How a Construction Project Manager Leads a Team Toward Success

Pulling off your construction project in an organized and smooth manner can be challenging at times, and hence, you might require a project manager. Often called Construction Managers or General Contractors, Construction Project Managers are responsible for overseeing construction projects from the beginning (pre-design phase) to the end (closeout) and take on a leadership role in the process. Projects can vary from residential apartments, commercial structures like offices, hospitals, bridges, skyscrapers to various industrial buildings.

For less complex construction projects, the client may choose to work with a general contractor who will also serve as a project manager. However, if your project is large-scale, it’s recommended to hire a project manager separately. Note that construction project managers carry a unique set of skills and competencies in addition to those all project managers possess – industry knowledge and experience. Currently, there are over 234,665 construction managers employed in the United States.

In this blog, you will learn what is a project manager in construction and how through strategic planning, scheduling, budgeting, communication, risk management, and overall coordination, this team leader can drastically influence the outcome of your next building project.

What Does a Construction Project Manager Do?

According to the Construction Management Association of America (CMAA), the construction project manager supervises the entire project for the owner, collaborates with all stakeholders to deliver it on time, within budget, and to the owner’s expected standard of quality, scope, and function.

A construction manager provides leadership in planning, organizing, and directing team’s efforts to accomplish the client’s objectives. Handling all aspects of the building process, the construction manager works closely with team professionals, distributes resources, establishes timelines and budgets, and ensures everything is up to code. In short, business owners should be careful in selecting and hiring the right person to manage projects.

Let’s see how the roles and responsibilities of a construction project manager lead your team toward success.

1. Drawing Up A Detailed Plan

A construction project manager creates a detailed plan and uses it as a benchmark to track overall progress.

Firstly, project managers hold discussions with clients to clearly define goals and scope of the project. Based on these identified objectives, they devise a comprehensive plan and effectively communicate the same with their employees and clients. Good planning ensures compliance with local building codes and regulatory requirements, and that the project is within budget and schedule. A project manager in a construction company will have planning responsibilities like:

• Assigning tasks to the whole team
• Estimating costs
• Preparing deliverable schedules as a roadmap for the construction team
• Monitoring the progress of the work in case some tasks need to be handled or supervised
• Reviewing the plan in-depth to check if the progress is in the right direction

Drawing up a detailed plan of action helps in setting benchmarks for tracking and evaluating the overall progress.

2. Setting Goals

Successful building projects rely on firm goals and standards set by project managers with clients.

Before the work starts, a construction project manager develops specific goals along with the clients. These goals are then effectively communicated with the whole team. Commercial construction companies can put dedicated efforts to meet objectives such as –

• Keeping a safety-conscious construction site
• Establishing quality standards
• Adhering to the budget and schedule
• Employing sustainable practices during construction
• Causing minimal disruptions to the tenants and curbing waste production

Sometimes, stakeholders aren’t clear about what they want to build and there are disagreements between themselves about their practical goals, which results in delays. Here, a project manager should step in, conduct discussions with stakeholders, and help them create SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely).

Setting goals like these helps project managers make decisions on how many laborers and types of supplies are needed. It becomes easier to track and review standards of performance, accuracy of the work, material requirements, deliverables, and other factors.

3. Estimating and Tracking Budget

Project managers in construction are responsible for setting a budget and sticking to it.

Construction project managers regulate costs throughout the life cycle of the project. Their role is to generate an accurate cost estimate and track the expenses of your team to ensure they are not overspending. Over 55% of project managers claim budget overrun as a reason for project failure. Proficient building managers forecast all costs associated with the project and develop a precise budget around required resources.

They identify potential issues like change orders and price inflation of building materials beforehand and devise solutions to avoid cost overruns. Additionally, they constantly track the building process and analyze if all construction tasks are sticking to estimated costs or not. For example, if a building project has failed to achieve milestones and suffered cost overruns, the construction manager will employ masterful recovery techniques between the client and the contracting team. The manager will review the jeopardized areas and redefine client/vendor requirements, task milestones, resource projections, cost estimates, and delivery targets. In this case, expectations management of stakeholders can also be a critical element to success.

A project manager working for a flourishing construction company will use advanced cost estimation and management software serving payroll processing, item cost tracking, subcontracting, and reporting features.

4. Allocating Resources

Balanced and optimized distribution of resources is one of the key construction project manager duties.

