Fiji Reflections Part 6

Posted on September 17, 2026September 17, 2026 by va.jason.almas@gmail.com

Read 12 min

The Moment You Know Something Is Wrong And Say Nothing

There is a specific moment nearly everyone recognizes, seeing something wrong, feeling the pull to speak up, and then staying quiet instead because speaking up feels socially risky in that exact instant. That moment, repeated enough times over the course of a life or a career, quietly reshapes a person’s whole identity around staying comfortable instead of doing what they actually know is right.

Where Social Comfort Quietly Wins Over Doing What’s Right

A person notices something genuinely concerning, a safety risk, a decision that feels wrong, a professional dismissing a real concern out of hand, and feels the pull to speak up clearly and directly. Speaking up in that moment risks looking difficult, annoying, or overly dramatic in front of other people watching closely. Staying quiet feels safer in the moment it actually happens. It usually just delays a problem that speaking up firmly could have actually solved before it grew worse.

Confusing Likability With Actually Doing The Right Thing

The failure pattern is prioritizing being liked or avoiding social friction over actually protecting someone or something that genuinely matters. Silence in that moment feels like the easier, more comfortable choice. It is actually a form of selling out, choosing personal emotional security over the outcome that genuinely needed real courage to protect.

The System Failed Them, They Didn’t Fail The System

The system failed them, they did not fail the system. Nobody explicitly teaches people that staying silent to avoid social discomfort is its own kind of failure, distinct from simply not knowing what to do. Without recognizing that pattern clearly, it becomes easy to rationalize silence as politeness or respect, when it is often simply choosing comfort over the harder, more protective choice available in the moment.

A Cast, A Concern, And A Painful Lesson

One honest story shows exactly how costly this pattern can become when it happens even once. A concern had been raised directly, a cast being applied in a way that risked cutting off circulation and causing real tissue damage over time. When the professional applying it pushed back and insisted it would be fine, the concern was repeated once, then quietly dropped rather than pressed further in the moment it actually mattered most. Weeks later, real and lasting damage had occurred, exactly the kind that speaking up more firmly in that original moment might have prevented entirely. That experience became a painful, permanent reminder that staying comfortable in a moment of genuine concern can carry a real and lasting cost for someone who depended on that concern being taken seriously.

Why This Distinction Matters

This matters because the moments that call for real courage rarely announce themselves clearly in advance, giving anyone time to prepare a perfect response. A room getting uncomfortably hot during a long training session, a safety concern on a jobsite, a medical decision that feels wrong in the moment, all of these moments offer the exact same quiet choice, speak up and risk feeling awkward, or stay silent and stay comfortable a little longer. Choosing to speak up consistently, even when it feels socially risky in that specific moment, is what actually protects people, projects, and outcomes that genuinely matter in the long run.

Practicing The Harder Choice In Smaller Moments

Building the habit of speaking up does not require waiting for a dramatic crisis to practice it. Noticing a room that is uncomfortably warm and asking for it to be addressed, speaking up at an airport or a restaurant when something feels wrong, or simply raising a concern a second time instead of letting it drop, all build the same muscle. Every time silence gets chosen instead, that pattern quietly gets reinforced. Every time speaking up gets chosen instead, even in a small moment, that becomes a little easier the next time it actually matters.

Signs You’re Choosing Comfort Over Speaking Up

Watch for these patterns before silence becomes the default response.

Dropping a concern after being pushed back on once
Worrying more about seeming difficult than being right
Staying quiet in a group even when something feels wrong
Assuming someone else will speak up instead of you

Connect To Mission

None of this means creating conflict where none is actually needed. If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow. It means recognizing that real protection, of people, of projects, of outcomes that matter, sometimes requires choosing discomfort over silence.

Ways To Build The Habit Of Speaking Up

Use these to practice choosing the harder, more protective response.

Repeat a genuine concern a second time instead of letting it drop
Notice small moments where staying quiet feels easier, and speak anyway
Ask directly for what a situation actually needs instead of assuming
Treat speaking up as protection, not conflict, for whoever is affected

A Challenge For Every Leader And Every Parent

Here is the challenge this week. Notice the next moment where staying quiet would feel easier than speaking up, and choose to speak up anyway. As has been said plainly, the moments that matter most rarely feel comfortable in the moment they actually arrive, and choosing to act anyway is what real protection looks like.

On we go.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does staying silent to avoid discomfort actually count as a real failure? Silence in a moment that calls for real concern prioritizes personal comfort over an outcome that genuinely needed protection, which makes it a choice with real consequences, not a neutral or harmless one.

What makes it so hard to speak up a second time after being pushed back on? Social pressure and a desire to avoid seeming difficult often outweigh a genuine concern in the moment, even when that concern turns out to be completely justified afterward.

Why does practicing this in small moments actually matter? Building the habit of speaking up in low stakes situations makes it significantly easier to do the same thing when a truly high stakes moment eventually arrives and real courage is genuinely needed.

What should someone do if their concern gets dismissed the first time? Repeating the concern clearly, asking directly for what is actually needed, and being willing to escalate further are all more protective responses than quietly letting the concern drop after a single pushback.

How can a leader build a culture where people actually speak up? Modeling the behavior consistently, treating raised concerns as valuable rather than annoying, and making clear that speaking up is genuinely welcomed all help build a team where silence stops being the default response.

If you want to learn more we have:

-Takt Virtual Training: (Click here)
-Check out our Youtube channel for more info: (Click here)
-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.

Fiji Reflections Part 5

Posted on September 17, 2026September 17, 2026 by va.jason.almas@gmail.com

Read 12 min

You Don’t Know Something Unless You’re Doing It

You don’t really know something unless you are actually doing it. That single distinction separates people who talk about change from people who actually create it, and it applies just as directly to a jobsite as it does to any other part of life worth taking seriously.

Where Intellectual Awareness Gets Mistaken For Mastery

Someone sits through a training, nods along with every point, and walks away genuinely believing they now understand the concept being taught inside and out. That understanding feels real in the moment it happens. It is actually still just an intellectual awareness, a belief that something is possible, sitting several real steps away from the kind of knowledge that only comes from actually doing the thing itself out on a real project.

Confusing Belief With Actual Knowledge

The failure pattern is treating awareness of a concept as though it were the same thing as competence in it. Believing something can be done, or knowing about how it works, is not the same as having actually done it successfully. Someone can attend every training available on a subject and still not genuinely know it, because real knowledge only exists on the far side of consistent action, never before it.

The System Failed Them, They Didn’t Fail The System

The system failed them, they did not fail the system. Training environments naturally reward the appearance of understanding, nodding, taking notes, answering a question correctly, without ever requiring the follow through that actually produces real competence. Without a clear distinction between awareness and mastery, it becomes easy to mistake genuine progress for something that still has not actually happened yet.

A Simple Switch That Explains The Whole Idea

One simple, everyday example captures this entire concept clearly and memorably. Looking across a room at a light switch, it is genuinely possible to know that flipping it would turn off the light before ever moving a muscle. That knowledge alone changes nothing in the room, no matter how certain it feels. Only after actually wanting to get up, walking across the room, and physically flipping the switch does the light actually change, and only then does real knowledge replace what had only been a reasonable belief a moment earlier. The exact same gap exists between believing a system like clean jobsites or reliable scheduling is possible, and actually walking onto a site where it is genuinely happening in front of you.

Why This Distinction Matters

This matters because plenty of people can describe a concept in detail without ever having implemented it successfully themselves, and construction teams often end up taking direction from exactly those people without realizing it. Someone who has taken a course on a scheduling system knows about it in theory. Someone who has actually implemented it successfully on a real project knows it in practice. Those two things sound remarkably similar in conversation and are genuinely different once real work begins, and the difference shows up the moment real implementation actually starts on an actual jobsite.

There Is No Shame In Simply Knowing About Something

None of this means feeling bad about being early in a learning process. Knowing about investing, about leadership, or about any new skill without yet having done it successfully is a completely normal and acceptable stage to be in. The actual goal is simply not stopping there. Learning a concept, wanting to apply it, taking real action, and finally succeeding at it turns an intellectual awareness into something that has actually been proven through direct experience.

Signs Someone Only Knows About Something, Not How To Actually Do It

Watch for these signs, whether in yourself or in someone offering advice.

Confident explanations that have never actually been tested in practice
Advice about a system nobody has personally implemented successfully
Enthusiasm for a concept with no real track record behind it
Frustration when actual implementation looks harder than expected

Connect To Mission

None of this means learning and training do not matter, because they absolutely do. If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow. It means recognizing that real mastery only exists once learning turns into consistent action, not simply once a concept starts to sound familiar.

Ways To Turn Knowing About Something Into Actually Knowing It

Use these to move from awareness into real, tested competence.

