An overview of construction management

- Have you ever looked at a building or a bridge and wondered who built this? Have you ever walked by a construction site and wondered how all of that activity happens or who runs it all? Is it an architect or an engineer? Is it a contractor or a builder? Well, it's all of these. In fact, a typical construction project can involve hundreds of people. All working together to build a project for an owner. And none of this happens without a leader. On a large construction project, that actually might be a whole team of leaders that we call construction managers. These construction managers have a lot of duties and responsibilities. So to keep it all straight, there's typically a lead project manager. And this person's going to have the knowledge and the experience needed to map out all of the plan progress for the entire project. But they're still going to need a team of construction management personnel working under them on all of the many aspects that will be involved. They may have a construction manager that's assigned to work with the design team to help develop plans and specification. And then once these construction documents are developed, they're going to have to be passed on to a construction estimator, whose job it is to determine quantities of materials and costs for labor and equipment that will be needed. After that, a construction schedulers going to need to determine how long it's going to take to build. And another construction manager will probably need to start getting trade contractors hired, people that specialize in different aspects of the work. Now these trade contractors, but I'll also call subcontractors, they're experts in different types of work things like concrete, steel, plumbing, heating, electrical, earth work, and so on. And these companies will also employ construction managers in their ranks and they'll plan and oversee their portions of the work. And they'll also oversee the actual people performing the hands on building. Once building starts, somebody called a project superintendent's going to take charge. And they're going to run the day to day field operations. Now the superintendent is somebody with years of experience in construction but they still rely on all those other people that have been working on the planning, scheduling, and contracting to supply them with budgets, schedules, and subcontractors that can get the job done. Now, as the project progresses, there might also be additional construction managers on the site watching over things like safety or quality control. And throughout the process, remember that senior construction manager is still overseeing all of this activity and working with others in the company to make sure that the project progresses properly, the site's safe, the owner gets billed for the work, and their subcontractors get paid. In the end, all of these construction management professionals are trying to deliver a project to the owner that's safely built, on time, and within budget. So let's take a look at how all of this happens.