Posts Tagged ‘process management’
|Is it CM or PM?
Wednesday, August 25th, 2010
By Phillip Infelise
In this edition, I want to clear up the distinction between Construction Management and Project Management. All too often we are referred to as Construction Managers (CMs) even though we call ourselves Project Managers (PMs). I want to be sure that everyone understands what we are, what we aren’t, what we do, and what we don’t do.
As I see it, PMs are not CMs as they do not directly manage construction. Applied today on most corporate projects, CM is simply a derivative form of General Contracting (GC), and often it’s difficult for the layperson to differentiate between them. Traditionally, CMs oversaw a series of subcontractors who were directly contracted with the owner, usually for a specific fee override on direct costs, with our without risk. Today, however, it is more typical that CMs:
-Act in place of GC but generally perform in the same capacity providing pre-construction, providing on-site supervision, overseeing sub-contractors, et al.
-May operate at risk or for a fixed fee at no risk - this is where the roles get cloudy.
-Oversee a GC who acts as a consultant to the owner, often incentivized by derived cost-savings.
-Hold contracts of subcontractors, directly liable and accountable for their performance.
-Pay subcontractors and withhold payments until work is satisfactorily complete.
We are PMs, not CMs. As PMs, overseeing the entire project process—ensuring that construction activities are accomplished in a timely and budget-compliant manner—is only one of our myriad responsibilities. As PMs, our responsibility regarding direct construction is only as follows:
-Direct the process to select GC or CMs through a process detailed in a previous blog entry.
-Oversee GC to assure that quality, cost, and schedule are in compliance.
-Work closely with GC or CMs during the value engineering process.
-Hold no contracts of subcontractors in any circumstance.
-Little or no direct contact with subcontractors other than at OAC (Owner, Architect, Contractor) or GC/sub meetings where specific sub issues may be reviewed and resolved.
-Periodic site and final punch walks with site superintendent to view means, methods, quality, and finish.
-Weekly interaction at project meetings, OAC, working through changes orders, etc.
In sum, PMs do not act as CMs, but oversee their activities to achieve a perfect outcome relating to quality, cost, and schedule. As PMs, our scope entails all aspects of the project from early conception to post-occupancy. Overseeing construction is just one facet of the process, albeit a very important one, considering that more than 50% of the overall costs are embedded therein. Our total Process Management approach suggests that we should be called Process Managers; but articulating that differentiation may call up even more questions.
In my next entry, I will dive into Relocation Planning and Management (RPM) – why it is so critical to our overall Project (Process) Management approach.
Do you agree with my differentiation?
Tags: construction management, corporate real estate, PM, process management
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Project Management for a New Day
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010
By Phillip Infelise
Project Management. The term implies different things to different people. I want to offer a perspective of what it means in the context of the New Day Project Manager. In a perfect world, we would call it Process Management, since that is what we are really managing…an overall process…but that only confuses folks with vernacular, so we stick with Project Management. We whisper then that the New Day Project Manager manages the entire process that surrounds the more simplistic “project.” What is it that we actually manage is broken down into three buckets: Process. People. Projects.
Process is an expanded set of activities in our world – dream it, find it, design it, build it, occupy it. Most traditional PMs focus solely on the design and construction phase. If we have engaged the right partners on our project teams, that’s the easy part. Surrounding the sticks and bricks are the true hazards and pitfalls. The New Day PM is involved in the Strategic Planning and real estate on one end and Relocation Planning & Management on the other, effectively bookending the traditional PM mindset. We manage both physical and intellectual process, distinct activities as well as overall planning and communications.
People. The majority of the New Day PM’s effort is spent in managing the myriad of people on a project, including the internal team (client management, staff) and the external team (architects/engineers; contractors; cable, phone, security, and furniture vendors; specialty vendors like sound-masking, audio/visual, signage, graphics, and right down to the art consultant). In a large project, we can easily be talking 50 people or more. One classic, large law firm project included a total of 34 companies represented at an all vendor meeting. We practice a lesson taught early in pre-school – learn to play well in the sandbox; teach others to do the same.
More than anything, the New Day PM is tasked with managing the very client that hires him/her to manage everyone else. We are not shy about saying this, but managing the client expectations, their internal organization, and their spending to achieve their stated output is where we spend our time and efforts since that’s where we can add significant hidden value. We are “people people” that manage process.
Project. The projects we manage are diverse. We oversee the “dream it, find it, design it, build it, occupy it” effort to build a user’s space, be it in a standard office, a build-to-suit headquarters, a technical space in a flex-tech environment, a laboratory, or a special use building like a recreation center, sports facility, studio, church, school, what have you. Whatever the project, the process remains the same.
New Day PMs, thus, require a much broader set of skills than the old world PM. Beyond the sticks and bricks expertise, the new day requires strategic, financial, diplomacy, and communications skills only learned after years on the job. Building it is easy; managing the process and the people to get it built is the real challenge.
Tags: PM, process management
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