As a Project Manager, you carry the weight of the Company on your shoulders. You are responsible for creating clear, attainable objectives and building the requirements for each project. Once you have set these goals, it is your job to manage your staff through the constraints that you have set up for cost, quality, time, and scope. Of course, you already knew all of that.
What you and many Construction Project Managers don’t know, is how to get both employees and subcontractors to adhere to the schedule to get work done on time and on budget.
You are expected to act as a liaison between the client and the production team. Because of your exceptional knowledge of your industry, ability to form close relationships, and adaptability to various procedures; you are often tasked with communicating the problems with both the client and the crew. You are the front line to ensure complete client satisfaction, which is the backbone of any Organization.
However, many Project Managers feel that there are outside factors that they cannot control. Poor weather conditions, unexpected delays due to custom-made products, shortage of staff, or waiting for an available subcontractor crew are just a few examples that leave you feeling anxious and out of control.
How are you going to succeed in meeting deadlines?
You try to convey your urgency to your teams and material sources but they have their limitations and feel that their hands are tied. You try to explain the situation to your clients but they don’t understand your processes and feel that you have had plenty of time to complete the project (even with some outside hindrances) which leads to clients getting angry and frustrated over what the delays are doing to their own schedules.
What you end up with is broken relationships with vendors, clients, and staff. Not a good situation for any Construction Project Manager.
The good news is that there is a solution to this problem…
A solution that few Project Managers know about and those that do aren’t willing to share. Why? They won’t let others in on the secret because they don’t want the competition. They know that once your client gets frustrated that you aren’t completing the job on time, that client will look to the Company who will… and pay your competitors more to do it!
Don’t worry, all hope is not lost.
As an impartial outsider, I am not afraid to tell you the secret that your competitors won’t. The industry leader in your area is able to do the work in less time, at a lower cost, and charge more because their Construction Project Manager has hired a Systems Developer. That’s right… the highest paid Project Managers work with a Systems Consultant to:
- Diagram the work into a flow chart format
- Add the measureable indicators
- Build in variances based on experience
- Recruit and train employees and subcontractors in the overall system and its expectations
Most contractors have not completed the system or believe it can’t be done. I have actually written a special report on “How Your Contractor Operations Team can get the Job Done – On Time, Every Time, at a Profit.” You can get it here and get back in control:
Please take a look at it. I am offering a complimentary copy so that all Construction Project Managers can get a better idea of the steps involved to complete their projects on time and improve client satisfaction.
Warning: If you aren’t specifically a Construction Project Manager, I’ll still let you download the report…just don’t share this with your competitors (these steps can be used to transform any Company’s operations department into a highly efficient team.)
If you have any questions regarding this article or special report, or you would like to find out the next steps that allow you to respond to any variances before or as they occur in order to innovate the system and prevent reoccurrence; please contact us.
If you would like to share your thoughts, have suggestions, or just want to give your opinion on this article, please let us know in the comment section below. We respond to all of our commentators!