Take one specific action this week instead of just studying further
Track what actually happens, not just what you expected to happen
Repeat the action until it becomes muscle memory, not conscious effort
Ask whether you have truly done this, or simply learned about it

A Challenge For Every Leader Learning Something New

Here is the challenge this week. Pick one thing you currently only know about, and take the first real step toward actually doing it successfully. As has been said plainly, you don’t know something unless you’re doing it, and the only way across that gap is action.

On we go.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is knowing about something different from actually knowing it? Awareness or belief that something is possible exists before any real action has been taken, while genuine knowledge only comes from actually doing the thing successfully, which is why the two should never be treated as equivalent.

Is it wrong to only know about something you have not done yet? No. Being early in a learning process is completely normal and nothing to feel bad about, as long as the goal remains moving from awareness toward real action instead of staying comfortably at the awareness stage indefinitely.

Why does this distinction matter when taking advice from someone else? Advice from someone who has only studied a concept carries real limits compared to advice from someone who has actually implemented it successfully, since only direct experience reveals what genuinely works in practice.

How can someone tell if they actually know something or just believe it is possible? A useful test is asking whether the thing has actually been done successfully and repeatedly, since genuine knowledge shows up as consistent results, not just a confident explanation of how something should theoretically work.

What is the fastest way to turn awareness into real competence? Taking direct action as soon as possible, paying close attention to what actually happens, and repeating that action consistently is the most reliable way to convert an intellectual awareness into something genuinely proven through real experience.

If you want to learn more we have:

Discover Jason’s Expertise:

How Takt Planning Actually Works (Live Construction Simulation)

Posted on September 16, 2026September 16, 2026 by va.jason.almas@gmail.com

Read 18 min

What a Physical Takt Simulation Actually Teaches a Team

Here’s the deal. You can explain Takt planning in a classroom for weeks, or you can hand a room full of trade partners a set of 3D printed building pieces, a timer, and a tape-lined zone, and watch fifteen years of learning compress into about four hours. That is exactly what a real Takt simulation does, and the lessons that come out of it are worth understanding even if you never get to run one yourself.

Plan It First, Build It Right, Finish as You Go

Every simulation starts with the same rally cry, repeated together as a group until it sticks. Plan it first. Build it right. Finish as you go. That is not a slogan for decoration. It describes the entire discipline the simulation is built to teach, planning together before starting, building to a shared standard, and finishing clean and stable so the next trade can move in without inheriting a mess.

One Piece Flow, Made Physical

The core concept every simulation demonstrates is one piece flow, sometimes called one process or progress flow. If you have five zones, five submittals, or five connections to make, it is genuinely faster to complete all the steps of one thing before moving to the next, rather than doing the first step of all five things before circling back for the second step.

Picture assembling a gang form. The wrong way lays out all the strong backs for five forms, then puts on all the whalers, then sheaths all five, then oils all five, then rigs all five at once. The right way builds one complete wall panel before starting the next. The same logic applies to something as administrative as submittals. Research, review, package, and distribute one submittal completely before starting the next, rather than batching every step across five submittals at once. Batching feels efficient. Timed honestly, it is almost always slower, because the end user receives the finished product later, and errors discovered late require rework that a one piece approach would have caught immediately.

Why Takt Time Should Never Be Filled Completely

A physical simulation makes something click that is hard to explain in the abstract. Takt time, the rhythm at which a trade moves zone to zone, should never be filled entirely with work. The actual installation should fill only a portion of that time, leaving room to absorb variation, lower than expected productivity on a rough day, and genuine time to finish and clean before handing off.

Think about a full coffee cup. If a server filled your cup all the way to the rim, you would not thank them. You would ask where the room for cream and sugar went. A Takt time packed completely full works the same way. There is no room left to absorb anything unexpected, which means the first hiccup breaks the whole plan. Buffers are not a flaw in the system. They are the room the system needs to actually function.

Leveling Trades and Leveling Zones

Watch a simulation run more than once, and leveling becomes the central theme. Instead of assigning five or six different trades whose activities each take wildly different amounts of time and simply releasing them to see what happens, leveling means splitting an oversized crew’s work into smaller segments, or combining smaller pieces together, until every crew’s task takes roughly the same amount of time.

The same principle applies to the zones themselves. Breaking a project into equal square footage, ten thousand square feet, ten thousand, ten thousand, sounds fair and is actually a trap, because a crew entering a zone with more actual work density than its neighbor will bottleneck immediately. Zones have to be leveled by work density, not by area.

Watch for these signs a Takt implementation has skipped real leveling:

Crews sized identically regardless of how much work density each zone actually contains
Zones drawn by equal square footage rather than calculated work content
One trade consistently finishing early while another consistently runs long in the same rhythm

Goldratt’s Rules of Flow

Eliyahu Goldratt spent his career studying flow, and his principles, now carried forward through his own writing and continued teaching, show up directly inside a well run simulation.

Triage means doing the most important things first, the same logic an emergency room uses when deciding who gets treated immediately. Avoid bad multitasking, since the human brain was never built to do several things well at once, and multitasking usually means doing several things poorly instead. Never start without full kit, because a crew missing materials or information ends up on a frustrating scavenger hunt instead of doing the work they came to do. Keep attention focused on the task at hand, especially safety, rather than letting it scatter across everything happening around you. Segregate work by assigning different tasks to different crews instead of overwhelming one crew with everything at once. Build from real standards so nobody is left guessing. Stay synchronized, moving together at a shared pace rather than letting a few people sprint ahead while others fall behind. And protect real buffers, allocated time specifically meant to absorb the impacts and delays that inevitably show up.

Constraints Are System Problems, Not People Problems

One of the clearest lessons a simulation teaches is what happens when you pair genuinely excellent people with a genuinely bad system. Take an A-plus group and give them a C-minus system, and the honest result is C-minus C-minus, no matter how talented the people are. You cannot fix a system problem by simply asking good people to try harder inside it.

That is why roadblocks matter so much. Weather, a work area not ready, layout not finished, a failed inspection, defects, missing resources, equipment issues, labor shortages. These are the temporary, foreman focused conditions that a well run team is constantly identifying, discussing, and solving before they ever reach and impact the crew. That pattern, identify, discuss, solve, repeated constantly, is exactly what separates a team that prevents problems from one that only reacts to them. And problems themselves are never the actual issue. Hiding them is. Every real problem on a site should surface immediately, because a team working together can solve almost anything once it is actually visible.

Point and Call

A technique borrowed from Japanese railway inspection deserves wider use in construction. Point and call means physically pointing at and calling out important checkpoints out loud during an inspection or install, rather than silently assuming everything is fine. Teams that adopt this practice consistently catch more real time problems and see measurably better install quality, with documented studies showing gains in the range of forty percent or more. It costs nothing but the discipline to actually say it out loud.

What the Simulation Proves About Labor and Leveling

Here is a real comparison worth remembering. Two comparable hospital projects, similar scope, one running with a properly leveled Takt team of around fifteen electricians, the other running with roughly eighty. The larger crew was not accomplishing more work. They simply had more labor thrown at a problem that was never actually about labor. What they lacked was work made ready, the genuine preparation that lets a smaller, properly leveled team move efficiently instead of a large team standing around waiting on conditions nobody prepared in advance.

What the Debrief Reveals Every Time

Run a simulation and the closing reflection tends to surface the same handful of insights, over and over, regardless of the group. Do not blame people, blame the process. It works if you actually work it, meaning following the system step by step produces results. A whole new level of performance tends to open up right when a team feels like they have hit their ceiling, which is why continuous improvement never happens in a chaotic environment. It requires genuine stability first. Stable, then improve. Stable, then improve again. And the most important reframe of all, the right question is never whether somebody looks busy. It is whether the work is genuinely flowing.

Bringing This Discipline to Your Own Team

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your teams experience this same kind of simulation, turning years of hard won lessons into a few focused hours your crews can genuinely feel rather than just hear about.

So here is the challenge. Pick one small process on your current project, whether that is submittal review, a specific installation sequence, or a recurring handoff, and test it against one piece flow this week. Complete every step for one unit before moving to the next, rather than batching. Time it honestly, and compare the result against how it usually runs.

Jason Schroeder said it plainly: “You cannot put great people with bad systems.” Build the system worth their talent, and watch what they can actually do with it.

On we go.

FAQ

Why is one piece flow usually faster than batching, even though batching feels more efficient?
Because batching delays when the end user actually receives a finished, verified product, and any error discovered late in a batch requires rework across everything already completed. One piece flow catches problems immediately, since each unit is fully finished and checked before moving to the next, which reduces total process time even though individual steps can feel slower in isolation.

Why should a Takt time never be completely filled with planned work?
Because real crews experience genuine variation, occasional lower productivity, and need real time to finish and clean before a handoff. A Takt time packed entirely full leaves no room to absorb any of that, which means the very first disruption breaks the schedule. Building in that buffer intentionally is what lets the system absorb normal variation without falling apart.

