Rink

November/December 2019

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>> A PROJECT TEAM WAS SEPARATED only by the locked doors to the two trailers that sat side-by- side on their wastewater treatment project site. Every day for six months, the owner's team and the contractor's team filled their days with writing letters. Back and forth, they literally emailed over 1,200 letters. The purpose of each letter was clear—to prove the other side was to blame. This type of scenario plays out far too often on construction projects of all sizes and types—including ice rink facilities. Even good people with outstanding records can get "stuck" in conflict. Imagine you're at an awards ceremony and a contractor was praising an owner's project manager as the best person he had ever worked with. The very next day you get a call from a different contractor telling you about an owner's representative on his new project and how he was the worst person he had ever worked with in his career. Then, you find out it was the same person. Conflict is not only frustrating, demand- ing, and unfulfilling—it is downright expensive. A study done at Michigan State University in 2012 found that the aver- age job site conflict took 161 hours (~20 days) to manage. The wages of the workers involved cost an average of $10,948. This is only for the labor costs due to the lost time and does not include the impacts that the conflict had on the cost of the proj- ect. This study was the first of its kind to assign a monetary value to the conflicts that occurred on actual jobsites. So what can you do to help deal effectively with jobsite conflicts? Here are eight tips to help: TIP 1: Don't Become Engaged You can help the resolution process by not becoming engaged in the battle. How? Try to remain as if you were an interested onlooker. Don't let your co-worker's words or behavior make you favor one side over the other. 8 Tips for Dealing with Project Conflict Don't let pettiness and pride get in the way of good management & conflict resolution // by SUE DYER 24 / NOVEMBER.DECEMBER.2019 USICERINKS.COM DON'T BEGIN YOUR ARGUMENT WITH COSTS OR THE THREAT OF A PENALTY. SUCH STATEMENTS USUALLY EXACERBATE THE CONFLICT AND THE DISPUTE GROWS MORE HEATED.

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