Checklists and You!!!

Posted on May 31, 2026May 31, 2026 by Jason Schroeder

Read 25 min

Why Checklists Are Not Optional: The Case Every Construction Leader Needs to Hear

There is a version of the checklist conversation in construction that goes like this: we are professionals, we have been doing this for years, we do not need a piece of paper to tell us what to do. That version of the conversation ends with inconsistent quality, preventable rework, and a project team that is relying on tribal knowledge and individual memory to execute work that a simple written standard could have protected. The argument against checklists in construction is not actually an argument for expertise. It is an argument for hoping that experienced people never have bad days, get distracted, skip steps under pressure, or forget what they learned before handing off to the next crew. That hope is not a quality system. It is a wish.

The Problem That Repeats When Checklists Disappear

The pattern is familiar to anyone who has managed field quality on a construction project. The crew installs the in-wall rough-in. The work looks complete. The area is closed up. Three weeks later, during a ceiling inspection, someone notices that putty pads were missed on a portion of the in-wall conduit runs. The drywall is already in. Remediation begins. The schedule absorbs the hit. The cost absorbs the hit. And the team has a conversation about how to prevent this from happening again. The conversation usually ends with a verbal reminder, not a checklist. And six months later, on a different floor with a different crew, the same type of miss occurs because the verbal reminder did not travel with the work.

The root cause of that failure is not a careless crew. It is an absent system. The in-wall inspection did not have a written checklist because someone decided that experienced electricians know to install putty pads without being reminded. That decision sounds reasonable and it produces rework. Every time.

The System Failed, Not the Crew

This is worth stating plainly because the instinct when a quality miss is discovered is to look for who did not do their job. The question to ask instead is whether the crew had a written standard that specified every step required for a complete and correct installation. If the answer is no, the system failed the crew. Experienced workers know how to do the work. What checklists protect against is not incompetence. They protect against the natural human tendency to skip steps under time pressure, to rely on memory in conditions that are not ideal for memory, and to assume that the person who precedes you on a task covered everything that needed to be covered. Those vulnerabilities exist at every skill level, in every industry, in every person who has ever worked under pressure.

The Industries That Already Proved It

Aviation figured this out through painful experience. Early in the development of complex aircraft, Boeing encountered failures and accidents that traced back to the lack of standard work and standardized checklists for operating aircraft that were too complex to be managed from memory alone. The response was to develop and mandate checklists for every phase of operation: preflight, takeoff, cruise, approach, landing, and emergency procedures. The result, combined with other improvements in training and engineering, has produced a commercial aviation safety record in the United States that is remarkable by any standard. The discipline of the checklist is not a small contributor to that record.

Medical practice tells the same story from a different angle. Hospital-acquired infections, surgical errors, and medication mistakes dropped significantly in facilities that adopted standardized checklists and standard work protocols for procedures that experienced practitioners had been performing for years without written guidance. One specific example that Jason Schroeder cites directly: inclining a pneumonia patient’s bed is a step that dramatically reduces the risk of the patient’s lungs being overwhelmed by fluid. That knowledge existed in medicine long before it became a standard item on a pneumonia care checklist. The difference between it being known and it being done consistently was a checklist.

The question every construction leader should sit with is this: if you would want your pilot to use a checklist, and your surgeon to use a checklist, and your pharmacist to use a checklist, and the people who handle your food to use a checklist, what exactly is the argument for your installation crews not using one?

What Good Checklists Actually Do

The objection to checklists is usually not that they are wrong in principle but that they are burdensome in practice. Too many items. Rarely referenced. Recreated from scratch every time instead of being standardized and reused. Formatted in a way that makes them feel like paperwork rather than tools. All of those are real problems with how checklists are often implemented, and none of them are arguments against the concept. They are arguments for doing checklists well rather than abandoning them.

A good checklist in construction does several specific things. It captures the lessons that were learned the hard way by the people who came before, so that the crew doing the installation today does not have to relearn them through a quality miss. It creates a shared definition of done that the foreman, the superintendent, the inspector, and the downstream trade can all reference and confirm against the same standard. It makes quality a crew accountability rather than a management inspection, because the crew has the checklist in hand and knows exactly what complete looks like before the next crew enters the space. And it creates a repeatable standard that can be improved over time as new lessons emerge, rather than relying on the individual knowledge of whoever happens to be working that day.

What These Look Like on a Construction Site

The crew that enters a zone with a clear feature of workboard and a relevant checklist is a crew that does not have to reconstruct the definition of right from memory or from the foreman’s verbal instructions at the start of the shift. The checklist does not replace the foreman’s expertise. It protects against the parts of the installation that expertise alone cannot guarantee under field conditions.

Here are examples of where checklists directly protect quality in construction:

In-wall rough-in inspections: conduit fastening, putty pads, back box installation, firestopping, circuit labeling, and any penetration sealing required before drywall can proceed
Concrete placement: slump testing, form inspection, reinforcing bar inspection, pre-pour checklist items required by the structural drawings, and wet weather or temperature protocols when applicable
Ceiling inspections: overhead coordination clearances, hanger wire installation at required intervals, main runner and cross-tee connections, tile or panel placement before accessible areas are completed
Preflight checks for heavy equipment and temporary power systems: safety devices, fluid levels, inspection documentation, and operator certification confirmation

None of those lists are long. None of them are complicated. All of them represent the difference between work that closes out clean and work that comes back for rework.

The CFO Who Never Misses Payroll

Jason tells the story of a leadership team meeting where the company’s chief financial officer listened to the conversation about checklists and had a visible moment of recognition. She had never in ten years been late with payroll. Never missed a name. Never made a material error. And then she realized, out loud in that meeting, that she uses a checklist every single time she processes payroll. Every time. Not because she is not expert at her job. Because the checklist is what makes her expertise reliable rather than variable. Her process includes confirming every employee’s name, verifying hours against her established system, and running through a sequence of steps that she has followed consistently for a decade. The checklist is not a crutch. It is what makes a decade of error-free performance possible.

That is the point. The checklist does not replace the professional. It makes the professional’s performance reproducible regardless of the conditions on any given day.

The Art That Construction Cannot Afford to Lose

The risk in construction right now is that checklists are being dismissed in favor of digital tools that claim to replace them, or in favor of the confidence that comes with years of experience, or simply because the pace of work does not feel like it leaves time to reference a written standard at the end of every installation. All of those feel like reasonable trade-offs in the moment and they cost projects significantly over time.

Jason Schroeder grew up at Hensel Phelps where checklists were part of the professional culture. Port inspection checklists. In-wall inspection checklists. Checklists for each critical phase of work, embedded in the field and office guide that new team members were expected to read and use. That culture produced a generation of superintendents and project managers who understood quality at the source as a discipline rather than an aspiration. When that culture disappears from a company or a project, the quality that depended on it disappears with it, quietly and gradually, until a rework problem or an inspection failure makes the cost visible.

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

Bring the Checklist Back

The challenge from this episode is simple. Identify one scope of work on your current or upcoming project that would benefit from a written checklist and does not have one. Build it by working backward from what a failed installation looks like and specifying the steps that prevent each failure mode. Make it short, specific, and relevant to the work your crew is actually doing. Put it on the feature of workboard where the crew can reference it during the installation, not in a file on someone’s computer. And then use it consistently, every time, on every floor, with every crew, without exception. As Atul Gawande wrote in The Checklist Manifesto: under conditions of complexity, not only are checklists a help, they are required for success. Construction is one of the most complex endeavors human beings undertake. The checklist is not optional.

On we go.

FAQ

Why do experienced construction professionals sometimes resist using checklists?

Because expertise creates the feeling that a written standard is redundant. When someone has installed the same scope of work dozens of times, referencing a checklist can feel unnecessary and even slightly insulting, as if the checklist implies they do not know what they are doing. That feeling is understandable and it is also incorrect. What checklists protect against is not incompetence. They protect against the natural human tendency to skip steps under time pressure, to rely on memory in suboptimal conditions, and to assume that everything was covered when some element was missed during a moment of distraction or fatigue. Those vulnerabilities exist at every skill level, including expert level.

What makes a checklist effective in a field construction setting?

Effective construction checklists are short, specific, and relevant to the actual work the crew is performing in the actual conditions of the current project. They capture the specific failure modes that have occurred before, so the crew can confirm those steps are covered before moving on. They are formatted for field use, laminated if possible, and posted at the point of work rather than filed in an office. They are reviewed and updated when new lessons emerge. And they are used consistently, by every crew, every time, without exceptions made for experience level or time pressure. The most useless checklist is one that exists as a document but is never referenced during the work it is meant to govern.

How do checklists connect to the concept of quality at the source?

Quality at the source means that the entire production team is oriented toward installing work correctly the first time rather than inspecting defects out after the fact. Checklists are one of the primary tools that make quality at the source operational rather than aspirational. When a crew has a checklist that specifies every step required for a complete and correct installation, they have the ability to confirm their own work against the standard before closing up the area or moving to the next zone. The checklist is what makes quality the crew’s accountability rather than the superintendent’s inspection task. It also allows any worker on the crew to stop the work and confirm something is correct, which is the field application of the Andon stop-and-signal principle.