What does it mean to level zones by work density instead of equal square footage?
It means sizing zones based on the actual amount of work contained inside them rather than dividing a project into equally sized areas. Two zones of identical square footage can contain very different amounts of real work, and a crew entering the denser zone under an equal-area system will bottleneck immediately, which is why leveling by density produces a much more consistent, predictable pace.

If you want to learn more we have:

-Takt Virtual Training: (Click here)
-Check out our Youtube channel for more info: (Click here)
-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:

What Are Typical Project Management Skills?

Posted on September 16, 2026September 16, 2026 by va.jason.almas@gmail.com

Read 17 min

The Project Management Skills Worth Developing, and the Ones Worth Avoiding

Here’s the deal. There is a book called Built to Fail by Todd Zabel that is not particularly well written, and its early chapters carry genuinely important content, especially read alongside How Big Things Get Done. The book traces distinct eras in how construction has treated the people doing the work, and understanding those eras explains exactly why so much of what gets called project management today does not actually help a project succeed.

Era One: Disrespect Dressed Up as Efficiency

The first era traces back heavily to Frederick Taylor’s Theory of Scientific Management, a body of thinking responsible for one of the most dehumanizing management philosophies our industry ever inherited. Taylor’s own writing described workers using genuinely degrading language, and that framing helped justify pushing people too fast, segregating labor, running piecework systems, and building a toxic classical business management model that prioritized output over the people producing it. A lot of that thinking is still embedded in how our industry operates today, even when nobody realizes where it came from.

Era Two: Solving the Wrong Problem With More Paperwork

The second era emerged as a reaction to the first, and it solved the wrong problem. If workers were assumed to be careless or slow, the logical response, from that flawed starting point, was for management to add more oversight. More forms. More meetings. More positions created specifically to manage and monitor the people doing the actual work. That is how the era of administration was born, and it is closely tied to the Project Management Institute’s model of the job.

I have gone through PMI’s materials directly, and in my own assessment, only around fifteen percent of the content genuinely adds value to running a real project. A lot of what gets emphasized, heavier RFI processes, more complex submittals, extensive project controls, does very little for the actual outcome of a construction project.

Why the RFI Process Is a Perfect Example

Here is a concrete illustration worth sitting with. Picture an RFI process where a designer, working collaboratively with financial approval already in place, simply posts corrected and updated information directly at the source, through a shared design platform, automatically distributed to everyone who needs it. Compare that against the standard process most projects still run, essentially writing a small document for every question, batching and queuing it, exchanging emails back and forth, with a standard fifteen day delay built into the whole cycle.

There is no version of that comparison where the traditional process wins. We have simply normalized these slow, administratively heavy habits and called the result project management. What the industry actually needs is project leadership, and that starts with genuinely loathing waste in this arena rather than treating it as an unavoidable cost of doing business.

Skill One: Planning, Not Scheduling

The first real skill worth developing is planning, and I mean that in the fullest sense, not simply scheduling. Planning means the environment, the rhythm, the integration, the collaboration, the design, the materials, the tools, the equipment, and the information are all prepared together, so the crew has genuine full kit, meaning materials, information, and permissions, available in their zone within their Takt time to complete a day’s work.

That is the actual job. The project delivery team’s ultimate customer is the crew and the trade partner executing the work. A project manager supports the superintendent, who supports the assistants, field engineers, and foremen, who in turn support the workers. The project manager’s role in that whole chain is making sure everything flows well enough that the crew genuinely has what they need.

Skill Two: Communication, Not Email

A project manager is fundamentally a professional communicator, and this applies equally to introverts and extroverts. I want to be direct about something. Email is not communication. There is nothing about email that actually delivers effective communication.

Real communication happens verbally, in meetings, through phone calls, through the ability to set genuine clarity, through interpersonal skill in the office, and through the principles found in how to win friends and influence people. A project manager who genuinely communicates well transforms the entire job. Communication sits at the center of everything else on this list.

Skill Three: Genuine Organization

Organization matters for superintendents too, but it is especially critical for a project manager. A person who consistently runs a disorganized desk, a cluttered computer screen, or a chaotic vehicle is signaling something real about how the rest of their role will function.

Watch for these signs organization has slipped in a project management role:

Documents that are hard to locate quickly when a real question comes up
Communication channels that are not consistently organized or easy to follow
A general environment that reflects disorder rather than genuine control

A project manager needs everything filed appropriately, posted appropriately, and organized from day one. The entire jobsite becomes, in a real sense, a manifestation of that person’s organized mind.

Skill Four: Problem Solving, Built Around Timing

I once worked alongside a colleague who liked to say that problems are actually opportunities. Later, working in Japan, I heard the opposite framing, that problems are simply problems. Eventually I realized both were right, depending entirely on timing.

A problem genuinely is an opportunity if it gets caught before it ever impacts the crew. A problem only becomes an actual problem once it reaches and impacts the work. That distinction is exactly why a project manager needs to become a fanatical roadblock remover, clearing the path ahead of everyone else so real progress can happen, especially at the crew level. The framing I like best, borrowed from the Lean Builder philosophy, is that a project manager’s job is to keep all the lights green out ahead of the team.

Skill Five: Merging Field and Office Competence

A project manager genuinely needs competence in administration, planning, pre-construction, finances, and design coordination. None of that competence matters if it is not ultimately oriented toward how well the work executes in the field.

Here is a clear example of getting this wrong. A knowledgeable project manager decides to cut line items like field engineering or advanced planning from the job cost report to trim short term spending. That is not wise financial leadership, even though it looks disciplined on paper. The wiser approach treats field engineers and genuine pre-planning as an investment, consistent with the research behind How Big Things Get Done, because that investment is exactly what prevents losing far more money later through contingency draws and rework. Being financially wise and being field focused are the same skill, not two competing priorities.

Building These Skills Into Your Own Team

None of this happens automatically. It requires real investment in people skills too, the ability to provide clarity, connection, and relevance to a team, and the ability to engage in genuinely healthy conflict rather than avoiding disagreement entirely. Patrick Lencioni’s work through the Table Group covers this territory extremely well and is worth studying directly.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your project managers build these five skills deliberately, planning, communication, organization, problem solving, and merged field and office competence, rather than letting them default into the administrative habits our industry inherited from an era that was never actually designed to help projects succeed.

So here is the challenge. Look at your own project managers, or your own role if that applies, and check honestly against these five skills. Which one is genuinely strong, and which one has quietly been replaced by administrative habit instead of real leadership? That gap is exactly where to focus training next.

Jason Schroeder said it plainly: “What we really need is project leadership.” Build these five skills deliberately, and that shift becomes real rather than aspirational.

On we go.

FAQ

Why does the article criticize the traditional RFI process so directly?
Because a collaborative alternative already exists, where a designer posts corrected information directly at the source with financial approval, distributed automatically. Compared against a traditional RFI process built around written documentation, batching, queuing, and a standard fifteen day delay, the traditional version adds significant time without adding meaningful value, which is why the article treats it as a clear example of administrative waste.

What is the actual difference between planning and scheduling in this context?
Scheduling refers narrowly to dates and sequence. Planning, as described here, covers the environment, rhythm, integration, collaboration, design, materials, tools, equipment, and information all being prepared together so a crew has genuine full kit in their zone within their Takt time. Planning is the broader discipline that scheduling exists to support, not the other way around.

Why does the article claim that a problem can be both an opportunity and a genuine problem?
Because the distinction depends entirely on timing. A problem caught and resolved before it ever reaches or impacts the crew functions as an opportunity to improve the plan. The same underlying issue, left unaddressed until it actually disrupts the crew’s work, becomes a genuine problem with real cost attached. That is why the article frames a project manager’s core role as removing roadblocks before impact rather than reacting after.

If you want to learn more we have:

Discover Jason’s Expertise:

How Much Do Project Managers Make

Posted on September 14, 2026September 14, 2026 by va.jason.almas@gmail.com

Read 17 min

How Much Do Project Managers Actually Make?

Here’s the deal. Every time I do a field walk, I ask workers, foremen, lead persons, assistant superintendents, superintendents, and assistant project managers a simple question. How much could you make in the future if you advance, and how do you actually advance? Almost nobody knows the answer, and that frustrates me, because construction leadership is a genuinely remarkable career with a range most people never realize exists.

Why a Single Number Was Never the Right Answer

I have avoided giving a specific number in the past, because pinning down one figure tends to either restrict people’s ambition or set an expectation that does not match their actual situation. The real question is not how much a project manager makes. It is how wide the range actually is, and what it takes to move toward the top of it.

