Atlas sighed, then died STRANGE HOW THE best advice you've always followed all your life and for good solid practical reasons, such as never playing poker with a man named "Doc" or responding to e-mails promising riches from a former Nigerian government official, all of a sudden goes right out the window. All common sense and apocryphal anecdotal horror stories go by the wayside when it involves deep, close personal friends and friends of friends and loyalties and trusts generated through years together in the trenches fighting the battles we all fight together daily. I never wanted to go into business for myself. Not in the mechanical and plumbing business at least. I simply enjoy my specialized niches within our industry too much, that of being a senior-level project manager and estimator. It's a job description for which my personality, intelligence and mindset are ideally suited. I never had the ego-driven desire for ownership and total control that being an owner or, in this case, a one-third owner of a partnership of a fledgling company brings. My recently dearly departed "Pop" always told me since I was little that I didn't have the fire in the belly or the hardcore mindset to be an owner of a plumbing or heating and air conditioning firm. He told me I should stick to what I know and do best: running crews; abusing GCs, owners and salesmen; and doing perfectly detailed estimates. He also told me that "partners are nothing more than dead weight" if you are in business, something that also stuck with me all my life as well. Our boutique partnership at Atlas Heating & Air was with two other senior-level middle managers of a large HVAC company that went bankrupt. We decided to go it on our own because we individually had made our former company literally millions of dollars each. But Pop was right: I didn't have the fire in my belly to be an owner (my two partners approached me initially, I didn't approach them) and that translated into the fact I didn't have the stomach to do what was sometimes necessary for our company to survive. The second problem was that our roles didn't mesh. Being the most senior of the three in age, experience and also having the necessary unlimited contractor's licenses, my presence was needed or our business couldn't have gotten off the ground. The most qualified partner to be day-to-day operations manager was also the most junior in age and didn't want to give up his recently acquired $1,500-a-week job until the other partner and I grew the business enough to where he could quit his existing job and come on board full time. Since I am physically unable to do fieldwork because of past, job-related orthopedic injuries, the one remaining partner and hired help had to do all the fieldwork. That partner resented it and that eventually lead to his quitting without warning. Finally, we never did get around to having our lawyer draw up a formal partnership agreement, which further compounded that severe biting on our collective behinds. Lessons learned from that: Even it's your own brother, have every single detail of expectations and contributions drawn up in a partnership agreement by a lawyer, not your bookkeeper and definitely not by one of you. Every partner should contribute equally financially or in-kind as far as fixed, real, tangible or liquid assets. When one partner contributes less than the others do, even if the reasoning for doing so is logical, such as that partner will be doing the lion's share of the fieldwork, it seeds resentment and hard feelings. All partners should quit any existing jobs they have and concentrate solely on the new venture. When you become partners in a new business, you do so because each of you has different strengths, knowledge and abilities that the business needs to succeed. The business can't use them if the owner of those skill sets is using them for what amounts to a competitor. There should be a clearly defined "exit strategy" for dissolving the business, should that become necessary. All businesses have a birth, life and death, and if you don't plan for its eventual death, it can't have much of a life. On top of everything, we had been promised literally millions of dollars worth of work from new and existing customers of our old employer that couldn't fulfill existing contracts because it was bankrupt. Those customers had a good relationship with one or more of us and liked and trusted us and our numbers were correct. Yet in the end we didn't get a single dime from any of them with any explanation as to why not. If it's not in writing, promises are worth the proverbial paper they're not printed on. Don't think for a second that promised work for your new venture will become actual work until you have a legally binding contract in your hand. Add to that a bunch of other little mistakes. We let a partner put company vehicles in his personal name instead of the company name because it saved a little on our insurance. We inked long-term contracts with the phone company and credit card company and such in order to appear more legitimate when other lower-cost options were available (I'll be personally paying for this mistake for the next year or so). Treat company assets as personal assets or vice-versa and you have a recipe for disaster. I don't know of a single senior-level project manager or estimator who hasn't at least entertained the idea of going into business for himself or with a partner. Some of us have actually done so. Most of us will at least give it a go sometime before we retire. A few of us will actually succeed. This sounds cynical, but if you do decide to go into business for yourself and take on partners, treat your buddies/partners as if they were total strangers with whom you decided to go into business. Then do business with them as a business partner, not as friends, or you'll regret it.

