What is Your Product?

Posted on June 8, 2026June 8, 2026 by Danny Jiménez⁩

Read 14 min

What Is Your Product? The Question That Changes Everything About Construction Workforce Development

Most construction companies think of their product as the finished building. Some say it is the customer experience. Some say it is their expertise. All of those are defensible answers. But Jason Schroeder wants to focus on one that most companies overlook, and that changes everything about how a construction business operates.What if your product is the foreman?

Why Foremen and Workers Are the Product

A beautiful finished building can be produced through pain, rework, and exhaustion. You can deliver the structure and still have failed at the full experience of what construction should look like for the owner, the trade partners, and the people who built it. The finished product is not the differentiator. The capability, discipline, and culture of the field supervision and workforce that produces it is.

When you define your foremen and workers as the product, the framing shifts entirely. Products are developed, packaged, researched, and improved. Products are protected from defect. Products are valued, invested in, and showcased. Products are not mixed together carelessly, interchanged randomly, or allowed to deteriorate without intervention.

That framing applied to your field workforce produces a set of decisions that most construction companies are not making.

Green, Yellow, and Red Crews

Jason uses a three tier classification for crew performance: green, yellow, and red.

Green crews are making production targets, maintaining safety records, staying together, and performing at a level that makes the company money. These are the crews a company should be doing everything to retain, protect, and keep intact.

Yellow crews are performing at an acceptable but not high level. There are gaps in production, consistency, or culture that could be addressed through training, better composition, or more direct coaching.

Red crews are underperforming. Production targets are being missed, safety incidents are occurring, or the culture of the crew is not functional. These crews need active intervention, not more time to sort themselves out.

The key metrics for evaluating crew status: how many days the crew has been together, production average against target, safety record, whether the foreman runs a morning huddle, and whether incremental improvements are being made.

What Product Thinking Does to Your Company

If foremen and workers are the product, the company’s responsibilities shift.

Research and development means investing in training programs, coaching, professional development, and the tools and technology that make the workforce more effective. This is not overhead. It is product R&D.

Packaging means keeping crews together. A crew’s culture, rhythm, and communication patterns take time to develop. It takes roughly seven days for a new person to be fully onboarded to a crew. Every time a crew is broken apart and reshuffled, that investment resets. Keeping green crews intact is product protection.

Quality control means knowing which crews are green, yellow, and red, and acting accordingly. Pulling three workers from a green crew to bolster a red crew does not make one good crew and one improving crew. It makes two yellow crews. Product integrity requires protecting the composition that is producing results.

Marketing and sales means showcasing your people. Owners who see a project run by a highly competent, engaged field team tell other owners. The superintendent who builds a clean site, runs tight huddles, and produces predictably is the advertisement.

The Crew Development System

The practical implication is that every construction company needs a visible map of its crew status. Not to shame underperforming crews, but to direct development resources accurately.

Keep green crews together and make them feel valued enough that they would never consider leaving. Move yellow crews toward green through targeted training, better foreman development, and active coaching. Assign a development resource to the specific crew and stay with them until they are green.

Invite red crews and red foremen to improve with support, or to exit. A company that tolerates red crews indefinitely is not being kind to anyone. The workers deserve better leadership. The company deserves better performance.

The Crew Composition Rule

Reduce context switching. Crews perform best when they know each other, know their rhythm, and know their foreman’s expectations. Every change to the crew composition resets part of that knowledge base.

Ideal crew size is around four. Larger crews are sometimes required, but beyond that size, communication complexity increases and performance per person tends to decline. Adding one additional person to a four person crew for swing capacity is reasonable. Building ten person crews for tasks that four could handle is inefficiency disguised as resource allocation.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow. Treating the foreman and the workforce as the product is the shift that makes every other improvement in training, culture, and production actually compound over time.

The Challenge for Your Company

Do you have a current map of your green, yellow, and red crews? Not in your head. On paper or on a visual board, with the data to support each classification.

If you do not, you are managing your most important product without a product development system. And no business would tolerate that for anything else it sold.

On we go.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you classify a crew as green, yellow, or red without it feeling like surveillance or shaming?

Frame the system around support, not judgment. A yellow crew means the company has an opportunity to invest more development resources in that group. A red crew means something in the system around those people is failing them. The classification should trigger a coaching and support response, not a punishment response.

What is the minimum you need to track to run a crew status system?

Days the crew has been together, production average against target for the last four to six weeks, safety record, and the foreman’s basic planning behaviors: running morning huddles, tracking production daily, and requesting support when needed. Those four inputs will accurately classify almost any crew.

How do you prevent a high performing green crew from burning out if they are consistently producing at a high level?

Manage their workload deliberately. Green crews should not be the default answer to every project problem. Their performance is an asset that needs protecting, which includes protecting them from overuse. Build sustainable capacity at the yellow crew level so that green crews are not constantly covering for underperforming groups.

Is it ever appropriate to move a worker from a red crew to a green crew?

In specific circumstances, yes: when the individual worker is being held back by the red crew’s culture rather than contributing to it, and when there is a clear plan for bringing them into the green crew’s standard rather than disrupting it. The test is whether the move improves both situations or just redistributes the problems.

What does showcasing your field workforce as a product actually look like in a business development context?

It looks like bringing owners onto active job sites that are clean, organized, and running on a visible production rhythm. It looks like having foremen and superintendents articulate what they are building and how to customers who visit the site. It looks like tracking and sharing production performance data with owners as evidence of management capability.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.If you want to learn more we have:

-Takt Virtual Training: (Click here)
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-Listen to the Elevate Construction podcast: (Click here)
-Check out our training programs and certifications: (Click here)
-The Takt Book: (Click here)

Discover Jason’s Expertise:

Meet Jason Schroeder, the driving force behind Elevate Construction IST. As the company’s owner and principal consultant, he’s dedicated to taking construction to new heights. With a wealth of industry experience, he’s crafted the Field Engineer Boot Camp and Superintendent Boot Camp – intensive training programs engineered to cultivate top-tier leaders capable of steering their teams towards success. Jason’s vision? To expand his training initiatives across the nation, empowering construction firms to soar to unprecedented levels of excellence.

Ordering Materials is The GC’s Job!

Posted on June 8, 2026June 8, 2026 by Danny Jiménez⁩

Read 15 min

The GC’s Job Is Not Done Until the Materials Are There: A Final Word on Supply Chain Ownership

Jason Schroeder has covered just-in-time deliveries. He has covered procurement logs. He has explained why the supply chain is not in Procore. This episode exists because the same conversation keeps happening on project visits, and the answer keeps being wrong.

“That’s the trade partner’s job.” It is not.

The Walmart Distribution Model Applied to Construction

Walmart does not stock its stores directly from manufacturers. The supply chain runs through distribution centers, which buffer inventory between production and retail. The distribution centers receive large shipments from manufacturers, organize them by product category, and dispatch to individual stores on a schedule that maintains adequate inventory at the point of sale without creating excess that goes to waste.

The grocery store itself is the final supermarket buffer: a staging location that holds enough inventory for customers to pull what they need, replenished from the distribution center on a rhythm that prevents stockouts without creating overstocking.

This is the model that just in time construction procurement mirrors. Materials are ordered and tracked through the supply chain. They arrive at the project’s designated lay down area, the construction supermarket, buffered ahead of when each zone needs them. Crews pull materials from the supermarket to the work face just in time, without having floors pre stocked with materials that create tripping hazards and congestion.

The system works when it is actively managed. It fails when it is assumed to happen on its own.

What Active Supply Chain Management Actually Looks Like

The procurement log is the instrument. Not the submittal register in Procore. The procurement log tracks the full supply chain from executed contract to material in the supermarket.

For a given scope, that log needs to capture: the submittal status, the PO status at the manufacturing plant, whether the order is in fabrication, shipping status including customs clearance for overseas materials, expected delivery date, buffer duration between delivery and planned installation, and the supermarket location where the material will land on site.

For long lead items like curtain wall, exterior metal panels, or elevators, where supply chains can run five to nine months, the log needs to capture multiple intermediate release points. When were samples approved? When were dies released? When were shop drawings approved and the fabrication order placed? When does field measuring need to happen in order to maintain the delivery timeline? Each of those dates should be on the team’s shared calendar, tracked actively, and reviewed weekly.

