Save money and sanity: hire a project manager 💵

Most of us grow up learning various life skills from our parents. Some of those skills are critically important, like a sense of humor or how to apologize. Some are more practical, like how to purify water from a stream or power wash vinyl siding. 

In my family, my sister and I learned a lot of things growing up, but “practical” skills? Debatable. I’m not sure that anyone ever saved money or survived in the woods by knowing all the words to Cats! or where Vermeer lived (Delft!) So having grown up in a home where DIY projects were pretty much limited to framing pictures and re-covering dining room chairs, you can infer that the world of commercial construction was pretty unfamiliar.



Needless to say, I learned a whole lot building out my own restaurant, and while much of that knowledge got buried under layers of trauma, it stuck. Years later when I began managing retail build-outs for a living, my own experience, my boss' extensive construction experience, and 40 hours a week turned me into a pretty great project manager. With the aid of A+ executive functioning skills and Google, I managed seven projects over seven years so that my boss, the business owner, could focus on his job.

☝️ Fact: Commercial build-outs take many months. They also take many, many, many dollars and even more decisions. 

But Sheila, aren’t the construction decisions made by the architect and the general contractor?

Great question. Even when you have a top-notch buildout team, there are decisions that ONLY YOU as the business owner (and ultimate user of the space) can make. But of course, as a business owner, you’re busy doing one-billionty other things, and it’s quite impossible to effectively manage the project yourself. At least, not in the way it needs to be managed.

Even in the best situation possible (negotiated lease deadlines, construction due diligence, sufficient resources, a great architect and GC), every single construction project is hard and all-consuming. It takes a lot of time and attention, and it’s not something that you can pop in and out of when you've got time and/or bandwidth.

A project manager’s primary job is to have the business owner's back from start to finish. They protect the budget and timeline, because both of those things can go off the rails really fast and really badly. Project managers can keep everything under control because (a) they’ve done it before, and (b) they are not busy trying to set up supplier accounts, hire staff, plan a grand opening, set up Quickbooks, write an SOP manual, and program a POS system. 

👷🏽‍♀️ Managing a commercial construction project is not like hiring a party planner. You can't just offload the work and show up ready to cha-cha-slide. Your architect and general contractor do a ton of work, but there are important parts of the buildout that are adjacent yet outside their scope, like:

• Reviewing and approving architectural plans. The architect and engineers draw the plans, but the business owner (their client) has to sign off on them. 
• Submitting plans for landlord review and ensuring compliance with construction requirements in the lease. There are a lot of rules.
• Submitting plans for permit according to whatever specific requirements a particular jurisdiction has. They vary by city and county.

• Monitoring the permit application as it makes its way through all the departments and responding to reviewers' feedback.
• Corralling competitive bids from general contractors and answering all the questions from each GC’s estimator.

• Comparing the general contractors’ bids. Yes, they’re looking at the same space and the same set of plans, but each bid has to be untangled so that you can really compare apples to apples.

• Value engineering the buildout to fit the budget. Everyone has to cut things down to size…and sometimes you have to cut $50,000 or even $100,000. It’s pretty easy to shave off 5%, but once you’ve trimmed the fat, the rest is meat, so cutting down the rest of the budget requires tough decisions.

• And other ongoing requirements like attending weekly on-site meetings, responding to the superintendent’s questions in the field, and evaluating change orders.


🐍 And then there are all the unexpected things that happen once construction starts. Truly, it’s Pandora's box of surprises; some are minor but annoying, some are major and very problematic, and most cost money and time. 

I'll share some non-repressed memories in a future newsletter, but for now, trust me when I say that dealing with every surprise issue sent from the underworld took a tremendous amount time, effort, and brainpower. As the project manager, it was my job to ask the questions, clarify the confusion, identify the options, and present clear choices to my boss. I ate the entire buffet so that he only had to decide between the chicken and the fish.

🗣️ So let me say it loud and clear for those in the back…

Hiring an experienced project manager is one of the best investments you can make, and it’s your greatest insurance against runaway budgets and timelines. 

It doesn't matter if your space is small or large, and it doesn’t matter if your budget is Bud Light or Champagne. It’s all the same – you’re doing construction, and you’ve got a budget. And having a budget means having limits – limits on what you can spend on X in order to have enough money for Y. Construction cost overruns can cause lasting financial damage that can hamstring a new business for years.

I really can’t even begin to calculate how much money my work as a project manager saved the company over those seven projects. Many hundreds of thousands? A million? Maybe. But one thing is for sure – the amount saved was many multiples higher than my salary…and I was paid just fine.

Is a project manager a magician? No, and their expertise does not absolve you, as the business owner, of being totally clued in on everything that’s happening with the buildout. But alongside a realistic budget, an extra 10% earmarked for surprises plus a nice pot of working capital, your project manager can definitely make some major problems disappear. 

P.S. If all of this is making you reach for a lorazepam, you should join our next session of Dream Space where we’ll desensitize prepare you to get your business open.