The 7½ cardinal myths of project management Over time, certain sayings have grown up around the practice of modern mechanical contracting project management. They are repeated so often by so many as to often be taken as gospel-fact, when in fact they're usually based in myth, often in flat-out myth-information. While agreeing sometimes with some of the more benign points, most of the time not - I present below an exploration and dissection of these common espousings of common-sense-less observations about project management practices. 1): To be an effective project manager, you've got to be the biggest, meanest, toughest, roughest, SOB (Sweet Old Boy) at the table. Patently false! As long you represent your company's interests with competence and professionalism, then you're doing your job as project manager. Although most jobs start out (usually) friendly if not downright kissy-kissy sometimes, they often end with anger and recriminations. Doing your job on a day-to-day basis is much easier when you act as a responsible professional, and are treated as such by the other professional PM's on the job. Acting like a goon with the IQ of a fence post, the manners of a NYC taxi driver, and the tact and diplomacy of a crazed Columbian drug lord will get you exactly what that kind of behavior deserves. 2): In order to make money, or to make the most money possible, you've got to lie to and/or screw your subcontractors. Hey, guy, aren't you a Sub to the general contractor you're working for? And if the GC you're working for is going to screw your company, do you think your company will want to work for that GC again? Even if it bids to that GC again, don't you think those numbers will reflect assumed relative risk of being screwed again? Remember that what goes around comes around, and elephants and subcontractors have long memories. In the end, the bottom line is the bottom line: help your subs make money, and they'll help you make money. 3): Be merciless in the manpower curve hiring process, promise the men anything to get to come on board, then cut them off at the knees the day that they're no longer needed for that instant, that's the business. While manning-up and manning-down is expected by the crews, the key to managing manpower costs is to concentrate on how much a given crew produces, not how much it costs. Man-hour productivity, not costs, being the key, it doesn't cost a dime extra to treat the men fairly as you can, as you would like to be treated. In the end, you can't go out and put the whole job in by yourself. 4): Women don't make good project managers. WRONG! Some of the very best project managers that have ever sat across from me at a job conference table have been women. They can be every bit as tough or tougher PM's than men. If you honestly believe women can't be good project managers just because they're women, I suggest you join the rest of us by traveling to the late 20th Century! 5): A great field superintendent by default will make a great Project Manager. Uh-uh, sorry, not quite true. If you do promote a field superintendent to a project manager and he/she turns out to be a good one, all it means is that you had someone with a PM soul and mind-set stuck in a Superintendent's body, and was just waiting to escape its cocoon and show you and the world that they're a PM-butterfly, not a supt.-caterpillar. While every PM should have some field experience, managing a job as opposed to running crews requires completely skillsets and mindsets. 6): Anyone with an engineering degree or Professional Engineer's seal also by default will make a great project manager. False,false,FALSE! Beside being an incredibly snobbish thing to say, it's also ludicrous. Unfortunately, this belief is often espoused by successful business owners who typically are far smarter than any engineer but who feel sometimes intimidated because they don't have the level of formal education of some of the "coats" they deal with in job meetings. An engineering degree is an entree to begin learning the business, not proof the holder of it knows the business already. 7): On a small job, a project manager isn't necessary. If you've worked the size of your company's jobs upwards to where you're dealing with narratives, scopes, and contracts replete with exhibits, then you need a project manager on staff, not a foreman or superintendent that also doubles as one. The mindset of a PM has to be different from a field superintendent because the expressed fiduciary responsibilities are much different. And it really is too much to ask of any superintendent to consistently work eight hours a day in the field then work another six to eight hours at night handling the paperwork etcetera for the same job(s). If you can afford to pay your hourly superintendent all that overtime to do PM work too, then you can afford to hire a full-time PM. 7-1/2): If you write a column on project management for Contractor magazine, then you must really know your stuff about project management. I ain't gonna touch that one with the proverbial 3.048 meter pole!

Creating a job schedule, schedule of values Every job has a schedule. Some schedules are formal, some are informal, some schedules are pulled out of the air, but all jobs have a day on which they start and a day they finish. In between are a whole bunch of seemingly unrelated but integrated activities that result in a building being built. A schedule does not drive the building. The building, its size, location, financing, type of structure, etc., drive the schedule. You wouldn’t have the same type of schedule for apartments that you would for a strip shopping center. I’ve always said it doesn’t matter what kind of schedule is chosen, whether it be a simple bar chart, a more formal Gantt chart, or even a full-blown critical path method one, as long there is something on paper for all trades to see. The days of even a doghouse being built without a schedule that someone can sue and be sued over are gone. What kind of schedule should be chosen for a given project? In Year 2003 dollars, if a project is less than $1 million in total cost, I can’t see the need for anything fancier than a typical Gantt chart that we’re all familiar with, showing the respective trades start and finish dates for major phases of the project. This is because in the end, if the building’s not completed by the finish date, then the lawyers get involved anyway when and if it goes into liquidated damages. If it’s over a million bucks and especially if the project: 1) has a duration of more than one calendar year; 2) consists of more than one type of building, which may or may not be physically connected to one another; and 3) has specialized, non-typical components such as in a medical or scientific facility, then a full-blown CPM chart is needed. This is because the need for phasing multi-trade room-level breakdowns are greater, and the effect that schedule limitations have on actual production are increased. If time/money/crew efforts don’t need to be cost-weighted, such as on smaller projects, then there’s no need for a CPM chart. It’s the process of automating scheduling accelerations and decelerations and subsequent cost and time adjustments using such software as Primavera’s P3/SureTrak that make doing a CPM schedule for larger jobs worthwhile. Once the schedule is created, then comes the critical task of doing a schedule of values overlay that puts allowable draws on specific completed activities as spelled out originally in the schedule. A schedule of values is normally required as part of contract documents. I can’t fathom a new commercial building contract in modern times not requiring one. Screw up doing the schedule of values and your company’s cash flow gets stretched if not totally screwed up. Then your job bonus is gone at a minimum, if not your job. Of course everyone plays the game of front-loading the schedule of values as much as possible, and all other parties on the opposite side of the fence, the owners and architects in particular, know that all contractors try to front-load. Do I front-load my own schedule of values? You betcha. It’s part of my job. I really don’t think it’s the least bit dishonest to do so, either. Why not? Because we’re not going to get a single dime more than what was contracted for. It’s just a matter of exactly when we get those dimes during the contract. The job is bonded and we lose our collective behinds if it’s not done on time. So, to me, trying to extract a little cash cushion up front to help internally finance the job is definitely part of my job. How should a schedule of values be generated? I hope that during your estimate you took off everything by plan sheet or even by each room so you can go back and refer to your green sheets to see what labor and materials were assigned to what activity and where. If you didn’t, then you’re either going to have to do some thumbnail takeoffs so you can assign dollars to them, or else pull the numbers out of the air. It’s okay to pull numbers out of thin air, as long as you have the experience, proven track record and present trade knowledge to do so. Kinda silly to do it that way if you ask me, but it’s done all the time that way in real life. Normally, except on tiny jobs where little breakdown is needed, I’ll do a thumbnail takeoff of equipment and major fixtures assigned to phases of the main schedule and combine it with “massaging” the labor to front-load as much as I can get away with. I ask for payments for mobilization, special insurance requirements, bonding, and other upfront costs that might not be spelled out in the contract but which the architect will generally approve anyway if asked for politely as schedule of values line items. The bottom line is the schedule can be your friend or your enemy. Run your jobs right and tight and it’ll be your friend.

