How Do You Run an OAC Meeting?

OAC stands for owner, architect, contractor: the three parties to the job's prime contracts. The meeting is where they settle the questions that hold up the work. It is not a progress lecture. If an item doesn't need a decision, an answer or a date from someone in the room, it belongs in the weekly owner update instead.

Public owners write the same purpose into their manuals. The City of Los Angeles Bureau of Engineering's meetings procedure says weekly progress meetings are held to discuss "general project status, specific problems related to construction, and outstanding items to be resolved", and for old and new business the construction manager should "establish the responsible party and a time limit for each outstanding item". Connecticut's construction administration manual calls for progress meetings weekly and says each one "should have a specific purpose with clearly defined and realistic goals".

Who chairs it depends on the contract. On a design-bid-build job the GC usually runs it; on agency work the owner's construction manager often does. The method below is written for the GC; where the meeting sits in the job as a whole is in the general contractor's guide and the project lifecycle.

The meeting goes fast when everyone arrives with their part already done. Send this list with the first invitation, so nobody brings a surprise.

Keep the trades out unless an item needs them. Their coordination belongs in a separate subcontractor meeting, where the superintendent can go through the look-ahead activity by activity.

Here is the agenda for a weekly OAC meeting on a made-up job, the Alder Street Medical Office, with the slab on grade done and framing under way. Every item has a number that stays with it until it closes: 14.1 is new this week, while 11.3 was first raised at meeting 11.

Notice what the agenda already does. Each item names who owes what. The overdue items sit at the top of their sections. The one decision the owner must make this week has a dollar amount and a date. Nobody has to ask what the meeting is for.

1. Start on time and accept last week's minutes first. The Los Angeles minutes procedure has the previous minutes amended as needed and approved at the following meeting.
2. Take old business before anything new. An open item that slides off the agenda is how a two-week question becomes a two-month delay.
3. Walk the look-ahead, not the whole schedule. Spend the time on activities in the next three weeks that wait on someone in the room. The federal scheduling spec, UFGS 01 32 01.00 10, has the weekly meeting review actual progress against planned progress and the upcoming work through a three-week look-ahead.
4. Go through the RFI and submittal logs oldest first, and only the items that are overdue or holding work.
5. Ask for decisions by name: "Can the owner approve PCO 007 by Friday?" A meeting that ends with "we'll look at it" ends with nothing.
6. Close each item with one person and one date, said out loud, so it goes into the minutes the way everyone heard it.
7. Set the next meeting before people stand up.

• Reading the schedule aloud. Send it ahead and spend the meeting on what needs a decision.
• Action items with no name or no date. "Team to review" means nobody does.
• Renumbering open items each week. Keep the number from the meeting it started in, so anyone can see how long it has been open.
• Letting minutes wait a week. Write them the same day, while the room still agrees on what was said; how to write construction meeting minutes has a filled-in example.
• Deciding a change in the meeting and never writing it up. A decision on cost or time still needs a change order.

In Conflo's meetings tool, OAC meetings form a numbered series: OAC Meeting #1, #2, #3. You set the date, time and place, invite people from the project team and write the agenda. During the meeting you mark who was present, write the minutes and add action items, each with an assignee and a due date. Assignees can mark their own items complete.

When you schedule the next meeting, Conflo can create it with the same people, place, time and agenda one week later, and every open action item moves to it marked with the meeting it came from. The earlier minutes still show the item as carried. The agenda and the minutes each download as a PDF.

A good OAC meeting is short because the work is done beforehand: the agenda and logs go out a day ahead, old business comes first, and every item leaves the room with a name and a date. Open items carry forward with their numbers until they close.

If your action items live in last week's minutes and nobody reads them, keep them on a series that carries them forward for you.

See how meetings work in Conflo

1. Project Delivery Manual, 16.6 Meetings — City of Los Angeles, Bureau of Engineering. Read October 22, 2026.
2. Project Delivery Manual, 16.7 Meeting Minutes — City of Los Angeles, Bureau of Engineering. Read October 22, 2026.
3. 0600 Construction Administration Procedures Manual, §2.4.5 Project Meetings — State of Connecticut Department of Administrative Services. Read October 22, 2026.
4. UFGS 01 32 01.00 10, Project Schedule (August 2026), §3.7 Weekly Progress Meetings — U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Whole Building Design Guide). Read October 22, 2026.