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The 7½ cardinal myths of project management
Over time, certain sayings have grown up around the practice of modern mechanical
contracting project management. They are repeated so often by so many as to often be taken as gospel-fact, when in fact they're usually based in myth, often in flat-out
myth-information. While agreeing sometimes with some of the more benign points, most of the time not - I present below an exploration and dissection of these common espousings of common-sense-less observations about project management practices.
1) To be an effective project manager, you've got to be the biggest, meanest, toughest, roughest, SOB (Sweet Old Boy) at the table. Patently false! As long you represent your company's interests with competence and professionalism, then you're doing your job as project manager. Although most jobs start out (usually) friendly if not downright kissy-kissy sometimes, they often end with anger and recriminations.
Doing your job on a day-to-day basis is much easier when you act as a responsible professional, and are treated as such by the other professional PM's on the job.
Acting like a goon with the IQ of a fence post, the manners of a NYC taxi driver, and the tact and diplomacy of a crazed Columbian drug lord will get you exactly what that kind of behavior deserves.
2) In order to make money, or to make the most money possible, you've got to lie to and/or screw your subcontractors. Hey, guy, aren't you a Sub to the general contractor you're working for? And if the GC you're working for is going to screw your company, do you think your company will want to work for that GC again? Even if it bids to that GC again, don't you think those numbers will reflect assumed relative risk of being screwed again?
Remember that what goes around comes around, and elephants and subcontractors have long memories. In the end, the bottom line is the bottom line: help your subs make money, and they'll help you make money.
3) Be merciless in the manpower curve hiring process, promise the men anything to get to come on board, then cut them off at the knees the day that they're no longer needed for that instant, that's the business. While manning-up and manning-down is expected by the crews, the key to managing manpower costs is to concentrate on how much a given crew produces, not
how much it costs.
Man-hour productivity, not costs, being the key, it doesn't cost a dime extra to treat the men fairly as you can, as you would like to be treated. In the end, you can't go out and put the whole job in by yourself.
4) Women don't make good project managers. WRONG! Some of the very best project managers that have ever sat across from me at a job conference table have been women. They can be every bit as tough or tougher PM's than men. If you honestly believe women can't be good project managers just because they're women, I suggest you join the rest of us by traveling to the late 20th Century!
5) A great field superintendent by default will make a great Project Manager. Uh-uh, sorry, not quite true.
If you do promote a field superintendent to a project manager and he/she turns out to be a good one, all it means is that you had someone with a PM soul and mind-set stuck in a Superintendent's body, and was just waiting to escape its cocoon and show you and the world that they're a PM-butterfly, not a supt.-caterpillar.
While every PM should have some field experience, managing a job as opposed to running crews requires completely skillsets and mindsets.
6) Anyone with an engineering degree or Professional Engineer's seal also by default will make a great project manager. False,false,FALSE!
Beside being an incredibly snobbish thing
to say, it's also ludicrous. Unfortunately, this belief is often espoused by successful
business owners who typically are far smarter than any engineer but who feel sometimes intimidated because they don't have the level of formal education of some of the "coats" they deal with in job meetings. An engineering degree is an entree to begin learning the business, not proof the holder of it knows the business already.
7) On a small job, a project manager isn't necessary. If you've worked the size of your company's jobs upwards to where you're dealing with narratives, scopes, and contracts replete with exhibits, then you need a project manager on staff, not a foreman or superintendent that also doubles as one.
The mindset of a PM has to be different from a field superintendent because the expressed fiduciary responsibilities are much different. And it really is too much to ask of any superintendent to consistently work eight hours a day in the field then work another six to eight hours at night handling the paperwork etcetera for the same job(s). If you can afford
to pay your hourly superintendent all that overtime to do PM work too, then you can afford to hire a full-time PM.
7-1/2) If you write a column on project management for Contractor magazine, then you must really know your stuff about project management. I ain't gonna touch that one with the proverbial 3.048 meter pole!
Kent Craig is a second-generation plumbing and mechanical contractor with master's licenses in boilers, air conditioning, heating and plumbing. You may reach him via e-mail at
hkcraig@yahoo.com
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