Communication is critical when working in a team environment. Access to the most current information in a timely manner is critical to make informed decisions, and meetings are often required in order to access information and make decisions.

But meetings often fail to deliver the right information and fail to generate the required decisions.

Meeting participants can leave a meeting with varied opinions of the meeting’s success:

• The leader of the meeting may think the meeting was great since they led the discussion, talked about the topics they felt were important, and got the answers they were looking for.
• Other meeting participants may leave thinking the meeting was a waste of their time and did not produce the results they were looking for.
• The information may not be relevant to all meeting participants, but they felt obligated to attend.
• Or the meeting was just poorly run, no clear objective, no focused discussion, or no outcome at all.

There are some meetings to avoid, and only three meeting types required each week for efficient discussions, as described below.  I included meetings as one of the lessons in my Electrical Commissioning Training Course.

The Worst Type of Meeting

There is one particular meeting format that is terrible and needs to be cancelled or restructured immediately – this is the status meeting. If you are the meeting organizer of a status meeting, let’s work on restructuring it to make it more productive for everyone. If you participate in a status meeting, forward this article to the meeting organizer and have a discussion with them to set up the 3 meeting types required.

At a status meeting, everyone is given a few minutes to tell the group what they worked on during the past week. Most people will use their time to justify their role on the project or to prove that they accomplished
something since the last meeting.

Invariably there will be one or two people that take the opportunity to grandstand and talk for half the meeting about irrelevant topics. After monopolizing most of the meeting, the remaining people cram their update into the last few minutes so everyone gets a chance to talk. As
the last person is talking, they are quickly cut off as the next meeting group is knocking on the meeting door and the meeting ends.

This meeting has no tangable action outcomes and needs to be restructured.

There are no decisions made and no
actionable outcomes from the meeting. The only reason this meeting exists is because the team leader feels they need an opportunity to find out what each team member has worked on. But this is a
misguided objective if the team leader feels they need to utilize an hour of everyone’s time to get this information, only to benefit the leader and for no other meeting participant’s benefit. There are many
better ways to exchange information than to have everyone sit in a meeting together. Besides, the leader should be more engaged in the team’s efforts and know what they are working on (assuming everyone is working on critical activities) than to only catch up once per week. As well, meeting
participants should be seeking out the information they require on a daily basis to do their job. And the information they have not sought out is likely irrelevant to their daily tasks.

Cancel this meeting immediately and replace it with an issues/forecast meeting.
If everything went well with last week’s activities, then why talk about it. Instead, structure this team meeting to talk about any issues encountered and any upcoming activities. Don’t dwell on the past if
everything went well.

By focusing on issues, the team can help each other to address any problems encountered or learn about any impacts to their work by issues encountered by others.

As well, the team can look to future activities to identify any upcoming impact to others or any required coordination.

This meeting requires a critical ground rule:

Prevent any meeting participants from grandstanding by using the opportunity to justify their role.

Instead, make everyone feel comfortable that they can say they have no issues to discuss, and move onto the next person. An ideal outcome from the meeting is that nobody had any issues and the meeting is
over in less than 10 minutes.

Intentional Meeting Participants

Rather than invite everyone to a meeting, give people the chance to determine if there is benefit for them to join. This can be challenging, because people will either feel they are being excluded, or alternatively included with no benefit. But if you allow the meeting participant to choose if they should attend, you can avoid this discomfort.

To do this, determine the core meeting attendees that need to attend. For others, make them aware that the meeting is taking place, and offer them the meeting minutes from the first meeting. Have them review the topics discussed and let them determine if they see benefit in attending each meeting. This way you are not including someone in a meeting that does not want to be there. And also not excluding
someone that feels they should be part of the discussion.

Also be aware of meeting forwards from other meeting participants. These need to be treated in the same manner to allow individuals to decide if they should be part of the discussion without feeling
obligated to attend. Send them the meeting minutes and allow them to determine the benefit.

Meetings can often get bloated with additional attendees, getting too big to have a meaningful discussion, when some could receive the meeting minutes after each meeting and get the same benefit from the information rather than sitting for an hour to listen to a discussion they have nothing to contribute to.

The Only 3 Meetings Your Project Needs

In a project environment, meetings work well when structured around a weekly cycle. A correct weekly meeting structure establishes the processes for information exchange and decision making processes,
as well as ensures processes are in place to deal with information and critical topics when there are project challenges. You want to provide a venue that allows the team to function efficiently when
things get tough.

