A good friend of mine and I were having this discussion the other day when he said, "The only difference between a PM and a CM is that the construction manager does not care about the cost of the project because he just wants to get things done, while a project manager does care about the cost of the project."
Although I do not agree with the part about this being the only difference, I do agree that this is at least a major distinction between the two positions. Temperamentally speaking, a good construction manager needs to have a perfect understanding of industry codes and best practices geared towards resolving a technical problem. He or she is the embodiment of what engineering means - practical application of scientific theories and methods. A good project manager, on the other hand, needs to go beyond the engineering aspects of the job. The practice of the art and science of project management needs you to be a meld of an engineer, an accountant and a lawyer!
I have seen more than one project fail because the PM did not exercise an adequate control over the costs of the project. In one of my recent projects the PM had come from the construction side of the business. He was a genius in finding solutions to technical or construction problems. But he utterly failed to grasp the concepts of project management techniques that are taught in the various institutions around the world (PMI in the US or the PRINCE2 in the UK, for example). For him the earned value numbers and the performance indices were just some random numbers, not worth giving much thought. This attitude led the project to hemorrhage money till at last he was shuffled sideways and a new PM brought in to staunch the flow.
You as a project manager, more than anyone else in the project, have to be aware of the following: You are there to make money for your bosses. Every other condition is subservient to this aim. A successful completion of any project involves, in equal measure, cost control, schedule control and scope control – cost control just happens to be the first among equals. At the end of the day everything leads to a cost. If your project takes longer to finish it will cost you more unless you can persuade your clients to pay for the delay. If you do more than you were contracted for you will not recover your additional costs unless you can show – using change management processes – that your clients made you work more. If the quality is shoddy, if the resources are not adequate, if your plan was not the most optimum, if you did not do your risk analysis, at the end of the day it will all lead to higher cost for your business, either today as your project loses money or later as you lose business due to poor deliverables.
Although I do not agree with the part about this being the only difference, I do agree that this is at least a major distinction between the two positions. Temperamentally speaking, a good construction manager needs to have a perfect understanding of industry codes and best practices geared towards resolving a technical problem. He or she is the embodiment of what engineering means - practical application of scientific theories and methods. A good project manager, on the other hand, needs to go beyond the engineering aspects of the job. The practice of the art and science of project management needs you to be a meld of an engineer, an accountant and a lawyer!
I have seen more than one project fail because the PM did not exercise an adequate control over the costs of the project. In one of my recent projects the PM had come from the construction side of the business. He was a genius in finding solutions to technical or construction problems. But he utterly failed to grasp the concepts of project management techniques that are taught in the various institutions around the world (PMI in the US or the PRINCE2 in the UK, for example). For him the earned value numbers and the performance indices were just some random numbers, not worth giving much thought. This attitude led the project to hemorrhage money till at last he was shuffled sideways and a new PM brought in to staunch the flow.
You as a project manager, more than anyone else in the project, have to be aware of the following: You are there to make money for your bosses. Every other condition is subservient to this aim. A successful completion of any project involves, in equal measure, cost control, schedule control and scope control – cost control just happens to be the first among equals. At the end of the day everything leads to a cost. If your project takes longer to finish it will cost you more unless you can persuade your clients to pay for the delay. If you do more than you were contracted for you will not recover your additional costs unless you can show – using change management processes – that your clients made you work more. If the quality is shoddy, if the resources are not adequate, if your plan was not the most optimum, if you did not do your risk analysis, at the end of the day it will all lead to higher cost for your business, either today as your project loses money or later as you lose business due to poor deliverables.
I actually enjoyed reading through this posting.Many thanks.
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Hey people just wondering What is a Construction Management Plan is it a document (PDF or DOC) explaing the whole sequence of the project in detail basically eleborating more on the MS Project Sequence of tasks that must be done ? Is there any books which can explain to me the Construction Management Plan Document how to write one ?
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