The topic I’m choosing to write about and the topic of discussion between myself and Jacob has to do with client and contractor relationships. A lot of what is done within the office of the Real estate developers is in the details of contracts and the relationships that enable those deals to be made.

One topic that is a reoccurring  theme is the importance of maintaining good relationships with your contractors and your architects and making sure all parties are up to date and incorporated in the conversation. This importance spreads past the moments of the actual project discussion and becomes a fluid system of open information. At least, this is how it ideally goes.

The client relationship for the project that I am working on is a particularly unique one. The main client, who at the moment needs to remain un-named, has a very tight tie to the City of Charleston. The nature of this relationship within the given project is somewhere between walking on eggshells and balancing on a tight rope. Both require a very calculated and well executed set of steps, but one requires light, even distribution while the other calls for high concentration to a single way. What I mean with this analogy is, when you have the full ensemble of organizations and groups you need to have a narrow straight forward line of information, but when its a direct interaction with the client, things can be more light and spread out with the topic(s) of discussion.

Although this may seem out of the context of the other two, public engagement is the third integral cog to the interworking’s of a successful development relationship. Any project being built within even eyesight of a local person (someone who actively lives in the area year round) should require that persons opinion, at least, brought to the table of discussion. The challenge with most public projects is separation of expert opinion from the ones of persons who call that place home. One knows the quantitative and qualitative data that can give a solution that will work by a number of metrics. The other has a lifetime of experiences and knowledge that cannot be absorbed through spreadsheets and presentation. A good development project, of any scale or caliber, must meet the base understanding that the closer these two entities come to agreeing on choices, the more successful the project will be.

Having a better understanding of the nature of these different relationships, I am extremely excited for the engagement event later this week.