LEED accreditation will be vital to your future IF YOU HONESTLY think this so-called "green revolution" is a fad, ask yourself: Do you believe that gasoline is going to drop back down to a buck a gallon in your lifetime? If your belief is that so-called "energy-efficient architecture" costs many times more over its lifecycle than conventional ways of doing things, have you actually looked at the math, especially in light of recent energy prices? Do you think everyone who promotes "sustainable technology" is a commie-leftwing-liberal pinko bent on destroying our very way of American life? That's what it's boiling down to, my friends. If you honestly believe that global warming is a myth, then ignore this column and hang on to your hats because the beach is gonna be sizzlin' soon. That is, if it's even there in a few years due to rising sea levels. Since global warming is no myth, this is the question: How can I, as a project manager in the mechanical contracting field, make an honest buck off any or all of this? Well, you could go into business selling icebergs to Inuits since they're going to need them soon to keep their igloos cool. But perhaps the best advice I can give is to consider obtaining Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design accreditation from the U.S. Green Building Council ( www. usgbc.org) in one or more specialty areas. A Professional Engineer designation has always helped one's chances of becoming a project manager and the "PMP"/Project Management Professional designation from the Project Management Institute (pmi.org/) is becoming more popular. The fact is, however, that there are more registered PEs than licensed Master Plumbers and, while the PMP designation tells some folks that you know how some jobs shouldn't be run, the fact of the matter is that such a buck-saving credential definitely does get potential employers' attention. Knowing how to save a buck counts, especially when those bucks are expensive. "LEED accreditation carries very strong weight in management decisions on whom to hire or not since all major firms understand that all publicly funded buildings built in the future will be green buildings," says Carol S. Wilburn, P.E./LEED-AP accredited independent consulting engineer for sustainable technologies (cswilburnca@yahoo.com, 919/969-6553). "The proof is in the number of local governmental bodies requiring ' commissioning' of buildings, which requires that contractors have people in place that understand what LEED is all about. Since governments will soon require all buildings that are built with public money be LEED certifiable (people receive LEED accreditation, buildings get LEED certification), that in itself will drive the private sector building market even further into green and the need for personnel with knowledge of sustainable technologies along with it." Think of the green revolution as being comparable to the original "air conditioning revolution" back in the mid-20th century. The first air conditioners were expensive to buy 60 years ago and required what amounted to a self-selected "priesthood" to install and operate. Because of that, their use was limited to larger commercial and government buildings where comfort cooling made sense such as hospitals, office buildings and theaters. As time passed, people became more appreciative and accustomed to the idea of being comfortable year-around, and the number of installed units increased. As production increased, the cost to buy, install and maintain them dropped faster than the proverbial rock to the point where A/C until recently (because of increased energy costs) was taken for granted, not as a luxury, but as a necessity. Don't you think that pioneering bunch of original HVAC design-build/install contractors made just a ton of money in the early days of that gold rush? Don't you want in, now, on the ground floor of the next revolution in comfort technology — that of sustainable and super energy-efficient design and installation means, methods and materials? To do so, you'll need proof of your knowledge of this new paradigm, this new way of thinking old, this new way of doing business the old-fashioned way, that of being kind to your neighbors by saving them mucho dollars. And being kind to the only atmosphere you can actually breathe in. That means becoming LEED accredited.

A COUPLE DAYS ago I received an e-mail from an under-30 project manager who has a degree in construction management and five years of experience as a project manager for a larger HVAC contractor in south Florida. He asked if I thought that his earning the Project Management Professional certification from the Project Management Institute was worth anything. Would it be worth the considerable time, trouble and expense that earning it would entail and, most importantly, would it help accelerate his career track? My four-word answer to him was, “yes, no, maybe, possibly.” I wasn’t trying to be flippant or humorous in my response; I was just trying to give an honest answer as best I could. On the face of it, common sense would tell you that earning any license or certification or anything with any credibility would help differentiate you from the rest of the pack of fellow rat-racers. At the minimum it would increase your chances for better positions at better salary and perks along your career path. On the other hand, unless you’re a project manager under 50 and have given your heart and soul to project management as a career path and done tons of investigative homework, chances are you’ve never heard of the Project Management Institute or its nationally recognized certification program. It follows that most of the upper management types in our industry have zero to little knowledge of PMI and, therefore, while they might notice your PMP certification on your resume, chances are they could not care less what it is or what it means. Your knowledge, provable employment track record and personal references in mechanical contracting are still 90% of what gets your foot in the door to a potential position as a project manager most of the time. You can have all the professional certifications and degrees that you can earn, but if you don’t have a successful track record, forget it. PMP or any other certification or degree simply becomes so much pretty wallpaper for the office you won’t have. You’ve got to give the Project Management Institute credit for at least trying. PMI has 30+ years of experience at trying to bring some sort of semblance of sanity and order to an otherwise chaotic and scatter-shot world of project management. With such an ever-growing track record of its own, PMI does mean something to some people within the trade and having the PMP designation might make a difference sometime to someone somewhere. So the young PM needs to assess his return on the time and money spent earning it. Considering the PMP certification is based on the “Project Management Book Of Knowledge”/PMBOK as published by PMI and is not specific to any one industry or trade, I guarantee you’ll find a whole bunch of statements of principles and facts within it with which you’ll disagree. You may even disagree vehemently on some but, guess what, PMI doesn’t care! You’ll have to adjust your thinking to suit what’s in PMBOK or you won’t be able to pass the exam. As a prerequisite, you must have a provable track record for a couple years and have been on the hot seat for at least a couple of jobs that PMI requires just to earn enough “points” to become qualified to sit for the exam. Then it becomes a matter of time spent in local PMI chapter study groups and money spent for the actual exam. Would it be worth it to you? At this point in your career, if you plan to stay with your current employer for the near-term future, I’d simply ask my boss if I were you. Ask him if he thinks certification gives you any extra credibility, i.e., would it increase your chances for promotions and raises. If it wouldn’t, then it becomes a more focused assessment of how you think it might help you in the future, possibly with another employer. If you don’t have a four-year or better degree and/or a slew of unlimited-class contracting licenses, earning a PMP certification would at least give you some sort of “neighborhood qualification” to put on your resume, so it is something to consider. For more information, contact the Project Management Institute, 4 Campus Blvd., Newton Square, PA 19073-3299; phone: 610/356-4600; fax: 610/356-4647; e-mail: pmihq@-pmi.org; Web site: www.pmi.org.

