How to Run High Impact OAC Meetings
The complete guide to running OAC meetings so effective your team will rate them 10/10 every time.
👋 Hey, Kyle here! Welcome to The Influential Project Manager, a weekly newsletter covering the essentials of successful project leadership.
Today’s Overview:
When was the last time you had a truly effective OAC meeting? If you’re like most construction project managers, it’s probably been a while.
Usually they’re painfully unorganized, key stakeholders aren’t in the room, and there are no clear action items at the end. Basically, they’re a waste of everyone’s time.
What if you could transform your weekly OAC meetings into High Impact OAC Meetings—sessions so effective that your team consistently rates them 10 out of 10? Read on to find out how.
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👥 How to Run High Impact OAC Meetings
Filed under: Frameworks & Tools, Leadership & Managing People
Anyone reading this has probably sat through countless OAC meetings that didn’t accomplish anything and could’ve been an email.
People go on tangents, the organizer lacks any real agenda, and people walk away wondering why the heck they went.
It can feel like death by 1,000 hours of pointless meetings.
That typical OAC meeting you suffer through averages a rating of about 4 out of 10 by attendees. That’s essentially a failing grade for 90 minutes of your most expensive people’s time.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
You can learn how to hold world-class meetings—something I call a High Impact OAC Meeting. I call it a High Impact meeting because they are high effective and yield a great outcome every time.
Today I’m going to show you how to raise all your OAC meetings to a rating of 10 out 10.
The Purpose of the OAC Meeting
Most decisions about an AEC project require a seemingly endless number of considerations, from the budget to even the weather. Many of these decisions require input from the people footing the bill, the people who designed the project, and the people doing the work — most commonly the Owner, Architect and Contractor (OAC). That’s why construction teams have OAC meetings.
Without the OAC meeting, getting input and approval can involve tracking each stakeholder, repeating information over and over and constantly following up.
The topics covered at the meetings evolve over the course of the project, though the goal is always to keep the project efficiently and effectively moving forward.
Why High Impact OAC Meetings Work
High Impact OAC meetings are so effective because they are a time management tool.
They make the most of you and your project team coming together for 60-90 precious minutes each week. High Impact meetings will help you save two to three times that amount each week because the time you invest in the High Impact meeting will help you:
Avoid project delays and miscommunication
Solve avoidance issues by holding trade partners accountable
Keep all stakeholders aligned on schedule, budget, and quality
High Impact OAC meetings all come down to structure, process, and soft skills.
The Five Essential Elements
A great meeting rhythm requires five non-negotiables:
Same day, same time, same agenda format
Starts on time, ends on time
All key stakeholders present
Structured agenda flow
Action-oriented outcomes
Now I’ll show you the psychology, the philosophy, and the flow of a high impact OAC meeting.
The High Impact OAC Meeting Structure
1. Start On Time
First, the meeting starts on time. Coach Vince Lombardi used to say that “early is on time and on time is late.”
So if your OAC meeting is Monday at 9:00 a.m., you and your project team are there at 8:55, small talking and getting ready to roll.
2. Safety Moment & Good News (5 minutes)
Whoever runs the meeting, at nine on the button says, “Okay everyone, safety moment and good news,” and you start your meeting off with a safety moment and good news, which is the segway.
“We just passed our safety milestone - 100 days without a recordable incident. Everyone here contributed to that success.”
This builds rapport with your team. You’re giving sincere appreciation for wins and creating common ground around safety. It helps a project team transition from working in their disciplines all week to working on the project together.
Sharing both personal and professional good news also brings a human element to the meeting, helping you relate to people at their level.
Sharing good news and the safety moment only takes about five minutes and is pretty rapid fire around the room, but the psychology behind it is huge and extraordinarily valuable.
3. Reporting Mode (15 minutes total)
Then you go into reporting mode. The next three agenda items are all about reporting, and so the psychology here is you’re now going into the mode where you make sure everything important in your project is on track.
You’re making sure that your schedule is on track, that your design coordination is on track, and all your stakeholders are aligned.
Here’s what I mean:
A) Schedule Dashboard Review (5 minutes)
First, you’ll review your schedule dashboard to make sure that all your critical milestone dates are on track.
This should just take five quick minutes - no explaining, just reviewing: on track or off track.
Keep language simple. Avoid jargon and stay factual.
B) Trade Partner, Design Team, Administration Status (5 minutes)
Then you’re going to do a trade partner and design team status review to make sure that your active trades, documentation (RFIs, Submittals, Drawings) and their coordination requirements are on track for the week.
These are your critical path activities. This should take just five quick minutes.
C) Safety/Quality Headlines (5 minutes)
And then you’ll share any safety concerns, quality issues, customer impacts, or inspection headlines.
You’re sharing good and concerning news about site conditions and project status. They should be one sentence headlines, not big long stories. Follow a logical progression. Facts first, emotions second.
This way you quickly know what’s going on with your project, and remember, we’re in reporting mode.
D) Building the Roadblock List
Any milestone that’s off track, any design coordination that is off track, or any safety/quality headline that requires discussion or is an issue that needs to be solved, you simply drop them down to your Roadblock list.