Here is a real sense of that range, based on what I have personally seen. Working for a trade or a smaller general contractor, a base salary might sit around eighty five thousand dollars a year, closer to one hundred thousand once benefits and retirement contributions are factored in. Fifteen years ago, the average sixteen year employee at a company like Hensel Phelps who had made it to project manager was earning around two hundred sixty thousand dollars in total compensation, and adjusting that figure for roughly fifty percent growth since then puts a comparable range today somewhere between two hundred sixty thousand and three hundred sixty thousand dollars. On data center and semiconductor projects, which move fast and can be genuinely demanding, total compensation sometimes doubles that, reaching three hundred sixty to four hundred sixty thousand dollars, occasionally approaching half a million. Move into mining or oil and gas work in remote, harsh environments, and the numbers can climb even higher than that.

I want to be careful here. This is not permission to march into your current employer demanding double your salary tomorrow. It is a map of what the career genuinely allows, depending on the environment you are willing to work in and the value you actually bring.

Choosing Your Pool

Here is a mental model worth thinking through directly. Do you want to swim in a large pool with fish of every size, where the range of possible outcomes is wide and largely up to you? Or do you want a small, narrow pool where nearly everyone is a big fish, and the competition for advancement is intense with a much tighter salary band?

Fields like architecture or engineering, outside of making partner, tend to sit in that second category, a narrow range regardless of how hard you work. Construction leadership sits firmly in the first category. The range is wide, and where you land inside it depends heavily on the circumstances you are willing to take on and the value you genuinely deliver.

Your Title Does Not Determine Your Value

Here is the second real lesson. Every profession carries a lazy stereotype attached to it, the disengaged nine to five employee doing the bare minimum, and construction management has its own version of that persona too. I want to be direct that the persona is never the whole truth. I have known people in plenty of professions who show up early, stay late, and take real pride in doing their work well, alongside others who coast.

The point is not which profession you choose. It is which version of that role you decide to become. Watch for these signs of the version worth avoiding in your own habits:

Treating the job as finished the moment the minimum requirement is technically met
No ongoing effort to sharpen skills, read, or seek out further training
Waiting to be told what to do rather than staying ahead of the project’s needs

Real project management leadership requires constantly sharpening your mind, maintaining a genuine personal organization system, staying field focused to make sure crews have what they need, thinking long term about supply chains, knowing how to actually plan and run a meeting system, and leading the Lean way. None of that happens without ongoing reading, studying, connecting with people, and genuinely improving. Adding value is close to a law of nature in how careers actually work. Give value consistently, and compensation and advancement tend to follow. Demand a specific salary without the value behind it, and that approach rarely works the way people hope.

We Are Not Professional Victims

Here is the third lesson, and it connects directly to something I feel strongly about. I genuinely dislike the persona of a project manager who defaults to excuses. Oh, the owner will not let us. Oh, here comes a change order. Oh, let me send a cure notice. Oh, let me route this straight to the lawyers because we are behind. That is a victim posture, and this industry cannot afford to keep rewarding it.

We need to be victors instead, staying ahead through genuine problem prevention, actively managing and removing risk, knowing how to plan a project properly, and working with teams to solve real problems before they escalate. I would not give two cents for a project manager operating from a victim mentality, even if all I needed at that moment was a warm body to fill a seat.

I want to be careful about how I say this, because I do not want anyone hearing this to hate the people who fall into that pattern. They are good people. I want us to blame the behavior specifically, not the individual, while still feeling genuinely disgusted by the pattern itself. I once worked alongside a company doing genuinely strong work, where one vice president consistently focused more on building a legal case for why the project was behind than on actually helping build it. That posture gets dressed up as staying legally safe. The real way to stay legally safe is to stay ahead of the work through genuine pre-planning, not to prepare a defense for falling behind.

The Two Real Levers on Your Salary

If you want to genuinely move your compensation upward, there are two things that matter more than almost anything else. Learn how to win friends and influence people. Learn how to communicate effectively.

A project manager’s actual job is to read the owner’s mind, deliver genuinely excellent customer service, and provide clarity, communication, and training to the team, resourcing the project so it has real rhythm, a strong environment, and genuine integration, all of which come from collaboration, communication, and properly managed resources. If you want to actually earn your way toward the top of the range, invest in the people side and the communication side of this work specifically. There is no better series for this than Patrick Lencioni’s full body of work, all fourteen books genuinely worth reading.

Building Your Own Path Up This Range

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help you build the exact skills that move you toward the top of this range, genuine people leadership, effective communication, and the discipline to prevent problems instead of defending against them after the fact.

So here is the challenge. Look honestly at where you currently sit inside this range, and ask what specific value you are adding that would justify moving further up it. If the honest answer is that you are waiting to be given more before you give more, that is exactly where to start reversing the order.

Jason Schroeder said it plainly: “Add value and the world will compensate you for it.” That is the actual formula behind every number described here.

On we go.

FAQ

Why does the article avoid giving one specific number for project manager salary?
Because compensation genuinely varies enormously depending on the type of employer, project type, and environment, ranging from around one hundred thousand dollars total compensation at a smaller trade or GC to several hundred thousand dollars on demanding sectors like data centers or remote industrial work. A single number would misrepresent that real range and either understate or overstate what is genuinely possible depending on someone’s specific career path.

What does the article mean by choosing a large pool versus a small pool for your career?
It refers to how wide the realistic salary range is within a given field. Fields like architecture or engineering, outside of making partner, tend to have a narrower compensation range regardless of individual effort. Construction leadership has a much wider range, meaning the ceiling depends heavily on the environment someone chooses to work in and the value they bring, rather than being fixed by the profession itself.

Why does the article treat a “victim mentality” as such a serious problem for project managers specifically?
Because a project manager who defaults to blaming owners, filing cure notices, or routing problems straight to legal counsel is prioritizing defense over genuine project success, which tends to produce worse outcomes than proactively preventing the problem in the first place. The article argues that staying ahead through real pre-planning is a more effective form of legal protection than building a case for why a project fell behind.

If you want to learn more we have:

Discover Jason’s Expertise:

How To Become A Project Manager

Posted on September 14, 2026September 14, 2026 by va.jason.almas@gmail.com

Read 18 min

How to Actually Become a Project Manager

Here’s the deal. A lot of people think becoming a project manager means getting the title and learning the administration. That is not it, and treating it that way is exactly why so many project managers stay stuck in an office instead of genuinely leading a project.

The Partnership That Taught Me This

One of my favorite people on the planet is Ryan Young, who was the project manager on my very first project as a superintendent. There cannot be any disconnection between a superintendent and a project manager on a construction project, and I learned that the hard way.

I came into that partnership from an older, stuffier culture, not really used to genuine integration and teaming, and I spent the first three or four months genuinely frustrated. Ryan kept pulling me in anyway, staying focused on people the entire time, until I finally broke and became fully open to a transparent, integrated approach. Once that happened, we linked arm in arm. I took care of what he was worried about, and he took care of what I was worried about, and it turned into a genuinely wonderful partnership. When people tell me they are not getting along with their super or their PM, my honest advice is usually to go to lunch and actually get to know each other, because that dynamic between the two roles is absolutely crucial to how well a project runs.

Lesson One: Lead People First, Not a Title

Ryan never treated the role as administration or as a title that let him boss people around. He knew it was fundamentally about people, and he knew how to lead boots on the ground. That is the actual starting point for becoming a real project manager.

Jocko Willink’s approach to extreme ownership gets this right. If something is wrong, it is your fault, and that is genuinely a good thing, because it means you have the power to change it. Go dig into the relationship. Go work it out. Go focus on the value of the human being in front of you. From there, leadership comes down to three things, repeated constantly: clarity, training, support. Clarity, training, support, delivered shoulder to shoulder, over and over.

Dale Carnegie made a related point in How to Win Friends and Influence People, drawing on research involving hundreds or thousands of people, that somewhere between eighty and ninety percent of any role is genuinely about people, with only ten to twenty percent being the technical piece. That applies whether you are a project manager, an engineer, an architect, a foreman, or a vendor. The job is overwhelmingly about people first.

Lesson Two: Reduce Administration So You Can Actually Be in the Field

I was recently doing a field walk with a genuinely strong project team who wanted to get ahead on procurement, planning, permissions, and information, making sure the field had full kit, but they felt like they simply did not have enough time. The first fix is a real personal organization system: a working to-do list, leader standard work, time blocking, avoiding back to back meetings, and using email sparingly.

The second fix is more aggressive. We have to genuinely reduce non-value administration. If I could, I would eliminate RFIs entirely, answering questions at the source through a live design session instead, immediately, rather than routing them through a slow paper trail. I would treat submittals the same way, largely pre-selected and automatically posted rather than run through a heavy administrative process. Extensive monthly reporting, bloated project controls, and needlessly complicated pay application processes for both subcontractors and owners could all be reduced significantly too.

Watch for these signs administrative load is quietly keeping your project managers out of the field:

RFIs and submittals routed through a slow, multi-step process instead of resolved at the source
Monthly reporting requirements that consume significant time without changing any actual decision
Project managers who cannot remember their last full day spent physically in the field

That reduction exists for one reason. Project managers, assistant project managers, and project engineers need real time to be in the field, because the actual job is providing full kit, meaning the information and materials a foreman and crew need, inside their zone, within their Takt time window. That is the job. Everything else exists to support it.

