Working with professionals
By Rob Sandelin. © Community Resource Guide 1997. Reproduction and distribution of this material for profit, without the permission of the author, is prohibited. Contact the author at Floriferous@msn.com
This chapter deals with working with hired professionals.
There may be skills you will need to hire as you develop your community. If you are planning the whole thing as one large project, like a cohousing development, this is going to be an epic group process so before you begin be sure to solidify your conflict resolution process and decision making. An objective outside professional can help guide the members as the group makes trade-offs and concessions, especially if your group is going to design all the living areas. People tend to get a little more "me focused" when talking about designs of things like kitchens and bedrooms and having an outside professional can really help keep things on track.
Hiring members as professionals
Even if you have architects and builders in your group, you should still consider hiring outside professional consultants. Having a member involved in a professional capacity can cause problems if members are afraid to criticize another members work for fear of damaging the relationship. Sometimes members operating in a professional capacity lose focus of the balance between their professional role and their member role, or end up pushing "their" ideas rather than collaborating with the group. If you use members to do professional work, it can be very valuable to hire an outside expert to evaluate the work and give an outside opinion.
When members volunteer, this often means getting things done in their spare, which if they work full time, can lead to longish delays because they simply don’t have time to go down to the agency office or take care of details. Another problem is that when members are inexperienced, they don't know the glitches, the processes, or the right questions to ask. If you do have expertise and time within your group evaluate how to include it whenever possible. Often an knowledgeable member can add great value as an oversight person watching over the professionals work.
You should also think carefully about the trade-offs of doing it yourself. Sure, you could sheetrock the commonhouse, after all, that's not a very hard job? However, skilled labor can do a better looking job, much much faster and it may mean paying someone who knows what they are doing is worth it. Evaluate the skill levels and time availablility of members carefully when considering using members to do complex jobs.
Before you hire any professionals you need to figure out what process you are going to use when dealing with them. Figure how the group will communicate with the professional. Be sure that you can cover the costs of professional services. Nothing sours a professional relationship faster than an unpaid bill. Most professionals will want a retainer fee and some sort contract for the remaining services. Be wary about hourly contracts or time and materials and closely evaluate any such contracts against flat fee based bids.
Figure out exactly what you want a professional to help you with. A lot of work can be done ahead of time and then the professionals expertise can be used to evaluate and improve what you have started. For example, if you want to hire an attorney to draw up a membership share agreement, you can brainstorm much of what you want in this agreement and write up a sample, using a standard contract form. The attorneys time is then spent evaluating the legal aspects of what you want to do rather than in defining all the elements. Since attorney hourly fees can be very expensive, the more homework you do first, the less a legal agreement will cost you. It can help to ask a professional what sort of things the group can do in order to reduce costs.
Typical professionals that communities may fire include architects, attorneys, , project managers, construction managers, contractors, engineers.
Architects must balance the wants and needs of their clients with their own perspectives and biases. They will have a portfolio from which you can see their ideas and it pays to ask for references and check them. It should be a requirement to have an architect that understands the social goals of community housing.
In a group process situation it can be very stressful for a professional not to be in the drivers seat. Having an architect that can function as a good facilitator, drawing out ideas from the group as a whole is very helpful. Group facilitation is not on some architects resumes and will be something you will want to ask about and even interview for. Many groups agree that they got too involved, had too many meetings thrashing out details that the architect should have decided. It is an often expressed relief that an expert took all the divisive arguments and then made the decision for them. If the group gets hung up on design aspects, let the architect decide, that’s why you are paying them.
Many architects don't understand community buildings, nor have expertise in acoustics and commercial kitchen design. For example, there are several cohousing developments that have common houses that are too loud and have kitchen design problems. Find out what the limitations of your architect are and ask for specialists.
How to find someone you can work with
The best way is to use the resources within your community, and the larger communities network, to come up with potential contacts. Ask relatives and friends for recommendations. Create a list of the attributes you want in a professional and then use that list as a hiring screen. Interview candidates and ask about their experience in working with groups like yours.
For a list of Community savvy professionals that others have used, click here
Finding a project manager
Professional project managers work on a regular basis with the local building bureaucracy, and good managers know all the agency people and what the processes are. These are relationships and understandings that would take an "outsider" years to develop. It is often more cost effective to pay someone else to work with agencies to get permits, zoning, legal documents and bank loans than it is to do it yourself because a paid professional is working for you and works regular business hours.
Many cohousing projects are large capital developments that require considerable project management. There are a large number of finished projects. For a list of Cohousing projects and e-mail contacts click here.
Another way to find a project manager is to call local development companies and inquire. Many smaller companies will be happy to provide you information, and some that are sole proprietorships can offer consulting at reasonable fees. If you are good at working with people, you can often get a huge amount of advice for free just by buying the right person lunch.
One of the problems that often arises is that everybody in the group will have a different opinion about some aspect of something and eight different people will tell the project manager eight different courses of action to take. This is especially problematic during construction, where it may cost you several hundred dollars an hour to keep large machines idle while a dispute is resolved. One way to avoid this is to set up and interface committee. The committee then meets, discusses the issues, and provides the project manager with a single voice. Some groups have used a index card system. Any member can fill in an issue or concern on an index card and give it to the interface committee or person. This ensures a record that nothing gets forgetten. The resolution to the issue is then printed right on the card and all the cards are passed to the professional and later returned.
Finding an attorney
For information about legal advise and finding an attorney click here