Three philosophies applied to running a development

An illustrative scene. Monday, coordination meeting for a high-end residential tower. For the third week running, the building-services designer asks whether he can open a shaft through the slab on the 12th floor. The structural engineer says it depends on the architects. The architects say it depends on a floor plan that the commercial curation team has not yet closed. The minutes record the question again. Nobody records who will answer it.

The minutes prove the problem was seen. Only an owner proves it will be solved. And the best clue about that gap comes from an unlikely place: a Japanese public-health study.

Published in 2008 in Psychosomatic Medicine, the Ohsaki Study followed 43,391 Japanese adults for seven years. Each was asked a single question: "Do you have ikigai in your life?" Over that period, 3,048 participants died. Those who said they had no ikigai, the sense that life is worth living, faced a 1.5 times higher risk of death from all causes, after adjustment for other factors. The study says nothing about construction. It does show a concept that sounds poetic can be asked about, recorded and tracked.

Three foreign words name the three failures that cost a complex project the most

InnovaSphere uses three words from distinct traditions as working labels: ikigai (生き甲斐), from Japanese; lagom, from Swedish; and qi (氣), from Chinese. None was coined to run real estate developments. Together they name the costliest failures of a project that puts design, engineering, permits, commercial curation and finance on one schedule.

The first is the contractor who honours the contract without committing to the project. The second is the in-house team that grows or shrinks out of proportion. The third is the decision stuck between two disciplines, like the shaft in the opening scene. Ikigai chooses whom to hire. Lagom sizes the core team that coordinates. Qi disciplines the flow of decisions. The value lies in turning each word into a question with an owner and a cadence.

Ikigai can be asked, and the question becomes a hiring filter

For a manager, the merit of the Ohsaki Study is its method: one simple question, put to a large cohort and followed over time. The study is about mortality, not productivity. What travels is the gesture: ask clearly, record the answer, and watch what happens next.

In procurement, that gesture becomes a three-question filter. Competence: does the technical track record prove the ability to deliver this discipline at this level of complexity? Commitment: does the team that will actually do the work know the project and have real availability? Viability: do the contractor's price and financial stamina allow it to finish the scope without a forced renegotiation? When any answer is missing, the contract tends to generate friction. And friction surfaces late.

The third question is more than prudence. Article 4-A of Brazilian Law No. 6,019/1974, as rewritten by the 2017 labour reform, allows a company to outsource any activity, including its core business, to a provider "with economic capacity compatible with its execution". In plain terms: outsourcing is lawful as long as the chosen firm can carry the job. If it cannot, the bill comes back to whoever hired it.

It comes back in two ways. The hiring company is secondarily liable for the provider's labour debts for the period of the contract. And it must guarantee safety, hygiene and healthy conditions when the work takes place on its premises. The same statute bars hiring a firm whose partners worked for the client in the previous eighteen months, unless they are retired. Here ikigai becomes due diligence: checking the financial health and compliance of whoever joins the project, before signing and throughout delivery.

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Lagom is the measure the task requires, not a lukewarm middle

The Swedish word usually arrives with a charming story: Vikings supposedly said "laget om" while passing round the drinking vessel, so that each took only a fair share. The Swedish Institute for Language and Folklore, the public body that answers questions about the language, classifies the tale as folk etymology that does not hold. Lagom is a fossilised inflection of lag, a word meaning right position, order, proper condition.

The correction changes the management reading. Lagom is not "not too much, not too little" out of timidity. It is structure sized to what the task demands. For a development manager, it defines the size of the coordination core. Bloated, the core burns resources and starts redoing the contractors' work. Too lean, it loses the capacity to check, decide and answer.

The floor under that core is legal. Under Article 43 of Law No. 4,591/1964, a developer who contracts delivery at a fixed term and price is civilly liable for execution. If the building is not completed, or is delayed without justification, the developer compensates buyers first and only then recovers from a builder at fault. As amended in 2022, the same article requires a status report on the works, measured against the agreed deadline, to go to the buyers' representative committee every three months.

Put simply: you can delegate execution, not accountability. Whoever coordinates needs people to check measurements, consolidate the quarterly report, keep evidence for any recovery claim and decide at site pace. Below that floor, apparent savings become exposure. Above it, every extra person has to pay for themselves.

Outsourcing execution is a management choice. Responsibility for the whole stays with whoever coordinates. Lagom means sizing the core for that responsibility, no more and no less.

Qi is the flow of decisions, and flow can be measured

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that qi, rendered as "vital energy", originally named a kind of stuff connected with air and breath. It later came to explain dynamic processes of every kind, from the formation of heaven and earth to the processes of the human heart. On site, what moves are decisions: a technical query, a sample approval, a change of scope.

Operations engineering has a ruler for this. In 1961, John D. C. Little proved in Operations Research that, in a stable system, the average number of items inside it equals the arrival rate multiplied by the average time each item stays. On site: if twelve technical decisions arrive each week and each takes four weeks to resolve, there will be 48 open on average. Cut the response time to a week and a half, and the backlog drops to 18. Nobody had to work longer hours.

The Toyota Production System puts it another way: make only what is needed, when it is needed, in the amount needed. When an abnormality occurs, the machine stops itself or the operator stops the line, so the problem is clearly detected and prevented from recurring. The management equivalent is to make every pending decision visible, with an owner and a deadline, and to hold back any front that depends on an answer that does not yet exist.