The only 3 recurring meetings you need each week are:

• Weekly Project Meeting
• Daily Coordination Meeting
• Weekly Issues/Deficiency Meeting

There may be others or specialized versions of these meetings, such as weekly owner/operational meetings, weekly commissioning meetings, weekly training meetings, or others. But the above 3
meetings form the backbone of all weekly discussions.

These meetings are closely linked to the project schedule to ensure activities are progressing to plan, and address any activities that are deviating from the plan.

An overall project schedule is required with
enough detail to indicate what needs to happen week to week to achieve the project goals. The project schedule needs to be updated at a minimum once per month, but ideally updated weekly just prior to
the weekly project meeting. The project schedule forms the discussion for the weekly project meeting.

Weekly Project Meeting

The weekly project meeting informs all stakeholders not regularly involved in day-to-day project activities on the status of the project. Therefore, this meeting is not attended by many from the project
team. The key project leads attend the meeting as well as one representative from each stakeholder group. This could be one individual to represent the owner, one individual to represent the operational
group, etc. Each representative then takes the information back to their group for further discussion.

The project schedule is used to guide the discussion at the weekly meeting. The following topics are discussed:

• Safety and environment, if not covered in a separate safety/environment specific weekly meeting
• Any issues from the previous week with achieving the project schedule objectives and how each issue is being addressed
• A look-ahead of the next week’s objectives and any coordination required with stakeholder groups
• Priorities for the upcoming week to ensure project objectives are met, including physical work
  activities, as well as documentation priorities.

Daily Coordination Meeting

The daily coordination meeting is attended by the project leads and the individuals doing to work to ensure everyone is aware of what is going on and that the correct objectives are being worked on to meet the weekly schedule objectives. Any adjustments to the weekly plan are discussed as issues arise.

The daily coordination meeting is a more focused discussion getting to the hour-by-hour execution of the work and coordination with others:

• Review the work completed the day before
• Overview of the work to be completed today
• Identify any testing or witness points required
• Identify any inputs required from others for the days activities
• Highlight any critical tasks required for tomorrow
• Make any adjustments to the weekly plan as required in order to meet the weekly objectives

Weekly Issues/Deficiency Meeting

A weekly snapshot of any issues or deficiencies encountered during the week needs to be maintained and reviewed by all stakeholders. One group maintains the issues/deficiency list for review at this
meeting. An issue or deficiency could be anything noticed by any project participant that does not meet contract requirements, such as a deficiency noted in an inspection report, a non-conformance report (NCR), a punch list item, or a deficiency noted in a walk-through.

At each meeting, the list is reviewed to add any new items, agree on closure of an item and removal from the list, and classification of each deficiency as follows:

• Type-A – a deficiency that must be fixed before moving to the next tasks. (i.e. something that prevents the next activity from taking place safely and technically correct).
• Type-B – a deficiency that must be addressed, but does not prevent the next task from proceeding. Type-B deficiencies can be addressed at a later date, but must be fixed before handover to the owner.
• Type-C – a deficiency that must be addressed, but does not prevent the next task from proceeding, and can be fixed after handover to the owner (i.e. in warranty phase).

Classification of deficiencies identifies the priorities of each deficiency and aligns expectations of how issues will be resolved. Any discussion on the disposition of specific deficiencies can take place at this
meeting.

Specialized Meetings

As the project progresses, there may be a need for specialized versions of these meetings. The above 3 critical meetings are still required, but may get supplemented with specialized weekly meetings.

Towards the end of the project, the weekly meeting may split into a specialized weekly commissioning discussion, to focus on the details of testing, startup, and coordination with operations for handover of the systems.

If there is a training component of the project, weekly training meetings may be required to plan and coordinate training sessions with the operating teams.

An owner specific weekly meeting may be required, for more hands-on owners that want to be more involved in the week-to-week project activities.

As-Required Meetings

Topic specific meetings will also be required, but these are not recurring meetings. As the weekly meeting cycle progresses and issues arise, there will be the need for a smaller meeting on a specific
topic to address an issue or make a decision. These meetings should only have the necessary decision makers attend, be as short as possible, and issue minutes documenting the decision to all other
stakeholders. The objective of these as-required meetings are to address a specific topic with a specific outcome, such as a decision on how to proceed.

How to Make Meetings Less Terrible

With a focused effort by project leadership, meetings do not have to be terrible. Meetings can be a benefit to the project if done right. Meeting participants can feel that the discussion was effective and
the meeting objectives have been met.

No more terrible meetings, lead by example and restructure your meetings, rather than tolerate boring discussions!