This week’s blog post is authored by Justin Olson, Account Manager in the Southeast region.
Everyone knows and can relate to the importance of a strong relationship, especially a working relationship. In the construction industry a strong working relationship typically yields a great product.
Let’s talk about yielding a great product for a minute. One of the best analogies that comes to mind is the correlation between a strong working relationship and the importance of all ingredients in concrete, a product that has been used and improved for centuries.  Concrete isn’t just something you can find and use. Concrete has ingredients, all of different substances or materials. Some of the ingredients are large and rough like gravel and others are small and fine like sand. In order to produce concrete and it yield a great finish, you must have quality ingredients. If you are lacking one or more of these ingredients, your finished product will not be concrete.
Switching gears, let’s shift our focus back to strong working relationships. To have a strong working relationship you must have great ingredients just like concrete. In the Job Order Contracting (JOC) world, the ingredients are the facility owner, the JOC contractor and the JOC technical expert. Take away one or more of these and you don’t yield the product that everyone is striving for. In order to keep these top shelf ingredients glued together, it’s important to build that strong working relationship.
To touch on each of these ingredients and their role in the strong working relationship, let’s look at what each of them bring to the table. The facility owner has the knowledge of the project and specific needs of their organization along with others. The JOC Contractor brings their experience and understanding of how to add value to the project by maximizing efficiency and budget. Lastly, the JOC technical expert brings knowledge and expertise of the procurement process and can help with Price Proposal Review and development of the Detailed Scope of Work, which benefits both the contractor and owner to ensure that all the bases have been covered and that everyone is protected.
Like concrete, each ingredient has a different role and each must work together or the product will break down. All three parties, the facility owner, JOC contractor and JOC field expert must do the same and work together to build that cohesive bond that concrete has. This means that open lines of communication must be made, questions must be asked and that everyone has to be accountable.
