Don't become a statistic when projects fail
MY MODEST reputation within the industry is that I'm a "garbage man." I'm the hired gun who comes in when a project is tanking and threatening the company...
Learn to anticipate what can't be anticipated
I'VE ALWAYS SAID the main difference between the true professionals in any endeavor and the amateurs is that the pros pay close attention to every little...
Learn to anticipate what can't be anticipated
I'VE ALWAYS SAID the main difference between the true professionals in any endeavor and the amateurs is that the pros pay close attention to every little...
Where are all our great field guys coming from?
OUR INDUSTRY IS engaged in perpetual hand wringing over the lack of qualified field personnel. To that constant moaning, I say, "Bull!" Plenty of qualified...
Get your degree to become or stay a PM
YES, I AM A college dropout and successful mechanical contracting project manager and senior estimator. Yes, I do regret not taking the time out from...
Save a nickel on the job now, spend $500 later
Over the course of my career, I have worked for some truly cheap employers who redefined the word "thrifty." While I was traveling, one would pay only...
Project management by defenestration
DEFENESTRATION, according to Dictionary.com, is defined as "an act of throwing someone or something out of a window." Project management by defenestration...
The rituals of project management
A LITTLE MORE than a year ago, I wrote a column, "Rules for creating a successful PM career" (July 2004, pg. 44). One of the rules I mentioned was, "Ritualize...
Managing projects virtually, not physically
BY H. KENT CRAIG MECHANICAL CONTRACTOR IN THE NEW WORLD economic climate, a world where projects have been broken down into their constituent parts and...
Scope Deconstruction Reduces Mistakes
PROJECT MANAGEMENT has always been and will always be more of an art than a science, no matter how many metrics we apply to our actions and reactions....
Why We Should Become More Like GCs
BACK IN THE DAYS of King Arthur and His Knights of the Accidentally-Oval-Because-the-Specs-were-Screwy Table, a general contractor was first and foremost...
Sorting Out a Job's Assets and Liabilities
AS IN LIFE, everything associated with project management is either an asset or a liability. Every human, material or financial resource that can or will...
How to Negotiate a Personal Services Contract
BACK IN THE DAY, only the bigwigs, like the company CEO, were required to sign a personal services contract. Within the new forced paradigm of process...
Pharmaceutical Jobs Have Specific Concerns
Youve spent years knocking on their door. Youve flattered them when you happened to run across them in public. Youve given their secretaries flowers and...
Honesty and Ethics are Profit Centers
CAN YOU BE HONEST without being ethical, or must you be ethical to also be honest? These are not questions just for philosophers; theyre points of bottom-line...
The risk/reward paradigm on tough jobs
THROUGHOUT MY project management career I've been known as the "project garbage man" because I am usually willing to take on jobs where other companies...
How to properly document accident reports
IT'S AN OLD but true clich in our profession that if you work long enough in the trade, it's not a matter of if you'll get hurt but when you'll get hurt....
Doing due diligence on a dirty job
IF YOU STAY in the project management profession long enough, you're going to be assigned a "dirty" job, even if that job is a cleanroom or ultrapure...
Maybe you shouldn't be a project manager
THE ECONOMY IS still weak and construction is a lagging, not a leading economic indicator. Many of my project manager brethren are still being laid off...
Rules for Creating a Successful PM Career
I CANT THINK of a catchy opening line, so lets jump right into my list of rules for creating a successful career in project management. Dont make your...
The New Project Management Paradigm
HOLD ON TO YOUR hats for the big winds of change headed our way sometime in the next couple decades in the way jobs are run and buildings built. The traditional...
Protecting Tools, Materials from Jobsite Theft
I BELIEVE IT WAS Mark Twain who once said the locks on doors are meant only to keep honest men out. When I was a kid growing up in a strip of rural countryside...
PM's Skill Sets Should Match the Project
IT STILL AMAZES me that some mechanical contracting firm owners who dont have project management or field backgrounds think that a project is a project...
The Accidental PM
CONGRATULATIONS, newest member of the project manager profession! You never thought you would actually become a project manager for your company, did...
Variable Pay Option for Field Employees
FOR DECADES, MOST companies that employ project managers have made percent-of-earned-extra-job-profit a key part of those PMs compensation packages. Such...