Jason makes the point directly: if there is one long bar in a schedule that says “exterior curtain wall procurement” without intermediate milestones, the team does not have procurement management. They have a procurement placeholder.

Breaking Materials Out by Zone

One of the most common procurement failures is receiving materials by building rather than by zone. The entire floor plate of a material category arrives at once, creating a staging problem that affects production for weeks.

Jason’s experience is that breaking materials out by zone is almost always possible if the conversation with the supplier is had early enough and with enough specificity. He has successfully pieced out door frames by zone. Millwork and casework by zone. Metal panels and curtain wall by zone based on the Takt plan sequence.

The objection is usually cost: additional deliveries cost money. Jason’s response is to run the analysis. What does it cost to receive everything at once in lost production time, in congestion, in material damage, in labor to move materials repeatedly? That number has almost never been calculated by the teams making the claim that zone deliveries cost too much.

The German Model and What It Reveals

When Jason visited construction projects in Germany, he found that in some cases at least half of the materials were procured directly by the general contractor rather than by the trade partners. The trade partner brings labor and expertise. The GC brings the material.

This model has trade offs. But Jason’s observation is that the failures caused by this trade off are far less costly than the failures caused by having each trade partner manage their own procurement in a silo, with no GC visibility or coordination.

The lesson is not that GCs should procure everything. The lesson is that the GC’s active participation in procurement is not optional regardless of who ultimately places the orders. Just as a GC does not delegate safety to the safety manager and call it done, and does not delegate quality to the QC manager and call it done, a GC does not delegate procurement to trade partners and call it done.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow. Supply chain ownership is one of the clearest markers of a project team that is actually in control versus one that is reacting to the consequences of delegated chaos.

The Challenge for GC Teams This Week

Pull up your procurement log. If you do not have one, that is the answer. If you do have one, check whether it has intermediate release point milestones for your long lead items. Check whether your materials are being tracked by zone. Check whether the last weekly procurement meeting happened and what decisions came out of it.

A GC that is not in a weekly procurement meeting with a functioning procurement log is not managing the supply chain. They are hoping it works out.

As the principle holds: amateurs study tactics, armchair generals study strategy, and the real generals study logistics. If you can get things where they need to go, you can build a remarkable project. If you cannot, the rest of the plan does not matter.

On we go.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you establish a procurement meeting rhythm that actually produces decisions?

The meeting should run weekly with the superintendent leading, the project manager and project engineers in the room, and trade partner points of contact available by phone when their scope is being reviewed. The agenda follows the procurement log: current status, upcoming release points, any delivery risks, and corrective action items with owners and dates. The meeting is not a status report. It is a decision making session.

What is the GC’s role when a trade partner is managing their own procurement?

Active oversight and verification, not passive acceptance. The GC should know the trade partner’s supply chain timeline, be receiving regular status updates, have direct contact with the supplier for critical items, and have identified the intermediate milestones that need to be hit to keep the delivery on track.

How do you handle a trade partner who resists sharing procurement information with the GC?

Address it contractually and in the preconstruction meeting. Procurement transparency is a project requirement, not a courtesy request. If the subcontract requires timely delivery in accordance with the project schedule, the GC has the right to verify that the supply chain is on track to meet that requirement.

What should a Takt aligned procurement log look like for a complex project?

It should show every scope in the Takt sequence, with columns for the current procurement status at each stage: contract executed, submittal submitted, submittal approved, PO placed, in fabrication, in transit, on site, in supermarket. For long lead items, add a column for each intermediate release milestone. The dates in the log should be driven by the Takt plan’s zone sequence, counting back from when each material needs to be in the supermarket.

What happens to projects that do not manage procurement actively?

The same thing that happens to ships that sail without checking the fuel gauge: they run out of what they need in the worst possible place at the worst possible time. Late materials cause production gaps. Production gaps create crew displacement. The cost of reactive procurement is always greater than the cost of proactive procurement management.

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Swing Capacity & Workable Backlog

Posted on June 8, 2026June 8, 2026 by Danny Jiménez⁩

Read 15 min

Swing Capacity: The Buffer Concept That Separates Flow From Chaos

Most construction conversations about crew capacity land in one of two places: either we do not have enough people, or we have people standing around. Both of those feel like the problem. Neither of them is the solution. The solution is swing capacity, and understanding it changes how you think about crew composition, schedule buffers, and what to do when a bottleneck appears on your project.

Three States of Capacity

No capacity is exactly what it sounds like. Every worker and crew is fully committed, running at their maximum, with no margin for anything unexpected. If one person gets sick, one crew member has an off day, or one activity runs long, there is nothing available to absorb it. Projects in this state are one problem away from falling behind.

Free capacity is the other extreme. Workers are on the bench. People are standing around getting paid for doing nothing particularly useful. This is the state most field leaders instinctively try to avoid because it is visible and easy to criticize.

Swing capacity is the space between those two extremes. It is a crew or workforce composition that has just enough additional capacity, whether in people or in time, that can be redirected toward a bottleneck activity or a workable backlog task without disrupting the primary production sequence.

Hal Maykommer introduced this concept to Jason in a conversation about Takt systems, and it crystallized something that experienced field leaders have been doing intuitively for years without naming it.

How Time Buffers and Crew Buffers Work Together

In a Takt plan, the relationship between Takt time and cycle time is everything. If you have a five day Takt time and a cycle time of exactly five days, you have no buffer. Any variation in the work will immediately push you past the Takt boundary and into the next zone, disrupting flow for every subsequent trade.

If the cycle time is four or four and a half days within a five day Takt time, you have a half day to a full day of time buffer. That buffer absorbs the variation, the unexpected problem, the minor equipment issue, the late delivery. The project stays on rhythm. The trades stay in flow.

The same logic applies to crew size. A crew that needs four people and has exactly four has no swing capacity. If one person is unavailable, the crew is at 75% capacity and the work slows. A crew of five doing the work of four has one person with the ability to redirect their attention when the primary work is ahead of schedule, when preparation for the next area is complete, or when a bottleneck elsewhere needs additional support.

This is not free capacity. The fifth person is not sitting on a bench. They are working on workable backlog, and they are available to swarm a bottleneck when one appears.

What Is Workable Backlog?

Workable backlog is a concept that belongs on every project schedule. It represents work that is real, productive, and valuable, but not on the critical flow of the Takt sequence. It can be done at any point within a defined window on the project without disrupting the primary production sequence.

Think of it as a productive holding pattern. When a crew finishes their Takt zone ahead of schedule and the next zone is not yet ready, they do not start the next zone early, which would create congestion and interference. They do not send people home. They go work on the workable backlog.

The workable backlog gives crews a purposeful place to redirect their energy during buffer time. It keeps people productive, it advances the project, and it preserves the availability of those people to swarm a bottleneck when one is identified.

The Swarming Principle

In the Takt planning simulation that Elevate Construction uses in its boot camps, the secondary beams consistently become the bottleneck. They require more coordination and time than other elements of the structure. The team leaders who navigate the simulation successfully start saying it early: when you have capacity, swarm the secondary beams.

Swarming is not the same as throwing more people at a problem indiscriminately. Swarming means using existing, onsite project resources to support the bottleneck activity in the ways that actually help it move faster: staging materials ahead of the crew, clearing access, making sure the forklift is available to the bottleneck trade instead of tied up elsewhere, ensuring the crane or hoist gives that trade priority.

Here is what swing capacity activation looks like in the field:

A trade partner with a five person crew finishes their Takt zone ahead of schedule and shifts one person to workable backlog while the other four prepare for the next zone
The superintendent identifies that the secondary beam install is running behind and directs the workable backlog person to stage materials for that crew and clear the hoist schedule to prioritize their lifts
The bottleneck gets support from within the existing project team without onboarding a new subcontractor, renegotiating contracts, or disrupting any other active workflow

That is swing capacity producing flow.

