Building a complete AWP program starts with understanding its value and finding a passionate evangelist in your organization. But building an AWP team is when companies get serious about actually investing in AWP. It means tagging people to build, facilitate, measure, and grow AWP. It means putting your money where your mouth is.
Here's the good news: just like any new department or initiative, you need to start with the minimum number of resources, grab some quick wins, and then ramp up staffing to support the consequential growth of the program. You don't need to build an army initially to run AWP successfully, as long as the right people are in the driver's seat.
The success of your AWP program hinges on having the right people in the right roles. Without a dedicated team to drive adoption, manage processes, and facilitate cross-functional collaboration, even the most well-intentioned AWP initiatives can stall. A properly structured team ensures accountability, maintains momentum through early wins, and scales the program as your organization realizes measurable benefits. The difference between AWP programs that transform project delivery and those that fade away usually comes down to one thing: the strength of the team behind it.
Let's start with the minimal resources to support your organization's AWP program or an AWP pilot effort:
Primary Responsibilities: The AWP Champion is responsible for driving adoption and continuous improvement within the AWP program. This individual sets the direction of the AWP program and ensures all participants and stakeholders perform their tasks and objectives.
Traits for Success: Likes to drive initiatives, enjoys educating team members, ability to see "the big picture," familiar with change management and in a position with enough authority to drive change, and deep knowledge of construction processes.
Primary Responsibilities: The AWP Lead is a single point of contact at the management level who coordinates resources and efforts within the organization. Duties include managing AWP processes, reviewing the Engineering, Procurement, and Construction Contractors' performance to ensure AWP compliance, and assisting in mitigation strategies if a non-compliance issue arises.
An AWP Lead also acts as a program administrator to ensure ongoing communications within cross-functional teams regarding the AWP program. The administrator maintains all documentation related to the AWP Program and manages the schedule for the Education & Training program. This person ideally serves as the single point of contact for the selected AWP software (such as O3) to ensure the software is being utilized properly and works with the development team if any issues arise.
Traits for Success: High level of organization, strong documentation and project management skills, ability to interpret data trends.
Primary Responsibilities: Each organization, such as Safety, Project Controls, Engineering, etc., needs to identify a team lead who will represent the needs of their organization in the implementation of AWP.
Traits for Success: Vocal about risks and rewards of change, ability to communicate benefits of change to immediate teammates.
Primary Responsibilities: The WorkFace Planner is responsible for converting Construction Work Packages (CWPs) into Installation Work Packages (IWPs). They also ensure that all necessary resources are available prior to releasing the IWP and handle monitoring and control of IWPs. Coordinates constraint management efforts with the cross-functional team leads and the AWP Lead.
Traits for Success: Knows how to break down and issue work, ability to use AWP management software (such as O3).
Once you've identified and assigned the right people to forge the AWP path, be sure to put some basic infrastructure in place. Don't assume that everyone will be able to just "start doing AWP" without consistent, weekly communication. This could mean a weekly WorkFace Planning meeting where both the Engineering Team and AWP Champion attend, or a Constraint Management call to review barriers and resolve them quickly. This may seem like a simple step, but organizations have failed at launching AWP by ignoring the power of "getting the brain trust" together to work through new processes.
The AWP organizational chart offers exciting career advancements and opportunities for growth among innovators, leaders, and performers. Think about how becoming an AWP Team Member contributes to your organization's career pathing. Craft the messaging behind each role about WHY and HOW this is a career advancement in your organization, so the AWP Team Members are proud and excited to contribute.
Building the right team is just the beginning. Equipping them with expert guidance makes all the difference. O3’s seasoned AWP specialists work in lockstep with your company to implement effective strategies that transform project delivery. From Path of Construction development to comprehensive enterprise-wide AWP health checks, we provide the consulting and training services that ensure seamless adoption of new processes and technology.
Whether you're launching a single-project pilot or rolling out AWP across your entire organization, we help Owners, EPCs, and Contractors set up their teams for sustainable success. With our battle-tested methodologies and purpose-built digital platform, your team gains the visibility, accountability, and execution power needed to complete projects on time and on budget.
Request a personalized demo today and discover how we can accelerate your AWP journey!