Lesson Three: Become Ridiculously Reliable

Here is something harder to put into words, so I want you to genuinely feel this rather than just read it. There is a real difference between a forward thinking project manager who stays ahead of the game and a reactive one who needs to be reminded constantly, forgets a pay application detail, and slides into a kind of victim mode when something slips.

My wife has always had what we call object permanence in our house, meaning she can always remember exactly where something is and holds real mental context for it. A great project manager carries that same quality. People should be able to say about them, they are reliable, they always know what is going on, and they understand contextually where the project needs to be and how to actually lead it there. That reliability is not a nice bonus trait. It is close to the core of the job.

Lesson Four: Learn to See Flow, Not Just Departments

This next one is genuinely hard to explain fully, and it might be the most important shift on this list. We cannot be department focused, silo focused, or task focused. We have to be flow focused.

Niklas Modig and Pär Åhlström, in their book This Is Lean, describe this precisely, and I have had the chance to hear Modig speak directly on it. A department will sub-optimize. A silo will sub-optimize. A person handling a single, isolated task will sub-optimize, and none of that gets the information the crew actually needs to them in time. Every department, every task, and every process should be oriented toward creating flow, of information and of materials, all the way to the crew on site, so that crew can genuinely move from zone to zone to zone without friction. The single best way to develop this instinct is to genuinely study Lean thinking.

Lesson Five: Learn Planning, Not Just Scheduling

There is a meaningful difference between scheduling and planning, and this distinction has been on my mind constantly lately. Scheduling is one small piece of the picture, dates, a lock line, a sequence. Planning is where you actually make sure the crew has full kit, and everything else subordinates to that single outcome.

If I ever went back into scheduling as a career, I would insist my title be changed to planner. I also genuinely dislike the common saying that a plan is not a strategy. A good plan, with the right tactics built into it, is a strategy, one where everything is set up specifically to enable the foreman and the workers in the field. Do not just focus on the schedule. Make sure the plan produces full kit as its actual outcome, and hold to the principle that we do not start until we are ready to finish.

Lesson Six: Learn From People, Not Just Concepts

Find an excellent mentor. Figures like Patrick Lencioni, the Table Group, Simon Sinek, and Jocko Willink can serve as strong role models too, but the real advice is simpler than any book. Find somebody who genuinely leads at the level you want to lead, and model them directly. Surrounding yourself with the people you actually want to become is close to the whole secret.

Follow this pattern and you naturally stay away from drowning in administration, typing emails all day, and the disconnection that separates leadership from the field. A non-Lean company keeps leadership and the field as two separate worlds. A genuinely Lean company does not. We want project managers who are field leaders working alongside the superintendent, not stepping on toes, but genuinely understanding and supporting the flow of the entire project.

Becoming This Kind of Project Manager

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help project managers build exactly this combination, people first leadership, real reliability, a genuine sense of flow, and the discipline to plan rather than merely schedule, all while spending real time where the actual work happens.

So here is the challenge. Look honestly at how much of your current week is spent on administration versus genuine time in the field with your foreman and crews. If the ratio has quietly tipped toward the office, that is exactly where to start reclaiming your time, one reduced RFI, one streamlined submittal, and one afternoon at a time.

Jason Schroeder said it plainly: “Clarity, training, support.” Lead with those three things, shoulder to shoulder, and the rest of what makes a great project manager tends to follow.

On we go.

FAQ

Why does the article claim eighty to ninety percent of a project manager’s role is about people rather than technical skill?
This draws on research cited in Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, which found that across a wide range of professional roles, success depended far more heavily on interpersonal skill than technical expertise. Applied to construction, that means a project manager’s relationships with the superintendent, foremen, and trade partners often determine project success more than any single technical decision.

What is the actual difference between scheduling and planning?
Scheduling refers to the dates, sequence, and lock line that make up one piece of a project’s timeline. Planning is the broader discipline of making sure a crew genuinely has full kit, meaning the information, materials, and conditions they need to complete their work, with the schedule existing to support that outcome rather than standing on its own as the goal.

Why does the article recommend reducing processes like RFIs and detailed monthly reporting?
Because time spent processing administrative paperwork is time not spent in the field, where a project manager’s core job of ensuring full kit actually gets done. Resolving questions at the source and streamlining submittals and reporting frees up real hours for project managers to be physically present with foremen and crews, which the article treats as the actual measure of the job.

If you want to learn more we have:

Discover Jason’s Expertise:

You Have to Stay on Top of Your Health

Posted on September 14, 2026September 14, 2026 by va.jason.almas@gmail.com

Read 18 min

You Have to Stay on Top of Your Health

Here’s the deal. I have been on a genuine health kick for close to a decade now, and I am not sharing this to brag, because plenty of people reading this are probably in better shape than I am. I am sharing it because of a pattern I fell into that I think a lot of people in this industry recognize immediately, whether they admit it or not.

How I Ended Up at 248 Pounds Without Noticing

I let myself get to 248 pounds, and I want to be honest that letting that happen was not a disciplined choice. It crept up the way these things usually do. Then something interesting happened. I spent nine days in Japan with Paul Akers, eating genuinely well the entire time, real meals, real steak, wonderful food, and I still lost fifteen pounds without trying.

When I got back to the United States, that lack of hunger stuck around for about six weeks. I was eating carefully, following the principles from Paul’s book on Lean health, genuinely committed to keeping the processed food out of my system for good. Then, roughly two to two and a half months later, the hunger came back in full force. Frantic hunger. Not enough willpower in an entire day to hold the line against it. The weight started creeping back.

Realizing This Was Not a Discipline Problem

That experience changed how I think about weight entirely. I grew up watching relatives make cutting comments about people who struggled with their weight, and I always found that unfair, especially watching kids get picked on for the same thing as a child myself. What I eventually realized is that this is not laziness or a lack of discipline. It is biology, combined with a food system in this country that works against us constantly.

That reframing led me to try peptide treatments, which have genuinely changed things for me. I do not crave food the way I used to. My mood has improved. Everything feels more level. I want to be clear that this is my own personal experience, not a medical recommendation, and anyone considering something similar should work directly with their own physician rather than treating my story as a how-to guide.

The Numbers I Am Actually Tracking

Beyond weight, I have gotten serious about the specific, measurable things that actually predict long term health. I am working on my kidney filtration rate, aiming to get it back above eighty. I am addressing insulin resistance, which my body tends toward naturally. I am also managing high cholesterol, and in my case, that cholesterol is not coming from diet. My body simply produces more of it on its own.

Instead of going straight to medication for the cholesterol issue, I found that whole fiber made a real difference for me specifically, somewhere between thirty and fifty grams a day between whole fiber and fiber supplements. My numbers have improved significantly since making that change. Again, this is what worked for my specific situation, verified through regular blood work with my own doctor, not a universal prescription for anyone reading this.

Watch for these signs your own health tracking has quietly fallen behind your professional discipline:

Regular physical checkups skipped for months or years while other parts of life stay tightly managed.
Physical symptoms, like bleeding gums or persistent fatigue, treated as normal rather than investigated.
No recent blood work tracking cholesterol, insulin resistance, or kidney function.

The Dentist Visit That Changed My Whole Approach

For years while I was deep in construction, I kept my personal hygiene tight. Showered twice a day, brushed, flossed, all of it. What I was not doing was going to the dentist or the doctor regularly. I eventually went in for a bad tooth, one that had bothered me since childhood and had required a root canal years earlier, and needed a crown placed over it.

That visit revealed gum recession from plaque buildup, purely from not having a professional cleaning in far too long. The deep cleaning that followed was one of the most genuinely painful experiences I have gone through. I told myself I would never let it get to that point again, and I have not. Now I go to the dentist every six months, sometimes every three if something feels off. My teeth are aligned, I wear retainers to keep them stable, and I keep enough space between them to actually floss properly, since teeth genuinely shift and warp as we get older.

Why the Right Professional Changes Everything

Here is something I have learned that applies far beyond dentistry. Most of the friction people experience with their own health comes down to not having found the right professional to actually help them.

Once you find a doctor or dentist who genuinely takes care of you, the entire equation changes. My dentist here in Phoenix, Dr. Vo at Advanced Laser Dentistry, is genuinely excellent. My doctors at Living Wellness Medical Center, Dr. Brower and Dr. Turner, take real care of me, and our kids have an equally strong dentist and doctor of their own. My father has a similar relationship with his doctor in California, someone who treats health like ongoing coaching rather than occasional maintenance, aiming to keep him well into his nineties. That kind of relationship is worth actively seeking out rather than settling for whoever happens to be closest or most convenient.

