Top Tips for Construction Project Management

Five ways to improve your PM strategies today.

Project managers have their hands full these days. With labor shortages impacting nearly every construction company, projects becoming more complex, and new regulations to consider, project managers have a lot of balls in the air—and a lot of responsibility too. Many project managers are responsible for projects worth millions—and often billions—of dollars. Let’s explore a few tips today for how to make these jobs a little bit easier, ensuring projects are completed on time and on budget.

Tip 1: Set realistic project expectations and goals. Perhaps the best way to improve project management is to be realistic. It starts at the very beginning of the project when the team and project stakeholders are coming together to address the underlying goals of the project. Make sure the objectives are attainable, otherwise the PM is going to have an uphill battle. This is one of the key reasons we consider the “A” when making SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) goals. Achievable expectations also mean a team will likely hit the goals and the project stakeholders will be happy at the end of the day.

Tip 2: Address the labor challenges. A good project manager is only as good as the team working for them. We all know the construction industry has a growing challenge in front of it with the labor shortage. Make finding good talent a top priority, otherwise filling in the gaps will fall on the PM—and then they won’t be able to effectively manage the project. To be clear, the labor shortage is a wide-reaching problem that is going to require a global cultural shift in the way we work. But companies can still address it too by guiding the conversation, making jobs appealing to young workers, making jobsites safer, getting buy-in from local schools, and using technology as a catalyst to attract younger workers. How is your company addressing the labor challenges today? Make that a top priority for your company.

Tip 3: Finetune the schedule. A good project manager is also only as good as the schedule they keep. Gantt charts have been trendy long before the advent of the internet, with Henry Gantt popularizing the bar chart that illustrates a project schedule back in the late 1800s. CPM (critical path method) has been used since the mid-1900s—which is a method for managers to see where potential breakdowns might occur and what resources are available to deal with them. Today, the schedule can be finetuned with good technology, enabling project managers to assign the right tasks at the right time, ultimately improving the success of the project.

Tip 4: Identify potential roadblocks or risks. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. New regulations, safety risks, natural disasters, cyberattacks, financial setbacks. There are so many potential risks that could impact the timeline of the project. While many of these cannot be controlled, it is good to be aware of the ones that can. Consider creating a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis to develop a strategic plan for internal and external potential roadblocks on each particular project. It will help address each risk as it occurs.

Tip 5: Leverage technology. Technology can be used in all walks of construction but proves especially beneficial in project management. It can be used to plan, track, and manage projects, centralizing the data for teams to understand what needs to happen next. We are currently seeing the rise of AI (artificial intelligence) in project management. Data collection, analysis, and reporting are a large part of project management and AI can help speed these tasks.

If project management is done well, the project is often a success, but if a ball is dropped, then time, cost, or quality could be sacrificed. Have you tried one of these strategies? What else would you add?