Process Improvement - The Second Most Important Thing

Any construction firm seeking a faster or more accurate business process must start at a reservoir of best practices. For a quicker achievement of its goal, a library of best practices allows a contractor to sort, discard and pare down dozens of ideas in a single day to the strongest ones which will help him or her reach schedule, financial, safety and quality goals. Once a good set of practices are destined for adoption, the next step is not so obvious.

It is the concept of "discrete tasks go to the lowest possible level, functional tasks go to the highest possible". Said differently, project duties should be done by the people closest to the tasks, corporate duties should be done by folk who are higher in the hierarchy. Why? We make more money on projects than by corporate strategies. The executives should help push the infrastructure and systems along while the field and administration managers keep projects on-time and on-budget while keeping safety and quality excellent.

As an example, Job Estimates and Project Planning (discrete duties) are best done by the middle managers. Hiring people and buying software (functional duties) are more effectively done by Senior Managers. Both sets of managers are tasked with decisions that allow for them to effectively drive the cost equation.