Construction Project Managers: How Are They Affecting Your Bottom Line?

Construction business owners know there are countless ways a project can go wrong. Each person on your team is entrusted with a set of responsibilities essential to the company's success – particularly project managers. But what if you think a project manager might not be carrying their weight? What happens to your processes, competitive advantage, and bottom line?

获得一个有经验的视角, 我们咨询了保罗·朗斯多夫, 注册会计师, 税务部合伙人, 客户经理, and member of the construction industry team at Redpath, for insight about the value of turning a critical eye to your project managers.

The Impact of Having the Right (or Wrong) Project Manager on Your Bottom Line

Project managers are at the heart of any job you take on as a construction company. Paul says that "efficiencies can be derived from the way you run the job," from things like timing and scheduling to team coordination. That means that project managers and their methods can be the difference between completing a project on time and on budget and… not.

更重要的是, a project manager's real value should be in "looking for opportunities to change things up and do things even more efficiently,保罗说. "Hard bid jobs are bid pretty tight – you might submit your bid alongside anywhere from two to 20 other bidders or more." That makes streamlining (within reason) a necessity for maintaining a competitive edge in the construction space.

在当前的全国卫生大流行期间, Paul says a project manager's ability to discover innovative new ways to guide projects is more important than ever. He says that there are "more bidders at the table for every job right now," even if the project they're bidding on isn't their specialty, 保持活跃. 另外, Paul reminds construction companies that "the quickest way to go bankrupt is to underbid," so there's more attention paid to – and questions asked about – the value of estimators and project managers during COVID-19.

How to Know Which Project Managers Are Bringing You Down

你比任何人都了解你的团队. 你知道一般的风格, 习惯, and expectations of your project managers – so you may even have an informal idea of which ones are and aren't bringing value to your company. 而不是仅仅依靠直觉, 虽然, Paul recommends also taking a top-level view of your team.

Paul recommends performing post mortems on projects from the past two years of your business and sorting them by the assigned project managers. "That way, you can thoroughly vet each project and the team member who managed it,保罗说. “你可以看看这个项目是如何竞标的, 你想做的和最终的结果, and how the scope and nuances of the project changed along the way. You can look across the board at how individual project managers performed compared to the original budget."

If you have little insight into the value your project managers bring to your company, 这是突出需要改进的地方的一种方法. If you already have a hunch about how your team could improve – or even individual project managers – it can reveal the extent of the issue. "It can show you that not only are some project managers not pulling their weight,保罗说, “但情况比你想象的还要糟糕." It's a small time investment to view your completed projects from that new perspective, but it can show you a lot about the way your project managers contribute to your bottom line.

如果你的项目经理也是一个估算员怎么办?

Some construction companies decide that key project managers make good estimators or vice versa. Paul says that some of the construction companies he works with have some blend of the two responsibilities in one role. 对于一些, it's a way to close the distance between planning and execution – for some, 双重责任可能导致混乱.

“如果你既在估算项目又在运行项目, you're mentally in a different place than if you were doing just one,保罗说 of the rival intentions (estimators looking to win bids while project managers seek to increase margins). He adds that individual roles need to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, but if your company experiences friction or inefficiency with a combined estimator/project manager role, it could be an indicator that you should try something new. "The dynamics are fundamentally different when you separate those functions."

Your own team is the last thing you should have to worry about when planning for the future. Looking at the structure of your team and their past performance is a reliable way to find out the value your project managers bring to the company, 他们是如何阻碍你的, 以及你能做些什么来纠正错误.