Have you ever read Contractor Mag.com? It's the news magazine for the Mechanical Contracting (plumbing and HVAC) industry. H. Kent Craig writes a regular column titled Craig on Project Management. In today's column Craig's article is titled, The New Project Management Paradigm. Here's how it opens:

"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 sequence of "design-build-validate" project management, which has been the mainstay -- if not the only way -- jobs have been built for the past 100 years, has now become a suicidal strategy."

Among other things, Craig argues that buildings cost too much. That alone may bring about a change in project management. Read the article for the rest of the argument.

posted by Hal at 6:25 PM | link  |   |   | Google It!  | Email This  |

Mark Zweig, guru to the AE industry, noticed there just aren't enough good project managers. Writing in his Zweig Letter Mark offered four reasons and three recommendations. I urge you to take his views seriously even if you don't agree. Mark has a knack of getting to the heart of a subject. And he does so with few words. Mark graciously allowed me to republish his essay. Following Mark's writing is my commentary.

Editorial: Not enough good project managers?

This article first appeared in The Zweig Letter (ISSN 1068-1310) Issue # 566. Originally published 06/14/04

My theory is that no firm is completely happy with how it handles project management. There are always problems. And one of the common complaints heard is, "We don't have enough good project managers."

While I will accept that as fact -- i.e., A/E/P and environmental firms DON'T have enough good project managers -- it may be helpful to explore the question of WHY that's the case. Here are my thoughts:

Project manager is a very difficult job.
There's no doubt about it -- being a PM is a tough role. As a PM, you may get responsibility for completing a job you didn't start. A lot of bad decisions could have been made that you will have to live with. The fee allocated to do the work may be too low. The client could be impossible to please, yet your job is to please them. You could be stuck with a team of low performers and not have the authority to get rid of them. The job you are assigned to manage may be one of 10 jobs that you are responsible for managing. Your computer system may not support moving the work around the firm to get it completed by those best qualified to do it. There just isn't enough time, money, or manpower to do the job properly. The fact is, project manager is probably the most difficult job in the firm to do well for any number of reasons.

Project manager is a thankless job -- at least internally.
Not only is being a PM a tough job, but you get very little appreciation from your firm for doing it. If the budgets are routinely exceeded, deliverables late, or quality lacking for any number of reasons, it's no wonder PMs are not universally lauded in our firms. The fact that many, if not all, of these things were not/are not under the control of the PM is not usually brought up when top management is griping about it, or when other employees who aren't project managers are looking for someone to blame about their lack of a bonus. The good news for PMs is that they can at least get some positive feedback from the client. As the lead person handling the project from the A/E/P or environmental firm, they are also in the best position to see the firm's successes from the client's point of view. That's tremendously gratifying.

Project managers have to be tethered to the office.
While most everyone these days in any position of responsibility in a design or consulting firm has to accept more intrusion of work time into personal time (especially if we let personal time intrude on work time occasionally!), project managers probably face more of this than anyone else.

Clients expect an immediate response to every question. Team members need to be informed of changes in direction immediately. Contractors with questions in the field need an immediate response. The need for rapid-fire response requires that the cell phone be turned on and the BlackBerry be constantly checked. And this level of connectedness can create stress in your personal life.

The higher education system doesn't turn out project managers.
What the system does tend to turn out are experts (if you can call anyone with a technical degree an "expert"). What I mean by "expert," is someone with specific technical knowledge in a particular engineering/design/scientific discipline.

NO amount of technical knowledge, however, is a replacement for being able to communicate, being able to work well with others, or being able to solve complex problems.

These are the skills that are essential to being a good project manager, and they really are not emphasized in the typical engineering, architecture, or science education. The reasons for that are many? employers want people with certain training, accreditation boards drive higher-ed institution curriculums in certain directions, and academics often lack real-world work experience.

If we want to solve the problem of not enough good project managers in our firms, we are going to have to do some things differently. That includes making the job as easy as we can for our PMs by giving them some permanently assigned staff resources, fixing accounting policies that don't reinforce resource sharing, and building intelligent wide area networks.

We need to thank our effective PMs for the amazing job they do, and we need to get those who don't do so well into roles that they can be successful filling. We need to make sure we don't have overly restrictive policies on work hours or absences during the day if we expect on-call response from the PMs 24/7.

And we need to make sure we can tell people what the PM role is and provide some good guidance to those who want to succeed as project managers? not allowing them to go on with a dysfunctional idea that it is less important than the technical stuff they do. All of these things will help!? M.Z. (mzweig@zweigwhite.com)

The above was Mark's views. Now my commentary. Please join in with your own in a comment at the end of this posting.

• Project manager is a very difficult job.
  Mark offers a litany of usual circumstances that make the role difficult. I'll add three more:
  1. The firm lacks standard practices for organizing teams and delivering projects relying instead on the idiosyncrasies of project managers.
  2. There are no practices for learning from one project to the next.
  3. Team members are isolated from one another performing one task after the other on one project to the next.
  The job is difficult enough. And then we add to it!
• Project manager is a thankless job -- at least internally.
  Appreciation and acknowledgement are easy to do. But the project manager too often only hears the griping...from the team, from the customer, from the management, and to top it off from his or her family for doing all of what is necessary to get the job done while missing or being late for one precious family event after another.
• Project managers have to be tethered to the office.
  The always-on always-available project manager is the current standard. This undoubtedly has a toll on the individual. And the uncertainty and ever-changing situation of AE projects demands nothing less.
• The higher education system doesn't turn out project managers.
  This is the big issue. Architects, engineers, and planners are not being prepared for the role they play as project managers. Worse, the preparation available is having little to no effect on project performance. As Mark says technical expertise is no replacement for communication skills, relating to others, and solving complex problems. And so often projects require all three at once in the form of collaboration.

Mark offers three recommendations for managers of AE firms. Building on those I will

• Make the project manager job easier. Adjust policies and systems to suit their tasks and challenges.
  Ask the projects managers what dissatisfies them. Then address each one.
• Thank project managers for the amazing job they do.
  Take care of your project managers. Stay close to them. Not to keep track of their actions, but to see they are getting what they need. And that includes telling them how well they are doing and how much you appreciate them. The Gallup organization claims that people only consistently perform at high levels when they are appreciated at least once every 7 days.
• Provide guidance on the role of project manager.
  Make it a point to understand the day-to-day nature of the role. There is nothing more important than communication. See that project managers have exceptional communication skills. See that company practices support everyday good communications.

The project manager role doesn't have to be difficult, thankless, or restraining. Projects are the exciting work of organizations. Make the time to support your project managers.

posted by Hal at 2:34 AM | link  |   |   | Google It!  | Email This  |

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