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By Kim J. Gifford
Project Manager. It’s one of those titles that seem
pretty self-evident. The answer lies in the very
words — someone who manages a project. Yet, this
simple definition cannot adequately convey the
extent of this role and the many varied components
this individual or company oversees during the
course of a construction project.
The Role of a Project Manager
Cam Brown, a former Project Manager with
Trumbull-Nelson Construction Co. who now manages a
commercial golf course while doing some outside
project managing, defines a project manager as
“someone who is totally in charge of a construction
project from start to finish and involved in all
facets of the project from design development
through estimating, scheduling and interaction
between the architects, engineers, subcontractors
and owner. He is really the point man for all the
information and everything that happens concerning
the project.”
A Project Manager may be an individual or a
management firm involved in supervising a
construction project, whether it is residential or
commercial. Projects range from simple, fixed cost
projects in which a project manager ensures that an
estimate is complete and all the trades are in
place, to larger projects in which an owner hires an
architect and all the other disciplines and looks to
a construction manager to oversee issues as they
develop and manage the interaction between
the trades.
A Project Manager’s duties range from scheduling and
dealing with delays and changes to identifying and
managing resources and assuring the project is built
to specifications. A project manager needs to be
able to identify the information that is needed to
complete a project, understand who is able to
provide it — and convey this information to the
appropriate parties to ensure that a project is
properly completed.
“The primary role of the manager is to recognize as
early as possible – and maybe even before anyone
else – the impact of things,” says Scott Osgood,
Senior Project Manager at Trumbull-Nelson. “You find
out someone’s work is taking a little longer than
expected or that someone didn’t show up when
planned. Our job is to recognize the impact and
manage the expectations so that everyone involved is
aware of the effect and knows about it in time to
deal with it.”
A Project Manager’s role can be challenging. “What I
found interesting working as a project manager is
the fact that depending on the project, you could
spend as much time on a $200,000 project as you
could on a $4 million project,” says Brown. “It’s a
matter of complexity.”
The Skills of a Project
Manager
Overseeing and pulling together so many facets of a
project obviously can be quite challenging. How does
a Project Manager manage?
“Pay attention” says Osgood. “One way to make your
job very easy is to ask the people doing the work
how much time they will need and schedule around
that. You can’t know what another company’s needs
are. It’s experience and having a good sense of how
much time something will take and knowing how many
steps are involved.”
It also helps to have a good supervisor who can
convey to the Project Manager all that is going on
at the job site. “That doesn’t mean a Project
Manager can’t go there himself. There’s no way
around it other then talking to people,” says
Osgood, stressing the importance of communication.
According to the FMI Corporation and the
Construction Management Association of America’s (FMI/CMAA)
Fifth Annual Survey of Owners (2004), the top answer
given as the change that would most significantly
contribute to improving the quality of the delivery
process resulting in more successful projects was
“more effective communications.”
“Project managers need to have technical ability and
an understanding of engineering, math and science,
but must also have the ability to understand people
and businesses.”
Project Managers certainly need to have good working
relationships with a variety of participants
including owners, designers, supervisors,
subcontractors and municipal officials, each with
their own roles and vested interests in a project.
“When you ask someone to do something you have to
understand what the ramifications are for their
business and the people as well as the technical
aspects of it,” says Osgood.
“You have to be available. You have to be confident,
aggressive, willing to put in all kinds of hours.
You have to be organized and can’t let things get to
you,” says Brown.
The Tools of a Project Manager
Although establishing good relationships and
collaboration among all participants on a project is
key to success, today a Project Manager also has at
his or her disposal technological tools that not
only help achieve their goal, but also organize a
project’s various tasks.
“It’s a whole new world,” says Osgood. “I compare it
to my grandfather who worked in the power industry
as an engineer. I still have his books from the
1800s. The science was the same then as it is today,
but now instead of having a book with a few charts
and tables in it, you have a computer that can
enable you to check out a complete range of things.
Today’s technology gives us access to much more
information. That’s the big difference. In some ways
you could say we have more control.”
Technology in the construction industry can range
from laser-guided bulldozers and sophisticated 3D
CAD design programs to the estimating and scheduling
software used by Project Managers. Estimating
software can be customized to an individual company,
making a highly detailed estimate faster and less
expensive to build.
Scheduling software can be “very user friendly,”
says Osgood, and is actually a contract requirement
on many jobs. The FMI/CMAA survey records that
almost 60 percent of owners typically rely on the
contractor or construction manger’s software to
track and report on progress.
“Certain tasks have to be completed before certain
other tasks can even start. Scheduling software
provides an analysis of this, putting together a
project schedule for the full duration of a job,”
says Brown.
Cell phones, pagers and e-mail have increased access
and communication among project participants. In
fact, 80 percent of owners in the FMI/CMAA survey
believed that project collaboration software could
help reduce miscommunication and disputes on
projects. Web-based communication and collaboration
programs are already available, bringing information
and project participants together in a virtual
setting.
“One of the best ways to get a team to collaborate
is to define the mission and expectations of the
project and put that on a web site so that everyone
is aware of their role while communicating through
one tool,” says Bruce D’Agostino, executive director
of CMAA.
Technology, however, can present some challenges.
There is an additional cost not only in purchasing
such software, but also in training people to use it
and in having specialists available who are versed
in it. “Technology brings a lot of baggage with it,”
says Osgood. “Sometimes I think it is good to give
it a second thought and ask if it is necessary and
if there is the budget for it.”
Also, while scheduling software aids a Project
Manager in establishing, tracking and updating a
project’s schedule, its ease of use can also lead to
excessive tweaking that could lessen the value of
the schedule over time. “It is far better to make a
schedule and track it. If you are behind schedule,
well, you’re behind schedule. You don’t make a new
schedule,” Osgood says. “Technology in the field
makes things quicker, but you still need to
understand it and use it right.”
The Education of a Project
Manager
According to the U.S. Department of Labor,
construction managers held 389,000 jobs in 2002.
People come to the field through a variety of paths,
many having worked in some other area of the
industry such as an estimator or engineer.
Typically, people advance to the position of Project
Manager after having substantial experience in the
field. Although there are degree programs in
construction management, Osgood says that “no matter
what you get your degree in, you still have to learn
the business.”
Project Managers need to have technical ability and
an understanding of engineering, math and science,
but must also have the ability to understand people
and businesses. “This takes a little bit of time,”
Osgood says.
In recent years, there has been a movement toward
certifying construction managers. Both the CMAA and
the American Institute of Constructors (AIC) offer
certification programs.
“Certification is very important in promoting
professionalism and excellence in management of the
construction process. Anyone can write construction
manager on the side of their pickup truck, but
owners don’t want to deal with someone who isn’t
qualified,” says D’Agostino. |
