Entertainment Company Current State Narrative Discussion
2008
DESCRIBE THE DESIGN PROCESS USING THE NARRATIVE YOU BUILT
The main purpose of the current narrative is to visually show the current information exchange
process and the overall project organization used for the design process at the Entertainment
Company. The current narrative helps us identify and recognize the formal company procedures,
how information is distributed and received, potential organizational problems, overall
inefficiencies and so forth. All of this information can then be used to help create a future
narrative that resolves these potential design process issues and problems.
It is essential to establish and clarify the roles and relationships between the Entertainment
Company, Studio Company, Tenant Studio Company and the Corporate Real Estate Project
Manger in the design process. The Entertainment Company is the parent company of the Studio
Company and the Corporate Real Estate Project Management Company (CREPM).
It is
responsible for providing funding and authorizing the Studio Companies request for a new
soundstage, as well as alerting the CREPM to manage the overall design and construction
process.
The Studio Company is a subsidiary film making division of the Entertainment
Company. As such, it is the main user of the sound stage and thus has the responsibility to
determine the project requirements. In addition, since it is a common practice in the industry to
rent out the studio when it is not in use, the Studio Company is responsible to rent the sound
stage to other potential film companies, private film makers and so forth (Tenant Studio
Company) when it is not in use. The Corporate Real Estate Project Manger is responsible for
acquiring the land and overseeing the design and construction process on behalf of the
Entertainment Company Current State Narrative Discussion
2008
Entertainment Company. It maintains “ownership” of all Entertainment Company properties and
is responsible for all property related new construction activities, management and maintenance.
The CREPM is responsible to hire each “sub-team” which includes the architect, master planner,
legal team and sustainability team. With approval from the CREPM, the Architect and Master
Planner can then hire all applicable specialized firms who will report to them. However, for the
Sustainability Team, the CREPEM is responsible for assembling all personnel from within the
Entertainment Company as well as hiring a few specialized consultants in chemical engineering
and so forth). Once all sub-teams have been assembled, the CREPM can then let a varied
combination of these teams (see current state narrative) start the design process which includes
identifying all affected stakeholders, conducting a search for an acceptable property and so forth.
The main responsibility of the legal team is to assist the CREPM and other sub teams of any
potential issues or problems they may encounter with their respective role in the project. Once
all sub teams have been determined and debriefed of the project requirements, the CREPM can
then take an oversight role and verify the project preferences, give approval for the location and
manage the overall project on more of a macro level.
Once an initial design has been developed, the Sustainability Team will conduct an internal
analysis procedures on the design to determine if it meets all project preferences, goals and
requirements for the Studio Company and the CREPM. The Sustainability Team is responsible
for providing recommendations to the CREPM and Studio Company based upon their analysis
findings in conjunction with the project requirements and goals. Once the CREPM and Studio
Company have approved the initial design and relayed which recommendations they will like to
Entertainment Company Current State Narrative Discussion
2008
proceed with, the Architect can then proceed with producing a final design. Once a final design
has been developed, the CREPM, Studio Company and Entertainment Company must review
and give approval in order to proceed with the land acquirement and construction phase of the
project. (608 Words)
CRITIQUE THE DESIGN PROCESS USING THE NARRATIVE YOU BUILT
Creating the current state narrative gave us a broader perspective of the overall design procedure.
This narrative also gave us the opportunity to realize that the current design process had several
inconsistencies and uncertainties. As mentioned above, having a visual representation of how
decisions are made at this point was an extremely valuable and useful tool. The high level of
complexity that characterizes contemporary construction projects, demand visual representations
of specific tasks and their dependencies. This allows others to understand in depth which people
and organizations are making the decisions, how those decisions are made, and in which order.
An immediate observation of the current narrative reveals that there is a lack of communication
between the Entertainment Company and the Studio Company. To be more specific, at the
beginning of the process the Studio Company alerts the Entertainment Company that a sound
studio needs to be developed. The next step is the approval of the project by the EC. However,
after this point, the Studio Company proceeds to determine the project’s requirements without
the involvement or contribution of the Entertainment Company. While it is true that the Studio
Company is the primary user of the project, they should be required to consult with the
Entertainment Company to prevent any possible miscommunication or problems that can arise in
Entertainment Company Current State Narrative Discussion
2008
the final design review stage. In addition, the Studio Company announces the requirements to
the CREPM, without the involving the CREPM in the determination process. This can lead to a
major problem. Misunderstandings can occur when the CREPM is relaying the information to
the sub teams because since the CREPM was not part of developing the requirements, there can
be a lack of understanding regarding why certain requirements are demanded or what a specific
requirement means.