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 between North Carolina’s capital city of Raleigh and what would become the Beige Capital of the world in nearby Cary, my parents would often leave the front door locked to let visitors know we weren’t home but would leave the back door open just in case someone needed to get in. Seriously! My stars, how times have changed. Call me cynical if you wish, but when it comes to truly petty theft as opposed to major theft, I’ve pretty much thrown up my hands and resigned myself that a certain small single-digit percentage of little stuff will walk off my jobs. Losing a few hundred dollars worth of materials, fittings and consumable supplies on a $1 million job won’t break my job’s budget and isn’t worth my losing sleep over. What will break my budget, because it affects total crew productivity, is tool theft. Now, there has always been and still is a concept called “job justice.” When someone on the job starts stealing the other mechanics’ personal tools, the crews have a way of figuring out who’s doing it and they take care of business themselves, usually without getting either me or the police involved. It’s the original “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. But since there has always been a natural anti-company, anti-management attitude on the part of many field personnel regarding theft of company-provided major power tools, that’s another story. My philosophy on protecting major power tools has always been threefold: 1. I.D. it; 2. Ugly it; and 3. Assign it. First, every single power tool bought should be immediately logged into a master folder at the main office, making sure that its serial number is noted. Then the company’s federal tax I.D. number should be engraved somewhere on it, in a prominent place that lets all know the time has been taken to give the police a chance to recover it if it’s stolen. Second, I always “ugly” up the tools. Along with painting stripes or blotches of company colors on the tool, I always like to add some colorful highlights of safety orange or, better yet, hot neon pink. Nothing like a god-awful ugly tool to make a thief think twice about taking it. If he does take it, he’ll have to spend a lot of time grinding off the engraved federal tax I.D. number and then removing or painting over the ugly paint job so he can fence it. If he uses the tool, I’ll at least be pricking his conscience (assuming he has one) every time he uses it. And, who knows, that ugly paint job might actually aid in the tool’s eventual recovery. Third, I always keep a formal or informal sign-out sheet. I do the best I can to try to assign some responsibility for keeping track of that tool to someone, usually a working foreman. The reality is that tools get loaned out and used by other crews, not even necessarily your own, on a daily basis. If you let your foremen know, however, that it’s their responsibility to keep track of them, they’ll try at least and you’ll know who was supposed to have them and where. Not permitting employees to park next to or near the building, or even onsite, helps cut down theft a lot! Unless it’s some small stuff that can be easily concealed on their persons, all but the most brazen of thieves disguised as loyal employees aren’t willing to lug something that’s obviously not theirs from the job’s footprint all the way to their cars and take the chance that I or someone else who cares will see them doing it. High-dollar items such as HVAC equipment, large valves, fixtures, expensive accessories like controls and such should be kept off the job entirely until the last possible moment. They should be installed the same day, if possible, and the same week at minimum. Finally, if and when you do catch someone stealing, don’t be afraid to get the police involved and have them arrested and prosecuted. There’s nothing like being known as a true hard-ass project manager who won’t stand for being messed with and who will throw their butts in jail if you catch them stealing to make most criminals think twice before walking off with something. Not even the most arrogant and blatant of thieves enjoys going to jail. Let it be known that if they’re caught, that’s just where they’ll end up.

