In this video, we're going to talk about what is
the role of a superintendent in construction and you're going to love this video because this is my
jam. We are going to have a great time together. So the reason that this is important is because
some people, a lot of people actually don't know how to be a superintendent, what that role is
for a superintendent in construction, and then it really hurts their experience. And not only does
it hurt their experience, but their results and people want to win. And so you're going to want
to watch this video today because these are the keys to winning. So we're going to talk about how
can a superintendent see the future? That's like the magic superpower, seeing the future. How can
a superintendent do that? And what are the habits that allow you to do that? There's three of 'em,
and we're going to show you all three. And these three are key. If you don't know these, you're
going to struggle and I want you to have a good experience and also there are some things that
superintendents in our industry and construction abdicate and delegate to other people, and it's
a huge mistake. You don't want to do this. And so I'm going to cover those as well. What are some
things that only you can and should do in your role as the superintendent in construction? And
so by the end of this video, my hope is that you have a really an elevated understanding of what a
superintendent does in construction, and you feel fired up and motivated to go kicks and butt and
feel like you're winning by the time you go home every day. All right, so let's dig in. This is
super cool stuff. I once asked a really, I, I'd say prominent, but really successful construction
manager. When I was working at DPR Construction, I said, what is the role of a superintendent?
And he gave me probably the coolest thinking answer that I could ever have hoped for. He said,
Jason, project managers read the owner's mind, and a superintendent sees the future. He was really
attempting to get away from the boring while they do this, to really get back to that. What
does a superintendent do? They see the future. Why see the future? Because we need to plan and
prepare for the future and create flow. And so there's a couple of key things that really help
a superintendent to see the future and I'm going to tell you right now, your master schedule and
your six week make ready, look ahead. Right now you're thinking, Jason, I knew that. Wait a
minute, hold on a minute. Here's what I'm talking about. Building that plan and schedule yourself,
or at least building it with the project manager or the scheduler or your company is absolutely
key. Please, please do not just adopt or receive or inherit a schedule that somebody else created
and then attempt to implement it. It's not going to work. You creating that master plan will
allow you to see the future and adjust it to where what's coming and when it's coming, and
you can keep that time beat on the project. The other thing, so that's long term, right? The other
thing is the short term. Your six week make ready, look ahead. That's where you have the committed
tasks, hopefully from a pull plan, hopefully coordinated with your trade partners and that
plan and those activities will allow you to go in one by one and say, do we have the manpower,
the materials, the information, next activity, manpower, materials, information. Do we have the
equipment? Do we have the layout? Do we have all the things that we need and if not, that's
a roadblock. That's something that's going to hold you up. That's something that you need to be
working on to prevent so that we can have flow in construction. And so these two tools are amazing.
Your master schedule and your six week maker, look ahead and if you do this right, people will
say, oh my gosh, this person, he or she is just awesome at seeing what needs to be done and they
really help me to keep the beat of this project, and we are winning because of their influence.
So that's the first step in becoming or being an awesome superintendent in construction. All right,
so here, here's also one of my favorite parts. There's three habits to being a builder and if
I'll say it like this, don't be mad at me. Hey, don't be mad, but if we don't do this, we're
more brokers than we are builders. I'm going to tell you these three, okay? So number one is
we study the drawings for 15 to 30 minutes every day. Every day and I know it's hard. I know that
it's, I know what you're saying. I know that it's busy. I know that we rarely have time, and I
know you're going to miss a day. I know you're going to accidentally not hit a day. It's fine.
