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Parker 5 Johnson
To date, I have never been so busy in my lifetime. I have taken the roll of Project Controls Manager for an Industrial Construction project in Ohio and you could say my free time is non-extistent. For more than four months, I've spent a majority of my time working to secure a large construction project for my company. Once successful and considering my time invested, knowledge on the subject and motivation, I was named Manager. It has been quite a ride.
Unfortunately, I only had time for my salad and a few blog words this evening. I'm excited to spend more time detailing my experience so far, but it won't be this evening.
More to come!
... That little part above was from 01.04.21, while the part below is being written on 01.24.21 ...
Here I am again on a Sunday with some free time to type. This was the first weekend I stayed in Ohio rather than drive to Pittsburgh to stay at my place there. I chose to stay this weekend, so I could spend time with my roommates/coworkers and avoid seven hours of driving.
I tried to take full advantage of the weekend. On Friday, I took a group of supervisors out for dinner and it seemed like everyone had a great time. Yesterday, I was able to have a 2 hour workout at the apartment gym uninterrupted for the first time in I don't know how long. It was amazing, meditative, and helped my mental state tremendously. Saturday night, I went with the two engineers I live in Ohio with and a supervisor to the casino. Of course, everyone had a jolly time there too. Today, I'm planning to have a nice long workout, go get some lunch, and get some things accomplished at this Ohio apartment.
Anyway, let's talk about my position and the role I took on out here on this large industrial construction project in Ohio. Typically, an industrial construction project with over ~40 construction workers requires a staff to oversee operations - Project Manager, Project Superintendent, Safety Manager, Quality Control Manager, Engineers, etc. When the team and I secured this current project in Ohio, it was kind of a no-brainer who the Project Manager and Project Superintendent should be. However, I faced an interesting managerial dynamic when the time came to assign titles.
My age and number of years in the industry kept some of the senior managers from assigning me the Project Manager title. That title is not taken lightly in this industry and few individuals attain such a position before many years of experience and ripe age. Thus, they decided to give me a longer title - Project Controls Manager. I can't stress how little a job title means to me. I am here for one reason and one reason only, to learn as much as I possibly can in the short time I'm here on earth. Regardless, everyone saw the work we put in to secure this project, the work I've put in on multiple other projects, and the involvement I have now. It is universally known and accepted that I am the Project Manager for this job.
Anyway, I just had to vent a little in the previous paragraph. Veteran construction workers or Project Managers never want to feel they were "surpassed" by a young kid who got a four year college degree. Thus, I work my butt off, show them I'm on their team, and strive to make their jobs better.
The story about this project in Ohio:
One of the Project Estimators at our company headquarters in Baton Rouge, LA estimated a project, presented a priced proposal for and was awarded a small project in Circleville, OH. This was a $200k construction project to install 25 LED high bay lights in a big warehouse. I began my involvement as soon as my company was awarded this project, as I had with most every project. This means being involved with coordination phone calls, ordering material, finding construction workers for the job, setting up a mobile office on-site, etc.
However, as soon as we got to the job-site for our in-person kickoff meeting, we realized this was no ordinary 25 LED light project. The client had broken off the 25 LED lights portion of the project, so they could have lighting for construction in these massive buildings. There would soon be a full engineered package of documents and drawings released for competitive bid by companies like mine. I knew this was a huge opportunity for us.
I immediately began building relationships with the client on and off-site and catering to their every need/want. Our goal was to make the client not want to use any other company for their electrical and instrumentation needs. We quickly succeeded. We installed the 25 LED lights, conduit, cable, and panels with such ease and efficiency, they decided to break more scopes of work off for my company to do. I was able to grow the high bay lighting contract from $200k to just under a million dollars. This was done by proposing other work activities to be added like cable tray and other temporary construction power installations.
Each time the we agreed to add more work and cost to our contract, I used the drawings and documents to quantify and price that extra work and adjust our contract value. This activity actually added to our advantage over the other contract bidders. When the client finally did release the full electrical and instrumentation drawings and documents package, only I knew exactly what work was already being done by us on site. The fact that my company was already doing bits and pieces of the construction on site made it more difficult for competing companies to clearly decipher the project scope of work for accurate pricing.
As soon as the drawings and documents for the entire project were released to electrical and instrumentation contractors for competitive bid, I called up my best friend, Michael, to get him in on the action. Located in Baton Rouge and working from our company headquarters, he was well positioned to walk over to the Estimating department and get the ball rolling. Our goal was to convince the Estimating manager of this project's importance, so a good estimating team could be assigned to it. However, the Estimating department was very busy at the time, so Michael decided he would take the lead on the estimate.
It is atypical for someone outside of the Estimating department to estimate a project when it's over a certain size. We do this to maintain a systematic estimating approach and reduce errors and inefficiencies. Thus, it was atypical for Michael to take the lead on this estimate. Regardless, we hit full steam ahead. Michael recruited a few Project Estimators in Baton Rouge to help us out and we hit the ground running. I was unable to focus all of my time to the estimate since I had a few current construction projects consuming most of my time.
I believe we originally had a month to produce a priced proposal based on the drawings and documents. Considering the number of documents and size of the project, we had to work late and work weekends to meet this deadline. Once Michael and I submitted our proposal to the client, they reviewed it and came back multiple times for questions, revisions, etc. for about another month. This was a stressful yet exciting time because we could see how interested the client was in using our company for its construction services.
We call the phase of negotiation, review and discussion between proposal submittal and contract award the "re-bid" phase. During this phase, Michael and I achieved a notable victory. Since there were some portions of the engineered package that weren't well engineered, we were forced to include pricing for "worst case" scenarios. When the client was weary of this method, Michael and I proposed a separate contract type to handle this grey area on a Time and Materials or Cost Plus basis. To our surprise, the client took this separate contract idea and utilized it. I thought it was pretty cool that two guys under 30 years old (Michael and I) came up with such a unique contractual solution, presented it, and found acceptance from senior client management.
Again, this separate contract further increased my company's advantage in the bidding process.
Finally, after over two months of deliberation, negotiation and proposal revisions, the client sent an email on a Tuesday night while Michael and I were at dinner in Pittsburgh giving us the official notice to proceed and telling us the contract would be on its way for signature and execution.
Once the contract was signed by our senior management, we began the process of hiring. I chose to handle this on my own, so I could learn the process. It quickly became overwhelming since people started posting on Facebook that I was hiring. I would get more than twenty phone calls per day asking for work. I had to build a spreadsheet to keep track of the calls and data. After about a month of this, I was unable to keep up and requested assistance from the company Human Resources department. They took the hiring completely out of my hands and it was a tremendous relief.
I got an apartment in Ohio, ordered a double-wide mobile construction office to the job-site, and hired a full staff.
I currently have 94 employees on the job-site working diligently. The dynamic of personalities is my biggest challenge. Industrial construction is full of male, type A personalities. There are constant disagreements and disruptions. It is difficult to handle some of these situations considering my age, years of experience and appearance. I'm just a "little rich white kid." It takes extremely hard work to garner the respect of these guys, but I think it's going well so far. Ultimately, and as I mentioned earlier, I am here to make sure these people have the tools, material, information and safety they need to build the facility.
I hear some rummaging in the kitchen by one of my roommates and Project Engineers, so I'm going to stop typing for the morning and go see what the day has to offer.
Last updated 01.24.21 - PJ
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