What is the connection between checklists and standard work?

Standard work defines the best known method for a given installation, made visible and consistent for every crew member. A checklist is one of the primary expressions of standard work in the field: it captures the sequence of steps, the quality criteria for each step, and the confirmation that each step was completed before the next one begins. The feature of workboard that Jason Schroeder describes in other episodes combines cycle time, work sequence, and standard inventory with quality checkpoint confirmation. The checklist portion of that board is what allows the crew to execute the standard work consistently rather than relying on each crew member’s individual interpretation of what complete looks like.

How should a construction team get started if they do not currently use checklists?

Start with one scope and one phase. Identify the installation that creates the most rework or the most downstream problems when it is not done correctly. Work backward from the specific failure modes: what was missed, what was installed incorrectly, what was skipped under time pressure. Build a checklist that specifies the steps that prevent each of those failures. Keep it to a single page or less. Put it on the feature of workboard for that scope. Use it for the next three installation cycles and refine it based on what the crew actually references versus what they already do automatically. Expand from there to other scopes as the habit develops. The goal is not a hundred-item master document. It is a short, useful, field-relevant tool that the crew actually picks up and uses at the end of each installation sequence.

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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.

Construction Entrances

Posted on May 31, 2026May 31, 2026 by Jason Schroeder

Read 24 min

Why Your Construction Entrance Sets the Standard for Everything That Follows

It might not sound like the most important topic in construction leadership. Entrances. Not schedules. Not lean systems. Not production control. Entrances. But here is the thing: if you want to understand why some projects run clean, orderly, and with a sense of collective pride from day one, and why others descend into clutter, chaos, and indifference by week two, the entrance is where that story begins. It is not a metaphor. It is a literal threshold. Every worker who steps through a construction entrance reads it the same way they would read any other environment: this is what this place cares about. And they behave accordingly.

The Problem That Shows Up on the Project Floor

Walk a hundred projects and you can predict the condition of the floors, the bathrooms, the staging areas, and the crew break spaces within the first thirty seconds of stepping through the front gate. Not because the workers arrived with an intention to create a mess, but because the entrance communicated to them whether this project cares about how things look and whether the leadership will enforce that care. If the gate is crooked, the fence is sagging, the signage is weathered, the track-out pad is clogged with debris, and there are two energy drink cans on the ground next to the check-in station, the message is clear: nobody is watching, and the standard is survival, not excellence.

A project site in that condition is a project site that has already told every trade partner, every worker, and every subcontractor superintendent that the bar is low. And people live up to the bar they are given.

The System Set This Up, Not the Workers

Nobody chooses to work in a filthy environment by preference. Nobody shows up on day one of a project thinking they would prefer to navigate a cluttered entrance with broken signage and a mud-soaked track into the building. What happens is that the first trade to arrive sets its materials where it wants. The second trade adds to it. By week three, the entrance has taken on the character of every small decision that nobody corrected. Nobody corrected it because the project team never made it clear, from the first day, what the standard was and that the standard would be enforced. The system created that outcome. Not the workers, and not the trades. The absence of a clear signal from leadership is the system that produced the mess.

The Starbucks Bollard and What It Teaches

Jason Schroeder tells the story of a Starbucks drive-thru in Springfield, Illinois, where a bollard in front of the pickup window had accumulated at least three hundred stickers over time. Company stickers. Random stickers. McDonald’s order tags. All kinds of things from all kinds of people. His son thought someone must have asked people to put stickers there. Jason’s interpretation was simpler and more instructive: one person put one sticker. It stayed. Another person put one. It stayed. And by staying, it communicated two things simultaneously: this is what we do here, and this is what we allow here. The result was a bollard covered in three hundred stickers, not because anyone planned it, but because invitation and permission were implied by what was left in place.

That is exactly what happens at a construction entrance. The first piece of trash that is not picked up is the first sticker. The first fence post that goes uncorrected is the second. By the end of the first week, the entrance has taken on the character of the habits that were allowed to form, and it will communicate those habits to every worker who arrives for the rest of the project. The entrance does not just reflect the culture. The entrance creates the culture.

What a Great Entrance Actually Looks Like

Jason stopped his vehicle and took photographs of a DPR construction project entrance in Jacksonville, Florida because it was genuinely remarkable. Not because it was expensive. Because it was intentional. Laminated signage in English and Spanish, equally spaced, clearly formatted, mounted on a fence with taut screens and posts cut evenly across the top. QR codes for the worker check-in process positioned for easy access. A gate in clean working order. A properly maintained track-out pad with correctly sized rock for dust and dirt control. A stabilized interior entrance surface. Not one piece of trash on the ground from the gate to the first point of work. A guard station swept clean. A DPR sign and an American flag. A sign thanking the workers for their contributions.

The overall impression was of a project where someone cared deeply about the first impression that every person on site would receive every time they came to work. And the signal that sent was not about aesthetics. It was about operational control. That entrance was saying: this project is run with intention. The people running it are paying attention. The standards here are real and they are maintained. What you do inside this fence will be held to the same level of care that you are seeing right now at the entrance.

What a Great Entrance Communicates Without Saying a Word

Before looking at how to build a great entrance, look at what happens when workers arrive at one:

The worker who enters a clean, well-organized gate area gets a nonverbal signal that this team is serious about how things are done
The trade partner whose foreman sees laminated signage, clear wayfinding, and no trash at the entry understands immediately that this superintendent runs a tight project
The subcontractor who sees a properly maintained track-out pad and a swept interior access road knows the owner of this project will not tolerate a site that looks like a salvage yard
The new hire who walks onto a well-kept site on their first day adjusts their behavior upward to match what the environment is communicating
The experienced journeyman who has worked on poorly run sites recognizes a well-run one within thirty seconds of stepping through the gate and brings their best professional behavior to match it

None of that communication requires a speech or a policy. It happens the moment the worker arrives, and it sets the behavioral standard for the rest of their time on that project.

How to Build an Entrance That Sets the Right Standard

A great construction entrance does not require a large budget. It requires intentionality and maintenance. The elements that matter are straightforward: straight fence posts with evenly cut tops, taut screening secured properly to the fence, laminated signage that is clear and current, wayfinding that makes orientation easy for a new worker who has never been to the site before, a track-out pad that is properly sized and maintained, an interior surface that is stabilized and kept clear of trash, gates that work cleanly and are not left propped open or hanging, and a check-in system that is easy to use and visually organized. None of that is expensive. All of it requires someone to own the standard and enforce it from day one.

The other thing that matters is labeled gates. If a large project has multiple worker entrances, each one should be clearly identified, equally well maintained, and equally unambiguous about where people should go and what they should do when they arrive. Confusion at the entrance is a friction point that starts every workday with a small amount of friction that compounds across hundreds of workers over months of a project.

What Happens Downstream When the Entrance Is Right

The DPR project Jason photographed was not clean at the entrance and chaotic on the floors. Projects do not work that way. The level of care established at the entrance tends to propagate through the rest of the site because the signal is consistent: this team cares, this team is watching, and this team holds the standard. Workers who see that signal at the beginning of every shift carry it with them as they move through the building. Foremen who see their crew arriving at a clean entrance are reminded, visually and daily, of the standard they are expected to maintain in their own work areas. The entrance is a daily renewal of the commitment to operational control.

The bathroom is often cited as the lean indicator of a project’s culture, and it is a valid one. The entrance is the pre-bathroom indicator. By the time you reach the bathrooms, you already know what you are going to find. The entrance told you before you got there. If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow.

Set the Standard at the Gate and Hold It There

The challenge from this episode is not complicated. Walk your own project entrance tomorrow morning and look at it as if you are a worker arriving for the first time. What does it communicate? Is the signage current, laminated, and equally spaced? Is the fence straight and the screening taut? Is the track-out pad doing its job? Is there a single piece of trash between the gate and the first point of work? Is the gate itself in clean working order? And most importantly: does the entrance communicate that this project is run with intention and held to a genuine standard?

As David Morrison said in a speech that resonated across military and civilian leadership alike: the standard you walk past is the standard you accept. Every day that the entrance is less than it should be and nobody addresses it is a day that the project’s culture takes another small step toward the wrong standard. Set the entrance right, hold it right, and let it do its job every morning for every worker who steps through it.

On we go.

FAQ

Why does the construction entrance matter for project culture?

Because it is the first thing every worker, trade partner, and visitor experiences when they arrive on site, and the condition of that entrance communicates the project team’s standards more clearly than any policy or orientation speech. A clean, organized, well-maintained entrance signals that the project is run with intention and that the standards inside will be equally high. A neglected entrance signals the opposite, and workers adjust their behavior to match what the environment is communicating. The entrance does not just reflect the culture. It actively shapes it by setting the behavioral expectation for everyone who passes through it every day.

What are the specific elements of a well-maintained construction entrance?

