Why tiling a bathroom is similar to transforming your business

First let’s agree on something – tiling is 80% aesthetic and 20% functional. I say that because there are far easier and cheaper ways to achieve a waterproof environment for a bath or shower.

When I tile a room, here is my list of aesthetic requirements – these are even more important when you use a contrasting grout as I used in this bathroom.

Properly understood requirements

• Symmetry (horizontally and vertically)
• Angle of the tiles and grout lines
• All grout lines should match up, everywhere
• All grout lines should be the same width
• Flatness of the finished tiles floor
• Continuity of reflections on the wall (requires flat and even tiles)
• No silly slivers of tiles or bits you cannot tile because they are too narrow
• The quality of finish around the door frames
• Design of outer corners (positioning of tile trim, or chamfered tiles)
• Absence of areas with mismatched tiles (due to batch or natural variation)

Planning uncovers the challenges ahead and avoids them

Planning is really important and here are some things you discover in this phase:

• The corners in the room are not 90-degree right-angles
• The floor may not be level
• The walls may not be straight
• The room itself might not be straight
• You need to know where the sanitary wear and furniture goes so you can put the underfloor heating in the right place
• You may have some restrictions in positioning sanitary wear due to the plumbing, required fall (angle) on drainage pipes, etc
• To get the symmetry there is a relationship between the room and the position of the sanitary-wear and furniture. 
• For vertical symmetry you need to consider the heights of the bath, vanity unit, boxing in around the cistern (if that’s your design)
• Do you have the join between tiles as the centre-line on your toilet pan, or the middle of the tile centred on it? Same question for your sink, taps, shower tray, shower valves.
• The positioning of the windows, doors, other architectural features, shape of the room, the points at which you enter the room and how you move around it all feed into this.

There are decisions from this planning process including:

• The pattern that you use when you lay them (checkerboard, brick/offset, herringbone, etc)
• The angle of the tiles on the floor
• How wide the tiles will be around the edges so you can avoid really narrow slivers, and you have symmetry top-to-bottom, not just side-to-side
• The positioning of things in the bathroom
• The positioning of the tiles themselves
• The positioning of things in the bathroom
• The work that needs to be done before you start to lay the tiles themselves
• Your approach to features such as architraves etc

Planning should be iterative and isn’t about gannt charts

The planning process itself is iterative and involves laser levels, spirit levels, carpenters pencils, placing tiles, sanitary-wear and furniture, moving it around, to the point where I can check that the requirements can be fulfilled by the work. 

Then some more prep (e.g. screeding, underfloor heating, surface preparation) followed by final marking up. Checking you have the right tools, adhesives, surface preparations, etc.

In this room, the first tile I stuck down was a floor tile near the middle of the room. Get that wrong and you’ll either be disappointed with the results or doing a lot of rework!

If I had short-cut the planning in this project, it would have meant material wastage, re-work, adding time and costs and only partially fulfilling the brief. More expensive, poorer result and late (as it was I finished it just in time for our first guests). 

What’s the business take-away. 

These statements below all apply equally to tiling and technology direction-setting, architecture and design.

1. Planning is an essential component of delivery
2. There are interdependencies that are important but not immediately apparent. There are similarities between the dependencies I mentioned above and designing IT solutions, considering your data architecture, your user experience, etc.
3. The planning of the later activity can affect some things which need to happen earlier – you need to plan at just enough detail to identify this
4. Iteration in planning is important to get the results you want (and feel confident).
5. Do as much visualisation as you need (and get feedback) to feel 100% confident before you "glue things down"
6. Make sure you have the tools and skills you need when you need them. “Popping out” and getting something you have forgotten will mean your adhesive dries, you will have some wastage, some extra work and lose half a day. It has the same impacts on programmes too. 
7. If for some reason you feel you need to stick that first tile on the floor without doing the planning, understand the upsides and downsides of doing that, and whether the risk is worth it. If you can factor in cost and time overruns or how this might limit your overall aspirations (and the benefit limitation that results in) then that will help decide whether the risk is worth it or not (“within appetite” to use the jargon)

There is plenty of proof that setting your programme and technology roadmap up properly will reap many benefits, failing to do so destroys the value. Mckinsey’s Transformational Change Survey identifies that 45% of the financial benefit was lost at definition and planning stages, the book “How Big Things Get Done” gives loads of data-backed examples. 

Can I help?

Within my work at Qualocity, I help clients unpack what they need to achieve as a business and how technology can support that and consider the high-level design, interdependencies and ordering of work to form the roadmap. I then make sure that we have the right teams of people in place to deliver a quality outcome. This process is not dissimilar in some respects to achieving a really good finish when tiling a complete bathroom.