Why This Matters on Every Project

The projects that crash land in the final weeks are almost always projects where no swing capacity was maintained. Every crew was running at 100% capacity all the time. There was no workable backlog. When bottlenecks appeared, the only option was to throw new resources at the problem, which created congestion, coordination overhead, and rework.

Planning swing capacity into the project from the beginning is what prevents that scenario. It requires discipline: the discipline to not fill every crew to maximum, the discipline to maintain a workable backlog that crews can be directed to, and the discipline to redirect swing capacity to bottlenecks rather than letting it drift into free capacity over time.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow. Swing capacity and workable backlog are standard components of Takt planning and integrated control.

On we go.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you identify what qualifies as workable backlog on a specific project?

Workable backlog is work that is ready to be performed, is within the skill set of the crew being redirected, and can be done at any point in a defined window without affecting the Takt sequence. It might be prefabrication of assemblies, installation of items ahead of the primary sequence, punch list correction of completed areas, or site cleanup and logistics tasks that advance the project without entering the active production zones.

How much swing capacity is appropriate for a project?

There is no universal answer, but the goal is just enough to absorb normal variation and respond to a bottleneck without tipping into free capacity. For crews, one additional person per four to six core crew members is a reasonable starting point. For time buffers, a cycle time of 80 to 90% of the Takt time gives enough room to absorb routine variation.

What is the difference between swing capacity and having too many people on a project?

Free capacity is people with no defined place to direct their energy who are effectively being paid to wait. Swing capacity is people with a productive workable backlog assignment who are also available to redirect to a bottleneck. The difference is in whether the additional capacity has a purposeful place to go at all times.

How does the workable backlog concept integrate with Last Planner and the weekly work plan?

The workable backlog should be identified in the pullplan and maintained in the weekly work plan as a standing set of tasks available to crews with buffer time. Superintendents and foremen then direct crews to the backlog when buffer time appears rather than improvising on the spot.

Can swing capacity be used at the superintendent level as well as the crew level?

Yes. A superintendent who has enough systems and prepared planning that they are not in constant firefighting mode has their own form of swing capacity. That capacity can be directed to coaching a struggling crew, supporting a bottleneck trade partner, or conducting quality inspections. The principle applies at every level of the project hierarchy.

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You Are the Captain! – Keep the Ship Afloat!

Posted on June 8, 2026June 8, 2026 by Danny Jiménez⁩

Read 18 min

Are You the Captain of Your Ship? Seven Things Every Senior Superintendent Must Own

If you were the captain of a ship, what would your responsibilities actually be? Not the inspirational version. The operational version. What would you have to own, manage, and maintain to keep that vessel and everyone on it moving safely toward the destination?

Jason Schroeder has been developing this framework for the Elevating Construction Senior Superintendents book, and it is one of the clearest maps yet of what a senior superintendent’s job actually requires.

One: Stock the Ship

No captain would let a ship leave port without verifying that every provision was loaded. Food. Water. Fuel. Safety equipment. Everything needed to sustain the crew and the mission for the full duration of the voyage.

On a construction project, that is procurement. Materials are not optional, and they are not the project manager’s or project engineer’s primary responsibility. They are the superintendent’s. The superintendent has to make sure that every material needed to build the project is identified, ordered, tracked through fabrication and shipping, received on site with adequate buffer, and staged in the supermarket where it needs to be when the crew needs it.

Not “I delegated that to the PE.” Not “the subcontractor handles their own material.” The superintendent is ultimately responsible for making sure the ship is stocked. A procurement meeting weekly with a functioning procurement log is not overhead. It is navigation.

Two: Make Sure Teams Function at Every Level

A ship that has a functioning bridge but malfunctioning engine rooms, broken communications below deck, and untrained crew in critical departments does not sail well. The senior superintendent’s job is to make sure that every team on the project, at every fractal level, is functioning.

That means the leadership team. The area superintendents. The foremen. The crews. The administrative support. Every layer of the project organization has to be built, maintained, and held to a standard. Dysfunctional teams at any level will eventually surface as project problems, whether or not they are visible from the top.

Three: Make Sure People Are Trained

A ship captain does not accept poorly prepared crew and blame the admiral for sending them. The captain’s job is to make sure that everyone on the ship knows how to do their job and can fill in for their backup when needed. Training is not optional. It is the captain’s responsibility.

On a construction project, this means the senior superintendent ensures that their team members, including foremen, assistant superintendents, and field engineers, are trained to the standard the project requires. It means making sure that trade partner crews understand expectations, safety requirements, and quality standards before they begin work. It means building a project culture where training happens continuously, not just at onboarding.

Accepting undertrained people and hoping for the best is not leadership. It is abdication.

Four: Make Sure Systems Are Working

Every critical system on a ship must function: propulsion, communications, navigation, sanitation, electrical. Each requires maintenance, monitoring, and a backup.

On a construction project, the systems are different but the principle is identical. The logistics system. The safety system. The quality system. The Last Planner system or Takt planning system. The parking and site access system. All of them must be operational, maintained, and effective. A superintendent who allows critical project systems to degrade because they are busy with other things has allowed the engine room to go dark while managing the bridge.

Five: Know Where the Ship Is Going

The captain knows the destination, the course, and the mission. They do not leave port with a vague sense of direction.

The senior superintendent’s equivalent is the master schedule, expressed through a Takt plan. Every person on the project must know the substantial completion date and understand their role in getting there. Long range planning is the senior superintendent’s responsibility. If no one on the project can describe the production sequence from now to turnover, the ship does not have a course.

Six: Make Sure People Know How to Get There

Knowing the destination is not enough. The crew needs to know how each watch, each day, each week connects to the overall mission. The captain ensures that the navigational plan translates into action at every position on the ship.

On the project site, this is the translation of the master schedule through the six week look ahead, through the weekly work plan, down to the day plan. Each person on the project needs to be operating in a planning rhythm that connects their daily work to the overall trajectory. If that rhythm does not exist, the project is being navigated by feel.

Seven: Keep the Ship Afloat

This is the one that matters most in the moment of crisis. The MS Estonia, a ferry crossing from Tallinn to Stockholm, sank in September 1994 with 852 people on board. Investigators found that the bow door locks had failed in a storm. The water entered slowly, out of the field of view from the captain’s position. By the time the list was evident, recovery was impossible.

The lesson is not about storms. It is about visibility. The Estonia’s leaders could not see what was happening below the waterline. They did not know the ship was taking on water until it was too late to correct.

Construction projects take on water the same way. A team gets out of balance. Design changes accelerate. Two or three trade partners begin to fail simultaneously, which is manageable, but three or four failures at once overloads the recovery capacity. The superintendent who is not productively paranoid about early signals of imbalance will not see the list until the project is already in crisis.

Here is what that looks like in practice:

The team is taking on too much administrative work relative to its size, which is a sign that capacity is being overwhelmed
Three or more trade partners are simultaneously behind or failing, which is a sign that the support system cannot absorb the correction burden
The schedule is being driven by reactive heroics rather than systematic planning, which is a sign that flow has broken down
RFI and submittal volumes are spiking beyond what the team can process without falling behind, which is a sign that design completeness is affecting production

Each of these is a bow door signal. The superintendent who sees them early can correct course. The one who does not will be explaining a crash landing when it is too late to prevent one.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow. The seven responsibilities of the captain are the foundation of what Elevate Construction teaches and develops in senior superintendents and project leaders across the industry.

The Challenge for Every Superintendent

Walk through the seven responsibilities right now against your current project. Is the ship stocked? Are teams functioning at every level? Are people trained? Are systems operational? Does everyone know where you are going? Does everyone know how to get there day by day? And are you watching for the signals that the ship is taking on water before it lists?

Honest answers to those seven questions will tell you where your next 30 days of leadership energy needs to go.

On we go.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is procurement specifically the superintendent’s responsibility and not the project manager’s?

Because the superintendent is accountable for field production, and field production stops without materials. The project manager supports procurement, but the person who owns the outcome of whether crews have what they need to build must be the person accountable for building. Delegating procurement ownership away from the field leader creates a gap in accountability that shows up as material delays and production loss.

What does a functional six week look ahead actually contain?