The key elements are straight fence posts with evenly cut tops, taut screening properly secured to the fence panels, laminated and equally spaced signage in the languages spoken by the workforce, clear wayfinding for first-time visitors, a properly sized and maintained track-out pad for dust and dirt control, a stabilized interior access surface, gates that operate cleanly and are not left propped or hanging, a check-in system that is clearly organized and easy to use, and zero tolerance for trash accumulation at or near the entry point. On larger projects with multiple gates, each entrance should be labeled, equally well maintained, and equally clear about where workers should go and what they should do.

How does the entrance connect to the broader concept of cleanliness as a production strategy?

Cleanliness is not primarily an aesthetic preference. It is a diagnostic and control tool. A clean environment makes production problems visible because nothing is hidden under clutter. It makes safety hazards easier to spot. It creates the conditions under which lean systems can function because visual management requires a visual environment that is clear enough to be read. The entrance is the first application of that principle on every project. When the entrance is clean and organized, it signals to every person arriving that the project team is practicing the same discipline throughout the site. When the entrance is neglected, it predicts what will be found inside before anyone has walked through the gate.

How does the sticker analogy apply to construction sites?

The sticker analogy illustrates how cultural norms form through implied invitation and permission. When something is added to an environment and left in place, it communicates to everyone who sees it that this is acceptable here and that this is what we do here. The first piece of trash left near a gate is the first sticker. The first fence post that goes uncorrected is the second. Each small deviation that goes unaddressed becomes an implicit invitation for the next one, and over time the accumulated permissions define the standard. Conversely, a project team that consistently removes trash, straightens fence posts, and maintains the entrance is communicating constantly that those deviations are not permitted, and that communication shapes behavior without requiring a single direct conversation.

What is the superintendent’s role in maintaining the entrance standard?

The superintendent is responsible for setting the standard at the entrance from day one and for enforcing it consistently throughout the project. That means being the first person to pick up the piece of trash near the gate when it appears, which sends a clearer signal than any announcement or directive. It means doing the daily walk that includes the entrance as a deliberate stop, not an afterthought. It means addressing the first deviation immediately, because the first deviation that goes uncorrected becomes the new standard. The superintendent who personally holds the entrance to the highest standard they would expect anywhere else on the project will find that the rest of the project tends to meet that same standard over time.

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These Are Always Late!!!

Posted on May 31, 2026May 31, 2026 by Jason Schroeder

Read 24 min

Why the Same Three Scopes Are Always Late on Every Construction Project

Here is something every superintendent knows but few projects actually solve: walk into a hundred different construction projects and ask the team which scopes are causing the most pain, and the answers will be identical every time. The exterior skin. The elevators. The electrical service switchgear. The air handlers. Permanent utility connections to the building. Same scopes, same problems, same late deliveries, different projects, different teams, different markets. If everyone knows these things are always late, why are they still always late? The answer is not that people are incompetent. The answer is that the industry has normalized starting these conversations at the wrong point in the project, and then not tracking what happens between order and delivery.

The Problem Every Team Recognizes and Almost No Team Prevents

Every experienced superintendent knows that the exterior curtain wall and the elevators have long lead times. The awareness is universal. The action is not. Projects identify these scopes as critical, note them in the schedule, flag them in kickoff meetings, and then wait until the construction contract is awarded before actually engaging the trade partners. By the time the team is ready to move, the math has already failed. The fabrication window needed to deliver the exterior skin before the installation date requires procurement to have started months earlier, during design development, not after groundbreaking.

The gap between knowing and doing is where the schedule gets lost. It is not that the team forgot the exterior was a long lead item. It is that the team kept waiting for conditions that felt like the right moment to engage: a signed contract, a fully approved design, a funded GMP. All of those conditions are reasonable checkpoints. None of them change the physics of fabrication lead times. And by the time all of them are in place, the time that was needed to protect the schedule is already gone.

The System Created This Problem, Not the People

This needs to be said directly: the teams that keep experiencing late exterior skin and late elevator deliveries are not careless. They are working inside a procurement culture that has always defaulted to waiting for the contract before starting the vendor engagement. That default was established at a time when project schedules were longer, market capacity was more available, and the consequences of late delivery were more manageable. None of those conditions apply today. The system has not caught up with the schedule reality that most construction projects are now operating under. The system failed the team. The team did not fail the project.

The Lesson That Changed How Jason Schroeder Approaches Long Lead Procurement

Early in his career, Jason worked with a project manager named Ryan Young who pushed hard, in the middle of design development, to start weekly meetings with the exterior skin contractor and the elevator contractor. At the time, it felt premature. The design was not finished. The contract was not awarded. The scope was not fully defined. Jason’s instinct was to wait. Ryan’s instinct was to act.

Ryan was right. The team talked the owner into bringing those trade partners on in a design assist capacity before the construction contract was executed. They started producing preliminary submittals, building a detailed procurement schedule, and coordinating with the design team while the project was still being designed. By the time the construction contract was awarded, the exterior skin and elevator procurement were weeks ahead of where they would have been if the team had waited. That head start protected the schedule in ways that no amount of compression later in the project could have replicated.

The financial risk was real but small. A letter of intent. An owner-approved release of $20,000 to $30,000 for early submittals. A commitment to go at risk for a modest expenditure to protect a delivery date that the entire project depended on. That is a better trade than three months of schedule extension explained to an owner who trusted the team to manage procurement.

Why Tracking Release Points Is Not Optional

Knowing the lead time is not the same as managing the procurement. Most project teams can tell you approximately how many weeks a curtain wall system takes from shop drawing approval to delivery. Few of them have a system for tracking the five or six intermediate release points that determine whether that timeline actually holds.

For a unitized curtain wall system, those intermediate points run through preliminary sample approval, die approval for the extrusions that produce the mullion profiles, shop drawing production and review concurrent with the glass and panel order release, delivery of materials to the fabrication shop, fabrication of the unitized assemblies, shipping to the project site, stacking and staging by floor, and then installation in sequence with the adjacent structure and weather barrier work. Each of those is a step that cannot begin until the previous one is complete. Each of those has a date attached. And each of those dates is vulnerable to being missed if nobody is confirming that the action was taken.

Jason describes confirming that a purchase order for a curtain wall glass order was never executed because everyone assumed it had been after shop drawings were approved. The glass was six weeks late. Not three weeks. Six weeks, because by the time anyone checked, the fabrication slot had already been given to another project. That kind of miss does not happen when the team has a system for tracking release points. It happens when the team tracks the lead time at the beginning and trusts the process to handle itself the rest of the way.

What Needs to Happen Before the Contract Is Signed

If a project has any of the following critical scopes, procurement engagement needs to begin during design development, not after award:

Exterior skin systems including unitized curtain wall, metal panel, custom window systems, and specialty cladding
Elevator equipment including the cab, mechanical room package, controls, and door frames
Electrical service equipment including switchgear, service entry section, and main distribution panels
Major mechanical equipment including air handlers, cooling towers, boilers, and fan coil units
Permanent utility connections including power, communications, gas, water, and sewer, each of which may require utility company coordination that adds months beyond the equipment procurement itself

For each of these, the question is the same: when does the material need to arrive at the project site relative to the installation window, and how far back from that date does the procurement chain need to start?

What to Track Once Procurement Is in Motion

Once a critical long lead scope is procured, the work of managing it is not finished. The release points between award and delivery are where the schedule is protected or lost. These are the actions that need to happen at specific times for the procurement to stay on track:

Sample and mock-up submissions confirmed and approved
Die or tooling approvals executed before fabrication tooling lead times begin
Purchase orders for long lead materials within the scope, such as glass, released on the date required by the fabrication schedule
Delivery of raw materials to the fabrication shop confirmed
Field measurements taken for any components requiring site-specific dimensions
Shipping schedule confirmed and tracked against the installation window

Jason’s method for keeping these visible is to create calendar invites for each critical release point and distribute them to the full project team. When the invite fires, someone makes the call to confirm the action was taken. If it was not taken, there is still time to recover. If nobody is watching the intermediate points, the first visible sign of a problem is often when the installation window has already opened and the material is not there.

Built for Teams That Deliver What They Promise

Procurement feeds production. That is not an abstract principle. It is the daily reality that every superintendent manages when a scope that should be ready to install is not, and the crew that was supposed to be in that zone is standing on a floor waiting. The exterior skin and the elevators do not have to be the scopes that blow up every schedule. They are in that position because the industry has normalized starting too late and not tracking closely enough. Changing that requires starting the procurement conversation during design, using creative options like letters of intent and design assist arrangements to move before the comfortable moment, and building a system for tracking release points that does not rely on anyone’s memory or good intentions. If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow.

Get There Before the Problem Gets There First

The exterior skin is not going to manage itself. The elevator is not going to remind anyone that the cab release order was never executed. The switchgear is not going to flag that the shop drawing approval was three weeks late and the delivery date has already moved. That management belongs to the project team, starting in design development, continuing through the intermediate release points, and never assuming that silence means everything is on schedule.