One of the biggest challenges of a project is its limited resources. For that reason, every construction manager requires skills to procure and allocate resources effectively. By understanding the scope of work and availability of employees within the construction team, a project manager can implement effective resource allocation.

As a leader, construction managers are well aware of their employees’ capabilities. They will identify available team employees that meet the skills and experience criteria required for the assignment. Defining your workforce planning strategy ahead of time and prioritizing your team members’ allocations help your company meet its goals and accomplish tasks efficiently. Such informed decision-making significantly helps save the budget and company resources.

5. Creating a Realistic Schedule

Time management is crucial because a project comes with certain deadlines and constraints.

One of the prominent reasons business owners hire a project manager for construction is to avoid delays and losses. Unrealistic schedule estimation is a common challenge in the construction industry. During the planning stage, each company sets aside a unique available resources projection. At times, this projection gets disrupted due to human resources issues or any financial issue.

To deliver clients’ projects on time, construction managers create a realistic schedule and consistently meet its deadlines. Realistic scheduling techniques construction managers adopt include forming an organized work breakdown structure (WBS), fixing achievable deadlines using Gantt charts, and handling unpredictable events with floats. Moreover, using the Critical Path Method (CPM) scheduling, systematic weekly plans can be developed for the team and implemented within pre-set schedules. Employing other scheduling software tools such as ArchDesk, CoConstruct, Fieldwire, Procore, and Buildertrend prove beneficial to managers in time management.

The goal of a construction schedule is to ensure timely completion of a project, so it is developed, maintained, evaluated, and readjusted as needed.

6. Procuring Materials and Equipment

Construction managers are responsible for procuring cost-effective building materials and equipment without sacrificing quality.

As a best practice, construction managers build standardized procedures for procuring quality building materials and avoiding sudden equipment failures that can delay work or inflate budgets. The construction manager has to be mindful of the number of products they order and ensure that the ordered materials and equipment will be delivered on time.

Construction project managers can order low-cost and reusable materials like composites, prefabricated modules, corrugated iron, glass, and steel to save costs. Leasing construction equipment is another great way to cut down costs. For managing large numbers of heavy equipment and procurement, construction management software like Heavybid, Procore, SharpeSoft Estimator, and Penta are useful.

7. Obtaining Permits and Licenses

A construction manager is in charge of gathering all necessary regulations and permits.

Without the approval of authorities, no building project, whether it’s renovation, ground-up construction, or remodeling, can move forward. The construction manager handles all the paperwork and permits required to have construction projects in compliance with federal, state, and local government regulations.

Different commercial projects need different types of permits and licenses. A construction manager is familiar with all the permits and licenses that you will be asked to legally finish your project. It is their job to obtain the permits and licenses, and schedule inspections with building inspectors as needed.

8. Managing Risks

Keeping a proactive approach to risk management instead of a reactive one is necessary for construction management.

A vigilant construction project manager understands that there will always be a risk and unexpected changes arising from the initial plan. Therefore, a risk-managing contingency plan will always be developed separately. Risk management means identifying and mitigating potential issues throughout the duration of the project in order to maintain safety standards and prevent losses.

Risk management can be internal and external. Internal risk management includes fluctuating material costs, incorrect estimation, design errors, and poor site examination. External risk management may be handling natural disasters such as earthquakes, storms, and code violations. Using construction project management software that delivers real-time data, project managers are able to organize entire projects, from detecting all types of risk to monitoring and reporting to stakeholders.

9. Hiring, Managing, and Communicating with Staff Employees

An essential part of a construction manager’s job description is to assemble a competent team that will complete your construction project successfully.

A construction project manager is in charge of selecting a construction team including general contractor, subcontractors, architects, engineers, foremen, suppliers as well as managing personnel once hired. Project managers will assemble the team by issuing a Request for Proposal (RFP) to architectural, engineering, and general contracting firms. They perform intensive due diligence to ensure that selected firms have experience with similar project types and are qualified enough to execute the job.

The project manager and workers need to communicate effectively in order for the project to be completed on schedule and within budget. A successful construction project manager keeps lines of communication open, accessible, and regular at all times. With such smooth collaboration and direction, all the issues are promptly solved. In an industry facing labor shortages, it is expected construction managers to optimize their existing workforce with on-job training.

10. Preparing Contracts

Drafting and reviewing construction contracts between all stakeholders is important for completing construction process.

