{"id":21765,"date":"2026-11-05T08:32:48","date_gmt":"2026-11-05T08:32:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/whatif.ee\/?post_type=blog&p=21765"},"modified":"2026-11-05T08:34:23","modified_gmt":"2026-11-05T08:34:23","slug":"real-estate-development-project-management-franklin","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/whatif.ee\/en\/blog\/real-estate-development-project-management-franklin\/","title":{"rendered":"We measured which work people shouldn\u2019t have to do on a real estate project anymore"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Real estate projects are becoming more complex, more information is being generated, and the demands on project management keep growing. Yet we still handle much of this growing complexity with one and the same resource: people\u2019s time. At WHAT IF, we broke down our project managers\u2019 work and asked which activities actually require an experienced project manager \u2013 and which ones a person shouldn\u2019t have to do at all anymore.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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K\u00fclli Tulvik, Head of Development Services at WHAT IF<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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In real estate development, we talk a lot about how to manage projects better. We make more precise schedules, create new processes, adopt new platforms and add checkpoints. At the same time, the project itself has become increasingly information-heavy. Design constantly produces new versions, decisions are made in different places, requirements keep piling up, and over the course of a single project an enormous amount of documentation and history accumulates.<\/p>

Much of this complexity eventually lands on the project manager\u2019s desk.<\/strong><\/p>

When it isn\u2019t immediately clear which document is valid, the project manager checks. When a new drawing arrives, someone has to figure out what changed. When a question comes up about a decision made six months ago, someone digs up its background. When two pieces of information contradict each other, we often rely on an experienced person to notice.<\/p>

A good project manager compensates for a great deal of the system\u2019s shortcomings with their experience, memory and time. They know how to find information, they know the project\u2019s history, and they can piece together a large amount of fragmented information into a whole in their head.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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But is that really what we want to pay a good project manager for?<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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We broke the project manager\u2019s work down into activities<\/h2>

This question has become increasingly important at WHAT IF in recent years. Not because we want to shrink the project manager\u2019s role \u2013 quite the opposite: we want to use their expertise where it has the greatest impact.<\/p>

K\u00fclli is a project manager at WHAT IF. Her value to the client lies in understanding the project as a whole, seeing the consequences of changes, spotting risks, managing the various parties and helping the client make better decisions.<\/p>

Yet her workday is also made up of dozens of activities that don\u2019t actually require her professional expertise. You don\u2019t need a good project manager to find a file. You don\u2019t need a good project manager to spot differences between two drawings. Finding a decision from six months ago shouldn\u2019t require a good memory.<\/p>

We took K\u00fclli\u2019s daily workflows and started measuring how much time these activities actually take \u2013 and what changes when Franklin<\/a> handles part of the information processing for her.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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The goal wasn\u2019t to find out how many clicks some new tool saves, but something more fundamental:
how much of a project manager\u2019s current work could we take off their plate entirely?<\/strong><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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A project manager shouldn\u2019t have to start by hunting for the change<\/h2>

Take one of the most common situations: a new drawing version arrives on the project.<\/p>

For the project manager, the real question isn\u2019t whether a wall, a dimension or a technical solution changed on the drawing. The question is what that change means for the project.<\/p>