You are the Leader on your project, take ownership

You are the Leader on your project, take ownership

You are the Superintendent on the project, the leader, take ownership. Treat the project like it was your building you were going to live in. If you are a Trade Partner (Subcontractor) this goes for you as well. You take ownership of your scope and your responsibility as a team member. (This concept works for anyone on any type of project)

LEAD YOUR TEAM

Your team members will learn quickly if you are committed or not, you set the tone and expectations for the project. If you aren’t all in it will show and product, schedule, and budget will suffer.
You have got to also display leadership and people skills. I suggest you invest some of your personal time with personal development, reading, learning, taking classes and courses. If you want to be good or the best you must know how to influence others and get the team to buy in. The days of barking out orders and getting something done are long gone. Besides no-one wants to hear that, it doesn’t work.

You want to take ownership you’ve got to;

• Know the project better than anyone else. Dig through the details, notes, and submittals.

• Know your schedule, your mile stones, your completion date. Knowing the completion date seems
obvious but you would be surprised how many times when I’ve asked a Superintendent the
question, when is your completion date and the answer is, I don’t know or I’m not sure.

• Be a problem solver, certainly don’t be afraid to ask others for their thoughts and opinions
but don’t be afraid also to think outside the box to come up with solutions.

• Be the first to arrive and the last to leave. We all know that this job requires a lot of
hours, but you are the leader. If you have an assistant, you can share the responsibility of
locking up the site in the evening but always be there first. Having your subcontractors open
the site and lock the site on a consistent bases shows a lack of ownership.

• Don’t be a trailer Superintendent, you know what I mean, the guy who no-one ever sees the
walking the site, he never leaves the trailer or is always sitting in his truck. The guys in
the field notice that, if you are that guy, they are joking you.

• When walking the site don’t just be out for a walk, look for problems, look for thing that
just don’t seem right. If something doesn’t look right it probably isn’t. Identify issues as
early as you can so they can be addressed and correct as early as possible. The longer you
wait, the more costly they are in time and money.

• Have the ability to hold your own Subcontractor progress meetings, treat all Trade Partners
respectfully. again, know your schedule, the problems needing resolution, and the details.
This seems obvious but for many years I had to go to job sites once a week to hold the
Subcontractor progress meetings. As a result, the Subcontractors looked to me as the leader,
not the Superintendent.

Follow Through

These are just a few ideas you can and should implement to take ownership and be the leader of your project. If you want the be the best Superintendent, this is where you start. When you take ownership it is hard work but the rewards that come with it, respect, stature, accolades, and compensation are worth it.