Just start the next day. Reading the drawings for 15 to 30 minutes every day is so crucial because
that's what we get paid to do and then here's the key. We see the future and we help the other team
see the future. When we're studying the drawings, we take those details and those snippets and those
things that we're concerned about, and we take a picture of 'em on our computer or on our drawing
set, and we will send those out and communicate to the other team members why it's important and
how we should prepare. Okay? So that's number one. Number two is we are in the schedule for 15 to
30 minutes a day. That really helps you to see the future because you're looking at the projected
future on your schedule and then the same thing, how can we get it out of our head and to everyone
else so we can do something with it? Well, the answer there is again, when we see something that
we want to prepare and we don't know ourselves, if it's ready, we take a snippet of it, meaning on
a Windows or a Mac computer, a screenshot of that, or if it's printed set of plans, we take a
picture of our plans and we send that out and we communicate so that people are ready and
prepared to go and they can see the future with you. Number three, we take field walks. I'm going
to say something that's kind of fun, but it's true. The building will talk to you. That's just
it. The building will talk to you. I know that for a fact. Like, Jason, how can the building talk to
you? Well, go try this and see if it's true. And I promise you, you'll find out that it's true
when you go do a reflection walk, when you're not distracted, everything's out of your mind and
on paper, and you're like, I am here. I'm doing a walk. And you're walking around the construction
project and you're seeing things. You're seeing, Hey, are there areas that aren't clean? Are there
areas that are behind schedule? How is this crew doing over here? How's the feel of the job?
What's the morale? How are people feeling? Is there graffiti? Right? And the building will tell
you things that you should focus on to prepare and plan for the future. And then guess what? Yep, you
guessed it. We're going to take pictures of those things as you see 'em, right? And then you're
going to send that out to people as reminders so they can see the future with you and we can
plan and prepare work. So those are the three key habits of a builder. If we don't have those or at
least do our best with those, then we're brokers and not builders and I want you to be a builder
because I want what's best for you. I want you to have a great time doing it. All right? So I'm
going to go through a checklist now of some really key items that you must focus and I'm going to
say must as a superintendent in construction, number one, build that team. You have that team
assembled right now, it's time to build it and if you want some references, I love the Patrick
Lencioni books. Lemme go through 'em. The Motive, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Death by Meeting,
The Advantage. These are great books for you to learn how to build teams. And if you want more
references in the book, Elevating Construction Senior Superintendents, that is all about building
teams if you want to know how to do it. But please do not get so focused on the doing, doing the do. And
please also allocate time to build the team because building the team is first. If you have a
healthy team, you'll have a healthy project. Next one, train your people. Please do not get into the
habit of thinking that you can just hire your best people and leave 'em alone. There has never on
LinkedIn or Facebook ever been anything dumber written or said than hire your best people and
leave them alone and trust them to do your job. That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my
life. We don't do that. We hire the best people and we train 'em and we love him, and we coach 'em
and we connect with them and we help them and we mentor them, and we make sure that they feel at
home as a family. A superintendent will do that. You won't just have a field engineer or a project
engineer over here to the side and be like, oh, I'm going to trust you. I'm assuming you got it.
No, we train our people, we train the foreman, we train our trade partners. We train every day.
We train in the huddles. You are the number one trainer on the construction project and if you're
not good at it, good luck. You're welcome. You get to get good at it because that's just one of those
things that you get to do. So superintendents are trainers. All right? So we're about halfway
through the video and I've got five or six more key points that I know you're going to love. But
before we get to that point, I do want to ask you, let's please comment on this video. What are
some things that you're seeing? What are some components of being a superintendent, construction
that are important to you? We want to share back and forth. Give us your wisdom, please and comment
below. We want to see what you have for us. All right, so now I'm going to liken the role of
a superintendent in construction to being the captain of a ship. Okay? So if you were a captain
of a ship, one of the key things that you would have once you were charting a course forward once
you had the team, once you train that team, is you would supply your shift. And so a superintendent
will not delegate material procurement to somebody else. He or she can partner with the PM, he
or she can partner with the PE. But supplying that project site with materials is one
of the main roles of a superintendent in construction. That means monitoring it. That
means being hands on. Definitely if you want to be the captain of your ship, you'll make
sure it's supplied in stocked. The other thing, if you're being the captain of your ship,
and by the way, this is all in the book, Elevating Construction Senior Superintendents,
but if you want to be the captain of your ship, you'll make sure the systems are functioning
on a ship. You'll have the electrical system, you'll have the navigational system, you'll have
the propulsion system. All of these systems must be functioning. And so as a superintendent, let's
liken that to construction. You'll want to make sure all of your construction systems are up and
running and that they're functioning properly, your procurement systems, your quality systems,
your safety systems. You will want to monitor all of those throughout your day, your week,
and your month as the lead superintendent on your site. And now that you know your ship
is stocked and that the systems are running, you'll want to map a course. You're not just going
to go get on a ship and just sit there. Well, I mean, unless we're on vacation, right?
