How clients respond to criticism

When it comes to telling your clients that they may have made a mistake, your imagination is likely worse than reality.

In our line of work, often owners or other interested parties are a bit apprehensive about how the design team is going to handle criticism. Many people think that the design team (architects and engineers), who receive review comments regarding their work, will be defensive or unhappy. In my experience, this could not be farther from the truth! In almost all cases where I have gone to a debrief (in a debrief I walk the design team through the reviewed drawings and point out critical coordination discrepancies and omissions) the design team was appreciative and anxious to get working on the fixes.

In short, debriefs in our case and perhaps relating client mistakes in yours, are generally accepted much better than what you might expect. Most attendees of our debriefs are quite impressed by the thoroughness and attention to detail in our coordination review. The design team is so pleased that someone was able to put in the huge amount of time required to do an in-depth coordination review that they could not afford to do themselves. Not only that, but it becomes clear that unbiased, third party’s eyes can catch things that are “invisible” to the creators of the construction documents. In regards to their own work, most people have a tendency to see things as they intended them, but not necessarily as they are actually drawn. I know that I have that problem and I don’t feel comfortable with publishing anything that has not been proofread by someone else first!

To think about it in another way, by pointing out their mistakes, you are helping them with their job, which will be appreciated. Because if you did not catch the error, someone else will and likely at a more critical moment, or it will be their boss or their client who sees their mistake. Most people want to do a good job and I have found that mistakes in contract documents are not due to a lack of caring by the design team. They want clean documents… and any tool that will help them achieve that is very welcome.

I look forward to debriefs because they are generally very friendly, positive, cooperative affairs… where everyone has the same goal… to make the construction process as smooth and painless as possible.

On the few occasions when a debrief attendee has been somewhat resistant to the review and debrief process, they generally come around by the end and are very pleased and impressed. Part of this "coming around" has to do with me doing my job. I do not point out errors without doing my homework and if I am not sure about the discrepancy then I tell them I am not sure about it, so they can clarify it for me, but I at least address the concern. It is about trying to communicate to them that you care about the quality of their work and that you are on their team to help them be as productive, profitable or look as good as possible.

Author: Natalie Nigro, President