical and technical complexity gets underplayed. None of these disciplines are wrong. All of them are needed. The hard part is not naming the ingredients, it is knowing the combination, the timing and who leads whom. I have written before about who you need to deliver a workplace transformation.
Sometimes in my career I have been fortunate to be brought into a project when it really is a blank sheet of paper. This is obviously the best for me personally, as I get to apply my blueprint and framework to the project to set it up for success right from the start.
However, many times I get parachuted in part way through. This is always when the project has gone off course.
On one occasion the fit out PM had been jettisoned from the project after a clash of personalities with the sponsor and the designer had taken the opportunity to morph into that role, and the IT PM was running the steering meetings by the time I was brought in. Chaos.
In one of the earlier meetings, I was sat on one side of the table with the client, and the designer and fit out contractor were on the other. The designer constantly defending the performance of the contractor and blaming the client. That was all I needed to see and hear. Firstly, a designer masquerading as a PM, then biting the hand that feeds it and siding with the general contractor. Needless to say, it didn’t take long for me to restack the deck, bring in a qualified fit out PM, eject the designer, and wrangle control off the IT PM, who was lucky to maintain their position. That project was in freefall when I came in, but with a keen eye for who needs to be in the right positions it didn’t take long to get the ship back on course.
I joined part way through another project which was suffering from poor employee engagement and couldn’t get any designs approved. It transpired that the internal project team was already deeply entrenched with both a designer and a furniture supplier. They had created beautiful designs of the floors, and these had been shopped around the different business units, who all loved them. Then reality had struck, costs were worked out and it was way over budget. Instead of addressing the costs properly the project team went back out to the business units and had them redesign their spaces from scratch as a wish list. Again, the business units loved this approach and added in everything they could think of. Costings were redone and again it was way over budget. This was what I walked into. The budget was not getting any bigger. If those are the financial cards you’re dealt, then you need to work with them.
Once I took the helm, we had a damage limitation exercise to conduct with those who were expecting X but now getting Y. We worked instead with cost managers (QS) and project managers, and we created options from the earlier designs and furniture settings that could be configured in multiple ways, but whatever the configuration they would remain in budget. Then we went back to the business units, explained the reality, had them choose their preferred configuration and proceeded on budget. All completely avoidable and it took months to rebuild that goodwill with the business.
This is why a capable Workplace PM protects the organisation from the temptation to rush straight to design, and asks the questions that should be answered before the floorplan becomes the project:
What is the real business driver, and what problem are we actually solving?
What evidence do we have, rather than what opinions do we hold?
What assumptions are we making about headcount, hybrid working, desk sharing and attendance?
What needs to be fixed now, and what can wait?
What is the budget really expected to cover?
What would make this project fail in the eyes of employees?
These are not abstract project management questions. They are what protects the organisation from expensive drift.
You can be a poor client too
A truth that doesn't get said enough: just as you can get a poor consultant, you can be a poor client. Inaction, hand wringing, decisions that loop for weeks, multiple changes, and a general fog about what is actually happening. All of it slows the project down and makes it painful for everyone involved, and the consultants can see it happening long before you can.
Which is why good consultants prefer working with a capable client. A strong Workplace PM does not make life harder for the specialist team; they make it clearer. They sharpen the brief, set up the governance, appoint the right people in the right order, translate between executives, employees, property, ICT, HR, designers and contractors, and keep decisions moving. Designers get a brief worth designing against. Cost consultants get realistic options to test. Builders price with fewer unknowns.
Without that role, opinions run the show. Everyone has a view on desks, meeting rooms, lockers, kitchens, parking and who sits where, and those views matter because people use the workplace every day. But opinions have to be processed through evidence and agreed decision-making, otherwise the project becomes a classic case of design by committee and a negotiation with whoever spoke last, shouted loudest or had the most senior title. This is no way to run a project.
The role of the sponsor is so critical in these projects that I’ve never completed a successful one without an effective sponsor. Someone with vision, a transformation agenda and a steely-eyed determination to kick down the barriers when needed. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. On one project we had three sponsors, and we must have been a shocking client. These three had a clear dislike for each other as they jostled for prominence and power. All to the detriment of the project and the employees who would be using the workplace, because they could never agree on anything, so no decisions ever got made in a timely manner.
Appoint early, or pay later
The right time to appoint a Workplace PM is early. Before the designer is fully briefed, before the business case is locked, before the executive narrative has hardened, and before the organisation has made promises to employees it may later struggle to keep. That holds for all the common triggers, whether it is a lease event, a relocation, a refurbishment, a footprint reduction or a move to desk sharing. I have covered the trigger events for a workplace transformation.
Skip that appointment and the project will still move. In fact, it often moves quickly at the start. Meetings happen, concepts emerge, suppliers circle, a program appears, everyone gets excited. Then the cracks show. The brief keeps changing because it was never properly agreed. The design starts answering stakeholder opinions instead of a strategy. The technology requirements arrive after the furniture has been selected. The change management starts after the decision has already been made, so employees hear rumours before they hear the rationale. Variations pile up, program pressure builds, and leaders start asking why the whole thing feels harder than it should. The answer is usually simple. The organisation had plenty of consultants. What it didn't have was client-side control.
The first appointment sets the standard
Back to the car yard for a moment. Nobody thinks twice about bringing a mechanic mate along to look over a used car, because you know the seller has done this ten thousand times and you haven't. A workplace project costs hundreds of times more than the car, runs for years, and touches every person in your organisation. Bring your own mechanic.
Most organisations will only do this once every seven to ten years. Everyone else around the table does it every day. A capable Workplace PM sits on your side of that table, and the first appointment you make will likely determine the success of every appointment after it.
This blog was written by Work Future Workplace Transformation Consultancy. We specialise in leading and delivering workplace transformation projects in Perth, WA. Contact us at hello@workfuture.com.au or +61 0435 824 305 to discuss your workplace transformation needs.