As General George Patton understood about supply chains and military campaigns: a good plan executed now is better than a perfect plan executed too late. Start the procurement conversation before you have the perfect conditions for it. Track the release points before the consequence of missing them is already visible in the field. The schedule that finishes on time is the one where someone was watching the curtain wall glass order date three months before anyone else thought to ask.

On we go.

FAQ

Why are exterior skin and elevator procurement always late even when teams know they are long lead items?

Because knowing a scope has a long lead time is not the same as acting on that knowledge early enough. The industry default is to engage trade partners after the construction contract is awarded, but the fabrication timelines for these scopes often require procurement to begin during design development. Every week of delay in engaging the trade partner at the start of the process becomes a week of compression at the end, and compression at the end of a construction schedule is far more expensive and disruptive than the discomfort of starting before the contract is signed.

What creative options exist for engaging trade partners before the construction contract is executed?

Letters of intent allow a trade partner to begin preliminary submittals, coordination, and shop drawing production before the prime agreement is finalized. Design assist arrangements bring the trade partner into the design process formally, allowing them to contribute constructability input and begin procurement planning while the design is still being developed. An owner-approved release of funds for early submittal work, typically in the range of $20,000 to $30,000, covers the cost of getting the procurement sequence started before the commercial framework is fully in place. Going at risk for a small expenditure to protect a schedule that depends on early fabrication is a significantly better outcome than absorbing a multi-month delay.

What are critical release points and how should they be tracked?

Critical release points are the specific actions within a procurement sequence that must be executed by a specific person on a specific date for the next step to proceed on time. For exterior curtain wall, these include the die approval for extrusions, the glass purchase order release, shop drawing approval, delivery of materials to the fabrication shop, and field measurements for critical panel conditions. Tracking them means putting each one on the project schedule with a named owner and creating calendar reminders that fire on the relevant date. When the reminder fires, someone confirms the action was taken. If it was not, there is still time to respond before the delay becomes unrecoverable.

How does this procurement approach connect to the broader First Planner System?

The First Planner System begins in preconstruction by engineering the production system before boots hit the ground. Procurement planning is one of its core outputs: identifying long lead scopes, establishing the procurement sequence, and aligning the supply chain with the production plan before the work starts. Projects that engage long lead trade partners during design development are practicing First Planner discipline. Projects that wait until construction begins are starting the production system design after it was already needed, and they pay for that delay in schedule compression and cost overruns that show up later in the project.

What other scopes beyond exterior skin and elevators need this level of procurement management?

Any scope with a fabrication lead time that exceeds what the construction schedule assumes between contract award and installation. Electrical service switchgear and main distribution equipment frequently carry twelve to twenty-week lead times that projects underestimate. Major mechanical equipment including air handlers, cooling towers, and boilers has similar lead time exposure. Permanent utility connections to the building, including power, telecommunications, gas, and water, often require utility company coordination that adds months beyond the equipment procurement itself. Specialty finish materials with custom manufacturing requirements, including Italian tile, custom millwork, and specialty glazing systems, also need to be identified and procured well ahead of the installation window.

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How to Run a Commissioning Kickoff Meeting

Posted on May 29, 2026May 29, 2026 by Jason Schroeder

Read 15 min

How to Run a Commissioning Kickoff Meeting That Actually Works

Every commissioning kickoff meeting follows the same script. The owner sends the meeting invite. The commissioning agent runs the agenda. There are introductions, a walkthrough of the commissioning plan, a review of the schedule, and a round of questions. It is polite, it is organized, and it is almost entirely useless from a field builder’s standpoint.

That is the problem Jason Schroeder is addressing in this conversation, specifically from the builder’s perspective. Not the commissioning agent’s perspective. Not the owner’s. The people who are responsible for delivering the building and who need the commissioning process to move at a pace that actually supports completion.

The Incentive Problem Nobody Mentions

Here is why commissioning kickoffs go sideways before anyone raises a concern. The people in the room are not all pointing in the same direction.

The facilities team and the owner’s representatives do not want to start up mechanical systems early. Starting air handlers before they are absolutely necessary creates maintenance exposure, warranty questions, and operational responsibility that nobody in facilities management is eager to absorb ahead of turnover.

The commissioning agent’s incentives are similarly misaligned with the builder’s urgency. Moving the commissioning schedule forward compresses the time they have to complete their work. Agreeing to earlier milestones adds pressure to their process.

The builder, meanwhile, needs energized systems and completed commissioning activities to allow trades to finish, for the building to be conditioned, and for the closeout sequence to run. Three groups, same meeting, fundamentally different motivations. If the builder walks in and makes demands, they will lose every person in the room before the agenda is halfway through.

What the Builder Must Bring to the Kickoff

The builder has two things to accomplish in a commissioning kickoff meeting that the standard agenda does not naturally create space for.

The first is the schedule conversation. Commissioning efforts are almost always behind before they start, because the activities that need to happen months in advance are rarely treated with the urgency they require. The kickoff meeting is the first formal opportunity to make those milestones visible and to begin the alignment process.

The approach matters enormously. Walking in and announcing “I need the air handlers energized by this date” will antagonize the facilities team and the commissioning agent immediately. The better path is to frame the milestones as shared context rather than demands. Functional performance testing is scheduled for this date. Floor to floor commissioning needs to occur by this milestone. The air handler energization window is here. These are not the builder’s personal preferences. They are the sequence required to deliver the building the owner wants, on the timeline the owner has communicated.

Framed that way, the conversation is not builder versus commissioning team. It is the full team looking at a shared timeline and beginning to align around it.

The second thing the builder needs to accomplish is building real connection. Commissioning is one of the most collaborative phases of a construction project, and it fails most often because the relationships between the construction team and the commissioning team are distant and transactional. The kickoff is the first opportunity to change that. How can the project delivery team actively support the commissioning team? What does the commissioning team need from the builder to do their work efficiently? Those questions, asked sincerely in the kickoff, signal something different than the typical posture of two groups working in proximity but not actually together.

When You Get Pushback

If the facilities team or the commissioning agent pushes back on an early air handler date or a compressed milestone, do not fight it in the room. The commissioning kickoff is not the place to win that argument, and pressing too hard in a room full of people who are not ready for the conversation will harden positions rather than move them.

The better response: acknowledge what you heard, express genuine interest in finding an approach that works for the facilities team, and offer to come back with options. “I hear you. I would love to go back, think through some alternatives, and come back with a proposal that gives you what you need while keeping us on a path to deliver on time.” That posture keeps the relationship intact and opens a door for a follow up conversation that is more likely to result in actual movement.

Here is what that looks like in practice:

Introduce the schedule milestones in the meeting without framing them as demands
Listen fully when the commissioning agent or facilities team raises concerns
Defer the resolution conversation to a smaller, targeted follow up rather than trying to resolve it in front of the full group
Use the time between the kickoff and the follow up to build individual relationships with the key decision makers

Turning the Kickoff Into a Strategy Meeting

A standard commissioning kickoff is informational. The builder’s job is to shift at least part of it toward strategic. That means arriving with a visual that shows how the commissioning strategy connects to the production schedule: which systems need to be energized by which dates, how the floor to floor sequence supports trade work, and what the builder is prepared to do to support the commissioning team through each phase.

That visual, presented clearly in the kickoff, does two things. It demonstrates that the builder has done their homework and understands commissioning as an integrated part of the project rather than a downstream handoff. And it gives the commissioning team and the owner something concrete to react to, which is far more productive than open ended discussion about a plan nobody has seen yet.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow. Commissioning is one of the highest risk phases of any complex construction project, and the builder’s posture in the kickoff meeting sets the tone for everything that follows.

The Challenge for Your Next Kickoff

Before you walk into the commissioning kickoff, know your milestones. Energization dates for each major system. Functional performance testing dates. Floor to floor commissioning windows. Turnover sequence requirements.

Then prepare for the incentive misalignment. Everyone in the room wants the building done. Not everyone is aligned on what needs to happen in what sequence to get there. Your job in the kickoff is not to win the argument. It is to make the milestones visible, establish yourself as a collaborative partner, and create the conditions for the follow up conversations that will actually move the schedule.

As Dale Carnegie’s principle holds: the only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it. In a commissioning kickoff, that is not passivity. It is strategy.

On we go.

Frequently Asked Questions

What should the builder prepare before the commissioning kickoff meeting?

A clear map of the commissioning milestones tied to the production schedule, including energization dates for major systems, functional performance testing windows, and the floor to floor sequence. Also a clear understanding of what the commissioning team needs from the builder at each phase, so the offer of support is concrete rather than generic.

How do you handle a commissioning agent who is resistant to any schedule acceleration?

Start by understanding their constraints. What would need to be true for them to be comfortable moving earlier? What resources, information, or assurances do they need? Once you understand the actual barrier, you can often find a path around it that the commissioning agent can accept. Resistance usually comes from real concerns, not from a desire to slow the project down.

Should the builder run the commissioning kickoff, or defer to the commissioning agent?

Defer to the commissioning agent on the agenda and the process. The builder’s role is to be an active, prepared, and strategically engaged participant, not to take over the meeting. Taking over creates resentment. Showing up prepared and contributing meaningfully earns respect.

