A Day in the Life of a Construction Project Manager

By WILL WRIGHT

What is it like to be a construction project manager?

In many circles the idea still lingers that working in the construction industry means working with your hands, being subjected to the elements and getting dirty – and that’s true for many of the roles involved in building.

But it takes plenty of other people and different skill sets to do the job.  As Sandra Benson, worldwide head of engineering at Amazon Web Services, wisely said in a recent webinar called Foundations for Progress: The future of Women in Construction, “So many women think they’re going to be on top of a roof hammering – and there’s nothing wrong with that and there are people who do that, but there are so many other jobs out there.”

Construction project management can look very different depending on the employer and the project type, but generally speaking, the role involves planning and facilitating building projects, first by planning how the work will be done, then by communicating, reviewing and revising that plan.

Project managers deal with a lot of stress caused by the constant time crunch and navigating the divergent needs of all the stakeholders and team members on a project, but seeing a project come together is a big reward.

You can check out this article for how other construction project managers effectively deal with their stress and how to write a proper construction project executive summary for your proposals.

Understanding the role

As part of the construction management team, a construction project manager’s job doesn’t often involve swinging a hammer, but that doesn’t mean the PM is ignorant of how the work is done. On a recent episode of the Construction Management Podcast, host Damien Edwards identified understanding how the trades work and how it takes them to complete a task as the number one thing he wished he knew more about when he started.

Good communication with the general contractor, subcontractors and owner is critical to success as a project manager, and understanding the project schedule facilitates those conversations. A good dose of both humility and diplomacy is also key in dealing with interpersonal conflicts and changes to the plan. That’s why it’s important for construction project managers to adopt a people-first approach when dealing with team members on a project. Read our top 5 components of effective leadership in construction project management.

“It’s important to manage expectations up front,” says Shane Hedmond, construction project manager and editor-in-chief of ConstructionJunkie.com. “Let them know, this isn’t going to be perfect, things will go wrong, but we just have to come up with a new plan and make sure everyone is aware of the new plan.” The key is that people feel they’re being taken seriously and not feeling left out of the loop while on the construction site.

Will Wright is an intern at Creative Structures Inc. and is a Construction Science and Management student at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville with a dedicated focus on project and operational management.