Communication is paramount for a project to be completed effectively, especially when multiple people are involved, as is the case with construction projects. From closing a new construction contract to completing each phase within time and budget, effectively communicating with the relevant stakeholders can make all the difference. But how, exactly, can you communicate in a way that keeps them informed, engaged, and committed? Project milestones.
Why Communication With Stakeholders Is Crucial
Excellent communication skills are one of the most sought-after characteristics of a top-notch project manager in construction. Project managers need to begin with a crystal-clear view of your project – and setting up project milestones is how you can ensure this in action.
Project Milestones: Ensuring Visibility and Systems
A project milestone is a specific stage within a project that, once completed, allows you to move on to the following step. Milestones help you break down the project into smaller, more manageable sections, giving you a better idea of what needs to be prioritized in what order.
Project milestones are different from project tasks or activities, which are much smaller segments of a project, typically not all holding the same level of importance for the project to be successfully carried out to completion.
Milestones mark important achievements and events that enable project managers to complete a project efficiently and successfully. Here are some examples of project milestones:
- Starting and ending specific construction phases
- Obtaining stakeholders’ approvals
- Delivering key materials, holding meetings, or hosting events
Milestones Enable Clear Planning
Construction projects are massive endeavors, and breaking down a project into concrete milestones enables you to prioritize and focus on what moves the needle and in what order to avoid confusion, misalignment, and unnecessary stress.
Each milestone should be laser-focused on a specific topic or theme, whether it be helping business decision makers, finalizing contracts with vendors, gathering the stakeholders for a check-in meeting, or similar. It has to specific and spelled out, such that there’s no confusion when a milestone is reached. Defining milestones with a focused lens removes distractions and redundancies.
Measure Progress
The most practical value of milestones is how they support project managers in keeping track of project progress. Are you meeting all the required deadlines? Are your stakeholders on board with every decision? Is everyone aligned and happy to move ahead as suggested? Project milestones allow you to keep your finger on the pulse of whether the project is still within the timeline and phasing projected from the beginning.
Communicating Project Milestones: Best Practices
Milestones are essential to project success, so communicating them effectively is crucial. Here’s a guide to communicating project milestones to your stakeholders.
Understand Your Audience
Imagine your stakeholders are the audience of a movie. If the majority of them are sitting in the theater expecting to watch a gripping thriller, but you show them a light-hearted rom-com, the results will be disastrous.
Ultimately, you want to be “speaking the same language” with your stakeholders to engage them properly. This ensures that the intended meaning is coming across. Make sure that terms are clearly defined, knowing the context of the stakeholders also help guide the way you phrase documents and put together messaging in all your communications. So, before going ahead, ask yourself: Who are my stakeholders? What do they have in common? What do they want to achieve from this project? What are their preferred channels of communication?
Answering these questions enable you to interact in a more productive way.
Select the Best Format
Project milestones can be presented in many ways Most of them are visual, such as Gantt charts that display start and end dates, progress, and dependencies. If you realize that your stakeholders respond better to other formats, align with that. You may find that they are particularly interested in storytelling and are happy to meet online, which means that communicating project milestones as compelling narratives on a video call could work well. It’s also typical in construction that project participants prefer traditional methods such as in-person meetings led through slide presentations.
Keep the Updates Short and Focused
Even though project milestones can cover large chunks of a project, keep updates brief and concise. Remember that the function of milestones is to present progress in extremely precision.
Are you about to present a milestone for sales lead generation for a construction project? Focus on that–and leave any other topics for another time. To aid you with this, you could structure each project milestone so that it covers:
- Main purpose
- Challenges and opportunities
- Potential risks and solutions
- Deliverables
Remember to make it all specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound – in other words, SMART.
Seek Your Stakeholders’ Input and Support
Your stakeholders shouldn’t be seen as a passive audience, only receiving updates. They are active participants. Ask for their input and feedback – and, of course, put the best suggestions in place. Show them that you are grateful for their expert help by publicly acknowledging them during meetings and events, which can further improve trust, dedication, and engagement.
Has a specific stakeholder proposed a different – and much better – way to handle online payments during one of the project milestones? Share their insights with the team.
Do what you can to build and nurture a positive, productive, and personable rapport with your stakeholders, as this will have fantastic repercussions on the overall management and success of the project.
Communication in Construction Projects
Communicating effectively throughout construction projects is essential to project success. Breaking down a project into specific project milestones can help you keep things clear, aligned, and focused, enabling the project to progress as it should. From contract closures all the way to payment approvals, being able to communicate these milestones to your stakeholders is vital.
David Becker is a Growth Marketing Manager at Leadfeeder, a powerful website visitor analytics software. He helps drive Leadfeeder’s growth strategies and demand generation with a keen focus on mental health and well-being in the workplace. David excels in creating impactful marketing campaigns, analyzing trends, and boosting customer engagement for the team.