The move from project engineer to project manager follows evidence that you can manage money. Own the buyout of a few scopes, run the change-order log to closure, lead an owner-facing meeting and produce a cost-to-complete forecast. Ask for those four pieces of work by name, and the title tends to follow them.
The RFI log is perfect. Every submittal is tracked, the minutes go out the same afternoon, and the architect answers your email first because you are the one who knows where things stand. Nobody has asked you what the job will finish at. Until somebody does, and you can answer, you are an excellent project engineer, and the distance to project manager is the length of that one question.
What separates a project engineer from a project manager?
Money. A project engineer controls information: RFIs, submittals, logs and minutes. A project manager controls cost: the buyout, the change orders, the forecast and what the owner expects to pay. Promotion follows proof that you can carry the second list, and flawless document control is proof of the first.
That is uncomfortable news for the best project engineers, because they have usually been told that the route up is to be flawless at the job in front of them. Flawless helps. It also makes you expensive to move, since the person who promotes you has to find someone else to run the logs. The BLS profile of construction managers describes people who learn management on the job after their degree, and on a building site the part that has to be learned that way is the commercial part. Nobody can teach you a buyout in a classroom. Credentials come second for the same reason, and our note on management certifications explains that a general contractor reads the project list first and the letters last.
What you want is the title. What you need is to be the person the money questions already go to, at which point the title is a formality your firm either grants or loses you over. It is a seat worth earning: some vice presidents step back from leadership to run projects again.
Which four pieces of work lead to a project manager seat?
Buying out a few scopes yourself, running the change-order log until every item is closed, leading a meeting where the owner is in the room, and producing a cost-to-complete forecast. Each one puts you on the hook for a number or a relationship, which is the whole difference between the two jobs.
- Buyout of two or three scopes. Start with scopes a mistake cannot sink: doors and hardware, toilet accessories, signage. Write the scope sheet, level the bids, recommend the award and defend it.
- The change-order log, to closure. Opening change requests is clerical work. Getting them priced, negotiated with the subcontractor, approved by the owner and billed is management.
- An owner-facing meeting. One recurring meeting that you chair, where the owner’s representative hears bad news from you and still trusts the next thing you say.
- The forecast. Covered below, because it is the one that decides the promotion.
| What you do now | The project manager version |
|---|---|
| Track submittals for the drywall package | Buy the drywall package and own its budget line |
| Log change requests as they arrive | Price, negotiate and close them inside the month |
| Take minutes at the owner meeting | Run the meeting and carry the action list |
| Update the cost report with posted invoices | State what the job will finish at, and why |
Three of the four can be learned by watching closely. The forecast cannot.
The forecast is the real test
A cost-to-complete forecast asks what the job will have cost when it is finished, which is a different question from what has been spent. Consider, as a worked example, a job with an original cost budget of $27 million and $16 million of cost booked. The lazy forecast subtracts one from the other and reports $11 million to go. The project manager walks every open commitment, every unbought scope and every pending change, and finds $12 million still to spend. The job will finish at $28 million, a million over, and somebody now has to say so with seven months left to do something about it.
That million is why the forecast is the test. Saying it early costs you an unpleasant meeting. Saying it late costs the firm its margin and, through the work-in-progress schedule, its credibility with the bank and the surety; the CFMA is the association for the controllers and finance chiefs who will be reading your number. A project engineer who has produced a forecast, been wrong, and corrected it the following month has done the job. Our piece on the step from project manager to project executive shows the same skill, one level up, being used to read other people’s forecasts.
How do you ask for project manager work?
Ask for the work, one piece at a time, and leave the title out of it. “Can I buy out the specialties on this job” is easy to grant. “When will I be promoted” asks your manager to promise a decision that is probably not theirs alone.
Ask at the start of a job, when the buyout schedule is still open, and bring the list. Offer to do the first forecast in parallel with your project manager’s and compare the two. If the answer is yes, you have your evidence within a year. If the answer is “we need you on the logs” two jobs running, you have learned something as well. Write the evidence down as you collect it; the note on the project manager resume explains how a reviewer reads scope.
When is moving firms the faster route?
When your firm’s jobs are too large to hand you one, or when the answer to a specific request has been no twice. A smaller contractor can give you a job of your own years earlier. The cost is a smaller job, thinner support and a reputation you have to rebuild from nothing.
Job size is the structural part. At a builder whose smallest project is $150 million, nobody is handed one at 28. At a mid-size general contractor in Houston or Nashville, a strong project engineer may get a $5 million tenant improvement with a superintendent and no assistant, which is frightening and is also the fastest education available. How many jobs a manager there ends up carrying is its own question, covered in our note on project load.
Moving is common enough that nobody will hold it against you. BLS tenure data shows younger workers in the United States staying far shorter periods with an employer than older ones. What you give up is the credit you have built: the superintendent who covers for you, the operations manager who knows your work. A move to another city gives up more, because the subcontractors stay behind too, as our note on relocating explains. Move for the job you will run, and treat any raise as incidental.
Selah Talent Partners does confidential executive search for mandates that cannot be publicly posted, at project manager level and above, and candidates are never charged anything. So the useful instruction comes first: write the forecast for the job you are on, then take what it said to the candidates page.
Tomorrow morning, before anyone asks, work out what your job will finish at. Then tell somebody.
Sources and further reading
- BLS profile, construction managers, Occupational Outlook Handbook
- CFMA, Construction Financial Management Association
- Tenure data, BLS employee tenure release