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+---
+title: Project Management™ for Construction
+tags: []
+---
+# Project Management™ for Construction
+
+This note discusses the applicability (or lack thereof)
+of [[project-management-tm]] in [[construction-contracting]].
+
+...
+That's not to say that it should be overlooked in construction applications.
+There's no better source for solutions to problems that our industries share.
+Specialized practices like [[lean-construction]]
+are decades behind [[project-management-institute|PMI]].
+However, consulting Project Management™ for relevant insight
+requires acknowledging its biases.
+
+## Limitations
+
+### Labor Management
+
+Project Management™ assumes workforce deficits are difficult to fill,
+and that significant changes are sign of process failure.
+
+* Qualified employees are hard to find
+* Project onboarding is extensive
+* Diminishing returns start early and are severe
+
+In construction projects, labor is highly dynamic.
+Workforce necessarily varies greatly through the project's lifespan,
+and labor reallocation is a regular (weekly) task.
+
+* Qualified employees are relatively plentiful, cost is the bottleneck
+
+* Onboarding is practically nonexistent,
+    new employees are productive on their first day
+
+* Diminishing returns start late and are less pronounced
+
+### Basis of Progress
+
+If you assume that labor is a strong predictor of cost,
+and that your audience can convert between them implicitly,
+then hours convey both schedule _and_ cost by their nature.
+
+Project Management™ is primarily concerned with _schedule_,
+because it assumes that labor is a strong predictor of cost.
+
+* Labor is the greatest (if not only) project cost.
+* Labor (and therefore cost) is effectively fixed for a given scope.
+
+As such, Project Managers™ may discuss project cost in hours,
+with no loss of detail.
+
+In construction projects, labor is known to be a weak predictor of cost.
+
+* Labor is almost always a minority of project cost.
+* Functionally equal options have a large spread
+  of possible hours-to-complete and total cost values.
+
+As such, construction project managers must discuss project cost directly.
+
+I believe this difference is one purely of language,
+and doesn't represent a difference in philosophy.
+However, it does speak to Project Management™'s tendency to overgeneralize.
+
+### Material
+
+The use of labor as a measure of cost is not a difference of philosophy itself,
+however Project Management™ is only able to get away with conflating labor and cost
+because it assumes Material cost is negligible,
+or that it can be allocated as overhead.
+
+What I'm calling Material cost
+refers to direct costs not associated with labor.
+These costs vary wildly,
+even independent of installation requirements,
+due to [[gold-plating]] and owner furnished scope.