Technical teams can use these strategies to improve communication clarity on automation and controls projects.
Jonathan Shores, Systems Engineering Group Manager at Tesco Controls, recently wrote an article for the December 2019 issue of Water Environment & Technology magazine. The article is titled Say What?, and presents five tips for improving team member communications for industrial automation and controls projects. Here’s a summary, click on the link above for the full text.
Acronyms are one method for simplifying discussions and documentation about complex systems and procedures. This is especially true for large water/wastewater and municipal projects. While acronyms serve a practical purpose, their overuse can become a stumbling block to good communications. This article offers some tips about how systems integrators (SIs) and technical team members can achieve clarity when working on automation and controls projects.
1. Learn Your Audience
Time is money, and technical folks may tend to jump right into the topic at hand during project meetings. However, it is always beneficial to perform introductions so the team can understand each person’s name, responsibility, background, and point of view.
Forging ahead without such an understanding is presumptuous at best, and a waste of time at worst. Many meetings have attendees with widely different backgrounds and motivations. This often is the case when higher level stakeholders or supervisors are present and being briefed with a technical update for a top-level project review.
Those who perform their work with an understanding of their audience are in the best position to be effective.
2. Leverage SI Coordination
Typical water/wastewater projects are executed by large, multi-discipline project teams. The automation system is crucial to the project, but it is a relatively small fraction of the project cost and attention to it can be deferred by an early focus on large site construction and procurement efforts.
However, SIs are uniquely positioned to understand and coordinate many aspects of the work because automation affects so much of the overall system. Therefore, it is wise for project teams to select experienced SIs with a track record for effectively interacting with owners, engineering firms, contractors, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and other suppliers.
3. Define the Rules of Engagement
For the case of acronyms, one simple rule is to always ensure the documentation includes a definition sections for easy reference. Otherwise, discussions can devolve into a confusing “alphabet soup”. Some other common-sense tactics:
- Speak in plain and simple language.
- Use metaphors to help get ideas across, but be careful not to condescend.
- Create simple block diagram sketches where appropriate to summarize more complex concepts. Attendees often will take cell phone pictures of these diagrams, so make them visible from a distance.
- Pause periodically to ask if everyone is still following or if there are any questions.
Efforts to get attendees up to speed in this way eventually pay great dividends, especially during planned workshops for developing standards.
4. Build Trust
Subject matter experts (SMEs) are often in the role of leading communications for the most complicated designs. Fortunately, one characteristic propelling many SMEs to their level is the fact that they’ve been forced to teach the details of a subject to a room of people.
Contractors can’t build excessive unrequested training into their prices, but SIs can fill the gap by promoting a culture of education into their efforts, building trust and team member engagement.
5. Keep Calm, Stick to the Facts
It is easy to offer communication and documentation platitudes: slow down, engage, be clear, and so forth. But those skills usually must be developed over time and under proficient guidance. One simple and proven method to navigating past these traps, at least for technical work, is to stick to the facts.
Engaging in clear communication is a valuable life skill in general, certainly not limited to industrial automation and systems integration project work. Team members and SI’s able to emphasize understanding become trusted advisors and help ensure project success.
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