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Project management is the process of overseeing a project from start to finish. Project managers can have a difficult job where they take responsibility for the execution and delivery of the project. As a project manager, it was critical to understand my key responsibilities to ensure that the project ran smoothly. This post will discuss the project manager’s key duties in detail.
The project manager or PM is responsible for the project’s execution time, budget and scope. Project managers must communicate effectively with stakeholders and clients while managing subcontractors. PMs need to maintain a profit margin for their companies on their projects by ensuring that all the client demands are met to the highest quality while securing the best deals on labour and materials.
The following is a breakdown of those key responsibilities:
1- Communication
Project managers need to be excellent communicators. This means they need to negotiate and sell their ideas to stakeholders, clients and subcontractors. In doing so, they can execute the project with minimal latency and loss of resources.
Project managers need to create value for their company by bringing profit and completing the project with less capital expenditure and minimal time loss. Working as a project manager requires you to manage people to work within the budget and time frame, and it is all done through effective communication.
Technical skills
The project manager must have the required technical skills to run a certain project and have at least enough experience in this area to run the project. The technical skills are a quality the PM needs to run a certain project, identify issues early, and step in when required.
The PM’s job will require reading and writing emails and reports to different parties. The paperwork forms a big part of the PM work, which can be time-consuming, including reporting on the work progression, consulting for issues on-site, acquiring approval, purchasing materials, approving labour hours, tendering for work, and closing jobs.
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Negotiation
This includes negotiating for the best price and deals on materials, variation to work with the client, or negotiating for a tender price with a subcontractor. As stated earlier, communication is a big part of the project manager’s key responsibilities where the project manager is responsible for getting in the best deal for their company to stay profitable.
2- Administration
Administration involves managing the cost and timeline of the project to ensure that no resources are wasted while the project is still profitable. Budgeting ensures that the cost of services is kept at a minimal compared to the project’s total value. The profit margin target is set by the company standard, which has to be maintained by the project manager.
Budget
The project has a scope of work that vendors publish for specialised companies and contractors to apply for. Those specialised contractors apply for those jobs with a price schedule or rates. The winning contractor is the entity that oversees the project on behalf of the client. The contractor appoints a project manager to ensure that the project is kept according to the estimated profit margin. Any changes to the original scope are considered a variation due to unforeseen technicalities that was hard to predict during the tendering stage. Usually, the client has to pay for these unexpected events.
Program
The program is also estimated during the tender stage by the contractor. The project manager ensures that the project is kept within this time frame. Any changes due to unforeseen events or adverse conditions are considered delays that can cause the contractor financial losses in terms of labour and material resources which is why the client has to pay for them.
Contracts
On the other hand, If the contractor, specifically the project manager, did not commit to the original scope of work, the company will be in breach with the client. The loss has to come up from the contractor’s pocket to amend the mistakes.
Any breach or deviation to the original scope has specific clauses in the original contract that protect both client and the contractor from incurring any financial losses. The client might not be as experienced as the contractor, so a contract administrator or superintended is appointed on behalf of the client to ensure that the contractor, specifically the project manager, is doing the job correctly.
3- Delegation
The contractor might not have all the resources and capabilities to do the project independently, so they hire subcontractors to do different parts of the scope. The project manager’s job is to break down the scope of work and tender for those specific jobs to different specialised companies. The subcontractor chosen for a specific job within the scope is selected based on the skills, price, and time they are willing to do the work.
Subcontractors report to the main contractor who reports to the contract administrator or the superintended who report to the client. The project manager is to delegate between the superintended and the subcontractor to ensure that the work is done according to the scope, budget and time.
Contract value and progress claims
The original contract value that the contractor is to be paid by the client is broken down into small amounts paid as the job progress, which is called progress claims submitted to the client by the contractor. The progress claims also act as funding for the contractor to do the work intended for, such as paying the subcontractors and resourcing materials and equipment for the project.
Like the main contractor, the subcontractor must submit progress claims to the main contractor to get paid the agreed contract value as work progresses. The progress claims are to be submitted monthly on an agreed time and paid within a due date agreed in the contract.
Tier 1, Tier 2 & Tier 3
Tier 1 is the company that has the most capabilities and resources to do a certain type of work which is the main contractor. Tier 2 is hired by the main contractor to do a certain job as the specialised subcontractor. Tier 3 is hired by the Tier 2 companies to do specific work and so on.
All the Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 companies have project managers overseeing their assigned work scope based on the original letter of award or purchase order given by the higher Tier company or the client.
4- Quality Control
Quality control ensures that the work is done according to the scope and all the client demands have been met. This also involves completing the legal requirements and relevant standard requirements. This involves checking and cross-referencing to ensure compliance with all the relevant requirements known as the duty of care.
ITPs
ITPs or inspection test points are stages in the project that require inspection for approval before moving to the next stage. The ITPs are critical parts of the project that, without proper review and approval, might cause uncertainty, non-compliance and quality control issues. The approval of those ITPs ensures that the project is going smoothly without mistakes and variations from the scope and the relevant standards.
The project manager might not be an experienced engineer in many things, so he needs to hire private contractors to do specific work or check the work of another subcontractor. Not complying with the relevant standards might produce issues or flaws in the work, which result in poor quality control.
One of the main reasons companies hire a project manager is to ensure that the work is done to the highest quality without changing the original scope.
Closing and handover
When certain parts of the project are complete, the PM needs to close that part of the scope by doing a final inspection to prove that the work was done in the highest quality. This might require the expertise of engineers or specialists from the same company or private inspectors to confirm the work. Once the work is confirmed, the job is closed.
The handover is the final part of the job where the whole project is complete, and the project manager is required to submit a handover to the client to notify that the project is complete and is fit for the purpose it was built for. Job completion is the final stage of the project when the project manager is required to provide a warranty and guarantee of the work complete to the client.
The Bottom Line
Project managers can have a difficult job that requires running a project within scope, budget and time. However, project management can be a fulfilling career where the project manager takes ownership of the work and manages people.
There are always challenges to being a project manager. If you want to learn more about this topic, you can learn about the daily tasks of the project manager here.
Also, you can learn about the top 7 personality traits to be a project manager.