EVEN THOUGH FRIDAY'S still payday and poop still runs downhill unless an ejector pump is involved, many of the old rules of residential plumbing and HVAC design are simply too antiquated to be worth the space between your ears. The ultra-competitive world of residential design and contracting is definitely a different one from just a decade ago. No longer will typical homebuyers settle for what's offered them initially by the builder. Thanks to the Internet and 800-lb. gorillas such as Lowe's and Home Depot, consumers come loaded with more details about more options on mechanical systems than they typically can understand. This isn't a bad thing. It allows you, the contractor who's going to design and install their HVAC and plumbing systems, to try to educate and up-sell them. Let's take a look at these current trends in design. Nice kitchens and bathrooms sell homes, so they're getting larger while the rest of the rooms in a typical new house are being forced to shrink. With aging baby boomers trading up to nicer second and third homes and gen X'ers, who are used to having everything luxurious and being in debt past their eyeballs, virtually every new home built today has a kitchen 50% larger than ones a generation ago. Bathrooms, especially "master bathrooms," are often 100% larger than what was built 20 years ago, with every possible luxury crammed in them. This presents obvious up-sell opportunities but also possibilities for increased homeowner complaints because of poor system design. You must take into account the additional heat loads of what amounts to commercial-capacity stoves and ovens. Moreover, many homes have an open plan combining the kitchen, breakfast nook and dining area often bleeding into a large living/great room. You're going to have homeowner complaints if you put in two 8-in. supply ducts into what may have turned into several hundred square feet of living area. In fact, if you've not made the switch over to Version 8 of ACCA's Manual J for doing your heat loss/heat gain calculations, you're asking for trouble. Keep in mind it's moving air as much as mechanically cooled air that gives people the perception that they're cool. When you do the design, allow for one or two extra runs for maximum coverage in airflow patterns. In bathrooms, even though it's not your fault, most homeowners want enough water pressure in showers to be able to sandblast with it. If the municipal water supply doesn't have the pressure, the best you can do is either try to sell a booster pump or run larger supply lines right up to the fixtures, even though it'll cost you more. Even if you piped it to code, if the homeowner isn't happy, you'll get warranty calls. A master bath in a new house, even a starter home, without a whirlpool bath? Unheard of! Just remember that it also puts an additional load as an appliance in your Manual J calculations and can create humidity issues, depending on your local climate. Nicer baths and kitchens are also required to sell existing homes, which is where you should be selling, selling, selling. You should intimately know every single neighborhood in your coverage area and be aware of which ones have equipment and systems that are eight to 12 years old. You'd be foolish if you don't aggressively go after the change-out market since margins are higher and risk is low. Hang attractive but cheap-to-produce flyers on every single front doorknob in these neighborhoods at least once a year and send refrigerator magnets to individual homeowners whose condensing units are obviously on their last legs. Cable shows on the Discovery Channel and HGTV are educating a new generation of potential sellers that if they really want to sell their homes quickly and for more money, spending a few grand on remodeling their outdated kitchens and bathrooms with new plumbing fixtures often leverages the expense. This may or may not be true depending on your local market, but you still need to be aware of this perception. To take advantage of this trend, you'll need to know the higher end fixtures by memory and possibly partner with a one or more local showrooms and interior decorators to generate leads. Most homeowners don't know a SEER from a psychic, but they do know the higher a unit's SEER the lower their utility bills will be. With automated Manual J V.8 and design programs such as WrightSoft (www.wrightsoft.com) loaded onto your laptop, you can walk into a home-owner's den and often walk out with a nice fat check for a high-efficiency replacement system, once you show him how much money he'll save. He'll have to do it eventually since the old equipment will fail some day. The master bedroom/suite should have its own zone to keep the owner happy. The old saying, "If Mama ain't happy, then nobody's happy," also applies to Pappy. Since it's usually the two of them that pay the mortgage together, not having proper airflow and temperature where the bed will be located is usually a mistake. If the owners get a good night's sleep because they're comfortable, chances are they'll be happy campers even if the rest of the house might have a couple dead spots. At least they won't be whining to the builder that the house's AC system wasn't sized properly. Selling a "poor man's zone system," i.e., a two-unit system, is actually a logical up-sell, especially when the house is either two story or split-level. It's a trade secret (remember that since you're reading CONTRACTOR, it means you're a member of "the brotherhood," so no telling the general public) that all the risk for a typical job is in labor and very little is in the equipment. The more you can boost your equipment-to-labor-dollars-ratio, the more actual net profit you'll put in your pocket, which is why it might make more sense for you to sell two units for a house. This also fits in with the master bedroom as sanctuary concept, telling the homeowner that even if the other system that supplies the rest of the house temporarily goes down, then at least their bedroom will be comfortable. Don't forget that hot tubs and whirlpools require a lot of hot water. You may still see standard-size tubs, but I've been seeing many larger "garden tubs" at minimum and usually larger jetted tubs inside and multi-person hot tubs on the back deck. All require copious amounts of hot water, which means you should be trying to sell something different — dedicated water heaters, tankless heaters, re-circulating hot water systems, 50-gal. or 75-gal. tanks, boilers with high-recovery indirect tanks or multiple manifolded water heaters. A homeowner who runs out of hot water before the giant tub is filled is not going to be happy with the rest of his plumbing, even if it works great.

