The project's meeting calendar: every recurring meeting designed once at the start
The same access problem appears at Monday’s trade meeting and Wednesday’s owner meeting. Each group asks for an update, but neither assigns the missing decision. The calendar is full while the issue keeps circulating.
Design the project’s recurring meeting calendar at the start by assigning each meeting a purpose, required attendees, duration, input cutoff and record owner. Position meetings after the information they need and before the decisions must reach the site. Share the calendar with the owner and trades, then review it at phase changes or when it is no longer serving the work. A recurring booking should earn its place through a distinct decision or coordination purpose.
Give every recurring meeting a job
- List the decisions the project needs. Include owner decisions, trade coordination, look-ahead planning, cost review, design coordination and the project’s required safety meetings. Confirm formal meeting requirements separately instead of assuming your preferred calendar replaces them.
- Separate purposes that differ. Define what each session should produce. An owner decision meeting and a crew work-planning meeting may use related information but need different participants and authority.
- Place the information handoffs. Schedule progress and cost reviews before the reporting or decision meeting that uses them. Allow time to distribute the input, so attendees do not spend the session discovering facts that could have been prepared.
- Choose required and optional attendees. Invite people who can supply the facts, decide or carry out the actions. Bring a specialist for the relevant agenda item rather than requiring everyone to sit through the entire calendar.
- Set duration and recording responsibility. Give the chair a clear agenda and name who records decisions, owners and dates. Decide when those notes are issued and how people challenge an inaccurate record.
- Review the calendar with the phase. Combine, reduce or replace sessions that no longer have a distinct output. Publish changes and preserve required formal meetings. Treat a recurring session with repeated unresolved issues as a process to repair, not a reason to add another session automatically.
A calendar entry should say
- Purpose and expected output.
- Chair, required participants and decision authority.
- Input cutoff, duration and notes owner.
- Where actions go after the session.
Action list
Before accepting another recurring booking
- Identify its distinct purpose.
- Check whether an existing session already owns it.
- Place it around the required inputs and decisions.
- Invite people needed for the output.
- Name who records and follows actions.
Check your understanding
A meeting repeats the same issue for three weeks without a decision. Would a longer meeting solve it?
