What Are The Daily Tasks Of A Project Manager? Tips For Excellent Project Management.

This post contains affiliate links.

Project managers oversee project completion and manage people. As a project manager, I realised that I needed attention to detail to manage my daily tasks. This post will break down those tasks and what you can do to be a better project manager.

In general, the project manager (PM) job is highly dynamic, which means new challenges to overcome every day. The job requires excellent communication skills, problem-solving skills and time management skills. The project manager must be able to plan things in advance and shift things around in case of changes in plans.

The overall goals and responsibilities for the project manager are to ensure that the project:

A – Finishes on time
B – Be profitable
C – Executed in a safe manner
D – With a high level of quality

You can learn more about the project manager’s key goals and responsibilities here in detail.

Knowing the tasks above does not necessarily ensure success as a project manager. The project manager needs to learn how to manage the daily tasks effectively. The following summarises those everyday tasks. Those tasks are based on my experience as a PM and other successful PMs I knew in my professional career:

Table of Contents

1- Task planning

A good project manager will start the day by planning his priority list of things that need to be done today and postpone the things that are not so urgent to another day. The project manager must also plan what needs to be done tomorrow or next week.

Task planning can do two things for you:

Ensure that you can be more organised with your time and get things done
Be less stressed about losing or underperforming in delivery for important due dates or meetings.

To be a better task planner as a project manager, you need to know the urgency and importance of your tasks. The best way to sort your task is to break them into three lists:

First is the most urgent, which is your priority list or A list.
Second is your B list which is essential but not urgent tasks that you can afford to postpone for now.
Finally, the C list is the not urgent and important tasks that you do not have to do any time soon.

A-List	B-List	C-List
Highly urgent	Not urgent	Not urgent
Extremely important	Important	Not important
Has the highest priority	Still a priority but can be postponed	It can be delayed for a long time

By sorting your work from highest to lowest priority, you ensure that:

You are working efficiently and not just wasting your time with tasks that can keep you from other urgent and important tasks.
You ensure that you work smarter, not harder, and are more likely to finish tasks on time and have as little stress as possible.

As a project manager, I have used many daily planners; I recommend the daily planners below as you can quickly note the critical tasks and the meetings:

2- Responding to emails, phone calls and masseges

Emails

Responding to emails is not an easy task, and if you are extremely busy, it can significantly slow you down. Project managers, on average, can write and respond to at least 5-10 emails a day, making emails a critical part of how PMs communicate to engineers, other project managers, assistants, contract administrators, subcontractors, clients and stakeholders.

Responding to emails can be difficult, especially if you do not have an immediate answer or trying to communicate something that can not be explained easily in an email. The most important thing that I realised as a project manager is that multitasking can slow you down.

When I started as a project manager, I thought I could multitask and write an email, respond back, and do a program and budget for a project at the same time. Then I realised that I spent more time doing all these tasks simultaneously, which significantly affected my productivity.

The same can be said if you respond immediately to every Microsoft team message or slack message, so you should have a time when you close those apps and turn off notifications so you do not get distracted.

The following are tips on how to be better at managing emails:

Do not check your emails when you start working in the morning. Instead, start your day by writing your action list or plan for the day. Doing so will ensure that emails or issues can wait until you figure out the priority tasks first.
Specify a specific time in the morning and in the afternoon to check your emails: This is when you open Outlook or your email and check all the emails sent to you.
Close your Outlook when you are not using it: Doing so will ensure it will not distract you when you are doing something else. Also, ensure that Outlook is not working in the background of your computer, so you do not get notifications while working.
Acknowledge that you received an email if you do not have an answer: Say something like “Received will get back to you later” this will give you time to think and ask for information.
Do not have Outlook on your phone or disable notifications, so you do not get bothered when you are outside your work hours. You will only check your mail when you need to.

If you want to learn more about managing emails, read: 10 Tips To Use Outlook More Productively And Work Smart.

Phone Calls & Massages

Phone calls are an amazing way to get things done by communicating directly with people. Phone calls can be a far better way to explain things than emails or messages. Phone calls are used when you need to communicate something urgently that it can not wait.

