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This article was written by Michael Sheerin, P.E., Healthcare Division Director TLC Engineering for Architecture, Orlando, Trust Is Crucial in Project Coordination.

Sheerin opens his article this way:

The key ingredient of any successful project is trust: the owner must trust the building team to envision and create the owner's goals; designers must trust the contractor's ability to work within the framework of construction documents to build a living environment; the contractor must trust that the design team has developed a plan comprehensive enough to get them all out of the jungle without too many snake bites.

Great start, unfortunately, there is no more. He has the right idea, but doesn't offer insight into how to do it.

Certainly, the best method for keeping on track throughout the course of a project is communication � the unambiguous, respectful, formal kind as well as the inquiring, personable, informal kind.

He goes on to speak about compromise in the coordination of design documents:

…every coordinating agent should seek to balance the competing interests of all of the design and construction team members to achieve ownership � and acceptance � of sometimes difficult decisions.

He shows his cynical side here:

(A) contractor may take some satisfaction in button-holing a designer for some area of flawed thinking. In the face of concrete dimensional data, designers must drop their egos at the door.

Aargh! I can't go on.

Right title…no understanding of trust. Trust is nurtured and preserved on teams. It starts as compound assessments of each other's competence, reliability, care for the other, and sincerity. Once we spend enough time with each other, trust can be elevated to a central component of a relationship. The problem on projects in the AEC world is we start out as strangers and too often end the project that way. [Strangers, Friends, and Partners]

Yes, trust is crucial in project coordination, just as it is important in all project endeavors. Leaders have the greatest opportunity for intervening where trust is insufficient for the task at hand. The rest of us have the responsibility to see that our leaders do just that.