Run your jobs safely or make your firm sorry RECENTLY AN old friend, who had come up through the project management ranks with me and started his own successful mechanical contracting business some years back, called to tell me to stop work on a side estimating job that I had been doing for him. He had just lost his general liability insurance and was facing the likely prospect of having to shut his doors for good. When I pressed for more information, all he would say was the obvious that we both already knew: When you’re a small contractor and have two, three or four lost-time accidents in less than a six-month period, you’re screwed. Insurance companies just don’t cotton to businesses that actually use their services. That got me to thinking about my own personal experiences with project management job safety issues, something that’s been dear to my heart. Actually it’s dear to my right ankle, which was destroyed in a jobsite accident when I was only 17 years old and which left me 28% disabled for life. As foreman on that particular job (yes, I was a working foreman at age 17), should I have been able to foresee and prevent the accident that crippled me? Yes, but. Yes, but probably, maybe, probably not really, probably yes, really. As the responsible party running my crew nearly 30 years ago, should I have more closely noticed that four-gang electrician’s box that was turned upside down on the newly finished quarry tile floor in the kitchen area of the restaurant remodeling job we were working at? Should I have avoided stepping on it and subsequently falling backwards with my ankle sliding under my butt – my 250-lb. weight crushing it? Yes, I should have been more careful. But when every single job is full of such “landmines” just waiting to go off, even perpetual vigilance can’t catch everything. Only two occupations mandate use of hardhat protective gear, the first being a frontline combat soldier and the second being a frontline construction worker. Why? Because they’re both equally dangerous. If you stay in the field long enough as a working field employee, it’s not a question of if you’re going to get hurt, but only of when and how badly. Over the years when I’ve wanted to spend an extra dollar a pair for better safety glasses or a couple hundred bucks on extra safety harnesses to make sure all my guys working on ladders and scaffolds could be properly tied off, or rent another section of trench box that wasn’t in the estimate because of re-routing problems encountered in the field, the universal refrain that I’ve always heard from my bosses is, “You can’t do that, that costs money!” To which I always replied, “Yeah, but a huge OSHA fine would cost us more if we’re caught not doing it, and a lost-time accident would cost us far more in increased insurance premiums than even the fine from OSHA would.” Since my bosses signed our checks I usually lost these arguments. But at least I got on record as disapproving of what I considered to be penny-wise and dollar-foolish. One of my favorite safety proverbs is “job safety doesn’t cost, it pays!” Think about it. You might only need to spend 0.5% of your total job budget for such things as mandatory attendance weekly toolbox talk safety meetings for all jobsite employees, a decent first aid kit and a one-day Red Cross basic first-aid training course for one responsible person (yourself?) on how to use it so minor injuries don’t end up at the emergency room. Get rid of broken down ladders and chewed-up drop cords. Spend a couple bucks a day for ice for the job Igloo water coolers that prevent dehydration and boost concentration. If, at the end of the job you’ve not had a single lost-time/lost-money accident, have you spent money on safety or have you made money on safety? When you make safety such a driving force on your jobs that there’s never a chance your company’s general liability insurance coverage will ever be canceled for any reason and your workers’ comp and other mandatory insurance coverage premiums are kept as low as possible, have you cost your company a few dollars in chump-change profits, or have you helped them keep their doors open?

How to become an 'instant project manager' IT'S 2 P.M. FRIDAY. You've just learned that the senior project manager for your company, Mr. Alias, was fired Monday because of some " accounting irregularities" that were found in one of his jobs and that two of the PMs he trained, Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones, walked out in sympathy with him. Then the one remaining experienced PM in the company, Mr. OhBoyHereIt-ComesNow, was told he was going to have to take over the entire workload of the Infamous Three, so he quit Friday morning. Which now leaves your company with exactly how many project managers to handle the workload, plus start the biggest job in the history of your company next Tuesday? How many PMs are left to do that? None, you say? Wrong! It leaves just one PM available, and that is you! I know, I know, you're just the Senior Field Superintendent and have never fully managed a project nor have you actually wanted to. But your company needs you desperately now, especially with that monster job starting next week, so as of now you've been officially "promoted" to the company's newest and for now only PM. Myohmy, what should you do? Well, you have three choices: 1. Refuse the promotion and ask that you be allowed to keep your current position, keeping in mind that you may face some future negative consequences for doing so. 2. Accept it conditionally with the understanding that you will be allowed to go back to your old job, should you find out that you really don't like being a PM and once other qualified replacements are hired. 3. Gleefully accept your promotion, but, with a poker player's mindset, ask for the following so that you can hit the ground running as hard as you can: Immediately ask for a raise and all the other goodies you might want to "cherry pick" while you still have some leverage in this "honeymoon" period. Now, if you're grossing $75,000 to $100,000 with overtime, you might not want to push this raise-thing too terribly hard, but if you don't at least ask for a small raise then you're sending the wrong signal to your bosses. You also need to ask for standard PM perks if you don't already have them, items such as a decent laptop, maybe a PDA, a company car or at a least decent car allowance, a company credit card if your company has such a thing, etc. • In that same vein, ask for as much day-to-day management authority over your job(s) as you can negotiate from your bosses. This is critical because without real authority to hire and fire or buy material on your signature, then you've just been promoted to the guy who gets the blame, not PM. • Ask to see the complete job file, not just the estimate. This includes, but is not limited to, phone logs, original quotes from all and not just winning vendors on bid day, handwritten notes from the previous PM and/or his PM daily logbook, field surveys, etc. • Then ask for a list of all available personnel with whom you might be able to man your job, including their salary and benefit packages. Now, your bosses might balk at this at first, but, hey, you are management yourself now and your job will be charged fully for their salary and benefits. You're going to have to make some hard choices on who may or may not be worth their money and then work with your betters to obtain your chosen members of your team. • Go out to the job immediately and survey the site. With your newly furnished company camera, take pictures, pictures, pictures, lots of pictures! And don't forget to take a helper with you along with a 100-ft. tape and verify field-critical measurements as well. • Ask for a quick one-day tutorial on company policies and procedures you might not be totally familiar with such as how to create and reconcile purchase orders, how to file weekly job reports or how to bill work to an existing schedule of values. • Ask for a complete inventory of all tools on all jobs as well as shop tools. If you don't think you have the right or enough tools to do your job, make your case for what you think you do need. • Don't be afraid to go outside the box to get the job done. Think you have access to better personnel than your company currently has? Ask to the point of demanding authority to hire from outside the company. Think you need more than the standard issue one job trailer for every sized job to enable better production? Demand it! • Play diplomat, i.e., kiss your boss's rear just a little, even if it's not your nature, at least to extend your "new promotion capital" as far out as it will take you. You're going to need his cooperation as well as his signature on checks from now on, so try to build bridges, not burn them. • Seek a mentor. Contact Mr. Alias who was just fired (and don't get into company politics, stick to the matter at hand, the fact that you need help). Ask any other PM you know personally and tell him of your situation and ask for his help. Ask correctly and, nine times out of 10, they'll give it to you. If you can't find a mentor, then demand that one of your bosses take time to help you when you run across problems, situations or job demands with which you're not completely comfortable. Better to ask for help that turns out to be not-so-needed than not ask and have a situation blow up in your face and cost you that hard-earned credibility that you've worked your whole career to achieve.