How early in the project should commissioning planning begin?

Far earlier than most teams start. Commissioning activities that affect the builder’s schedule, particularly system energization and functional performance testing, need to be integrated into the Takt plan from the beginning of construction. Waiting until commissioning begins to think about those milestones is one of the most common causes of schedule compression at project closeout.

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Why Commissioning Must Start on Day 1

Posted on May 25, 2026May 25, 2026 by Jason Schroeder

Read 24 min

Why Commissioning Must Start on Day One: A Field Builder’s Guide

Here is the pattern on almost every project. The building is nearly complete. Trades are wrapping scope. The superintendent is driving toward substantial completion. And then someone asks about the commissioning schedule and it turns out the commissioning agent’s plan is six weeks behind where it needs to be, the pre-functional checklists have not been started, and a scope of work that should have begun months ago is now a crisis being managed against the closeout date.

That scenario is not bad luck. It is the predictable result of treating commissioning as a closeout activity rather than as a day-one responsibility. How a building gets finished and handed over to the owner is not a separate phase that comes after construction. It is interwoven with every phase of construction, and the builders who understand that who start asking the right questions on day one and never stop are the ones whose projects finish on time, with systems that work, and owners who trust them to come back for the next one.

What Commissioning Actually Is

Commissioning is the quality-focused process of verifying and documenting that the facility and its systems are planned, designed, installed, tested, and operated to meet the owner’s requirements. That definition carries a word that most field builders skim past: operated. It is one thing to install the equipment correctly. It is another thing entirely to verify that all of the systems HVAC, electrical, controls, fire alarm, building automation, plumbing, elevators are talking to each other, operating in the right sequence, and functioning the way the owner needs the building to function for the people and processes inside it.

That verification process is commissioning. It is not the same as a punchlist. It is not the same as passing inspections. It is a systematic, documented confirmation that the building works as an integrated whole not just as a collection of correctly installed components. And it is as much the field team’s responsibility as anything else done during the construction phase.

Who the Commissioning Authority Is and Why That Matters for the Builder

The commissioning authority often called the commissioning agent or CxA is an independent third party hired by the owner to lead, plan, and document the commissioning process. Understanding who they are and what motivates them is one of the most practically useful things a superintendent can know before the first commissioning conversation.

The commissioning agent is incentivized to find failures. Their job is to make sure anything that could go wrong does surface before the owner accepts the building, which is exactly what the owner needs. They are thorough, they are systematic, and they are looking for problems. What they are not incentivized to do is keep the construction schedule. Their timeline and the project’s milestone are not the same thing, and without proactive engagement from the builder, those timelines will drift apart in ways that cost the project significantly at the end.

The builder’s job is to be the schedule driver for the commissioning process to build a relationship with the commissioning agent, to support their work fully, to respond to their issues log quickly, and to pull the commissioning timeline forward aggressively enough that the testing and acceptance phases land before the milestone rather than after it.

The Documents That Govern the Process

Before any commissioning activity can be planned or executed, the field team needs to understand the governing documents. Three of them are foundational. The Owner’s Project Requirements the OPR is the written document capturing the owner’s functional needs, performance criteria, and expectations for the project. It is the condition of satisfaction. It defines what the building has to do for the owner to consider it successful. The Basis of Design the BOD is the designer’s narrative explaining the concepts, assumptions, calculations, and decisions used to meet the OPR. Together, the OPR and BOD define what the building is supposed to be and how the engineering team planned to get there.

The commissioning plan is the road map the commissioning agent will use to define the scope, schedule, roles, responsibilities, and procedures for the commissioning work. It is a large document dense, technical, and easy to defer reading until it feels urgent. Do not defer it. The commissioning plan contains the schedule that the project needs to drive, and that schedule is the single most important thing to identify and act on from day one. On every project, that schedule starts too late. The builder who reads the commissioning plan early and builds the commissioning timeline into the production plan is the builder who avoids the six-week deficit that otherwise becomes a given.

The Sequence That Governs Installation and Testing

The sequence of operations is the written description of how each building system is supposed to operate under all expected conditions how the HVAC system ties into the heating hot water, the chilled water, the duct system, the power, the controls, and the building automation network, and how all of those elements interact in sequence. Reading the sequence of operations from a field builder’s perspective produces three things: a path of construction that reflects how the systems need to be installed to be testable in the right order, visibility into the key interfaces between systems where failures are most likely to surface, and an understanding of how the commissioning agent is going to test each step and specifically where they are going to try to find a failure before clearing the next stage.

The systems manual is the turnover document that compiles the OPR, the BOD, the sequences of operations, the as-builts, the operations and maintenance information, and the test results everything the owner’s operations team needs to understand what was built and how to run it. This document needs to be built as the project progresses, not assembled in the final weeks. Every piece of information that belongs in it should be tracked and compiled in real time during construction. When it is assembled at the end from whatever can be found in the final weeks, the quality is poor, the gaps are numerous, and the owner inherits a turnover package that does not serve them.

Warning Signs That Commissioning Is Already Starting Too Late

If any of these conditions are present on your project, the commissioning schedule is already behind and needs to be pulled forward immediately:

The commissioning agent has not been identified by the time the first MEP systems are being installed on the lower floors.
The commissioning plan exists but has not been integrated into the overall production schedule, meaning commissioning activities and construction activities are being planned independently.
Pre-functional checklists have not been started for any equipment that is already installed and energized.
The controls contractor has not begun developing their graphics and building automation system programming for the equipment that is already on site.
Vertical connectivity the cabling and internet access that allows the building automation system to communicate floor to floor has not been established or planned.

Every one of those conditions represents time that cannot be recovered without compressing something downstream. Catch them early and correct them immediately.

The Pre-Functional Checklist: Where Most of the Work Happens

Of all the commissioning activities, the pre-functional checklist is where the field team will spend the most time and where the most progress can be made by starting sooner. A pre-functional checklist is an installation and startup verification checklist that confirms each piece of equipment is properly installed, connected, and ready for testing. The commissioning agent and the trade partners fill them out the builder’s job is to make sure that process is sequenced correctly and started as early as the installation allows.

The sequence within each floor looks like this: equipment goes in, gets connected on the dry side and the wet side, gets electrically connected, gets controls connected, gets properly braced per the manufacturer requirements, receives the manufacturer startup, goes through the pre-functional checklist, gets connected point-to-point from the equipment to the floor-level controller, and then gets integrated into the vertical connectivity that allows the building automation system to see and control it. That sequence has to be planned and driven from the field, because waiting for the commissioning agent to initiate it guarantees it will start too late.

Test and Balance, Functional Performance, and Acceptance

The later-stage commissioning activities test and balance, functional performance testing, integrated systems testing, and acceptance testing all depend on the pre-functional work being complete. Test and balance measures and adjusts air and water flows in HVAC systems to match design values. It must be coordinated carefully with other testing activities; most importantly, test and balance should not run simultaneously with fire alarm testing when the HVAC system includes fire smoke dampers, because the damper actuations during fire alarm testing will invalidate the air flow measurements.

Functional performance testing confirms that systems operate correctly in all expected modes including the failure modes and emergency conditions that regular installation verification does not test. Integrated systems testing checks how multiple systems work together: does the fire alarm trigger the smoke control system correctly? Does it engage the generator? Do the elevator recall systems function properly? These tests reveal the interface failures that no individual system test would find, and they require every upstream component to be fully commissioned before they can be run.

Acceptance testing is the formal process through which the owner accepts each system as completed and operational. It typically happens in the final weeks or months of the project, coordinated with the engineers and the authority having jurisdiction. A detailed commissioning schedule that maps out acceptance testing dates and works backward from those dates to confirm when each upstream activity needs to be complete is the field team’s most powerful tool for protecting the closeout milestone.

Day One Is Not a Metaphor

The phrase “start on day one” is not rhetorical. On day one of the project, the questions that need answers are: Who is the commissioning agent? Has the commissioning plan been developed? Has the commissioning schedule been reviewed against the production plan? Are there pre-functional checklists associated with any long-lead equipment that is already in procurement? Is the controls contractor engaged and working on their building automation system programming?

None of those questions have answers that can wait for the project to reach a certain percentage complete. By the time the building feels “close enough” to commissioning to start those conversations, the answers should already be in place and the work should already be months into execution.

We are building people who build things. The field builders who master commissioning are building the completion the final, fully verified confirmation that everything that was designed, procured, coordinated, and installed actually works together the way the owner needs it to. That completion is what every family connected to every worker on the project was working toward. It is the purpose of the whole effort, and it starts on day one. If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow including the commissioning discipline that protects the closeout milestone and delivers a building the owner can actually operate.

A Challenge for Builders

On your current project, identify the commissioning agent by name today if you do not already know. Pull the commissioning plan and find the commissioning schedule. Compare that schedule to your production plan and identify the activities that need to begin sooner than they are currently planned. Then have one conversation with the commissioning agent this week about pulling those activities forward. That conversation, repeated consistently throughout the project, is what the difference between a commissioning process that finishes on time and one that adds six weeks to the closeout looks like.

