Project Context
In 1998, NBBJ and its two Norwegian Joint Venture Partners were the winners of a prestigious competition to design a new headquarters for Telenor, Norway's telecommunications giant. The project, located on a 53-acre site at the former Oslo International Airport, was to be 137,000 m2, accommodate 7500 employees with 6000 workplaces, and contain 200 work zones, 220 meeting rooms, 1735 parking spaces, along with other corporate headquarters amenities.

The client's vision was to construct the leading workplace for innovation in Scandinavia, increasing efficiency by consolidating 40 separate offices and 6000 employees into one location. Telenor sought a highly aesthetic environment, even at this vast scale, that would stimulate creativity, the exchange of information, and the processing of ideas. In an increasingly tough international market, Telenor wanted recognition as a source of inspiration for both private and public sector telecommunications activities.

The new headquarters would become both the cultural and commercial heart of the company, providing inspiring new ways for people to interact with technology and their surroundings. It would express the company's external communications-rich profile: creative, forward-looking, democratic and socially responsible. The architecture would create a flow of interior and exterior spaces, and of people and ideas, to promote the full potential of global communications for client and customers alike. The business plan required innovation, function, flexibility, sustainability, aesthetics, and economy.

Major Players/Roles
NBBJ and its joint venture (JV) partners from Trondheim, Norway were selected by an international design competition administered by the client team. The JV contracted directly with Telenor, as did the local Oslo engineers who were elected by a formal interview process administered by Telenor without architect participation. The key leaders of the design team collocated with the Telenor team at the project site in Fornebu, Norway.

The project was governed by a Telenor Board comprised of outside leaders from the Oslo community. The Board was chaired by the CEO, Fredrik Baksaas. The internal client team numbered 40+ construction and project management professionals, led by their Executive Director, Bjorn Sundt. The client team handled all client communications, and took an active role in the project.

NBBJ was a 50% owner in the JV that contracted with Telenor. The two other Norwegian entities each controlled 25% of the ownership. The JV was governed by a three-person JV Board, chaired by Scott Wyatt of NBBJ. The other two Board members were the owners of HUS and PKA, although they were not active in the project. The Board was responsible for setting the overall project goals, guidelines and governance for the JV architectural team. The JV Board delegated the execution of the services under this agreement with Telenor to its Project Execution of the services under its agreement with Telenor to its Project Executive, Bill Nichols of NBBJ. The Project Executive reported directly to the Board.

Intercultural Challenges
From the outset, the potential for conflict within an American/Norwegian joint venture was clear. The team faced three principal challenges: running an international office where team members had left home to work together; creating an effective joint venture decision-making structure; and overcoming cultural differences among diverse team members.

Any firm setting up an international office faces fundamental issues. This project was no exception. Both Americans and Norwegians were relocated to come together in a new office in Oslo. There were many work permit and employee relocation tasks that naturally distracted even the most dedicated team members - a diverse cast made up of people from Chile, Portugal, and Sweden, as well as Norway and the United States. Additionally, the official project language was Norwegian, meaning that all drawings and contracts needed to be translated, and that all project meetings were conducted in Norwegian. This left the American team members at an obvious disadvantage in leading meetings and in their necessary communications with the client and engineers.

At the same time, a new method for making decisions and advancing the project while dealing with multiple decision-makers and styles was required. Disagreement stemmed from differences between the Norwegians' traditional, hierarchical style and the Americans' collaborative, empowered approach embodied by NBBJ.

But the cultural differences went even deeper. Due to Norway's hierarchical office paradigm, Norwegian employees typically are less inclined than their American counterparts to take ownership of their individual tasks. Additionally, Norwegian architects are unionized and thus are legally mandated to work no more than 140 hours per month. This came into conflict with the amount of time invested by American team members who spent a large number of hours at the office in order to meet project demands. However, it must be noted that since the American team members were further from home, they had less incentive than Norwegian team members to leave the office.

Cultural differences also permeated discussions about the project's design, as the Norwegian cultural emphasis on modesty and functionality contrasted with the strong formal character of the competition-winning scheme. Originating from the social characteristics of their society, Norwegian designs avoid the appearance of overspending community resources on individual outcomes. Instead, functionality is used to base architecture on an objective approach.