Sleep and Kidneys Deserve More Attention Than They Get

Two things deserve specific mention, because I do not think either gets talked about enough. Sleep matters enormously, and not getting enough of it is genuinely detrimental in ways that compound over time. And kidney health deserves far more attention than most of us give it.

In my own life, I have not personally known many people who suffered heart attacks or cardiac arrest. I have known six or seven people who died from COVID, and three or four who suffered kidney failure. In my own sphere of experience, kidney failure has been a real and present danger, which is part of why I now drink around one hundred eleven ounces of water a day and track my kidney function regularly.

If your gums bleed regularly, that is not something to shrug off. It means you do not currently have the support you need, and getting that addressed is worth prioritizing rather than postponing. The same goes for cholesterol, triglycerides, and anything else that shows up on a routine test. Get tested often enough that you actually know what is happening inside your own body before a small issue becomes a serious one.

Why This Matters for Anyone in This Industry

None of this is really about my specific numbers or my specific doctors. It is about a pattern I think a lot of people in construction fall into without noticing, staying disciplined and clean on the surface while quietly neglecting the actual medical care that catches problems early. Physical work and long hours can make it easy to convince yourself that showing up every day is proof enough that everything is fine.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your teams build the same kind of disciplined, proactive systems on the jobsite that I am describing here for personal health, because the underlying principle is the same. Catching a small problem early is always cheaper and less painful than discovering a large one late.

So here is the challenge. Think honestly about whether you are investing in your own health with the same discipline you bring to your work. If you have not had a real physical, a dental checkup, or basic blood work in longer than you would like to admit, that is exactly where to start, and finding the right professional to partner with is often the entire battle.

Jason Schroeder said it plainly: “Most of the friction is not having the right professional helping you.” Find that person, and the rest gets a lot easier.

On we go.

FAQ

Is this article suggesting a specific diet or treatment plan that other people should follow?

No. Everything described here reflects one person’s individual health journey, including choices that were made and verified in partnership with their own doctor through regular testing. Anyone considering changes to their diet, supplements, or treatment approach should work directly with their own physician rather than treating someone else’s personal results as a general recommendation.

Why does the article emphasize finding the right doctor or dentist rather than just committing to more visits?

Because a genuine, ongoing relationship with a provider who understands your specific situation tends to produce far better outcomes than sporadic visits to whoever is most convenient. The right professional relationship removes much of the friction that keeps people from staying consistent with their own care in the first place.

Why does the article compare weight struggles to biology rather than discipline?

Because the author’s own experience of losing weight effortlessly during a period of good food and low stress, only to have intense hunger return later despite continued effort, suggested that biological factors play a much larger role than willpower alone. That perspective is offered as one person’s reflection, not a medical explanation intended to apply universally to everyone’s individual situation.

Why might people in physically demanding jobs like construction be more likely to neglect preventive healthcare?

Long hours and demanding physical work can create a false sense of security, since staying active and disciplined on the job can feel like proof that overall health is fine. That can lead to skipping routine checkups, dental visits, and blood work for years, even while other parts of daily life remain highly disciplined and well managed.

If you want to learn more we have:

Discover Jason’s Expertise:

When Good GCs Become the Problem

Posted on September 14, 2026September 14, 2026 by va.jason.almas@gmail.com

Read 17 min

Good GCs Are Part of the Problem

Here’s the deal. Takt planning is scaling across the United States at a genuinely accelerated rate, and I get paid to do peer reviews for owners and general contractors working to implement it well. That work has exposed a pattern worth naming plainly, because it is more damaging to this industry than most people realize.

There are two very different ways a general contractor can go wrong here, and the second one is far more insidious than the first.

The Obvious Failure Mode

The first pattern is straightforward. A general contractor without good systems, infrastructure, or training tries to adopt Takt planning, and the team quickly gets overwhelmed. That is an expected outcome. Nobody is surprised when a company lacking the underlying foundation struggles to implement something built on top of it.

That kind of failure is at least honest. The organization knows it is behind, everyone involved can see the gap, and the fix is relatively clear: build the missing foundation, get the right training, and bring in real support before pushing further. It is uncomfortable, but it is not hidden.

The Failure Mode Nobody Wants to Admit

The second pattern is genuinely more interesting, and more damaging to the industry as a whole. A general contractor becomes genuinely good at Takt and Last Planner, sees real success from it, and then develops a specific kind of arrogance. I know what I am doing. We are the best. We do not need outside resources anymore.

That mindset is a serious mistake, and I want to be direct about why. Every genuinely good company still needs consultants. Every genuinely good company still needs new training. Every genuinely good company needs to keep progressing, regardless of how strong its current results already look. There is a version of failure that comes from a company being unable to accept further learning, and there is a worse version that comes from a company that is fully capable of learning and simply refuses to.

Why Success Itself Becomes the Trap

Here is the honest psychology behind this. When a general contractor is wildly successful running Takt and Last Planner, the natural question becomes, why would we change anything? We already have something that works remarkably well. Why would we want to keep learning, growing, or progressing past that point?

Jim Collins captured this dynamic well when he wrote that good is the enemy of great, because good performance genuinely removes the motivation to keep pushing further. A team that is already winning consistently has very little internal pressure pushing it to improve, which is exactly the condition that lets real stagnation set in quietly, disguised as confidence.

This is worth sitting with, because it inverts the assumption most people carry into a peer review. The instinct is to expect resistance from a struggling team and openness from a thriving one. In practice, it is often the reverse. A struggling team knows it needs help and tends to welcome an outside perspective. A thriving team has to actively choose to stay open, against every signal its own success is sending it.

Watch for these signs a genuinely capable organization has started sliding into this trap:

Consistently declining outside training or consulting because internal results already look strong.
Treating current success as proof that further learning is unnecessary rather than a foundation to build on.
A cultural shift from curiosity toward defensiveness whenever a new idea or method gets raised.

Why This Is Not an Argument for Constant Change Either

I want to be fair to the other side of this, because the opposite extreme causes real damage too. Changing too much, too constantly, genuinely stretches an organization thin and introduces variation that a stable, well running system does not actually need. Stability matters, and a company chasing every new idea without discipline creates its own kind of chaos.

The actual challenge for a genuinely good organization is holding both of these at once. Stay stable and consistent in what is already working well, while remaining genuinely open to continued learning, consulting, and progression, rather than treating current competence as a finish line. That balance is harder to maintain than either extreme, which is exactly why it matters.

Why This Problem Is Bigger Than One Company

Here is the part that makes this genuinely a wider industry issue, not just a single company’s internal culture. When a strong, capable general contractor stops progressing because arrogance replaces curiosity, that company is not simply plateauing on its own. It is quietly slowing the progress of the entire industry, since these are exactly the organizations with the credibility and capability to push Lean and Takt practices further, and instead they stop pushing at all.

That is the actual meaning behind the idea that good GCs are part of the problem. Not because they are bad at their work. Because their competence, paired with a refusal to keep growing, removes exactly the kind of forward pressure the rest of the industry needs from its strongest performers.

Think about what that means for the trades and owners working with a company stuck in this pattern. They are still getting a genuinely capable contractor, one that runs real Takt planning and real Last Planner sessions. What they are not getting is a contractor that keeps improving that system year over year, which means the gap between what is possible and what that company actually delivers quietly widens, even while the results still look good on paper.

What Staying Open Actually Looks Like

None of this requires abandoning what already works well. It requires treating current success as a floor to build on rather than a ceiling that has been reached. A genuinely strong general contractor can keep its stable systems fully intact while still bringing in outside perspective regularly, whether through peer review, continued training, or ongoing consulting relationships, specifically to catch the blind spots that internal success tends to hide.

That openness is not a sign of weakness or a lack of confidence. It is precisely what separates organizations that keep improving from organizations that quietly stop, protected by their own past results.

The organizations that actually sustain this over years tend to build it into a habit rather than treating it as an occasional gesture. A regular peer review, a standing training budget, and genuine curiosity built into leadership meetings do more to prevent the arrogance trap than any single decision ever could, since the trap forms slowly, one skipped opportunity to learn at a time.

Building This Into Your Own Organization

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your organization stay genuinely open to continued growth, including honest peer review of your existing Takt and Last Planner practices, even after your team has already achieved real success with them. That external perspective is exactly what catches the arrogance trap before it quietly settles in.

So here is the challenge. Look honestly at your own organization’s relationship with outside training, consulting, and peer review. If your team has quietly stopped seeking any of that out because current results already look strong, that is precisely the moment worth treating as a warning sign rather than a reason for confidence.

Jason Schroeder said it plainly: “Every good company needs consultants. Every good company needs new training. Every good company needs to keep progressing.” Stay good enough to keep learning, and you stay part of the solution instead of part of the problem.

On we go.

FAQ

Why is a genuinely successful general contractor more at risk of this trap than a struggling one?

