Solutions · Design
Project Management
First site visit to working handover. The coordination role that decides whether everything else arrives as a system or as a pile of invoices.
4
capabilities
5
stage engagement
4
deliverables
DesignProject Management is the division that decides whether the other seven arrive as a system or as a pile of invoices. On a project touching design, equipment supply, installation and training, the failure mode is almost never that one part was done badly. It is that four parts were each done well, in the wrong order, against assumptions nobody reconciled.
The role runs from the first site visit to a working handover: assessing what the site can take, holding the architectural, structural and services drawings in agreement with each other, tracking approvals so the schedule does not quietly stall waiting on a signature, and running procurement and logistics through to mobilization.
It is a coordination role with authority rather than an observation role with a spreadsheet. The value is in decisions being made when they need to be made, by someone whose job it is to notice they are due.
Capability
What this division does
Site assessment
What the site can take, what it needs, and what it will cost to bridge the difference.
Design coordination
Holding the architectural, structural and services drawings in agreement with each other.
Structural coordination
Engineer liaison and approvals tracking, so the schedule does not quietly stall waiting on a sign-off.
Mobilization
Procurement, logistics and site setup through to handover.
Audience
Who commissions this
Clients running a project across several suppliers at once
Organisations installing equipment into a building not designed for it
Institutions delivering a lab or facility end to end
Anyone whose project has stalled between disciplines
Process
How the work moves
Assess
Plan
Coordinate
Mobilize
Hand over
Deliverables
What you actually receive
Named artefacts rather than adjectives: the things that exist at the end, and can be checked against this list.
A site assessment report
What the site supports, what it needs, and the cost of bridging the difference.
A coordinated drawing set
Architectural, structural and services drawings reconciled against each other, with clashes resolved.
A programme and procurement schedule
Sequenced with the long-lead items identified early enough to matter.
Handover documentation
As-built records, warranties, operating documents and the approvals trail, assembled in one place.
Engagement
The practical detail
- Typical duration
- Project length
- Reporting cadence
- Weekly, written
- Site presence
- By project phase
- Scope
- Assessment to handover
- Markets served
- United States, Kenya
- Engagement start
- Introductory call
Questions
Asked before commissioning
The questions that come up on nearly every enquiry, answered here so the first call can start further along.
Often not. A contractor manages construction. This role matters when the project spans things a contractor does not carry, such as equipment procurement, commissioning, technology installation and training, and somebody has to hold those against the building programme.
Yes, and that is normal. The role is coordination, not a route to route work inward. Where an Umbaji division is the right supplier that is proposed openly, and where it is not, it is not.
A site visit, a read of every document that already exists, and a written assessment of what is agreed, what is assumed and what is unresolved. That last list is usually the most valuable thing produced in the engagement.
Weekly and in writing, against the programme, naming what moved, what did not, and what decision is now blocking. Reporting that only describes progress is not reporting.