As Jason says, “Plan it first, build it right, finish as you go.”

On we go.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does commissioning need to start on day one instead of near the end of construction?

Because every commissioning activity pre-functional checklists, startup, test and balance, functional performance testing depends on upstream work being complete. When commissioning starts late, every activity in the sequence gets compressed, and the acceptance testing and closeout that the owner’s milestone depends on gets pushed. Starting on day one means the builder is always pulling the commissioning timeline forward rather than chasing it from behind.

What is the commissioning authority’s role, and how should the builder work with them?

The commissioning agent is an independent third party hired by the owner to lead, plan, and document the commissioning process. They are incentivized to find failures which serves the owner but not to protect the construction schedule, which is the builder’s responsibility. The builder should build a genuine working relationship with the commissioning agent, respond to their issues log quickly, and serve as the schedule driver for the entire commissioning process.

What is the most common reason commissioning finishes late?

Pre-functional checklists start too late because the commissioning effort started too late because nobody was asking the right questions on day one. The pattern is consistent across projects: the commissioning plan is a large, technical document that gets deferred, the schedule within it is never integrated into the production plan, and by the time the commissioning activities need to run, the time to run them correctly has already been consumed by construction activities that were not coordinated with the commissioning sequence.

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Making Elevating Construction Surveyors, Part 3 Feat. Brandon Montero

Posted on May 22, 2026May 22, 2026 by Jason Schroeder

Read 20 min

Why Zero Residuals Are Not Good News: Surveying Mastery for Construction Professionals

Zero point zero zero zero. When a trade partner’s data collector flashes that residual after a resection, most people see confirmation that the work is accurate. Brandon Monteiro sees a problem. That perfect number does not mean the work is good. It means there is not enough data to prove the work is bad.

This is one of the most important lessons in the third session of Elevating Construction Surveyors, and it is the kind of insight that separates professionals who produce reliable results from those who produce results that occasionally happen to be correct.

Applied Resection: The Math Behind the Setup

A resection is how a surveyor locates their total station at a convenient vantage point without needing a physical survey nail or rebar beneath the instrument. The instrument shoots angles and distances to at least three known control points, then calculates its own coordinates by triangulating its position from those observations.

This technique is widely used across trades in construction. Electricians use it to locate stub positions for bollards and light poles. HVAC contractors use it to determine overhead penetration locations. Civil layout crews use it to work from inside a busy site where perimeter control points are blocked by structures. The technique is common. The problem, as Brandon puts it, is that it is also very commonly done incorrectly.

Brandon tells the story of a trade partner on a project who was performing a resection using only two control points. Before taking any observations, he had already eyeballed the position of a column corner by taping off chalk lines on the ground, holding his rod at that estimated location, and shooting to it with an eight and a half foot rod held well above his head. The data collector returned exactly zero zero zero on the residual. The contractor was confident. Brandon was not.

Here is why. When you use only two control points for a resection, the instrument has no independent check. If your measurements to both points contain error, the instrument simply accepts both observations and calculates a position that incorporates all of that error without flagging any of it. There is nothing for the residual to compare against. The zero does not mean the work is accurate. It means the system cannot prove it is inaccurate.

When you add a third control point, the instrument now has three observations to reconcile. The residual will not be zero, and that is good. A nonzero residual tells you the magnitude of your error and allows you to evaluate whether it is within acceptable tolerance. Add a fourth or fifth point and you can identify which specific observation is the outlier and remove it, tightening your result further.

The lesson is direct: the more points included in a resection, the more your residuals can reveal. Minimum three points, always. Zero residuals from a two point resection are not a green light. They are a blind spot.

Plan Your Daily Tasks Before You Arrive at the Site

The second concept in this session moves from technical precision to professional discipline: planning the full day before the work begins, not just reviewing the work order.

Brandon draws a distinction that matters. The work order tells you what the task is. A daily plan tells you how the full day is going to unfold, in what order tasks will be performed, what the time constraints are, what resources each stage requires, and where the plan could fall apart if something unexpected happens.

He uses the image of a water hose to make the point. A hose with no nozzle puts water everywhere. The same hose fitted with a narrow nozzle focuses all that force in one precise direction. Showing up to a job site with effort but no plan is the hose with no nozzle. You are expending energy without directing it.

A daily plan includes more than just field tasks. It accounts for reporting back to the office at a specific time, communicating with the team before or after work hours, coordinating with trades who need your results before they can proceed, and protecting time that matters outside of work. Brandon is direct about this: personal time, family commitments, and recovery are also tasks that deserve a slot in the plan, not leftover time after everything else fills in.

The challenge is building the habit. Whether you use a calendar, a spreadsheet, a task management application, or a written list is secondary to the discipline of putting the plan somewhere visible before the day starts. People who plan their days discover where their time actually goes. People who do not plan wonder where it went.

Applied Leveling and Level Loops

The third section covers leveling, one of the most foundational skills in survey and one of the most frequently performed poorly in construction.

Applied leveling means understanding not just how to operate a level but when it is the right instrument for the task, what the math behind the observations looks like, what a properly closed level loop tells you, and how to distribute and mark final adjusted elevations clearly for the people who will use them.

Brandon’s strong recommendation is three wire level loops rather than single wire. Here is the argument. Three wire leveling records top, middle, and bottom wire readings for each observation. This gives you a built in distance check between observations and allows you to see, reading by reading, whether any individual observation is out of range before you close the loop. Single wire leveling gives you less information to work with and fewer opportunities to catch an error in progress.

The common objection is speed. Three wire is slower. Brandon’s response is to get faster at three wire. The same efficiency principles that apply to any field task apply here. Define the workflow, assign roles so no one is waiting on anyone else, and practice until the method becomes fast. Accepting a slower QC method because you have not optimized the better one is the wrong trade.

Level loops close back to the original benchmark. That closure is the quality check. If you surveyed a level loop from a benchmark, set control around a project, and never returned to the benchmark to close the loop, you have no way to know whether error crept into the work. Closing the loop tells you the magnitude of any error and allows you to distribute it through an adjustment rather than having it accumulate at one end of your work.

Jason adds context from his own superintendent and field engineering experience. He has seen elevation problems on multiple projects caused by not using proper leveling techniques. Six inch errors. Eight inch errors. Problems traced back to trigonometric leveling used where a level should have been, or benchmarks that were never independently verified, or level loops that were never closed. In every case, the method was the problem, not the instrument.

Layout Basics: Understanding What the Equipment Is Actually Doing

The final section in this session addresses layout fundamentals, specifically the discipline of performing manual layout operations with a conventional total station rather than relying entirely on robotic operation.

Brandon’s point is subtle but important. When you operate a robotic instrument, the machine turns the angles, finds the prism, and reports a result. You accept the result and move on. The error characteristics of that observation, whether the angle was turned cleanly, whether the observation quality was appropriate for the tolerance required, whether the prism position was actually where the work needed to go: none of that is visible to you. You trust the output.

When you perform the same work conventionally, turning a 90 degree angle manually, flopping the instrument to turn the reverse, and averaging the two to find the true 90, you can see what the instrument is capable of in the physical marks on the ground. You develop calibration for your equipment. You learn when to trust its output and when to apply additional checks.

That calibration is not replaceable by robotic operation. It is built through the experience of working conventionally, making observations, seeing the error, and learning what it means.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow. The survey principles in this series, from resection to leveling to layout, are part of a larger professional standard that applies to anyone who touches control on a construction project. Learn the math. Verify the work. Plan the day. Trust the process, not just the output.

The Challenge From This Session

Brandon’s challenge for resection is direct: if you understand applied resection, spread that training to the trade partners working around you. The vendors who sell and set up equipment for trades do not have the math background to train them properly. When you see a contractor performing a resection with two points and getting excited about zero residuals, you have an opportunity to help them do better work. Better work from every trade means a better project for everyone on site.

On we go.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do trade partners use so few control points in a resection if more points produce better results?

Usually because no one has taught them the math behind the method. Vendors prioritize getting people operational quickly, not training them on the statistics behind their observations. The trade partner with two control points is doing what they were shown to do, not what produces reliable results.

When is trigonometric leveling appropriate versus using a level?

A level produces more accurate elevation transfers over short to medium distances. Trigonometric leveling using a total station introduces angle based error that compounds over distance. For project benchmark control and transferring elevations to the site, a level with proper three wire technique and a closed loop is almost always the right choice.

How do you handle a situation where a trade partner’s work does not meet accuracy requirements but they are confident in their results?

Ask to see the number of control points used and the residuals. If the resection used fewer than three points, the zero residual is not a valid quality check. Walk them through what a three point resection would show. In most cases, the trade partner is not being careless. They simply were not trained on why more points matter.

How detailed should a daily survey plan be?

Detailed enough to sequence the tasks in logical order, account for time constraints, identify what each person on the crew will be doing at each stage, and flag the moments where something unexpected could derail the plan. It does not need to be a formal document. It does need to exist before the crew leaves the office.

