When I walk into a building for a project, I’m usually expected to work with a group of people. They may include contractors, consultants, engineers, architects, project managers, and owner representatives. Everyone has a role, and everyone brings a certain kind of knowledge to the table.
Over the years, though, I have learned not to assume that the person with the most useful information about the building is sitting in those meetings.
Sometimes it is the facility manager who has been there for 15 years. Sometimes it is someone from maintenance who knows which mechanical room has given them trouble every winter. In an industrial facility, it might be an operator who understands exactly what happens when a particular piece of equipment goes offline. These people may not be part of the construction team, but they have something the rest of us cannot recreate quickly: a history with the building.
After more than 24 years working around property damage, restoration, and construction, I have learned to take that knowledge seriously.
Buildings Have Histories That Drawings Cannot Always Show
Plans and specifications give you an important starting point. Previous reports, maintenance records, and construction documents can also tell you a great deal. I would never suggest replacing that information with someone’s memory.
At the same time, documents do not always tell the whole story, especially in older buildings.
Buildings change. Equipment gets replaced. Spaces are renovated. Repairs are made. Something meant to be temporary may still be there ten years later. A problem may have been fixed three different ways before someone finally found the solution.
The person maintaining that building may remember it all.
I have learned that a simple question such as, “Has this area ever given you trouble before?” can lead to information I would not have found in a drawing. Someone may tell you that a certain area has had water problems in the past or that a piece of equipment behaves differently during extremely cold weather. Maybe an access problem only becomes obvious when a particular operation is underway.
None of those observations automatically changes the project. They do, however, give you another piece of information to consider.
I Want to Hear From the Person Who Deals With It Every Tuesday
There is a difference between understanding how a building is supposed to operate and knowing how it actually operates.
That difference becomes particularly noticeable in industrial facilities. A construction schedule might show that an area will be available for work on a certain day. Then you talk with the person who actually works in that area, and you learn that a delivery arrives every Tuesday morning, a particular piece of equipment cannot be shut down until the afternoon, or employees need that access route during a shift change.
Those details can sound small when you are looking at a schedule in a conference room. They feel much more important when a crew arrives and discovers the area isn’t actually available.
This is why I like talking with operators, maintenance personnel, and facility staff when the opportunity is there. I want to understand how people actually use the space.
I am not asking them to redesign the project. I am trying to learn what they know.
Experience With a Building Is Useful, but It Is Not Infallible
There is a tradeoff here that I think is important.
Someone may have worked in a building for 20 years and still not know everything about it. Memories can be wrong. People can misunderstand why something was changed. A maintenance practice that has existed for years is not necessarily the best practice simply because everyone is accustomed to it.
I have had to remind myself of this because firsthand knowledge can be very convincing. When someone confidently tells you, “That has always been like that,” it is easy to accept the statement and move on.
My next question is usually some version of, “Can we verify that?”
That might mean looking at records, checking the plans, inspecting the condition, or asking someone else who was involved. I treat institutional knowledge as another source of information, not the final answer.
The same principle applies to my own experience. I have been around enough buildings to recognize patterns, but I have also been around enough buildings to know that patterns have exceptions. Experience should help you ask better questions. It should not convince you that you no longer need to ask them.
Maintenance Staff Often Notice Problems Before Anyone Else
One group I particularly like hearing from is the maintenance team.
Maintenance personnel spend their time dealing with the parts of a building that most people only think about when something stops working. They know which doors never quite close correctly, which drains require more attention, which equipment has been repaired repeatedly, and which areas generate the most calls.
That does not mean every maintenance complaint belongs in the scope of a construction project. You have to be careful not to let a project grow every time someone mentions something they would like changed.
Still, I would rather know about those issues than not know about them.
If someone tells me that an area has experienced the same problem several times, I want to understand why. Maybe it has nothing to do with our project. Maybe it has everything to do with it. You cannot make that distinction until you listen.
Restoration Makes Building Knowledge Even More Valuable
I think this becomes especially important after property damage.
When you walk into a building after a fire, water loss, or another significant event, you are trying to understand both what happened and what existed before it happened. That can be difficult when parts of the building have been damaged or removed.
People who knew the property before the loss can provide valuable context.
They may remember previous repairs or explain how a space was normally used. They can tell you whether a condition existed before the loss or appeared afterward. You still need to consider their observations alongside physical evidence and documentation, but they can point you to questions worth investigating.
That is one of the lessons I carried with me from insurance into restoration and consulting. Before deciding what something means, understand as much of the history as you reasonably can.
Good Questions Are Usually Specific
I have also learned that “Is there anything I should know?” is not a particularly good question.
Most people will say no because the question is too broad.
I would rather ask what breaks most often, what area causes the most trouble, whether anything has changed recently, what cannot be shut down, or what part of the building they would check first if a particular problem appeared.
Specific questions make people think about their actual experience rather than guessing what information I want.
Sometimes the answer leads nowhere, and that is fine. Not every conversation needs to uncover something important. The point is to give yourself the opportunity to learn something you would otherwise miss.
The Building Usually Has More Than One Expert
One advantage of working in this field for a long time is becoming more comfortable admitting what you don’t know.
I may understand restoration, property damage, estimates, or project oversight, but I have not spent the last decade maintaining that particular building. The engineer may understand the system better than anyone else, but the operator may know exactly how that system behaves at six o’clock every morning. The contractor may understand how to build the work, while the facility manager understands what has to keep happening around it.
Those are different kinds of expertise.
When I walk into a project now, I pay attention to the people who have been living with the building long before our team arrived. I listen to what they have noticed, ask questions about what sounds important, and then try to verify what we can.
The person who knows the building best may never appear on the project team roster. I have learned that this is a good reason to look beyond the roster.