How Daily Check-Ins Transformed Project Management and Kept Teams Grounded

Uh, OK. Uh, so I can give you, uh, the insights which in fact was I, I was doing in my last role while I was working as a project project manager and operations manager for my company at my last location. So, uh, this project, uh, it was started, uh, in the, uh, initiated in the end of 2018, and, uh, uh, this, there was a sort of internal selection that who will be going first for to initiate the project in the, in the beginning of 2019. I applied for this thing uh on a voluntary basis and uh after clearing the initial assessment thing, I joined the project uh in the month of February 2019. So my initial responsibility was to make sure that the project site is in a proper way that we, we as a team, when the, uh, and the, when the contractors and all our workers are coming to site, are in a position of starting the commencing the project on time and uh to make sure that the responsibility of each and every individual is uh fixed and each and everyone has, has a clear thought of mind that what he or she is supposed to do. So here is what I did. First of all, what I did is I, uh, I changed that, uh, processes in terms that for almost every day after completion of work for around 6 o'clock to, uh, 7 o'clock, we were organizing, uh, I was organizing some sort of, uh, get-together meetings with the project people. So in that meeting, uh, all the entire project team of ACC and, uh, the contractor, Chinese contractor company will work. Coming, we were discussing all the pinpoints, what were, what, what went wrong, what went good in uh during that day, and what we are supposed to do to the next day. Targets and rules were roles and responsibilities were were decided for each and every individual in terms that what someone is supposed to do and what will be the line of action if something goes wrong in terms of, uh, not achieving a target or maybe any sort of safety related incident. One thing I which I found was that there was some sort of issue with people who were not able to uh communicate any issue with the senior leadership, but just because of the thing that they were afraid of the point that if we are communicating this thing now to the senior leadership, maybe they can they will not be listening to, uh, listening to, uh, our point. And during this these meetings, I was successful in making sure that my team is comfortable in providing any sort of issue or any sort of communicating any sort of feedback to me, me, or maybe, uh, my senior leadership team. Uh, one thing I was I, I also did was that I used to visit the site location almost daily or during, um, during, uh, uh, pre-lunch hours and post lunch hours just to make sure that, uh, and, and to understand that what is happening on the site and, uh, is there an issue over there. One thing which I observed was there's there was some sort of uh safety related incidents which were happening in the site and people were not able to uh work in a proper way that uh we are as as a company we were supposed to make sure that there is no sort of incidents related to safety happening at our site. When I deep dive into the things that what I found was that there was some sort of issues with the processes in terms of safety related, uh, work, uh, the guidelines which were my team was providing to the workers. I made sure that those things are changed in a way that the customer, uh, that the workers are clearly, uh, communicated the thing that what they're supposed to do and what they're supposed not to, not, not supposed to do. And, uh, if, if there is any issue, I also, uh. Introduce a toll-free number. Uh, in fact, so workers can come down and maybe, uh, they can provide their feedback over by calling on that number. I used to get a lot of calls from that number and, uh, we were, I in my team and me, in fact, particularly we're working on those feedback just to make sure that things are happening at all. On, uh, as per the guidelines of the company and this way I made sure that the, uh, project was running on time and, uh, during this thing, one thing which I'm very much proud of is I was successful in reducing the uh safety related incident at side by around 70% and the project ran smoothly until unless I was there. Before joining the B school.

I, I reduced the safety related incidents at site by around a massive improvement in terms.

OK, uh, so one thing which is, uh, which I was very much surprised, uh, by, uh, going deep dive into the safety-related incident thing. There was some sort of issue with the process, uh, the safety guideline process in fact at the site. So what generally used to happen is when the when some worker is coming to site, uh, there was some sort of industrial program which was given. Given to that worker and that then after which the worker will start working at site. There was no sort of guidance on the site for the workers. Sometimes what happens, my process, the process which was in place was kind of theoretical process. We were showing those pictures and we were showing those videos to the worker, this is what will happen and these kind of problems will happen. But there was no sort of practical guidance in hand kind of experience at site when the workers were working. So what I did is I talked with my safety team. And I told them that look, we have to divide the site in small clusters and there will be a safety engineer and a civil uh team engineer who will be responsible for that cluster. And whenever there is a hard work, which will be starting at that particular location, my team, one of my team member and one of my a safety engineer, when we go over there, he will look into it, what can be the, what can be the possible harms or what can be the possible issues with the by uh during that work. And they will be guiding the worker that look, this is the these are the protocols which you have to follow just to make sure that there's no sort of. A safety incident happening at that particular cluster. When I introduced this concept, I was, no, I was very much sure that this thing probably will work because of the thing that I, uh, as per my past experience also, sometimes theoretical experience is not as much important until unless we are not guiding the persons on the practically on the site or the work location. And this thing helped me um reduce the safety-related incidents and overall increase the overall efficiency of our process at that site.

Uh, so this thing, uh, generally these day takes, uh, uh, these, uh, process changes takes time. So when I, I, I probably, I believe I started this process in the month of April 2019, it took me around two months to, uh, change the entire process and reintroduce the revised processes for, uh, worker guidelines at site. Um, so I can say it was, it was around 2 month process.