Boost’s coaching services for more effective teamwork and interaction

A construction project is an excellent example of how the whole is more than just the sum of individual factors. Such a project combines many different actors and teams, each with their own ways and needs. The better the collaboration and communication between the teams and individuals, the fewer bumps there are on the way to a successful outcome.

The Boost Brothers coaching service helps the project team create a clear work plan, clarifies the project objectives for all parties involved, and helps both the team and the individuals to work efficiently toward common goals and deliver value for the money.

The aim of the coaching is to develop the team and the individuals as well as to maximize their chances to succeed in the project.

Our expertise is based on the study of self-management and teamwork, the utilization and application of the latest researched knowledge, and experience in team operations as well as in coaching and leading different kinds of teams.

Efficient teamwork and effective interaction

Maiju Hirvonen, the director responsible for our coaching services, introduces the types of coaching Boost offers:

“Boost provides both team coaching and project coaching according to the customer’s wishes. Team coaching, for example, provides tools to achieve the project objectives and to enhance mutual communication and cooperation. We provide the team with means by which the team itself, with the support of the coach, determines their own ground rules and suitable procedures and monitors their implementation.

For example, we can coach the client organization throughout the project, coach the service provider during the procurement phase, or coach the project team that was chosen to implement the project. In our coaching, when using project indicators, for example, we use the Milestone solution we have developed.

We can provide coaching for individuals or the entire project team and, if necessary, arrange coaching for a larger project team as well. We also provide management team coaching.

Our competitive advantage in team coaching is definitely the expertise in construction contracting and construction projects. In the role of an external facilitator, we can, based on our experience, highlight observations that the team may have missed with everything else going on.”

Valuable lessons about individual and team operations

Boost’s coaching service is ideally suited to the needs of building construction, infrastructure construction as well as industrial and energy projects. It is particularly well suited to collaborative project models, but also to ensuring the success of smaller teams and projects.

Customer feedback has brought up insightful comments about the value the coaching has added to projects. Customers have commented that one of the best parts of the coaching has been learning to reflect on their own and their team’s activities. It has also been noted that, in addition to technical issues, it is good to stop and think about the team’s mutual activities every now and then and, for example, consider how interaction could be improved.

Boost has been the project team coach of, for example, Helen Ltd.’s Seawater Heat Recovery project as well as the Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency’s alliance projects regarding the Hailuoto Causeway and the renewal of the Mt180 Kirjalansalmi and Hessundinsalmi bridges.

As for Helen, we have cooperated since the beginning of the project by coaching the client in the procurement phase, implementing alliance training and team coaching for the project team, developing the team model through workshops and providing individual coaching.

Tero Palmu, Helen’s project manager of the Sea Water System alliance, explains what he regards as the benefits of Boost’s coaching:

“Team coaching has been a very useful investment at the early stages of the project, almost essential to get the collaboration off the ground, create common working methods for the new project team and get to know each other.

Together with Boost and the Alliance project team, we developed a model that suits this project, in which the coach and the project team leaders work together, and the team coaching plan is updated as necessary as the project progresses.

The presence of an external facilitator has felt natural and made the team members work well together. Personal coaching has also given us new ideas and thoughts.”

Hirvonen advises new customers about why they should utilize Boost’s coaching services in their own construction project:

“We can give a boost to the very basics of your project, including introduction to the format and the basic concept of the project, clarification of the project objectives, the ramp-up of the project organization and practices, and the joint development of the project plan.

In addition, team coaching can help you review team activities regularly, which makes it easier to achieve common goals.”