Whether it’s a small-scale or large-scale project, contractors, subcontractors, and consultants sign contracts between themselves and the owner. The contract signing process may vary based on the project delivery method and contract type. Whichever the case, the project manager thoroughly reviews each contract and ensures the correct wording.

A draft contract is a written document that describes the overall scope of work that needs to be done for building a structure. Usually, owners sign the draft contracts with the following parties.

• Architects
• Materials Suppliers
• Subcontractors (electricians, carpenters, painters, HVAC specialists)
• Other Third Parties

11. Serving as Liaison between Stakeholders

Reporting the progress and health of the project with key stakeholders and clients is what a responsible project manager does.

Besides maintaining internal communication between project managers and construction workers, keeping clients and stakeholders in the loop is also extremely important. Clients need to be aware of project’s developments and that it is following limitations of their budget and timelines. To manage clients’ expectations, construction managers will show them regular presentations demonstrating whether the team’s performance is meeting the planned objectives or not.

Some other methods of keeping liaison with key stakeholders (clients, government, the company, investors, suppliers, etc.) are as follows.

• Establishing a chain of command
• Choosing the right means of communication for each phase, such as Requests For Information (RFIs), drawings, substitution requests, and meetings
• Providing daily or weekly reports of the job status, equipment, policies, and upcoming steps with all the issues that arose during building process
• Keeping written records of all exchanges and correspondence

If an issue comes up, it’s the duty of the project manager to inform all parties of how this will affect timelines, extra costs and what are the strategies to fix/adjust that. Project managers also coordinate with third-party sources like vendors and subcontractors to ensure there are enough available resources. With multiple stakeholders involved, disputes can naturally emerge. An experienced project manager will know how to resolve disagreements before they become obstacles to the work.

12. Assuring Quality of Work

Along with time and budget, the project manager oversees quality of work on a broader scale.

Owners expect a certain level of quality, and these expectations form a part of the construction firm’s contractual obligations. Construction quality has two components: quality control (QA) and quality assurance (QC). Quality control is the strategy to attain it, whereas quality assurance sets the quality management expectations and how quality will be attained.

Here are the different methods construction project managers adopt to ensure quality standards.

• Creating a quality assurance checklist or punch list
• Defining expectations of building standards to crew members
• Implementing a strict protocol for change orders and substitution requests
• Hiring reliable contractors and subcontractors
• Double-checking the quality of raw materials and equipment
• Monitoring daily progress and tracking employee performance
• Repairing identified defects without delay
• Protecting completed work from weather, fires, vandalism, and other possible external damages

Though every team member from the architect to the subcontractors is accountable for their quality of work, it is the prime responsibility of construction managers to guarantee performance excellence.

Construction Project Management Case Study

Healthcare Emergency Room (ER) Department, NYPH Columbia Campus.

Challenge

The HealthCare facility required an existing Emergency Department area expansion and renovation completed on an urgent schedule. The construction planned for the Emergency Department area would impact the facility’s capabilities in other areas as patients would have received treatment in the ED area.

Solution

This was the 5th phase of the overall Emergency Department area expansion and renovation. Subcontractors from previous phases were contracted by the construction project manager and an accelerated schedule was agreed upon by all parties. The project manager scheduled weekly meetings with subcontractors and effectively coordinated specialty trades to install and furnish the area as soon as possible.

Result

Due to Terrazzo flooring, all other contractors were unable to access the site for 4-5 weeks. Though, it was possible to finish the project on schedule due to the efficient coordination between all parties. As a result, NYPH was able to occupy the Emergency Department area on time and meet the needs of patients to the fullest capacity. The client expressed appreciation for not only the timely completion but also the quality of the workmanship. Source

Conclusion

A construction project manager is a team leader who possesses strong managerial skills. The role of a leader enables the construction manager to plan, supervise, and control the progress of a project in a way that benefits everyone.

Construction project managers fulfill several roles and responsibilities that contribute to the smooth running of the project. These are the 12 major responsibilities, but there are additional jobs your construction project manager will have to handle depending on your project’s unique requirements.

Through effective planning, budget and time management, teamwork, communication, resource distribution, and quality optimization, a project manager leads your construction team toward success. Hiring a qualified professional to coordinate and manage every aspect of your construction process is the first step toward reaching your goals.

If you have any construction and project management related queries, contact our team at Constructive Solutions, Inc. today.

Relevant Resources:

• The Differences between General Contractors and Construction Managers
• The Benefits of Construction Manager/General Contractor Services (CMGC) versus Design-Build Project Delivery