It identifies all the work that needs to be made ready in the next six weeks: materials that need to arrive, submittals that need to be approved, trade partners that need to be mobilized, design questions that need to be answered, inspections that need to be scheduled, and any constraint that could prevent work from proceeding as planned. The six week look ahead is a constraint removal tool, not a progress report.

How do you know when your project team is approaching its capacity limit?

When the speed of reactive problems is outpacing the team’s ability to address them. When the same fires are recurring rather than being permanently resolved. When team members are consistently working beyond sustainable hours without a corresponding increase in outcomes. When simple things start taking longer than they should. These are the signals of a team approaching its limit.

What is the most common system failure on construction projects?

The quality system. Most projects have a quality program on paper that does not translate into consistent field behavior. First in place inspections get skipped under schedule pressure. Ongoing inspection cadence breaks down. Closeout inspections are rushed. The result is punchlist scope that could have been prevented, and an owner experience that does not match the effort the team put in.

Is the captain of the ship metaphor specific to senior superintendents, or does it apply to project managers as well?

It applies to both, with different emphasis. The senior superintendent’s ownership is focused on the field: procurement, crew training, site systems, production rhythm, and team health. The project manager’s ownership is focused on the commercial environment: contract, financials, owner relationship, design, and trade partner agreements. Together they are the dual command of the ship. Either one operating without the other creates a gap that will surface as a project problem.

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Is Command & Control Bad?

Posted on June 8, 2026June 8, 2026 by Danny Jiménez⁩

Read 15 min

The Real Enemy in Construction Is Not Command and Control

Every lean construction presentation seems to open the same way. Here is the problem: command and control. Here is what has always been wrong with the industry. Here is why we needed Last Planner and collaborative planning to rescue the field from the tyranny of authoritarian superintendents.

Jason Schroeder is not convinced. And after spending years coaching companies, touring projects, and watching what actually fails, he has a different diagnosis.

What the Data Actually Shows

There is something in the historical record of construction performance that does not get mentioned in the command and control narrative. Projects used to finish. Not all of them, but the failure rate was dramatically different from what it is today.

Jason recalls a stretch at a large construction company with 1.5 billion dollars in annual revenue. Dozens of major projects across the country. One project became infamous. One. People would hear about it wherever Jason traveled. The rest were finishing on time with full fee. One project struggling against a field full of performing jobs is a very different industry than the one that exists today.

Now the ratio has inverted. Companies have one or two projects that are performing and a field of others that are mediocre, late, or in financial trouble. The crash landing has become the norm rather than the exception. And this shift happened roughly seven to ten years ago.

What changed? Jason’s best assessment: the economic crash of 2007 to 2010 stopped training across the industry. Hiring dried up. Development programs shut down. And a generation of experienced general superintendents retired without the transfer of knowledge that would have prepared the people behind them. The generals left and the replacements were not ready.

The Right and Wrong Answer to That Problem

If the problem is lack of trained builders, the solution is trained builders. Not specifically a different leadership philosophy.

Jason does not want to fight against Last Planner or collaborative planning. He believes in them. He uses them. He teaches them. The question is not whether collaborative planning is better than authoritarian command. Of course it is. That is not the argument.

The argument is that the lean community is spending significant energy criticizing the good and the better while failing to name and demonize the actual bad. The actual bad is an untrained superintendent without a plan who does not collaborate with trade partners. That person is the problem. Not the general superintendent of 20 years ago who had complete control of their project, ran it to completion on time with full fee, and happened to use a more directive leadership style because that was the model available to them.

Would you rather have a team with a great builder, team input, and integrated control? Yes. That is the best. Would you rather have a decent builder with trade partner input and the Last Planner system? Yes. That is better. Would you rather have a decent builder with a solid plan, even if they use a more directive approach? Yes. That is good. All three are acceptable. The problem is the fourth option: an undertrained superintendent without a plan and without any team coordination. That is what the industry is producing and living with, and it is not being addressed by the lean community with nearly enough force.

What Collaborative Planning Still Requires

Here is the point Jason makes with the most urgency. The Last Planner system, Takt planning, collaborative pullplanning, and every other lean scheduling methodology requires a stable, clean, organized, and respectful project environment to function. None of these tools work in chaos. None of them replace the need for a superintendent who has control of the site.

If you implement Last Planner on a job where materials are not managed, where the site is disorganized, where trade partners do not feel respected, where there is no clear expectation of safety or quality, the stickies on the wall will not produce flow. The collaborative planning process will become a performance rather than a system.

A superintendent who does not have control of their project will not gain control by adding a collaborative planning layer on top of the disorder. The control has to come first. Then the collaboration amplifies it.

What the industry needs is not less control. It needs more control exercised by better trained leaders who also know how to integrate the wisdom of their trade partners into the project. That is the best. And the gap between where most projects are and where best looks like is not being closed by criticizing command and control. It is being closed by training builders.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow. The best construction environments combine strong project control with collaborative planning, and the path to getting there starts with developing the leader, not replacing the leadership philosophy.

The Good, Better, Best Framework

Jason is clear about where he lands. He is not advocating a return to pure directive leadership. He is advocating for an honest assessment of what the industry’s actual problem is.

Good: a superintendent with a solid plan and control of the project, even if they operate in a more directive mode. Better: a superintendent with a plan, collaborative trade partner input, and the Last Planner system supporting the work. Best: a master builder with integrated control, trade partner wisdom baked into every planning conversation, and a project environment that is stable, clean, and respectful at every level.

What the industry currently has too much of: undertrained superintendents without plans, without collaboration, and without control of anything. That is not a command and control problem. That is a training and development problem. And until the industry names that problem directly and addresses it with the same energy it spends on methodology debates, the ratio of crash landings to successful completions will not improve.

As Jason puts it: not an ounce of the Last Planner system deployed on a project without a stable environment and a superintendent with control is going to do anybody good beyond showing off stickies and software.

On we go.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Jason saying collaborative planning is overrated?

No. He is saying it is being sold as the solution to a problem it cannot fix by itself. Collaborative planning requires trained leaders, stable environments, and project control to function properly. It amplifies good leadership. It cannot replace the absence of it.

What does a superintendent who has control of their project actually look like?

They know their Takt plan and reference it multiple times a day. Their site is clean and organized. Safety and quality expectations are clear and enforced. Trade partners know what is expected of them and when. The plan is visible, understood, and being executed. Control does not mean domineering. It means the project has direction and the superintendent is driving it.

Why did the crash landing rate increase so dramatically in the past decade?

Jason’s best assessment is the combination of a training gap caused by the 2008 economic crash and the retirement of a generation of experienced builders. The development programs that would have prepared replacements were suspended during the downturn and never fully restored. The industry is still working through the consequences.

How does the Last Planner system work best in practice?

When the superintendent has already established a stable project environment, the production sequence is clear, trade partners are engaged and prepared, and the collaborative planning process adds the ground level knowledge that makes the week by week execution more accurate. The system works best as an enhancement of strong leadership, not a substitute for it.

What is the first thing a company should do if its projects are consistently underperforming?

Invest in the development of its field leaders. Not in software, not in methodology training, not in consultants who reorganize the planning board. In the sustained, intensive development of the superintendents and project managers who are running the projects. Everything else follows from having people in the field who know what they are doin

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Making Elevating Construction Surveyors, Final Part, Feat. Brandon Montero

Posted on June 8, 2026June 8, 2026 by Danny Jiménez⁩

Read 20 min

How to Build a Career in Survey That Actually Matters: The Final Principles From Elevating Construction Surveyors

Brandon Monteiro and Jason Schroeder close out the recorded drafting of Elevating Construction Surveyors with a final session that moves from technical skill into professional identity: how to train people effectively, how to become a mentor who develops the whole person, how to find your sweet spot and chase it down, and how to build a culture that outlasts any single project.

Train Others With Effectiveness, Not Just Effort

There is a difference between training and training effectively. Brandon’s story from early in his career makes this clear. He was running a level loop on his first surveying job, and the party chief needed him to rock the rod. The party chief had never taught him the hand signals. Unable to communicate, the party chief threw his radio into some nearby bushes.