A shared model keeps information from stalling between disciplines

Brazil's Decree No. 10,306/2020 defines BIM, Building Information Modelling, as integrated technologies and processes for creating, using and updating digital models of a building collaboratively. The model serves every participant, at any stage of the life cycle. In everyday language: one model for all disciplines, not diverging copies.

The decree phased its use in. From 2021, clash detection between disciplines and model coordination. From 2024, also cost planning, scheduling, construction control and as-built updates. From 2028, also facility management and maintenance after handover. The rule binds only the federal bodies it names. Even so, it is a sound private roadmap, because it shows where qi breaks: in the clash found too late, in the quantity that disagrees with the budget, in the as-built model nobody updates.

Each word becomes routine once it has a question, an owner and a cadence

The framework only works on the calendar. InnovaSphere runs three rituals. The ikigai ritual reviews contractors: competence, allocated team, financial health and labour compliance. The lagom ritual reviews team size at every change of phase, against what the law keeps with whoever coordinates. The qi ritual reads, every week, the stock of open decisions, the average response time and the critical path.

On the Platform, each ritual leaves a trail: the question, the answer, the owner and the date. That trail turns a philosophy into evidence and survives staff turnover, when many rituals die.

Two collaborations within the group work at the edges of this arrangement. IncorpBuilding leads BIM coordination across disciplines, with clashes detected before work starts on site. InnovaPeople works on the organisational design that makes knowledge belong to the institution rather than to whoever happens to carry it.

A worked example: what an interrupted flow costs

The figures below are illustrative assumptions, not market or project data. The same build is compared under two set-ups: a fragmented flow, with an eight-person core, and a coordinated flow, with two extra people dedicated to managing decisions.

On these assumptions, the coordinated set-up costs R$ 130,000 less per year, despite the larger team. The stress test shows where that conclusion breaks. If the fragmented build lost fewer than 8.1 weeks a year, the two extra people would no longer pay for themselves. The same happens if weekly site overhead falls below about R$ 51,400. And it happens if coordination only cuts the loss to five weeks: the coordinated total rises to R$ 2.15 million, R$ 10,000 above the fragmented one.

The example does not prove that a bigger structure is better. It shows that the right size depends on the cost of the delay avoided. That is the sum lagom asks you to do.

When it does not pay off

Sometimes the framework costs more than it returns. The first case is a low-complexity project with a stable scope, few disciplines and predictable decisions. There, a lean core with simple follow-up is enough, and weekly rituals turn into red tape.

The second is low site overhead, as in phases spent waiting for external approval. If a week of extension costs little, extra coordination will rarely pay for itself. The third is a contractor network that already runs in a mature flow, with a shared history and fast responses. Laying a new central layer on top creates intermediation where there was none.

A checklist for applying ikigai, lagom and qi to your development

1. Ask each contractor, before hiring, who will actually work on the project and with what commitment, and confirm it with the named technical lead.
2. Check, with legal and accounting, each provider's economic capacity and labour compliance, before signing and at every measurement.
3. Verify with HR whether any provider's partner worked for your company in the last eighteen months.
4. List, with your lawyers, the duties that development law keeps with the developer, and size the core team to meet them.
5. Measure open decisions and average response time every week, flagging those on the critical path.
6. Require designers to work on a shared model, with clashes detected before construction.
7. Review the core team's size at every phase change, comparing with finance the team's cost and the cost of the delay it avoids.

Frequently asked questions

Are ikigai, lagom and qi recognised management methods?

Not as formal methods. They are cultural concepts used as names for three management questions. The substance comes from the tools behind them: legally required due diligence, Little's Law and shared information modelling.

Does the Ohsaki Study prove that purpose-driven teams are more productive?

No. It associates the absence of ikigai with higher mortality risk and does not measure productivity. It appears here for its method: a subjective concept can be asked about simply and tracked over time.

Is outsourcing a core activity allowed in Brazil?

Yes, since the 2017 labour reform, provided the contractor has compatible economic capacity. The hiring company, however, remains secondarily liable for labour debts from the contract period and must ensure safety when the work happens on its premises.

How do I know whether my in-house core is the right size?

Compare the team's annual cost with the cost of the delay it prevents, without going below what the law requires of whoever coordinates. The accompanying simulator gives a first order of magnitude; the decision needs your own numbers.

Do I need BIM for good information flow?

Not for private projects. What matters is the effect the decree describes: every discipline on a common model, clashes detected before construction and information kept current into operation.

Legal basis

• Law No. 6,019/1974, Articles 4-A, 5-A (paragraphs 3 and 5) and 5-C, as amended by Laws No. 13,429/2017 and No. 13,467/2017: outsourcing, economic capacity, secondary liability and the eighteen-month bar.
• Law No. 4,591/1964, Articles 29 and 43 (item I as amended by Law No. 14,382/2022): definition of developer, quarterly status report and civil liability.
• Brazilian Civil Code, Article 618: five-year liability of the builder for the soundness and safety of the works.
• Decree No. 10,306/2020, Articles 2 to 4: bodies bound, definition of BIM and implementation phases.