What is the most common leveling mistake on construction projects?

Not closing the level loop back to the original benchmark. An open loop gives you no independent check on your work. Elevation errors that go undetected at the leveling stage become structural problems later. Close the loop. Every time.

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From Chaos to Calm Predictability – Part 1, Feat. Tyler Cormeny and Harry Schmidt

Posted on May 22, 2026May 22, 2026 by Jason Schroeder

Read 18 min

The Overnight Success That Took 15 Years: O’Shea Builders’ Lean Journey

People look at what O’Shea Builders has accomplished in the last 18 months and ask how they got there so quickly. Tyler Cormany and Harry Schmidt, VP and Director of Business Strategies at O’Shea Builders, have the same answer every time: it was an overnight success that took 15 years to build.

That is not false modesty. It is a precise description of how transformation actually happens in construction, and it is the most important lesson any company on a lean or operational excellence journey needs to hear.

The Flywheel in Real Life

Harry Schmidt walked through O’Shea Builders’ revenue history against the backdrop of Jim Collins’ flywheel concept from Good to Great. The pattern was unmistakable. From 1992 through the mid-1990s, growth was steady but unremarkable. Then a series of deliberate investments, each one building on the last, began to compound in ways that only became visible much later.

The first inflection came in the late 1990s when president Mike O’Shea had an epiphany: leadership matters. He shifted his focus to leading the company and finding the right people, and the revenue curve began to bend upward.

The second inflection came between 2006 and 2011 with a series of key hires, including Tyler himself. Mike understood that the who on the team determines the ceiling, and he built accordingly. But the most significant investment in this phase was hiring a dedicated Director of Organizational Development focused entirely on growing people. At a company of 35 employees, that was a bold bet.

The third inflection came in the 2017 to 2019 period with discipline action: structured process implementation, lean principles applied at the project level, and the Last Planner System creating a stable environment where all the previous investment in people could finally express itself.

The fourth leap, Harry believes, will come through intelligent leverage of technology, not just purchasing it, but building the capability to actually use it.

On the revenue scale Harry described, the company moved from roughly 0.2 in those early years to near 0.8 after the people investment, to 1.4 with disciplined focus, and then shot to 2.5 and beyond with the breakthrough of discipline action. In real terms: they roughly doubled the number of professional staff from 30 to 60 full time equivalents and achieved approximately 10 times their revenue from the time the organizational development investment began.

What the Lean Principle of Respect for People Actually Looks Like

Harry was clear that the people phase of this journey is not just a well conceived cultural initiative. It is the lean principle of respect for people applied with full organizational commitment.

O’Shea currently has two people dedicated entirely to training and developing their 60 production staff. Tess, their Director of Organizational Development, and Josh have spent years building the learning infrastructure of the company. The investment looked like overhead. The return has been compounding ever since.

Just before this podcast recorded, O’Shea Builders was notified that Training Magazine had selected them as one of the top 100 training organizations in the world. A regional construction company. Recognized globally for how they develop their people.

Harry also has three people dedicated to business strategy. Five total overhead positions, all focused on making the other 60 people better at what they do. In an industry that typically views any non billable position as a cost to minimize, this is a fundamentally different philosophy.

Why the Last Planner System Was the Catalyst

Tyler made a point that deserves to be heard by every company investing in leadership development without a corresponding investment in operational systems.

O’Shea had been building great leaders and great people for years. And they were not seeing the full return on that investment on their project sites. The reason, Tyler explained, was that they were still managing chaos. Without a stable project environment, the trained leaders had nowhere to express what they had learned. They were applying 21st century leadership skills to a 20th century project management structure, and the structure was winning.

When they implemented the Last Planner System 18 months ago, everything changed. The stable environment created the conditions where the leaders they had developed could actually lead. The superintendents who had been trained to be collaborative, communicative, and crew focused could now operate that way because the system supported it.

This is the sequence that Harry articulated with clarity:

Build the people through leadership development and a culture of respect
Create a stable project environment through systems like Last Planner and Takt planning
With stability established, variation and waste become visible and removable
With waste removed, flow becomes achievable
With flow operating, continuous improvement tools like prefabrication, kitting, and 5S become accessible

Most companies try to jump to step four or five. O’Shea earned each step in order. That sequencing is why the results are durable rather than temporary.

The Evidence From the Field

Tyler shared an email from a trade partner who had experienced friction with O’Shea on previous projects. This contractor works on roughly 50 projects per year and has been in the industry for 15 years. After being on an O’Shea project where a senior superintendent was fully running Last Planner and Takt planning, he sent an unsolicited message.

In 15 years, he had never been on a project that flowed and was predictable the way this one did. He described what he was witnessing using the exact vocabulary that O’Shea uses internally, words like flow, predictability, and collaborative leadership, without having been through any of O’Shea’s training. He had simply experienced the project and named what he felt.

That is the goal. When a trade partner who had previously had friction with your company sends you an email saying they have never experienced anything like this in 15 years, the system is working.

The Challenge Harry Left Behind

Harry’s challenge was specifically for companies who have been on a lean journey for six to twelve months and are beginning to feel like they have figured it out. The temptation is to carry that momentum onto the next project and assume the new team will naturally catch up.

They will not. A trade partner who is new to your project has not traveled the path you have been on. A new subcontractor, even if they are a familiar company, may have different people on this project who have never experienced a well run Last Planner environment. You have to go back and pick them up. You have to bring them from unaware to aware before the system can function the way you know it can.

Patience and the willingness to re onboard, re explain, and re invest in each new project team member is not a sign of slow progress. It is what sustains the gains.

The Challenge Tyler Left Behind

Tyler’s challenge was about the tools. Everyone has tools. Software, scheduling platforms, prefabrication systems, BIM workflows. The tools are not the differentiator. The people using them are. If you put a sophisticated lean planning tool into the hands of a team without the culture, the leadership, and the stable environment to support it, they will use it the same way they used the old tool. A hammer used like a screwgun produces the same poor results regardless of how advanced the hammer is.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow. O’Shea Builders’ journey is a case study in what is possible when leadership, people development, and operational systems are built in the right order and sustained over time.

The lesson is not that 15 years of work is required before anything changes. The lesson is that the changes which last are the ones built on a real foundation. Start building the foundation today.

On we go.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you know if your company is ready to implement Last Planner or Takt planning?

You do not have to be fully ready. Commit to building the environment that makes the system work, which means leadership engagement, a willingness to train, and patience with the learning curve. The stable environment Tyler described was created by the Last Planner implementation over 18 months of consistent effort, not before it.

What is the right sequence for a company starting a lean journey?

Start with people. Build the leadership culture and the organizational development infrastructure before investing in process tools. When the people are ready, introduce the process systems. When the process creates stability, use that stability to identify and remove waste. Then flow. Then continuous improvement.

How do you justify the overhead cost of dedicated training and development roles?

O’Shea doubled staff and achieved roughly 10 times the revenue from the period when those investments began. The overhead created capacity, capability, and culture that produced returns no billable hire could have generated alone. The question is not whether you can afford it. It is whether you can afford to keep growing without it.

What do you do when new trade partners or team members do not understand your lean culture?

Go back and start from the beginning with them. You cannot expect new participants to catch up to a journey they were not on. Treat every new team member as someone who needs to be brought from unaware to aware before they can contribute at the level the system requires.

How does a company maintain lean momentum across multiple projects simultaneously?

By developing enough internal capability that the knowledge is not concentrated in one or two people. O’Shea’s investment in organizational development created a distributed leadership model where the culture and the systems are carried by the team rather than by any single individual. That is the only way the flywheel keeps spinning across an entire portfolio.

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The Ten Commandments of Change Orders

Posted on May 22, 2026May 22, 2026 by Jason Schroeder

Read 18 min

The Ten Commandments of Construction Change Orders Every Project Team Must Know

Are you stomping ants while elephants run wild? Are you straining at gnats and swallowing camels? That is how Petty Coach Schmidt introduces their Ten Commandments of Construction Change Orders, and it is exactly the right framing. Most project teams spend enormous energy on small inefficiencies while losing thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars on change orders that were handled poorly, undocumented, or simply never collected.

Jason Schroeder came across this framework at one of Petty Coach Schmidt’s Micro Monday training sessions and immediately knew it needed wider reach. These are not complex legal principles. They are the practical discipline that separates project teams who manage changes well from the ones who give away their margin without realizing it.

Commandment One: Know Thy Contract

You cannot do well with changes if you cannot identify how the change departed from the original agreement. The original contract is the rulebook. If you do not know it, you are playing a game without knowing the rules.

Jason’s go to example here is project manager Ryan Young, someone he considers among the best he has ever worked alongside. Ryan’s discipline was to go through every contract and distill the key provisions the entire project team needed to understand. Not just the PM. Not just the executive. The whole team. He would put contract inclusions and exclusions into a binder so that when questions came up in the field about whether something was in scope, the answer was already organized and accessible. That discipline protected the project from arguments that should never have happened.

Know your contract before a change request hits your desk. Know it before a trade partner asks whether something is covered. The contract is always the starting point.