That is the furthest possible thing from effective training. The person being trained cannot learn by osmosis. They need specific, well communicated information in a format that matches how they actually learn. Some people need a sketch. Some need a five minute video. Some need to put their hands on the instrument. Some respond to written descriptions. The signal is in how they communicate with you: if someone starts drawing a picture when they are confused, that is your cue to draw pictures. If they want to go straight to the equipment, they are telling you how they learn.

Training is also not a one time event. Time and effort spent training daily compounds over time, building professionals who visualize, solve, and perform tasks faster than they did the day before. Every senior person on a survey crew has knowledge that the person beside them does not yet have. Even three months of additional experience contains things worth sharing. Share them.

Become a Mentor Who Develops the Whole Person

A mentor is invested in the long term development of another person, not just their technical output. Brandon describes giving feedback to someone on how they wrote emails: the emails were factually accurate but read as defensive and disconnected. That is a mentoring conversation that goes beyond technical skill into professional communication, emotional awareness, and career health.

The most lasting mentorship often has nothing to do with survey math or equipment operation. It has to do with how someone handles a difficult situation, how they manage their emotional response to pressure, how they show up when things go wrong. Those soft skills shape a career more than any technical certification.

Being vulnerable about your own mistakes creates a person to person bond that technical feedback alone never achieves. When the person being mentored sees that the mentor has also struggled and learned, the relationship deepens and the feedback lands differently.

Weigh In on Costs and Participate in Bidding

Understanding cost is a differentiator at every level of a survey career. Brandon describes the moment of surprise that comes when someone first begins to engage with project bids: things that seemed simple turn out to carry significant costs once all the components are assembled.

The practical path is straightforward. Find a blank bidding or proposal spreadsheet. Bid the task or project you are working on right now. Compare your estimate to the real numbers. When there is a large gap, ask why. What are you not seeing? What assumptions are built into the real bid that you did not think of?

The sooner you start exercising your thinking in this area, the faster you develop the ability to create accurate, competitive estimates. That ability also makes you more cost conscious in the field, where small decisions about method, time, and resources translate directly into margin.

Find Your Sweet Spot and Chase It Down

Do what you are genuinely good at. Make a name for yourself doing it. Brandon describes how he found his: he joined one of Jason’s boot camps, added value wherever he could, and at the end of the week told Jason directly that he wanted to keep doing this work. Not passively. Actively. That directness led to a shift in his professional focus from purely technical survey work to training, coaching, and consulting alongside Elevate Construction.

The sweet spot is not a place to rest. It is the place where your most valuable skills and your deepest professional satisfaction overlap. Once you find it, pursue it deliberately. Talk to your supervisor about how to do more of it. Ask the department manager how your strongest skill can create the most value for the company. Build your reputation in that area and let it pull you forward.

Interpreting and Writing Scopes With Precision

The devil is in the details of a scope of work. Brandon illustrates this with a sanitary sewer layout example. A vague scope says: layout all structures and bends at maximum 30 foot intervals. That same scope, written with precision, specifies: two mobilizations maximum, two offset stakes at each structure and bend, one offset stake at 30 foot intervals maximum, additional mobilizations charged at the two person crew hourly rate. The second version protects the surveyor, sets clear expectations for the GC, and removes ambiguity about what happens when the project team changes the plan.

Writing a scope vaguely is not kindness. It is setting up a conflict for later. Clear is kind, unclear is unkind. Taking the time to specify mobilizations, stake counts, offset requirements, and overage rates means that everyone on the project team knows exactly what was agreed before anything happens that generates a cost dispute.

Build a Cohesive Department Without Silos

In a cohesive team, no one separates themselves from the group. When silos appear, the symptoms are predictable: miscommunication, duplicated effort, work heading in opposite directions, competition where collaboration should exist, and mixed signals going out to clients and trade partners.

Silos form in two ways. Either someone distances themselves from the group when they feel opposition to their ideas, or the group pushes someone out when they feel that person is a threat. In both cases, the team can no longer prosper as a whole.

Brandon sees this play out in boot camp simulations. When the scenario gets difficult, introverts go into their heads, extroverts take over the conversation, and others shut down. The result is a collection of individual movements in disconnected directions rather than a team moving toward a solution. The antidote is transparent, continuous communication: everyone knowing what the message is, who is doing what, and what the direction is.

Create a Culture by Being the Culture

Determine your values. Declare them. Live by them in every interaction. Brandon describes his own culture as quality and helping people grow. He builds his career around those values because they are genuinely his values, not because someone told him they were organizational priorities.

The key phrase from this section: be the environment you want to see. When you walk into a trailer where the culture is disengaged and flat, you do not absorb that environment. You bring yours. You start asking questions, showing genuine interest, creating energy. Not because you will change every person in the room. Some people will not come along. But you will not be changed by them either. The culture is in you, and you carry it wherever you go.

A culture of accountability is unstoppable. When people know they will be held responsible for the quality of their product, they bring their full attention. When they know everyone else is committed to their best, they rise to meet that standard.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow. The principles in Elevating Construction Surveyors apply to every professional on a construction project, not just those holding a rod or operating total stations.

How a GC Can Work Effectively With Surveyors

The general contractor and superintendent should expect and require constant communication from the survey team: an up to date control plan, look ahead planning input, and check in and check out conversations at the beginning and end of every visit. When that communication is missing, the project team makes decisions without the input of the people who know where the control is, what the obstacles are, and what is coming next.

GCs should also use surveyors where they create the most value. If the survey team is being pulled into carpentry tasks, trade partner layout QC, or serving as a tape and square for field engineers who should own those checks themselves, the surveyor is not being used at the precision level where they justify their cost. Carpenters, field engineers, and trade partners should own their own QC. The surveyor should be focused on the precision work that cannot be done any other way.

Brandon’s closing thought is worth carrying: your career will be so much better if you care about it. That caring is what flavors everything you do and everything you become.

On we go.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you identify what someone’s learning style is when training them?

Watch how they respond when they are confused. If they reach for a pen and start drawing, they need visuals. If they start asking questions about the sequence, they are processing verbally. If they are restless and want to get to the instrument, they learn by doing. The clues are there. You just have to look for them.

What should a GC do when a surveyor shows up, does their work, and leaves without communicating?

Address it directly and early. Set the expectation at the start of the project: the survey team checks in at the start of each visit and checks out with a summary of what was done and what comes next. If that is not happening, it is a professional standard issue that can be raised with the survey company’s project manager.

What is the most important thing a department manager can do to prevent silos?

Communicate the direction, the standards, and the expectations with enough clarity and repetition that every team member can describe them independently. Silos form fastest when people are unclear about the direction and fill that uncertainty with their own interpretation.

Why does caring about your work matter beyond the obvious professional reasons?

Because caring is the root of everything that separates adequate from excellent. A person who cares will catch an error the person who is checking a box will miss. A person who cares will make the extra call that prevents a callback. Caring is not a personality trait. It is a professional choice.

How do you find your sweet spot if you are still early in your career?

Try things. Say yes to unfamiliar tasks, observe what comes naturally versus what requires exhausting effort, and pay attention to what kind of work leaves you energized rather than drained. Ask the people who have observed your work what they see as your strongest contribution. That outside perspective is often more accurate than your own assessment alone.

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When the Company Outgrows an Individual

Posted on June 8, 2026June 8, 2026 by Danny Jiménez⁩

Read 15 min

When the Business Outgrows the Leader: The Hardest Conversation in Construction Companies

Over 80% of the companies Jason Schroeder visits have this problem. Someone on the leadership team was crucial to the company’s early success. Loyal. Hardworking. Present when it mattered. Promoted to a key position because they earned it, and because the company at that size needed exactly what that person had to offer.

Then the company grew. And somewhere in that growth, the business outgrew the person. Not because the person got worse. Because the job changed.

The Circles of Influence Visualization

Jason describes this through a visual he draws on a whiteboard. Imagine three people who founded or led a company in its early days. Each person is represented by a small circle. Around each small circle is a much larger circle, representing that person’s capacity: their influence, their proximity to the work, their ability to oversee what needs to be overseen.

In the early days, those three people and their combined circles of influence are wide enough to encompass everything the business needs managed. They can review every budget, visit every project, stay close to every key decision. The business fits inside their combined oversight.