But if you're actually on, you have a purpose. You need to chart a course. So let's tie that to
construction. A superintendent will chart a course with the PM to know where is the end date, what
needs to be done by that time, and create a clear vision of where we're going. So chart that course
as the captain of your ship. People need to know where they're going. Now that you have your course
charted, we just need a focus daily on where we're going. We know know the long term, we know
where we're going, but what are we going to do today to get there? What does the short interval
look like? What are we doing today? How many miles are we sailing? What direction are we going?
What obstacles do we have? So let's liken that to construction, a superintendent will help everybody
with the involvement of the trade partners, of course, according to the last planner system,
work with the trades to know, Hey, what's our plan for this week and specifically today? Because if
we do today and more today's, all the days tied together, we'll eventually end up hitting our end
destination. So we must have a plan for today if we're going to get there tomorrow. There's two
more. As once you have a ship with the right team that's trained, you have all the supplies,
your systems are working where you're going, and you know where you're going every day, then
the key is to scale clarity every single day for that long term course and for that short term and
how the ship is working and how it's functioning, and what the updates and news is. So let's tie
that to construction every day. As the senior leader, you should be communicating over and over
and over, what is it we're doing? Why are we doing it? When are we doing it? How are we doing it?
Over and over and over. Ad nausea, when people are so tired of hearing you speak that they're getting
a little bit agitated, great. We're almost to the point of getting started with how much you should
be communicating. People need to hear things seven times. And so as the captain of your ship, yep,
we have our course. Yep, we have our plan for the day, but they should hear every day, all of
the why, when, and how from you over and over and over so that their picture in their mind of
what we're doing is the same as yours and lastly, your ship's not going to be much good if it's
sunk. So we need to keep that ship afloat. So how do we do that? We monitor and manage risks.
We keep it safe. We keep it away from reefs. We keep it away from rocks and islands. We keep it
away from things that would sink it from storms. And so as the project superintendent or the lead
superintendent, you are going to want to keep a really good lookout, right, for anything that
could hurt your construction project. So again, risks, right? Making sure that you're looking
at identifying and removing roadblocks, working with your trade partners on the five
most difficult things on the project site. Keep your ship afloat. So that means in construction,
make sure that there's nothing that's a big enough risk that it's going to sink your project. So as
captain of your ship, keep your ship afloat. Okay? So that's it and I left you a little analogy here
that hopefully you love is if you're the captain of your ship, if you're the captain of your ship,
you have to have people on the ship. They have to be trained. You have to have the right supplies
so you can feed the people on the ship. All the systems need to be working on the ship. You need
to know where that ship is going. You need to know where that ship is going today. The people need to
see that same vision like you do so you're going to overcommunicate and you're going to keep your
ship afloat. So if you just remember that you're the captain of the ship, you'll remember these
key points and hopefully be able to really enjoy and be successful in that role. All of these
things are in the books, Elevating Construction Superintendents and Elevating Construction
Senior superintendents. One book will give you the vision of what a superintendent does.
The other one will give you a vision of how to lead and build teams. You're going to want
to go check those out. They're in print, they're on audio. You're going to love them. So
please, as you leave this video, please go to those links and check out those books and
again, please like and subscribe if you've enjoyed our time together, because I know I have.
So I appreciate all you love you on. On we go.
