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Coordination

A client communication plan: who hears what, and how often

By Review.LivePublished 3 min readHow we write

The principal hears from a parent, not from you, that the gym roof work has moved to concert week. The school board's facilities manager forwards the principal's 21:10 email with one line: "Who was supposed to tell her?" Your superintendent thought you had; you thought he had.

A worker in a hard hat and high-visibility shirt takes a phone call while a colleague watches a crane lift on site.
Photo: John Kakuk on Unsplash

Bad news hurts a client relationship less than news that arrives late, second-hand or from the wrong person. Without a plan, each person on the team guesses what the client wants to know, and the client learns to phone whoever picks up. California's transportation department frames communication planning around five factors: who is involved, what is communicated, when, how, and who provides the information.

  1. List who on the client's side needs what: the decision-maker, their day-to-day representative, the consultant, and the people using the building while you work.
  2. Sort the messages by kind: routine progress, decisions the client must make, problems, and formal notices.
  3. Name one voice and a backup for each kind: often the project manager for progress, decisions and cost, the superintendent for access, noise and shutdowns.
  4. Agree a channel and a rhythm for each: progress in a weekly report on a fixed day, decisions in writing with a needed-by date, problems by phone the same day and then in writing. If someone's preferred channel will not work for the team, agree one both sides can keep.
  5. Agree how fast each side answers, and what a late decision does to the schedule.
  6. Keep formal notices out of the everyday channels: they go the way the contract says — see notice of change.
  7. Put it on one page, and review it when people or phases change.

Common mistakes

  • Everyone on the team updating the client their own way.
  • Holding bad news for the weekly report.
  • Treating an email update as the notice the contract requires.
  • Promising a rhythm the team cannot keep in its busiest month.

Checklist

Your one-page plan covers

  • Who on the client's side needs what
  • Progress: when, how and from whom
  • Decisions: how asked, and the reply time
  • Problems: a same-day call, then writing
  • One voice and a backup for each kind of message
  • Formal notices as the contract says
  • A date to review the plan

Check your understanding

The client asks to be copied on every site email. Why might a short plan serve them better?

Show the answer
Copying everything moves the work of finding what matters onto the client and still misses calls and site conversations. A plan promising a weekly summary, decisions with dates and problems the same day gives them fewer messages, each one they need, from a person they know to call.

Sources

  1. Project Communication Handbook, Second EditionCalifornia Department of Transportation · California, United States (a public agency's handbook; shown as an example of practice) · accessed

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