Then the company triples in size. The circle representing everything the business needs managed grows three, five, ten times larger. But the circles representing the original leaders’ individual capacity stay the same size. They no longer encompass the whole business. There are areas of the operation that are outside anyone’s effective oversight.

This is the structural problem that causes many growing companies to feel like everything is getting harder without a clear reason. The work did not become more difficult. The oversight capacity simply stopped scaling with the demand.

The Multiplier Leader

The solution is not to work harder as an individual. It is to become a multiplier leader. Instead of using your influence to directly manage the business, you use your influence to develop the leaders who are managing the business. Each of those leaders, properly developed and genuinely guided, brings their own circle of influence to the table. When you multiply those circles, the combined oversight can encompass the full scope of what the business needs.

The leader who makes this transition successfully shifts their energy from doing the work to building the people who do the work. They hold their direct reports accountable, develop them actively, have the hard conversations, and create a version of their own standards inside every person they lead.

The leader who cannot make this transition keeps doing the work at their personal capacity, which no longer matches the scale of the business. Their direct reports do not grow because they are not being actively developed. The gaps in oversight multiply.

What It Looks Like When a Company Outgrows a Leader

Jason describes the leader the business outgrows as someone who does not hold people accountable, has low expectations, checks boxes rather than drives standards, is not refining company systems, operates with a fixed mindset, and is not providing real coaching and development to their direct reports. As a result, the people under their care have very small circles of influence. The portion of the business that falls under this leader’s area becomes a consistent source of problems, cost, and lost opportunity.

The painful reality: this person was excellent when the business was smaller. Their skills, their loyalty, their contributions were real and genuinely valuable. The problem is not their character. It is that the job has become something different from what they are capable of doing. The business needed one thing in the early days and needs something else now.

Jim Collins frames this as the number one metric in a business: the number of key seats filled with the right person. If you are below 90 to 95% on that measure, it is your single biggest focus as a business leader. And in most companies Jason visits, at least one key seat is occupied by someone the business has outgrown.

The Dilemma No One Wants to Name

Here is what makes this so hard. You love this person. They were there with you through the difficult years. They showed up when others would not. Removing them from the position feels like betrayal.

But keeping them in the seat has consequences that are just as real. Other people in the organization are being affected. The company is losing money. Projects are struggling. People who deserve strong leadership are not getting it.

Jason does not offer a simple answer. He references a General Electric example from How to Win Friends and Influence People: a custom position was created for someone in this situation that allowed them to save face while freeing the key seat for someone who could fill it properly. That is not always available, but it is often worth exploring.

What he is clear about: the problem cannot be denied. Saying “it’ll be fine” when a key seat is causing consistent organizational problems is not kindness. It is avoidance with real costs that fall on the rest of the organization.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow. Organizational health at the leadership level is as much a part of that work as any project system or planning tool.

The Challenge for Business Leaders

Look at your leadership team right now. For each person in a key seat, ask honestly: are their direct reports growing? Are the areas they oversee running well? Is the business getting more of what it needs from that area over time? Are there consistent problems that trace back to a single leader’s department?

The answers will tell you whether the business has outgrown anyone in a key seat. Awareness is the first step. Denial is not.

On we go.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you know when someone in a key seat has genuinely been outgrown versus just having a rough stretch?

A rough stretch produces temporary problems. Being outgrown produces consistent, recurring problems that do not improve over time despite effort. If the same issues keep surfacing in the same area of the business regardless of circumstances, the root cause is structural. If it was situational, it would have resolved by now.

What does a multiplier leader actually do differently than a conventional manager?

A multiplier leader invests their energy in developing the people who are doing the work rather than doing the work themselves. They set clear expectations, hold direct reports genuinely accountable, give real feedback rather than passing it over, and develop each person’s capacity deliberately. The result is that their influence extends through the people they lead rather than only through their personal effort.

Is it possible for someone to learn to be a multiplier leader if they have never done it before?

Yes, with genuine commitment and sustained coaching. The shift requires a willingness to let go of direct doing, which is often deeply uncomfortable for high performers who built their reputation by outworking everyone around them. It also requires developing skills in giving feedback, holding accountability conversations, and mentoring that many leaders have not formally developed.

How do you create a custom position for someone who needs to move out of a key seat without humiliating them?

The key is framing it around contribution rather than removal. The conversation emphasizes the specific value this person brings, identifies a role where that value is genuinely needed, and presents the move as a recognition of that contribution rather than a demotion. This works best when the custom role is real rather than a parking lot, and when the person retains dignity and meaningful work.

What happens to companies that never address this problem?

They plateau, and often decline. The business can only grow to the level that its leadership capacity can oversee. When key seats are consistently filled with people who cannot scale their influence, the organization cannot scale its performance. The problems become the defining feature of the company rather than temporary challenges to work through.

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MINI-POD – It is NOT in Procore!

Posted on June 8, 2026June 8, 2026 by Danny Jiménez⁩

Read 16 min

It Is Not in Procore: What Your Project Management Software Cannot Do for You

Here is something Jason Schroeder hears constantly on project visits: “Oh, we have that in Procore.” Buyout status? In Procore. Supply chain? In Procore. Material procurement tracking? In Procore. Financial projections? In Procore.

It is not in Procore. Most of what people believe is being managed in their project management software is not being managed at all. It is being documented, entered, and filed. That is not the same thing.

What You Actually Need to Run a Project

Before getting to the software problem, Jason lays out the instruments that a project team genuinely cannot succeed without.

A schedule is not optional, and it has to exist before field work begins. That schedule needs to be built on Takt planning principles, or at minimum on builder mentalities applied through CPM tools like P6 or Microsoft Project. Pure critical path method alone is not sufficient. The contractors who have succeeded with P6 for decades have been using it with production thinking and buffer management, not with pure CPM logic. The schedule must reflect how the work is actually going to flow.

A quality program that is not a checklist in software but an actual sequence: right scope, right buyout, preconstruction meeting, first in place mockup, ongoing inspections, closeout inspections, and a system that ensures every trade partner arrives prepared and knowing what they are building and how.

A financial projection summary that captures the full picture: original budget versus current budget, buyout contingency, over under by scope, fee, labor gains, gains on bonds and insurance, equipment rental gains, known and projected exposures, contractor contingency balance, pending change orders, and owner or design contingency balance. All of that totaling to a current financial projection that tells the team whether the project is on track to deliver its target gross margin.

A risk and opportunity register that ties directly into the financial projections.

A buyout log and a material procurement log, which are separate documents with separate purposes.

A roadblock removal system and a way to track team health.

That is the baseline. Not the aspirational target. The floor.

What Procore Actually Tracks

Procore has a submittal register. That is not a procurement log. It tracks whether submittals have been submitted, reviewed, and approved. It does not track whether the approved submittal triggered a purchase order at the manufacturing plant, whether that order is in fabrication, whether it is being shipped, whether it has cleared customs, when it is expected on site, what buffer has been built between delivery and installation, or whether the supermarket has room to receive it.

A procurement log tracks the full supply chain from approved submittal to material in the supermarket ready for installation. The difference between having a submittal register and having a procurement log is the difference between knowing that paperwork moved and knowing that materials will arrive on time to support flow.

The same distinction applies to a buyout log. A buyout log is not a list of contracts in a system. It is a living document aligned to the Takt rhythm of the project, showing for each scope whether the trade partner is identified, whether the scope inclusions and exclusions are defined, whether the contract is drafted and signed, whether bonds and insurance are in place, whether safety and quality plans have been submitted, whether the trade partner is pre qualified, and whether everything needed for them to begin work successfully is complete. All of that aligned to the dates when each scope needs to be ready to support the production sequence.

Why the “It’s in Procore” Response Is a Problem

When someone on a project team responds to a request for a procurement log by saying “we have that in Procore,” what they have revealed is that they do not have a procurement log. They have a submittal register and they believe those are the same thing.

This matters because the supply chain problems that derail construction projects are not submittal problems. They are sequencing problems, lead time problems, customs clearance problems, delivery coordination problems, and supermarket management problems. A submittal register cannot surface any of those. A functioning procurement log can surface all of them before they affect the schedule.