Cross-cultural Collaboration
This project was unusual in that the entire design team was pre-arranged by the client rather than self-selected by the architect. However, we determined that all team members would succeed or fail in equal measure. To meet the obvious challenges, the team needed to achieve successful cross-cultural design collaboration, confidence and trust within the team, and a shared commitment to and belief in the work.

NBBJ's collaborative work model, based on a participatory approach that includes all team members and the client, aimed the JV's direction at creating a mini-United Nations. Differences were celebrated as sources of inspiration, not deterrents to design. As Bill Nichols, the Project Executive says, "We decided to harvest the cultural 'spikes' rather than pound them down. The creative design community is all about diversity adding to the richness of the work experience."

With this mind-set, the project kicked-off in Seattle with a 1-1/2 week charrette for all team members to come together and talk about project goals and objectives. This was a chance for the Norwegians to see how Americans both live and work, and accordingly, work sessions and social sessions were acknowledged as equal in importance for the joint venture to succeed. The goal was to generate common links for everyone to draw from, starting with a road trip, American-style, along Chuckanut Drive - stopping to dine on local oysters.

Bill Nichols explains, "In order to keep everyone focused on the project, we needed to stop thinking about our differences and recognize what we had in common. It's like a boat trip: when you leave shore, it's all about new relationships. When the Telenor project started, it was all about the project and how everyone involved had become a key component and stakeholder."

Back in Norway, as the Project Executive, Bill continued to oversee intercultural events as an important part of his responsibilities. He organized a Thanksgiving dinner for the team and their families, and in return, the Norwegians hosted a Christmas dinner complete with reindeer and lutefisk, and summertime picnics to a local island in the fjord.

Trips to visit projects designed by the Norwegian partners were also organized to establish a shared understanding of Norway's language of materials and standards. Traveling as a team to Trondheim, where the other JV offices are based, and touring facilities built by the team members, helped the Americans to appreciate the Norwegian's insistence on access to daylight and fresh air, environmental stewardship, and interactive ways of working. After the tours, a slide show and daylong conference to discuss the nature of "modesty" and "function" in Norwegian architecture encouraged an open dialogue that became a mainstay of the team's ability to communicate.

Building Confidence, Trust and Commitment
Basic project logistics also strengthened the bonds between team members, such collocation of the entire international entourage in Oslo, near the site and client. Together, the entire team planned the workspace, bought and set up the office furniture, and constructed the model shop. They spent a week building a 1:500 scale building and site model as a part of their deliverables for schematic design. This large model, measuring 4' x 6', required joint decisions, and polished everyone's collaboration skills as much as the project's design.

Team members increasingly came to rely on each other's expertise, as they learned a new CAD platform together. Microstation Triforma was used as a modeling tool which, because of the way it integrates files, allowed distribution of the project's design of spaces among all the team members and reinforced a non-hierarchical team structure. For example, Nazare Lillebo, who was in charge of the atrium, worked with Jonathan Ward, who was focused on the adjacent office space. Their combined files rendered a common vision, but the two had to work well together for either to achieve success. In other words, the individual's accomplishment translated to the team's triumph - and vice versa.

Belief in the Work
Ultimately the strength of the client's vision and shared design tasks across the team helped to close cultural differences and steered everyone towards a joint commitment to the project. The client's clear goals served as a benchmark against which all decisions were measured, while the competition-winning design became the key document for maintaining the design's direction.

Carefully structured, self-empowered design teams now ensured a balance of cultural understanding and design know-how. Everyone was collectively at risk, but also collectively successful. Momentum grew throughout the team as a sense of ownership of the project developed. Bill Nichols even had to counsel the Norwegians to work less in order to avoid overtime legal issues!

Disagreements were handled through a practical hierarchy of dispute resolution where differences were resolved within the subteam closest to the work. In this way, problems did not go higher (to the project executive) unless an impasse was reached. And, as the three distinct components of the project (office structure, plaza, and customer center) took shape, each subteam demonstrated the capability to take care of internal issues and continue moving forward for the good of the overall project.

Conclusions
The end result of this transformational approach is a very successful project for our client and a true benchmark for success for all major international projects within NBBJ. It scores well against every measure, including quality of design, client transformation, team collaboration, sustainability, and client financial success. The extent of the project's impact became clear when it won a national AIA Honor Award in 2004.