Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Managing Big construction/Remediation Projects

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> On Mar 31, 2019, at 1:26 PM, Helen Spector <helen94611 [at] gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I live at Trillium Hollow cohousing in Portland OR.  We have had, over our 
> 20-year history, 7 water intrusion remediation "events" 3 BIG ONES and 4 of 
> more limited scope and impact.  [snip]
> After reflecting on our communities' lessons learned over this time, I am 
> offering an Intensive Program on Friday afternoon on "Managing THE BIG 
> PROJECT! "   We have learned that as intimidating as the technical side of 
> these crises can be, the impact on community cohesion requires significant 
> attention to community connection processes, clear decision structures, great 
> transparency in communication from beginning to end, and, many times, some 
> creative financial approaches for paying for them. 

A fabulous idea. So many of us got into cohousing without realizing we were 
taking on real estate development and maintenance — and collapse — that these 
events come as a surprise and can be disabling for some. Fortunately, for 
others they are a great opportunity to do right whatever was done wrong to 
cause the problem.

Having a guide for what will need to be organized will be a huge help.

The time we were struck by lightning and our internet equipment and many 
computers were fried, along with the keypad entry system, the one thing we 
hadn’t arranged was communications with the team working on fixing it. There 
were 3 of them with various skills running around figuring things out. Everyone 
was trying to be patient and not complain. 

One afternoon, I walked through the CH to overhear one of them say, no 
complaints in 2 days — everything is fixed. What we hadn’t arranged was a way 
for people to notify the team that their problem was not fixed without feeling 
like a burden. I made a checklist for the front hall bulletin board so people 
could see they were on the list, and if not, add themselves. I became a 
temporary geek to keep communications flowing. 

Sharon
----
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org