Because strong current results remove the obvious pressure that usually drives change, leaving very little internal motivation to seek further improvement. A struggling organization has a clear, visible reason to keep learning. A genuinely successful one has to choose to keep growing deliberately, since nothing in its current results is forcing that choice.

How does this connect to the idea that good is the enemy of great?

Good performance satisfies the immediate pressure to improve, which is exactly what removes the motivation needed to pursue something genuinely better. An organization that is already winning consistently often stops pushing further precisely because its current results feel sufficient, which is the dynamic that keeps many capable companies from ever reaching their full potential.

Doesn’t constantly bringing in new training and consulting create the same kind of instability the article warns against?

Constant, undisciplined change absolutely can create real instability and unnecessary variation. The distinction is between chasing every new idea reactively versus maintaining a stable, well running system while still deliberately seeking outside perspective on a regular basis. The goal is genuine openness paired with discipline, not constant disruption for its own sake.

Why does the article describe this as an industry wide problem rather than just an individual company issue?

Because the general contractors capable of pushing Lean and Takt practices further are often the same ones who have already achieved real success and are therefore most at risk of stopping their progress out of confidence rather than necessity. When those specific organizations stall, the broader industry loses exactly the kind of forward momentum that its strongest, most capable performers are best positioned to provide.

If you want to learn more we have:

Discover Jason’s Expertise:

Turning Variances Into Opportunities for Improvement

Posted on September 14, 2026September 14, 2026 by va.jason.almas@gmail.com

Read 17 min

Why Variance Categories Fail, and How to Fix Them

Here’s the deal. The Last Planner System deserves real credit for pioneering something valuable, the idea that when a commitment gets missed, you actually do a root cause analysis to understand why. That is a genuinely good instinct. The way most teams have implemented it since then has a real problem, and it is not the concept itself. It is the language we use to categorize the reason.

Why Percent Plan Complete Is Not the Metric You Think It Is

Before getting to variances specifically, it is worth being honest about Percent Plan Complete, one of my least favorite KPIs in this entire industry. It is a lagging indicator, meaning it tells you what already happened rather than helping you see what is coming.

It also locks you inside a weekly work plan with what is called a lock line, and that creates a real problem. If something genuinely needs to change the day before, you should be able to change it, and you should not be penalized for making that call. PPC actively penalizes stopping the train of trades to use a workable backlog, one of the legitimate recovery strategies available in a Takt system, which means it discourages exactly the flexible response that good Takt planning is supposed to enable. On top of that, PPC tracks every single activity indiscriminately, not just the ones sitting on the actual path of critical flow, so it does not even tell you whether your project genuinely has flow. In practice, I have never seen a project team dig deep enough into root cause analysis, using this metric, to actually identify a real variance and a real corrective measure.

The Real Value Hiding Inside Variances

Here is the part worth taking seriously. Turning variances into something genuinely foreseeable and preventable is valuable, and it can become a real leading indicator, specifically in the form of a roadblock removal average, tracking how consistently your team catches and clears roadblocks before they ever touch the work. That is worth building toward. The problem is that the way variances typically get categorized actively works against people actually using them honestly.

Why People Will Not Honestly Report the Real Reason

Here is the pattern that got me thinking about this. Standard variance categories are simply not built in a way human beings actually want to acknowledge. Several of the most common categories are quietly negative, and negative in a specific way, they ask someone to admit fault, either their own or someone else’s.

Bad planning blames the planner directly. Prerequisite work not done effectively tattles on another trade or party. Design issue blames the designer. Failed inspection implies the trade underperformed ahead of time. Compare those against categories like labor not available, materials not available, equipment not available, contract change orders, or submittal delays, all of which feel genuinely neutral, describing a condition rather than assigning blame to a person.

Watch for these signs your current variance tracking is producing dishonest or incomplete data:

The same neutral categories, materials, equipment, labor, getting selected repeatedly while blame-adjacent categories almost never appear.
Root cause conversations that stop short of naming the actual underlying issue.
Variance logs that read as complete on paper but never actually change future planning behavior.

Why This Specifically Conflicts With How We Are Wired

There is a real cultural dimension here worth naming honestly. The first four categories genuinely conflict with common cultural instincts, particularly in the United States, around kindness and not placing blame. We generally want to see ourselves as kind people, and from a religious standpoint too, many people do not want to identify as being unkind toward a colleague or a trade partner, even in something as small as a variance log entry.

That means a category structure built around admitting fault runs directly against how people are inclined to see themselves, which makes it far less likely anyone will select those categories honestly, even when they are the actual truth. The result is a variance log that looks complete but quietly misrepresents what is actually happening on the project.

The Fix: Two Changes That Actually Work

There are two specific changes worth making, and both matter.

The first is timing. Stop treating variance analysis as something that only happens after the fact, looking backward at what already went wrong. Look for these conditions before they impact the work, the same discipline behind identifying and removing roadblocks early rather than discovering them once a zone is already delayed.

The second is language. Reframe the categories entirely around neutral, system level conditions instead of assigning fault to a person or party. Instead of bad planning, describe it as changes to the plan or planning incomplete. Instead of prerequisite work not done, describe it as work area not ready. Add categories like permissions needed, layout not currently ready, something in the way, defects, missing information, missing resources, equipment issues, labor shortage, and site conditions. Failed inspection can be softened somewhat too, described in terms of the condition rather than the performance judgment behind it.

None of these categories ask anyone to admit they personally failed. They describe a condition, a system, or a process problem, which is exactly the framing that lets people report honestly without triggering the instinct to protect their own identity or someone else’s.

Why This Reframing Is Not Just Softer Language

This is not about being gentle for its own sake. It is about accuracy. A variance category structure that people will not honestly use produces a variance log that quietly hides the real information a project delivery team actually needs. Blame the system and the process, not the person, and you get data people will actually report truthfully, which is the only kind of data that can genuinely drive a leading indicator like a real roadblock removal average.

I want to be direct that I genuinely appreciate the Last Planner System and the organizations behind it. I have simply never liked the traditional variance list itself, and I think the industry, including the software tools and other Lean practitioners building on top of this concept, would benefit from shifting toward this neutral, roadblock-oriented framing, and toward catching these conditions before they impact work rather than only analyzing them afterward.

Building This Into Your Own Project

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your teams build a variance and roadblock tracking system that people will actually use honestly, tied to catching conditions before they impact work rather than analyzing them only in hindsight.

So here is the challenge. Pull your own current variance log and look at the category distribution. If a handful of neutral categories dominate the list while blame-adjacent ones almost never appear, that pattern itself is data, not an absence of problems. It likely means your team is not reporting honestly, not that those problems genuinely never happen. Switching to neutral, condition-based language is worth trying specifically to see whether the honest picture underneath actually changes.

Jason Schroeder said it plainly: “Variances are not set up for human beings to actually want to acknowledge.” Fix the language, fix the timing, and the honest data underneath finally becomes visible.

On we go.

FAQ

Why is Percent Plan Complete considered a weak metric for measuring project flow?

Because it is a lagging indicator that reports what already happened rather than predicting what is likely to happen next, and it tracks every activity indiscriminately rather than focusing on the activities that sit on the actual path of critical flow. It also penalizes legitimate recovery strategies, like stopping the train of trades to use a workable backlog, which discourages exactly the flexible response a well built Takt system is designed to allow.

Why do people avoid honestly selecting variance categories like bad planning or failed inspection?

Because those categories directly ask someone to admit personal fault, either their own or someone else’s, which conflicts with a common cultural instinct to see oneself as kind and non-blaming. That reluctance leads to those categories being underreported even when they accurately describe what actually happened, which quietly distorts the entire variance log.

What does it mean to switch variance categories toward “neutral roadblock” language?

It means describing the underlying condition, such as work area not ready, missing information, or equipment issues, rather than assigning fault to a specific person or party, such as bad planning or prerequisite work not done. The neutral version communicates the same underlying problem without triggering the identity protective reluctance that keeps people from reporting fault-based categories honestly.

Why does catching variances before they impact work matter more than analyzing them after the fact?

Because a variance analyzed after the fact has already cost the project real time and money, while a condition identified before it impacts work can often be resolved with a phone call or a quick adjustment. Shifting the discipline earlier, the same way roadblocks get identified and removed before they touch the schedule, prevents the delay entirely rather than simply explaining it after it has already happened.

If you want to learn more we have:

Discover Jason’s Expertise:

How Does A Company Know It’s Ready To Move From CPM to Takt?

Posted on September 11, 2026September 11, 2026 by va.jason.almas@gmail.com

Read 16 min

How Does a Company Know It Is Actually Ready to Move From CPM to Takt?

Here’s the deal. Readiness for Takt is not really about company size, project type, or how long you have been in business. It comes down to a specific intelligence and honesty test, and most of the excuses people give for staying on CPM do not survive that test once you look at them closely.