The same is true for the buyout log. Knowing that a subcontract exists in a system is not the same as knowing that a trade partner is fully prepared to mobilize when the Takt plan calls for them. Insurance lapses, unsigned scope addenda, missing quality plans: these things do not appear in a subcontract status field. They appear in a rigorous buyout log with clear readiness criteria at each stage.

Here is what that looks like in practice:

A buyout log aligned to the Takt plan shows that a mechanical contractor needs to be fully ready to mobilize in six weeks, and currently their insurance certificate has not been updated
A procurement log shows that a long lead specialty item needs to be ordered this week to hit its buffer window ahead of the installation date, but the submittal is still in review
A financial projection summary shows that two pending change orders represent significant contingency exposure and a decision about contractor contingency needs to happen before the next owner meeting

None of that visibility lives in a submittal register. All of it exists in the instruments that project teams still need to build and maintain separately.

What This Means Going Forward

Jason is direct about the state of the technology. As of this recording, project management platforms have not built the functionality that would replace a proper procurement log, a Takt aligned buyout log, or a financial projection summary. When they do, the improvement will be in the speed and accessibility of that information, not in the elimination of the information itself.

Until then, running a construction project without a separate buyout log and a separate material procurement log is running a project without two of the most important instruments in the kit. The submittal register tells you what the paperwork is doing. The procurement log tells you whether the materials will be there when you need them. Those are not interchangeable.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow.

The Challenge for Your Project

Pull up your current procurement tracking for one active scope on your project. Ask whether it shows: the submittal status, the PO status, the fabrication status, the shipping status, the expected delivery date, the buffer window before installation, and the supermarket location on site where the material will land.

If more than two of those are missing, you do not have a procurement log. You have a submittal register. Find out what is missing and build the tracking that will give you visibility into the full supply chain.

On we go.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the minimum a buyout log needs to include to be useful?

At minimum: scope name, trade partner, contract status, inclusions and exclusions confirmed, insurance current, safety plan submitted, quality plan submitted, and the date by which full readiness is required based on the Takt plan. Anything less than this is a contract list, not a buyout log.

Should the procurement log be a separate document from the Takt plan or integrated into it?

They should inform each other. The Takt plan drives the dates in the procurement log. The procurement log surfaces whether the material will be ready in time to support the Takt plan. Some teams maintain them as separate documents with shared date references. Others build procurement tracking directly into the Takt plan timeline. Either approach works as long as both exist.

How often should the procurement log be reviewed?

Weekly at minimum, with the superintendent leading the review. For projects with significant long lead items or complex supply chains, more frequent review is appropriate. The procurement meeting is a standing agenda item for the weekly project coordination cycle.

Is a financial projection summary the same as a job cost report?

No. A job cost report shows where money has been spent against budget. A financial projection summary projects where the project will finish financially, incorporating not just actual costs but contingency exposure, pending changes, labor gain or loss projections, and fee status. A job cost report is a lagging indicator. A financial projection is a forward looking management instrument.

What is the most common procurement failure mode on construction projects?

Not accounting for lead time against the production schedule. A trade partner is bought out on time and the submittal is approved on time, but nobody has traced the lead time from PO to fabrication to delivery against when the material is actually needed in the field. The procurement log prevents this by making the full timeline visible at every review.

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MINI-POD – Treat the patient, not the tools!

Posted on June 8, 2026June 8, 2026 by Danny Jiménez⁩

Read 16 min

Stop Checking the Equipment and Start Treating the Patient

Imagine you are in a hospital room. Something is wrong. You can feel it. You call for help. A nurse comes in, walks past you to the IV stand, checks the bag, verifies the drip rate, says “IV is functioning,” and leaves. Another person comes in, walks to the heart monitor, checks the readings, says “monitor is working properly,” and leaves. One after another, the medical staff enter the room, verify that each piece of equipment is operational, and exit without ever addressing the fact that you are telling them something is wrong.

That is what is happening on construction projects every day when project managers and project engineers treat their tools as the deliverable.

The Tool Monkey Problem

Jason has been watching this pattern for years. It shows up most often with project managers and project engineers, though it is not exclusive to those roles. The person comes in, checks the submittal register in Procore, confirms it is updated, and considers the submittals managed. They open the financial tracker, see the numbers are in the system, and consider the financials managed. They run a percent plan complete report and consider production managed.

Every tool is functioning. Everything looks fine in the software. And yet materials are arriving late, production targets are being missed, trade partners are losing money, and the project is drifting toward a crash landing.

The problem is not that the tools are bad. The problem is that the tools are being treated as the end rather than the means. Managing the submittal log is not managing submittals. Managing the risk in a software field is not managing risk. Verifying that Heavy Job has numbers in it is not managing production. These tools exist to support a professional who is actively managing a scope of work from start to finish. They are the instruments, not the practice.

The DPR Boot Camp Reframe

Jason describes a project engineer boot camp he ran at DPR Construction, one of the first of its kind. The entire premise was built on a single reframe: project engineers do not submit RFIs. They do not process submittals. They do not enter subcontractor pay applications. They manage scopes.

From the inception of a contract to its completion, a project engineer’s job is to scope out the work, buy out the contractor at the right price with the right understanding, set them up for success, prepare everything needed to begin, conduct a preconstruction meeting, oversee a first in place mockup inspection, perform continuous follow up inspections, close out the scope, and complete any change orders to the owner’s satisfaction.

That is the full arc. The RFI is one instrument in that arc. The submittal is another. Pay applications are a third. None of them are the job. The job is creating flow and delivering value to the trade partner, the owner, and the project team from the beginning of the scope to its end.

The phrase Jason uses is: do not just master the skills, master the scopes. The distinction matters enormously in practice. A person who has mastered the RFI process knows how to submit and track an RFI. A person who has mastered the scope knows when an RFI needs to happen to prevent a field problem, what information needs to go into it, how to follow it until the answer is in the field engineer’s hands, and how that answer needs to flow back to the trade partner installing the work.

Those are not the same skill level. And only one of them produces a finished scope.

What the Hospital Scene Reveals

The hospital analogy is specifically designed to produce discomfort in the right places. When project team members focus on tools rather than outcomes, the person who suffers is the one who needs help.

The trade partner who tells you materials are late needs someone to look at the procurement sequence and figure out where the breakdown happened, not a Procore notification that the submittal log has been updated. The superintendent who says production is off needs someone to look at the Takt plan, identify the constraint, and remove the roadblock, not a report from a scheduling tool showing the completion percentage.

Here is what treating the patient actually looks like in construction:

A trade partner is behind schedule. Instead of flagging it in a log, the project engineer sits down with the foreman, reviews the work sequence, identifies what is blocking flow, and drives resolution of each constraint with specific owners and dates
Materials are late. Instead of updating a procurement field in software, the project engineer calls the vendor, understands the delay, evaluates the impact on the Takt plan, and adjusts the sequence if needed while escalating to the superintendent
An owner raises a quality concern. Instead of opening a punch list item in Procore, the project engineer walks the scope with the trade partner, establishes the standard, reviews the mockup protocol, and builds a follow up schedule that prevents the same issue from recurring

In each case, the tool may be involved. The tool is not the action. The professional using it is.

The System View

Construction professionals who treat tool mastery as scope mastery are producing the same result as checking the IV without examining the patient. The tools are functioning. The patient is declining. And everyone in the room is confident the machines are working.

This is not an indictment of technology. Heavy Job, Procore, Bluebeam, and every other platform in use on construction projects can be genuinely useful. The question is whether the person using the tool is doing so in service of a patient they are actually trying to treat, or in service of keeping the machine running. The former produces outcomes. The latter produces documentation.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow. The shift from tool focused to scope focused execution is one of the most impactful changes a project team can make, and it starts with a clear definition of what the job actually is.

The Challenge for Every Project Engineer and Project Manager

Pull up the last week of your work activity. Count the hours you spent operating tools versus the hours you spent actively driving a scope from a constraint toward resolution. How many conversations did you have directly with trade partners about their production problems? How many times did you look at your Takt plan and trace a constraint back to a specific action item with an owner and a due date?