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; they’re points of bottom-line focus for project managers and others in positions of responsibility within contracting firms. Corporate culture comes from the top down increasing, not decreasing, in intensity as it flows downhill. What those who are managed perceive as being permissible eventually migrates down to them through words, actions and deeds. Your lower-rung foot soldiers being led by you and your bosses will, by their nature, follow your example. If that example is lying, cheating, stealing by direct or indirect actions, or otherwise engaging in dishonest or unethical behaviors, then that’s what they’ll mimic in order to fit in and to help keep their jobs. If the company you work for routinely embraces anything less than “Golden Rule” ethics and an expectation of deep personal honesty from your employees, as set by management’s examples, then your bottom line and even long-term survival prospects are being negatively affected every single day. Companies without honor and ethics attract only similar loser suppliers and clients, and loser employees who are bigger thieves than their bosses are. If you routinely screw your suppliers as much as you can and still have vendors who want to sell to you, those are the vendors who are also crooks themselves. They add large “insurance” factors to their pricing to you, put there just in case you decide not to pay at all one day, let alone after the 90 or 120 days that you normally pay. This means you’re paying higher prices at worse terms of sale than your competition. By being less than ethical with your suppliers and trying to shaft them out of every conceivable dollar, you’re actually putting yourself at competitive disadvantage, not any advantage at all. If you routinely try to be a Sneaky Pete and look for every chance, loophole and escape clause in the fine print of contracts to extract the last ounce of blood from one of your victims, uh, clients, who do you think will eventually wind up as your core customer base? You won’t attract the Vatican and the Dalai Lama.

Thirty years in the game at 50 I sit here at the computer writing this column on the 50th anniversary of my birth, which, coincidentally, is approximately the 30th anniversary of my career in project management and estimating. After 30 years in this job, I still don't know all the answers. In fact, that's one reason, among others, that I stay in this sometimes truly insane world of ours. For the past 30 years I have learned something new each and every day, and I'm starting to get a handle on what are the correct questions to ask. After 30 years, I have achieved spectacular levels of success and achievement, balanced by spectacular levels of failure and disappointment, as well. I'm proud of the fact that I have the reputation and habit of taking over "garbage jobs" that others have mismanaged so they were over budget and behind schedule. I have brought every one of them in on time and have never lost money on a single job. I am irritated with myself that I haven't been more demanding of employers over the years regarding better compensation, so I have little financial success or security to show for all my time in the salt mines. But, then again, money has never been the prime motivating factor for any career or other decision that I've ever made, nor will it be in the future. Like most of us, I stay in this business because I truly enjoy the daily challenges we all face and ultimately conquer. I feed my ego and part of my sense of self-worth by knowing how truly world-class I am at what I do. I enjoy the rough-and-tumble of actually managing the job and my own precision at generating perfect estimates. I've always made enough to live on and a little more, made enough to live large, if not unusually well, and have always, well, most days have always looked forward to what that new day might bring. Always admit your faults and mistakes. I've been blessed to have had many great teachers and mentors both in this business and in other aspects of life or I wouldn't be the project manager or person that I am. I take great pleasure in using the vehicle of this column to pass on what little bits of humble wisdom and sometimes useful knowledge to those who are coming up the path of their careers and lives behind me. My own sensei ("sensei" meaning literally "one who has walked the path before") showed me how to find my own path, which became mine and mine alone. I walked the path before me as though it were brand new, although it was as old as the art of construction itself. Now it is my turn to pass on the knowledge that the path before you is also yours and yours alone. I can offer you some resources to make your journey easier, but only you can choose to accept your chosen path or not. Thirty dirty years in trenches have given me some insights but they're nothing more than common sense and ordinary observations that we all have but are generally too busy to think about. Things like: 1. Don't panic no matter how bad things get, since panic brings certain failure; a cool head usually manages to save itself. 2. There's no one right or wrong way to do estimates, as long as the results are consistently profitable jobs. 3. Treat your field guys, heck, treat everyone around you with "Golden Rule" respect and you'll be respected in turn. You'll also achieve maximum productivity from your crews as well. 4. All jobs are local and your job can never be outsourced because of that, so don't sweat it. 5. Any certifications, licenses, etc., that you qualify for and can obtain relatively easily, then by all means, do so. They' l l become much harder to qualify for in the future and, even if they don't do you any immediate good, they'll pay off eventually. 6. Always admit your faults and mistakes. Always be honest even when it's not in your immediate self-interest, since doing so creates a space of trust about your personal integrity between yourself and your bosses and colleagues. I've learned in 30 years of playing the game that it doesn't mean you're a less knowledgeable player than I am if you have less experience than I do. All it means is that I've seen a few more hands and have survived a few more sticky situations than you have. I have learned that to be a master of something is to be a perpetually humble student of the game and its players and that you can only ultimately become a master of yourself, not of the game and of no one else.