During this reporting mode, the idea is not to have any discussion. You’re not solving anything. You’re just reporting for 15 quick minutes and building the roadblock list, which I’ll come back to in just a moment.
4. Action Items Review (5 minutes)
Once you’re done reporting and you’ve extracted all the relevant issues, we bring a little accountability into your project with an action items list. This is very important to know.
The action items list is baked right into the agenda. The High Impact OAC meeting agenda is one document that you manage as a project team. It is a dynamic document where action items are going on and coming off every single week, and your issues are going on and coming off every week. So again, this is a very dynamic document.
With that said, you spend just five quick minutes reviewing all last week’s action items to make sure that they are getting done. As a rule of thumb, 90% of your action items should drop off every single week. If they’re not, there’s a problem somewhere. Typically it’s an accountability problem, but nonetheless, everything you committed to last week - 90% should be done.
5. Roadblock Removal (60 minutes)
From there, after five quick minutes, we go to the portion of the High Impact meeting called Roadblock Removal.
Roadblock removal is the issue solving track borrowed from the Entrepreneurial Operating System (“EOS”) that I teach every project team.
It’s made up of Identifying, Discussing, and Solving the things standing in the way of flow on your project.
For Each Roadblock:
Identify: What is the real issue? Dig to the root cause
Discuss: Cover every option and solution openly
Solve: Create specific action items with owners and due dates
Never start at the top and work your way down. Never vote on them. Always focus on the most important issue you need to take on.
Dynamic Process
The issues list is a dynamic document and a dynamic list.
Typically, as part of solving the issue, you need to create an action item or two that you need to get done in the next seven days. Action items are seven-day commitments, so those action items for that issue need to get done in the next seven days.
6. Conclude (5 minutes)
Once there are five minutes left in the meeting, you conclude. That means wherever you are in roadblock removal, you just conclude.
Five minutes left, you do three quick things:
Recap the action items list - make sure everybody has their marching orders
Discuss if there are any cascading messages that need to be cascaded out to the field teams and other stakeholders
Quickly do a Plus/Delta on how you did today.
“Plus/delta” is a feedback technique used in meetings to identify what worked well (”pluses”) and what could be improved (”deltas”). A team discusses positive aspects to replicate and constructive criticism for future action, leading to continuous improvement in processes and meetings.
Then at 10:30 on the button, the meeting ends on time, every time. This way your meetings aren’t collapsing on top of other meetings, and you can get back to the real world.
⚡The iPM Edge — Advanced Communication Techniques
Remember at the beginning when I mentioned that High Impact OAC meetings come down to structure, process, and soft skills? Well, the structure and process only get you so far. What takes your meetings from good to world-class is how you execute the soft skills.
Here’s how to master the execution:
Voice Modulation & Leadership Presence
The way you communicate sets the tone for everything. Your voice is your tool for creating focus, urgency, and clarity:
Word Emphasis: Stress key phrases like “CRITICAL path,” “SAFETY first,” “COMMITTED deadline”
Strategic Pauses: After asking “Are we on track?” pause for impact before moving forward
Pacing Control: Speed up during reporting mode to maintain energy, slow down during problem-solving to ensure clarity
Eye Contact: Make each person feel heard during their reporting segment
Ownership: Speak with conviction about project goals and timelines
Psychology of Team Alignment
Getting nine different stakeholders moving in the same direction requires more than just good structure. You need to appeal to what drives people:
Create Higher Purpose:
“Let’s deliver a project our families can drive by with pride”
“This building will serve this community for 50 years”
“We’re not just building a project, we’re building a place where people work and heal.”
Build Emotional Investment:
Start with wins to create positive momentum
Use “we” language consistently: “Our schedule,” “Our quality standards,” “Our success”
End each section with forward momentum: “Now that we’ve identified the real issues, let’s solve them”
Handling Resistance & Pressure
Even with perfect structure, you’ll face push back, disagreements, and tension. When difficult moments arise, use the LCBR Method:
Listen: “I understand your concern about the schedule impact...”
Cushion: “You’re absolutely right that safety can’t be compromised...”
Bridge: “What’s important to remember is that proper planning actually accelerates delivery...”
Respond: Present the positive solution with evidence
This technique acknowledges concerns, validates the person, then redirects toward solutions while maintaining respect and momentum.
These are the techniques turn your structured agenda into a powerful tool for alignment, accountability, and results. Without them, you’re just running a slightly better version of the same old meeting.
The Result
So that’s it. That’s how to have a world-class High Impact 90-minute weekly OAC meeting with your project team.
This structured approach will transform your chaotic project coordination into productive, accountable sessions that actually move your project forward safely, on time, and on budget.
Ready to revolutionize your project meetings? I’ve built a complete High Impact OAC Meeting Template in Notion with everything from today’s framework ready to use.
→ Duplicate the Free Template Here
Until next week,
Kyle Nitchen
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Love this perspective, Kyle! It really hits home. What if the biggest challange isn't the tools, but getting everyone aligned and invested in these "high impact" changes? Seems like a truly human problem.