If the answer reveals more time in the software than in the work, the reframe is available. Tools serve scopes. Scopes serve people. The patient is waiting.

On we go.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you know if you are managing a scope versus just managing the tools?

Ask whether your actions are resolving constraints or documenting them. If you close a submittal in the system but the trade partner still does not have the information they need to proceed, you documented something. If you follow the submittal through to the field and confirm the trade partner can proceed, you managed something. The difference is in what actually moves.

Is this problem specific to less experienced project engineers, or does it show up across experience levels?

It shows up across all experience levels, but the cause differs. Newer project engineers often do not yet know the full scope arc and fill the role with tool tasks because it is what they were shown. More experienced project managers sometimes drift into tool management because it is measurable and defensible, while scope management is harder to demonstrate in a weekly report.

What does a good scope management structure look like in practice?

It looks like a project engineer who owns a defined list of trade partner scopes from buyout to closeout, conducts regular direct conversations with each trade partner about their production, tracks constraints and drives their resolution, and can describe at any moment where each scope stands and what the next action is. The tools support that structure. They do not replace it.

How do you make the transition from tool focused to scope focused if the whole team is operating in tool mode?

Start with one scope. Pick the one that is most at risk and assign a specific person to own it fully, meaning from constraint identification to resolution, not just from log entry to log entry. Run that scope differently for two weeks and measure the difference. The contrast will make the argument better than any presentation could.

What role does leadership play in creating a tool focused culture in the first place?

A significant one. When leaders evaluate project engineers on submittal log completeness and RFI response times rather than on trade partner flow and scope delivery, they are incentivizing tool management. The culture follows the metrics. Change the metrics and the culture will follow.

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MINI-POD – Production Comparisons

Posted on June 8, 2026June 8, 2026 by Danny Jiménez⁩

Read 16 min

Stop Guessing Where Production Went: The Daily Production Comparison Every Self Perform Crew Needs

There is a gap between knowing your production target and knowing why you hit it or missed it. Most self perform contractors live in that gap every single day. They have systems that tell them where they ended up. They do not have systems that tell them where the deviation happened, why it happened, or what to do differently tomorrow.

That gap is where profit disappears. And it is entirely fixable.

What Tracking Systems Actually Do and Do Not Tell You

HCSS Heavy Job is one of the better tools in the civil construction space for tracking production. It does what it is designed to do: capture production data and help you compare actuals to budget. Many commercial and vertical contractors have equivalent systems. Some have nothing at all.

The problem is not the tool. The problem is what any lagging indicator system shows you. It shows you where you ended up. It does not show you where the deviation happened, what caused it, or how to prevent it tomorrow. You can see that you installed 140 linear feet when the target was 180. You cannot see that you were 20 minutes late starting because the laser was not set up, that you lost another 30 minutes to a crew driving back to the office to use the restroom, and that a pipe delivery arrived at the wrong end of the road closure and cost you 45 minutes of repositioning.

If you want to recover production, you need to know where it was lost. That requires a different kind of analysis.

The Ten Minute Production Matrix

The concept is straightforward. On the left side of an Excel sheet, list your production stations in 20-foot increments. Across the top, list time intervals in ten minute blocks from start to finish of the shift. Then, at each ten minute mark, note where each crew element is in the matrix.

Jason uses a civil water pipe installation as an example. The target is 180 linear feet of water pipe in a road closure from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. The crew is a five person pipe crew and a two person grading crew. In the matrix, you can map where the pipe crew is stringing up pipe, where the grading crew is on demo, when the excavation transitions to installation, when backfill begins, when compaction happens.

A skilled superintendent or foreman who does this work in advance will know exactly what the production sequence has to look like to hit 180 feet: pipe installation every 40 minutes through the stations, with time built in for the morning huddle, for lunch, for fixture installation, for transitions between tasks. They can see the plan before the work begins. Everyone on the crew knows where they are supposed to be at every key point in the day.

More importantly: when the actual day runs, you can track where each crew element actually was at each ten minute mark and compare it to the plan. That comparison produces the data you actually need.

From Deviation to Corrective Action

Say the plan called for a specific activity to start at 8:20 a.m. It actually started at 8:40 a.m. When it did start, it took twice as long as planned. That is a documented deviation. Now ask why.

Was the laser not set up before the excavator was mobilized? Were materials staged too far from the work zone, requiring too much transport time? Did someone have to drive a truck back to the office to use the restroom? Was there a survey issue? Were drawings not ready? Was there a conflict in the field that required a phone call to engineering?

Every deviation has a cause. The causes fall into a manageable set of categories: equipment not ready, materials not positioned correctly, survey not complete, drawings not available, crew capacity issues, site access problems, rework from a previous activity, or simple coordination failures that could have been resolved in the morning huddle.

When you identify the deviations and trace their causes, you have a list of corrective items for tomorrow’s morning huddle. Not a vague “let’s do better” conversation. A specific action list:

The laser has to be set up before the excavator arrives, not after. That task is owned by a specific person by 6:45 a.m.
The morning huddle ran too long. Someone sets a timer. Done in ten minutes.
A porta potty has been ordered for the project site. It will be serviced three times a week. No more round trips to the office.
The pipe material was staged at the wrong end. Tomorrow’s staging location is marked on the plan. Delivery confirmed to the right access point.

That is the corrective action cycle. Day by day, the deviations get smaller. Flow increases. Production improves. Margin recovers.

Why This Has to Be the Foreman’s Job

A superintendent can set up this system and conduct the morning huddles. But the ten minute matrix only works if someone in the field is tracking in real time. That person is the foreman.

The foreman who understands production planning is not just a crew manager. They are a production system operator. They know the target, they know the sequence, and they are watching for deviation in real time so they can address it before it compounds. A five minute delay caught and corrected at 7:30 a.m. does not become a 45 minute loss by 11:00 a.m.

The foremen and superintendents who do this work are the ones who make money for their companies on self perform. The ones who do not are the ones whose projects bleed margin every day without anyone understanding why, because the lagging indicators only tell them they are behind, not where they lost the ground.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow. Production comparison analysis is a core component of field operations coaching for self perform contractors, civil crews, and any team where labor productivity is the primary driver of project margin.

The Challenge for Your Self Perform Crews

This week, build the matrix for one upcoming self perform task. Pick a scope where you have a production target and a defined crew. Map the stations on the left. Map the time intervals across the top. Then map what the sequence has to look like to hit the target.

Run the work. Track what actually happened. Compare the two. Count your deviations. Find the causes. Bring three corrective items to tomorrow’s morning huddle.

Do that for 30 days and your production numbers will be unrecognizable from where they started.

On we go.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does this approach work for vertical construction, or only civil and utility work?

It works for any self perform scope where there is a production target and a repeating sequence of tasks. Concrete crews, framing and drywall crews, mechanical and electrical self perform operations: all of them have stations, sequences, and time based production targets that can be mapped and tracked this way.

How do you get foremen to adopt this without it feeling like surveillance?

Frame it as a tool that protects them, not evaluates them. When a foreman can show that the deviation happened because materials were staged wrong or the laser was not ready, the foreman is protected from blame. When there is no tracking, the foreman absorbs the result regardless of cause. The matrix is their documentation as much as it is a performance tool.

What if the foreman does not have the skills to build this kind of plan?

That is the first investment to make. Train the foreman on production planning before asking them to track deviation. A superintendent or project engineer can build the first matrix together with the foreman, walk them through the sequence, and run the first few daily reviews alongside them. The skill develops through repetition.

How granular does the tracking need to be? Does every ten minutes feel excessive?

Ten minutes is a guideline for high production rate scopes. For some scopes, 15 or 20 minute intervals may be more appropriate. The goal is granular enough to catch a deviation before it compounds, not so granular that tracking becomes the work.

Can this approach be used in a pullplan or Last Planner setting, or is it separate from those systems?

It is complementary. The Takt plan and Last Planner system give you the macro production sequence across the project. The ten minute matrix gives you the micro production sequence within a single task or day. Both are needed. The Takt plan ensures the work is positioned correctly. The production matrix ensures the work is executed correctly once it begins.

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