Here are my yardsticks for project management: IF YOU'RE a mechanical contracting business owner or senior management executive who didn't come up through the field-to-project management ranks, setting expectation levels for your project managers may be a somewhat daunting task. The yardsticks for setting performance expectations are sometimes hard to adequately define yet are very important. If you set your expectations too high, you'll lose good people because they think you don't know what the heck you're doing, don't care, are trying to screw them or all the above. Set your expressed sights too low, then their human nature takes charge and they meet your non-standard goals easily and end up costing the company definable points of potential profit. Establishing realistic yardsticks are as important to your project managers as they are to you. They know that come annual review time, hitting or missing your stated goals will determine raises and promotions. You need to know if you're getting what you're paying for. ________________________________________ The only times I've worked less than 50 hours per week as a salaried project manager was during a recession. ________________________________________ To that end, below are what I believe to be some basic yardsticks of project management. I've assumed for this discussion that we're talking about medium-to-larger mechanical contracting firms that do primarily medium-to-large, mostly commercial and industrial new work and expect PMs to manage multiple projects simultaneously. The PM is a salaried employee with at least 10 years' experience in that position. 1) Hours. During a booming economy like we've been having the past decade, it's not unusual for a project manager to be putting in 55 to 60 hours per week. Let me state this very, very clearly: 60 hours per week is the absolute maximum you should be expecting any PM to log in, and then only for short bursts! Sixty hours a week is six 10-hour days ... would you expect any of your field people to sustain maximum productivity at that pace for long? Of course not, so you shouldn't expect your PMs to do it either. Just because they're on salary does not give you a license to abuse "the privilege." That said, they shouldn't expect to put in much less than 50 hours a week. The only times I've worked less than 50 hours per week as a salaried PM was during a recession. The exception to this was when I was the only PM running a huge job and the job simply hit one of those neat times between pre- and post-construction where things are clicking along great. All I had to do was have salesmen take me to lunch, attend progress meetings and make sure stuff wasn't walking out the storage trailers. Then I could realistically expect to drop into the odd 40-hour-max week. 2) Job profitability. If your company consistently bids work cheap for cash flow and to keep the crews busy, don't expect your PMs to squeeze out job profits that aren't there. If you bid more or less at the same margins and have the same O&A as your local competitors, then expecting margins to be exceeded by a solid point or two or better at least half the time is realistic. If you expect total net to exceed estimated on every single job based upon years-passed-track-record, then your estimating department has the problem, not your PM staff. It's a stupid project manager who can't do numerous value-adds during the life of the contract to squeeze out the odd dollar. That's what the usual system of cutting them in on a percentage of exceeded net profit is for, to assure that they'll try to do so. The only question becomes one of variables, such as weather, incompetent fellow subcontractors, or truly horrible in-house estimates and bids. If these and other variables kill the bottom line to the extent that your PMs can't make an extra buck or two over the estimate at least half the time, then go find out where the problem is. 3) Compensation. The best gauge for determining the salary and perquisites for your PMs or any other middle-to-upper management employee is Contractor's salary and benefit survey. Sure I'm tooting our own horn a bit, but I read Contractor for decades before coming on board as a columnist. By studiously memorizing my job categories in particular, that of project manager and estimator, I can right now tell you almost to the penny what salary and comps I should be getting if employed by what size firm in what part of the country. This is as important for you as it is for them. If you underpay, they won't stay long, and if you overpay, you're costing everyone else in the company money. Please be cognizant of two things in particular. First, if you recruit nationally for a PM, then please offer a decent relocation perk as part of the overall package. Myself, I won't consider a PM position no matter how great the base and other things are if I'm not shown basic respect by the inclusion of a relocation package. Second, car allowances are worthless! Why should I wear out my personal vehicle when 90%-plus of the mileage I'm putting on it is for company business? If you can't offer the trade standard perk of a Blazer, Tahoe or similar vehicle, then at least give them the option of driving an older model, fully decaled truck (as long as it has automatic and air) in lieu of mileage or vehicle allowance. 4) Total number of jobs/dollar volume. This is a sticky, sticky issue, especially for medium-to-smaller firms, but not so much at larger firms. Owners of smaller firms often expect their sole PM to handle all jobs period, no matter how many jobs the total might encompass. Larger firms doing larger work usually have the luxury of more realistic expectations. You can assume that any job, no matter how small, is going to take a minimum of three man-days per month to adequately manage. If it's a $5,000, 30-day turnaround job, assume that the floor time required to handle all project management responsibilities will be at least three days. If it's a $50,000 six-month to one-year contract, assume an average of three days per month to go to job meetings, chase down materials, handle personnel problems, etc. Larger jobs, especially above seven figures, which to me are the benchmark for defining a "large job," are another story. Both pre- and post-construction phases often will be like small children and demand a given project manager's attention full time sometimes for solid weeks on either end. The middle is often a little slack but no less important to the PM's attention because that is when most of the real work is being done and needs constant monitoring. So what are my suggested benchmarks? For smaller to medium jobs, a PM can handle a maximum of a dozen or so, up to $3 million to $5 million in total job-cost volume. Keeping in mind the three-day-per-month-per-job rule, a dozen jobs adds up to 36 days, but as long as a couple of those are more or less turnkey, a PM should be able to handle it. For larger jobs in the $1 million to $5 million each range, a PM can handle a maximum rotation of six. As long as he has decent on-site, full-time superintendents to keep a daily eye on things for him, a competent PM should be able to handle a total volume of close to $20 million in those six jobs. This also assumes any job above a couple of million will also probably have a jobsite secretary, and also assumes that your office staff fully backs your PMs up as best it can. Make sense or not? Agree or disagree? I'd love to hear from you! Please e-mail or call me if you have the time. I'd appreciate it!