The Order That Has to Be Right First

Before anything else, a company has to genuinely operate on people first, process second, and quality third. Not profits first, control of people second, and protection of internal leadership third, which is the inherited default a lot of construction companies run on without ever examining it. If that order is backwards, nothing about switching to Takt will actually stick, because the underlying priorities will keep pulling the organization back toward whatever protects profit and control instead of people.

The Intelligence Test Most People Fail

Here is the part that will bother some people, and I am going to say it anyway. A company genuinely ready for this change has to be intelligent enough to separate the good builder habits people sometimes practice inside CPM software from the actual philosophy of CPM itself. Those are not the same thing, and confusing them is exactly how otherwise smart people end up defending a method that structurally cannot deliver what it promises.

If someone has genuinely heard the case against CPM, crashing a critical path with zero buffers, adding resources to force through an impossible schedule, denying time extensions purely because an activity was not technically on the critical path, pushing work in progress above what the resources on hand can actually handle, and they still advocate for it anyway, I have to ask honestly whether they have actually been paying attention. None of those practices are kind, respectful, profitable, or productive. Not one of them. A company has to be able to see clearly that this is happening and that it is actively costing people money and dignity, not explain it away as simply how construction works.

Watch for these signs an organization has not actually developed the eyes to see this clearly yet:

Genuine familiarity with the criticisms of CPM paired with continued defense of the method anyway
Treating crashing the critical path as a normal, acceptable recovery tool rather than a warning sign
No real distinction drawn between good scheduling discipline and the specific CPM philosophy that produces trade stacking and burdening

Watch Where the Wrong People Sit in the Wrong Seats

The second thing worth checking honestly is whether specific roles in the organization are quietly incentivized against this change. A vice president of legal or a legal director who is primarily interested in playing the victim, fighting court cases, and writing down failed jobs rather than genuinely helping projects succeed is a serious warning sign. A scheduling director who derives real personal significance from CPM, even while knowing historically that it does not work, is another one. If literally everything in the organization is built around CPM to the point where nobody is willing to change any of it, that company is probably not ready yet either.

What Genuine Readiness Actually Looks Like

Set those red flags aside, and readiness comes down to a fairly short, honest list. Genuinely wanting to take care of people. Genuinely wanting to finish projects on time. Willingness to implement a real operating system and actually train your people. Willingness to do the right thing even when it is uncomfortable. Willingness to hold people accountable, and willingness to not stand quietly beside people who derive their significance from defending CPM.

Outside of that list, the actual system itself is not the hard part. Scaling and training are straightforward. Supporting project teams on an ongoing monthly basis is straightforward. Getting trade partners bought in tends to be easy too, since Takt genuinely matches how builders already think naturally. The books, the resources, the legal contract templates, all of it already exists, including organizations like the Takt Production Institute, which anyone can look into directly right now. There is nothing about Takt itself that a genuinely committed company is missing access to.

Why People Defend CPM Even When They Do Not Understand It

Here is something worth understanding about why this resistance shows up so consistently. Human beings tend to make emotional decisions first and then justify them with logic afterward. Someone buys a car because they wanted it, and only afterward starts talking about the gas mileage and the resale value. The same pattern shows up with CPM. Most people who tell me how much they love it genuinely do not know what crashing the critical path even means. They are not defending a method they deeply understand. They are defending a familiar habit and backfilling the justification after the fact.

That distinction matters, because it means resistance to switching is rarely really about the technical merits of CPM at all. It is about the discomfort of changing something familiar, dressed up in logical sounding arguments. And here is the honest truth about that discomfort. People will hate changing now, or they will hate changing later, once the consequences of staying on CPM finally catch up with them. Either way, the discomfort is coming. Getting it over with sooner rather than later tends to be the better trade.

A Warning Worth Taking Seriously

I want to close with something important, because I care about protecting the reputation of Takt itself, not just selling it. The real question a company needs to answer honestly is whether leadership is genuinely committed to people and to doing this the right way, and whether that same leadership is willing to personally drive the effort through the full eight to twelve month process this typically takes. If the answer is genuinely yes, the company is ready. If the answer is no, it is not worth wasting the effort right now.

Please do not force this onto an organization halfheartedly if leadership is not genuinely committed, because a poorly executed, half-hearted implementation gives critics real ammunition to dismiss Takt entirely, and that damage extends far beyond one company’s own results.

Building Genuine Readiness Into Your Organization

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your organization honestly assess whether it has developed the clear eyes and genuine commitment described here, before committing to the full transition process. Getting this assessment right up front protects both your own organization’s results and the broader credibility of the method itself.

So here is the challenge. Ask your own leadership team honestly whether anyone in a key role, legal, scheduling, or otherwise, derives real personal significance from defending CPM despite knowing its track record. Then ask whether leadership is genuinely willing to drive this change personally through a full eight to twelve month process, not just endorse it from a distance. Both answers will tell you almost everything about whether the timing is actually right.

Jason Schroeder said it plainly: “Humans make emotional decisions and justify with logic.” Recognize that pattern in your own organization’s resistance, and the real conversation about readiness can finally begin.

On we go.

FAQ

Why does the article emphasize separating good scheduling habits from CPM as a philosophy?
Because some genuinely skilled builders practice good discipline even while using CPM software, which can create the illusion that CPM itself works fine. The actual philosophy underneath the critical path method, no buffers, crashing to compress an impossible schedule, denying float based extensions, still produces trade stacking and burdening regardless of how skilled the individual practitioners using the software happen to be.

Why would a scheduling director resist switching to Takt even knowing CPM has a poor track record?
Because a role built around defending and managing CPM can become tied to that person’s sense of professional significance and relevance within the organization. That attachment can make someone resist a genuinely better method, not because they have carefully evaluated the alternative and found it lacking, but because the change threatens the identity and expertise they have built around the familiar system.

Why does the article warn against forcing a Takt implementation without genuine leadership commitment?
Because a half-hearted or poorly executed implementation tends to fail visibly, and that failure gets used as evidence that Takt itself does not work, even when the real cause was a lack of genuine commitment rather than a flaw in the method. Protecting the credibility of Takt for the broader industry requires only pursuing it with organizations genuinely prepared to follow through completely.

If you want to learn more we have:

Discover Jason’s Expertise:

General Offerings

Company Offerings

Systems

The Moment You Know Something Is Wrong And Say Nothing

Where Social Comfort Quietly Wins Over Doing What’s Right

Confusing Likability With Actually Doing The Right Thing

The System Failed Them, They Didn’t Fail The System

A Cast, A Concern, And A Painful Lesson

Why This Distinction Matters

Practicing The Harder Choice In Smaller Moments

Signs You’re Choosing Comfort Over Speaking Up

Connect To Mission

Ways To Build The Habit Of Speaking Up

A Challenge For Every Leader And Every Parent

Frequently Asked Questions

You Don’t Know Something Unless You’re Doing It

Where Intellectual Awareness Gets Mistaken For Mastery

Confusing Belief With Actual Knowledge

The System Failed Them, They Didn’t Fail The System

A Simple Switch That Explains The Whole Idea

Why This Distinction Matters

There Is No Shame In Simply Knowing About Something

Connect To Mission

Ways To Turn Knowing About Something Into Actually Knowing It

A Challenge For Every Leader Learning Something New

Frequently Asked Questions

SUBSCRIBE NOW !

Subscribe to our newsletters and stay updated!

Related Books

The First Planner System: The Project Planning System for Executives, Project Managers, and Superintendents in Pre-construction - Book 2

Pull Planning For Builders: How to Pull Plan Right, Respect People, and Gain Time (The Art of the Builder)

The Ten Improvements to Production Planning: What Lean Builders Can Do To Improve Short Interval Planning (The Art of the Builder)

Related Books

The First Planner System: The Project Planning System for Executives, Project Managers, and Superintendents in Pre-construction - Book 2

Built to Fail: Why Construction Projects Take So Long, Cost Too Much, And How to Fix It

Related Books

The First Planner System: The Project Planning System for Executives, Project Managers, and Superintendents in Pre-construction - Book 2

The 10 Myths of CPM: How The Critical Path Method Systematizes Disrespect for People

Calumet "K"

faq

General Training Overview

Superintendent / PM Boot Camp

Takt Production System® Virtual Training

Onsite Takt Simulation

Foreman & Field Engineer Training

Testimonials

Testimonials

agenda

Day 1

Foundations & Macro Planning

day2

Norm Planning & Flow Optimization

day3

Advanced Tools & Comparisons

day4

Buffers, Controls & Finalization

day5

Control Systems & Presentations

faq

UNDERSTANDING THE TRAINING

VALUE AND RESULTS

PLANNING AND SCHEDULING TOPICS

APPLICATION & TEAM ADOPTION

VIRTUAL FORMAT & ACCESSIBILITY

faq

GENERAL FAQS

CURRICULUM & OUTCOMES

LOGISTICS & FORMAT

PRICING & VALUE

SEO-BASED / HIGH-INTENT SEARCH QUESTIONS