Use massages when you need to ask questions or tell someone something they need to know urgently instead of doing so using an email. Massages are less formal and more likely to be used between work colleges than clients and contractors.

It is important to mention that using messages and phone calls can be annoying to many people if they are overused. Therefore, only use them for high priority situations.

3- Reviewing project progression and program

Project managers ensure that tasks are carried out on time and according to the program. This requires effective communication to ensure that the people who are working on the projects know exactly what they need to do and when to finish the given task.

Three things can affect project progression:

Delays due to unexpected events such as weather or injuries. The delays need to be addressed as soon as possible by moving some tasks or shifting the program to account for the lost days to ensure that the delayed task will not conflict with other tasks.
Issues found during the construction or development phase that requires re-evaluating the design given. This requires involving the design engineers and re-assessing the design.
Changes in scope where some part of the scope is deemed unnecessary by the client or addition to the scope, likely to increase the project program and cost. The project manager needs to assess the situation and request compensation due to the time or capital incurred by such changes.

It is important to mention that the project manager needs to have a sound understanding of the contract to negotiate with the client, superintendent, contractors or subcontractors in case of any changes to the program due to the above reasons.

4- Following up with contractors

In the project, the company you might be working for might not have all the capabilities to do everything by themselves, so the project manager needs to outsource some contractors to do some parts of the scope.

Dealing with contractors might be difficult because they are not people from your company; it might be difficult to communicate with them and even challenging to choose the right people for the job.

The following are a few ways to select the right contractor for the job:

Prepare a tender package that includes the necessary details for the contractor to review and submit the prices for the job. The tender must outline in detail all your expectations as a company.
Make sure the right people receive your tender package for the job. For big jobs requiring a consultant or another company, you can use special websites to submit your tender to them directly. On the other hand, if your project is small enough to be engaged by local subcontractors such as Plummer or an electrician for a house job, then google, yellow pages, and other tradies-consumer websites can be used, such as fiver.
Shortlist the candidates based on your budget for the job and the company capabilities, which you can find online and by calling their references.
Contact the shortlisted candidates for an on-site visit for small jobs or an interview to understand the company’s ability and build trust between parties. Usually, you are looking for someone you can communicate effectively with; you do not want someone that will give you a hard time when the project goes live.
Ask for recommendations from other companies or people who have worked with the company you want to hire. You will be surprised how effective the recommendation is because people will more likely be honest about their experience with that company.

5- Attend stakeholder and client meeting

Such a meeting can be a fantastic opportunity for both parties to express their concerns and have their questions answered. The meeting can usually be a recurring meeting where both parties come together to discuss the project’s progress or discuss problems that require both parties to discuss and find solutions.

Those meetings are the perfect chance for the project manager to ensure that all his demands are met. Usually, those meetings have an agenda that needs to be discussed.

The following steps can help the project manager to handle those meetings effectively:

Draft or contribute to the meeting agenda to ensure that all your concerns and request will be discussed in the meeting
Take notes to record the meeting minutes and post those meeting minutes to the client after the meeting in a short email.
Make sure you arrive early for the meeting. If it is online, make sure you log in 10 minutes before the call starts and mind your dress code; this shows your commitment to the client.
Ensure that both parties have actions and responsibilities after the meeting by setting due dates and following up on those actions in an email after a week or during the next meeting.

6- Organise site inspections

Site inspection is when the project manager visits the site to see work progression and meet with site supervisors, workers and engineers … etc. Visiting a site is an excellent way for the project manager to see project progression and understand the project’s challenges.

Usually, project managers are extremely busy with many tasks that keep them away from seeing the work progress. Therefore, site supervisors usually update the project manager with the progression and any issues on site.

The following are a few things a project manager need to do to get the best out of a site visit:

Physically inspect the workmanship that your company and subcontractors did. It is probably bad workmanship if it does not look right to you.
Ask for any issues that might slow the workers if those issues are created by other subcontractors or by site limitations such as access. This can potentially make your case stronger when you see things on-site and report back to the client.
The project manager, if not based on-site, should check the site at least 1-2 times a week unless if the project is far from the office that might require travel and stay over, the project manager should organise inspection after completion of critical parts of the project.