Furthermore, we can easily observe that the separate nodes represent activities divided amongst
the architects, legal team, master planner and sustainability team. Instead of having one unified
team handling all the issues, the CREPM assembles a corporate project team, which is
subdivided in four groups. Consequently, several tasks that demand the contribution of everyone
are exclusively done by a few individuals. Take for instance, establishing the location of the
project. It should be determined not only by the master planner and the sustainability team, but
also from the legal team and the architects. Even if this is not their main responsibility, their
opinions and experiences can be very valuable.
In addition, we see that the design team proposes an initial design and the sustainable team
reviews, analyses and proposes options on the acoustics, constructability and lighting. At this
step we realized that there was no proper distribution of information and data. The Entertainment
Company and Studio Company are not aware of the design options until the final phase, when
they need to make a final decision. This can be counter-productive because in the case that the
Entertainment Company or Studio Company does not approve the design, the procedure will
start all over again. On the contrary, if they were following the procedure and were able to
Entertainment Company Current State Narrative Discussion
2008
review the progress made in designing, they would be able to add or change between generation
and completion of the design. (530 Words)
DESCRIBE METHODS USED TO BUILD THE NARRATIVE AND WHERE MORE
INFORMATION IS NEEDED.
During the process of gathering information in order to build the current state narrative, we
received very limited but valuable information by our mentor (Andrew) via a 10 slide
PowerPoint presentation and a phone call. Overall we found out that Andrew was also unsure of
the overall design process used at the Entertainment Company, however he described to the best
of his abilities what he believed the current design process was used as a standard at the
Entertainment Company (shown in the current state narrative). However, Andrew was also very
brief and vague in answering a majority of our questions, such as the location of the project,
names of people in charge, name of the architect and such partly due to internal company
policies and partly due to the fact that this project has not been announced to the media (hence
why a majority of the nodes in the current narrative have a question mark for the icon).
However, with the information we were able obtain from Andrew, we were somewhat able to
better understand the general process and hierarchy of the Entertainment Company, the Studio
Company and CREPM.
The phone interview proved to be the most valuable because he
provided us with all of our non project specific related information such as relationships between
teams and companies, authority levels and so forth. By using this information, we were able to
Entertainment Company Current State Narrative Discussion
2008
create the narrative based upon the general standard hierarchical new project design and
construction process used by the Entertainment Company.
In addition, from our phone conversation with Andrew, we also found out that there is very
limited information available on our specific project because the master planner is due to release
a site plan by the end of November or early December, which will then enable the Sustainability
team to proceed with conducting their analysis. Once this has been done and all approvals have
been received, the Architect will then be able to create more detailed drawings (currently we
were supplied only a one sheet conceptual drawing of the project with approximate dimension
and square footages).
Originally, Andrew wanted us to base our options on the exterior the structure or the location of
the structure. However, since no information was available at the time for us to undergo an
analysis regarding these, we mutually agreed to analyze the large elephant doors. Since we only
had a conceptual blueprint, some basic acoustical values and a basic idea that the Entertainment
Company wanted to keep all operational costs as low as possible in order to attract tenants
(translates to a cheaper rent), we researched similar projects in order to determine what the
industry standard was, how the buildings were used, why they were rented, and so forth.
Unfortunately, due to the specialty of this type of project, there was very limited information
available. This is another cause of why almost all of our nodes in our current state narrative have
question mark icons, and the nodes that do contain information are very limited about how
decisions are made (using which tools) and how options are evaluated (using which tools) and so
forth.
Entertainment Company Current State Narrative Discussion
2008
As a summary to the above, we feel our current state model would be more accurate and detailed
if information regarding specific stakeholders, goals, weights and such were available to us.
Contrary to our future state narrative, we didn’t have specific inputs about which categories of
people the project affects and what their preferences and priorities are. It is obvious that this is
why we were not able to give prospectors in the majority of our nodes. Furthermore, we had
problems identifying which tools the sustainability team used in order to estimate the value of
the final design option. Although our mentor did not specifically refer to the tools they used to
record the preferences of the stakeholders, we drew the conclusion that they didn’t have a tool
like MACDADI available. In the future narrative we advanced the procedure by incorporating
this extremely valuable tool. For the above mentioned reasons, we were forced to make a best
guess for several points. The assumptions were made from the limited information we had. Take
for instance, the Corporate Real Estate Project Manager. We had information about the existence
of this specific department in the Entertainment Company, but we did not have full information
about his full sets of authority and responsibilities, so we had to make an assumption (Discussed
in question 1). (735 Words)