7- Solve ongoing problems

Issues never end, and when you are a project manager, there are always problems that you have to find solutions for that might slow down the project if not dealt with promptly. No projects are expected to go without hiccups, issues, delays, and it is the project manager’s job to step in and find a solution.

There are a few common project problems a project manager might encounter:

Issues involving compliance with relevant standards or building codes where the scope has defined something that conflicts with some standards. The project manager must seek to alter the design to comply with those issues.
Issues involving access were huge pre-constructed parts of the project needed to be transported or lifted to access the site.
Issues involving bad workmanship or defective work can significantly slow down the project if the issue falls in the project’s critical path.
Issues involving council approval, such as council properties or raising a development proposal, this is more common in construction projects.

More often, the project manager acts as an intermediate by involving the experts to find solutions. The project manager has a duty of care that he must exercise, which is also stated in the work contract that can give the project manager some authority to reject work or put a proposal to solve an issue.

The intelligent project manager is the one who finds a way to solve those problems while keeping the project running through delegations and engaging other parts of the scope ahead of its time.

8- Maintaining the project budget

The project budget is a value set by the contracting company to secure profit from the project. The project budget is the contract price minutes expenses. Maintaining a reasonable project budget is the project manager’s responsibility.

The project manager is usually not involved during the tendering stage when the company is submitting a price for a new project. This is typically the job of an estimator who submits the tender package to the client. The estimators are not perfect, and they might underestimate some parts of the scope, which can negatively impact the project’s profitability.

The following tips can help the project manager maintain a reasonable project budget during the project development:

When a new project is assigned to the project manager, the manager must study the project scope and requirement and check the prices provided by the estimator. The estimator should have a reasonable explanation for the provided prices and the materials required, labour and subcontractors.
The project manager must ensure early on that the prices provided by the estimator are still valid and it was not affected by inflation (which is quite common if there was a long period between the tendering process and the development phase) or loss or change of subcontractors (Subcontractors who provided quote for the job in the tender stage might not be available when the project in construction).
The project manager must raise any changes in budget between the tender and the construction to the senior managers to notify them that some parts are out of the project manager’s control.
The project manager must ensure that the project runs at least 25% profit as it is quite an obtainable margin within many organisations.
During the development phase, the project manager must charge the client for any changes in scope, delays and material or equipment the client requested to ensure that the project manager is not spending money out of his company pocket and charging the client a fair fee based on what is was stated in the contract.

9- Quality control assurance and certification

If you have read this far, you probably have figured out that this job can be quite challenging. The work done by workers and subcontractors needs to be according to the relevant standards and building codes with excellent workmanship.

In general, the project manager must ensure two things when dealing with subcontractors and clients:

Work done must have a certificate and guarantee to prove that the work complies with any relevant standards.
The project manager must provide a warranty to the client. Any issues that arise in the future can be fixed if still under warranty.

The project manager must record work progress and the final product using photos and videos, to ensure that if any issues arise in the future, the project manager can check those evidence to prove if any issues were caused during construction or later on by the client.

10- Ensure safety

Safety is the number one priority on any job site. If the work environment is not safe, then work must cease immediately, and workers must notify the safety officer on-site, site supervisor or the project manager directly.

Most projects have plans and safe work method statements to protect people and workers on-site.

The following are the hierarchy of controls for site hazards used on most project sites that have a high chance of injury or loss of life:

Elimination: The best way to protect people is to prevent the hazard from ever happening.
Substitution: If we can not eliminate the hazard, we will substitute it with something safe.
Engineering controls: Engineer something that can prevent the hazard from happening.
Administration controls: This includes training and usage of signs and warnings.
PPEs: Personal protective equipment is the weakest line of defence from hazards. The PPEs are usually used with another measure of controls to reduce the hazard as much as possible. This includes gloves, hard hats, glasses, steel cap shoos, earplugs … etc.

The Bottom line

Project managers have a challenging career that requires effective communication, organisation, planning, and attention to detail to effectively perform daily tasks.

If you are interested in becoming a successful project manager and want to learn more, you can read: Top 7 Personality Traits Of Project Manager For Immediate Success.