Commandment Two: Do Not Give Away Thy Leverage

The owner wants the project complete, including all changes. You want compensation and to deliver value. Both parties have something the other needs. But if you give the owner what they want without securing what you deserve, you have surrendered your position permanently.

Ryan Young’s practice here was also instructive: nothing got done in the field without a PCO number, a potential change order tracking identifier logged into the project management system. T&M tickets, contingency exposures, scope additions: all of it had a number and a home in the system before the work began. And the team never started change work without financial approval. That project finished on time and within budget. The connection is not coincidental.

Leverage exists in the moment when both parties still need each other. Once you have performed the work and accepted a vague assurance of resolution later, the leverage is gone. Protect it before you spend it.

Commandment Three: Never Perform Change Work Without a Written, Signed, Authorized Change Order

This one gets its own emphasis because it gets violated so often. Not a verbal agreement. Not an email chain that implies approval. Not a handshake on the job site. A written, signed, authorized change order. Period. Under any circumstance. For any reason.

Jason lived this standard as a superintendent and says it is both possible and the right way to operate. The temptation to start work first and sort out the paperwork later is how projects lose money that never comes back.

Commandment Four: Depend Not on the Attorney to Bail You Out

Use attorneys for advice. Build your competency in managing changes so that attorney involvement is never necessary. Most change order disputes that end up in legal proceedings started as management failures that compounded over time. Fight your own battles by not creating the conditions for battles in the first place.

Commandment Five: If Thou Ask Not, Thou Receive Not

If you do not request full compensation, you will not receive it. There are almost no cases where payment is made for items left out of a change request. Owners do not volunteer to pay for things you forgot to bill.

Jason spent years watching project teams leave money on the table because they were afraid to ask for the full amount. His experience was that when the request is right, when it reflects actual cost and actual time and can be supported, owners say yes the large majority of the time. Not because owners are generous but because a well prepared, reasonable change request reflects a professional team managing the project with discipline. Ask for what you are owed. Prepare the support. Submit the request.

Commandment Six: Time Is Money

Change orders cover both cost and time. Read the contract rules on both. Most project teams are disciplined about pricing the direct cost of a change and negligent about quantifying and requesting the time impact. Schedule delays, productivity impacts, extended general conditions: all of these flow from changes and all of them have legitimate value in a properly prepared change request.

Know the rules. Price the full impact. Request both.

Commandment Seven: Surprise Not Thy Owner

Owners have budgets and management options. The earlier they know about a potential cost increase, the more options they have to address it. The later they find out, the fewer options they have and the more damage is done to the relationship.

Jason tells the story of a project team that absorbed cost after cost, trying to handle it internally, and finished the project significantly over budget without telling the owner in real time. The project was beautifully built. The owner was furious about the financial surprise, and that team never worked with that owner again. Jason was assigned to the follow on project because that team had burned the relationship.

Here is what that looks like in practice:

Early notification of a potential change, even before costs are fully quantified, gives the owner time to plan
Regular updates on the financial trajectory of the project protect the relationship
A surprise at closeout is not a billing issue, it is a trust issue, and trust issues end relationships

Communicate early. Communicate often. Owners are business partners, not adversaries.

Commandment Eight: Be Persistent

Persistence gets results. Change order management requires consistent follow through. Submit the request, follow up, push through the administrative friction, and keep going until the change is approved and the money is collected. Most project teams do excellent work on the field side and then let change orders age out through inaction.

Commandment Nine: Thy Bargaining Power Equals That of Others

Your bargaining power in a change negotiation is equal to the owner’s unless you have done one of three things: failed to know the rules, thrown away your leverage, or chosen not to use your leverage. All three are self inflicted. The contract gives you rights. Know them. Protect them. Use them.

Commandment Ten: Thy Job Is Not Finished Until the Money Be Collected

The change order is not closed when the work is done. It is not closed when the paperwork is submitted. It is closed when the money is collected, the lien waivers are exchanged, and the account is reconciled. Closeout is where change order management most often breaks down.

Jason describes creating a streamlined system for change order closeout after seeing a project where the team had done excellent work but left open change orders at the end of the job and created friction with an owner who had been otherwise satisfied. The system reconciled all outstanding items between the GC and all trade partners, ensuring that when the team demobilized, everything was collected and resolved.

Nobody makes a lot of money on change orders. The best outcome is to get them done correctly and collect what is owed. The worst is to do the work, let it drag, and never collect.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow. Change order discipline is part of the same professional standard as schedule management and site cleanliness. It is not a back office concern. It is project management.

The Challenge for Your Next Project

Print these ten commandments and put them somewhere visible for your project team. Then audit your current change order process against each one. Where are you strong? Where are you giving away margin without knowing it?

As the old legal principle holds: a right not asserted is a right not protected. Every change on your project that is not properly documented, tracked, priced, and collected is money that belongs to your company being left behind. Stop stomping ants. Manage the elephants.

On we go.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the single most common change order mistake on construction projects?

Starting change work before receiving a written, signed, authorized change order. Once the work is done and the owner has what they wanted, your leverage is gone and collection becomes exponentially harder.

How do you handle a situation where the owner is pressuring you to start work before the change order is approved?

Document the request in writing, state your position clearly, and do not start the work. If the owner insists, escalate to your project executive or legal team. The pressure to start work early is almost always about the owner’s schedule preference. Your financial protection is your responsibility.

When is the right time to notify an owner about a potential change?

As early as possible, even before you have a fully developed cost. A preliminary notification that says “we have encountered a condition that may result in a change, we will have pricing to you by this date” gives the owner time to plan and demonstrates professional management.

How do you ensure trade partners are managing their change orders properly so GC closeout goes smoothly?

Set expectations in the subcontract and reinforce them throughout the project. Require PCO numbers for all potential changes. Establish a regular cadence for change order reconciliation, not just at closeout. The GC’s change order health is directly connected to how well trade partners are managed in this area.

What does a good change order closeout process look like?

All open PCOs reconciled and closed or withdrawn. All approved change orders with signed documentation and collected payment. All lien waivers exchanged. A clear accounting of what was billed, what was collected, and what remains, with zero open items before the team demobilizes.

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The Upside of Stress!!!

Posted on May 22, 2026May 22, 2026 by Jason Schroeder

Read 18 min

Stop Running From Stress: What Construction Leaders Get Wrong About Pressure

Here is a finding that feels backward at first: people who experience high levels of stress but believe that stress is a normal and helpful part of life have better health outcomes than people with low stress levels. Better than the low stress group. The people carrying a heavy load and viewing it as meaningful outlive the people who have figured out how to avoid the load entirely.

Jason Schroeder came across this research in the book The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal during a stretch when business was pressing hard, finances were tight, and the grinding pace of building Elevate Construction was wearing on him. He was doing what most people do when stress shows up: trying to get rid of it. The book reframed everything.

Lesson One: Stress Is Only Harmful If You Believe It Is

The original study McGonigal cites set out to show that high stress increases the risk of early death. It did. High levels of stress increased the chances of premature death by 43%. That number sounds like the case for every relaxation retreat and every doctor telling you to slow down.

But then the data broke open. That 43% figure only applied to people who believed their stress was harming them and also experienced high levels of stress. The people who had equally high stress levels but did not believe stress was hurting them were actually the least likely to die early in the entire study. Not slightly less likely. The least likely.

The differentiating variable was not the amount of stress. It was the interpretation of the stress. A mind that frames pressure as natural and meaningful produces a completely different physiological and behavioral response than a mind that frames it as a threat.

The book draws a direct parallel to the growth mindset versus fixed mindset distinction: believing that stress is a helpful part of life is more powerful than the facts about stress itself. That belief leads to seeking help when needed, viewing stressful events as challenges rather than threats, and developing better strategies for navigating difficulty. The opposite belief leads to avoidance, which compounds the damage.

This showed up in a study with hotel housekeeping staff. One group was told that their daily work, the lifting, moving, and physical effort of cleaning rooms, was legitimate exercise with real health benefits. The control group was not told anything different about their work. The group that reframed their daily activity as healthy exercise lost more weight and showed better health markers than the control group, without changing a single thing about the actual work. Same tasks. Different interpretation. Different body.

Lesson Two: Stress and Happiness Belong Together

The stress paradox is this: a completely stress free life cannot be a happy one. The happiest and longest lived populations in the world are not the most leisured. Japan, which carries some of the highest stress levels in developed nations, also has one of the highest life expectancies. Countries with the most leisure time and the least daily stress often show the opposite pattern.

A 2013 study by Roy Baumeister found that people consistently rate their most stressful experiences as also being their most meaningful. The most successful people tend to be extraordinarily busy and deeply invested in demanding work. The stress of that work is not incidental to its meaning. It is part of the meaning.

Jason recognized this pattern in his own life. When he left the stability of a director level construction career to build Elevate Construction, the financial security disappeared. Every day brought a new challenge that had no precedent from the day before. By the conventional measure of comfort, things got harder. By the measure of engagement, purpose, and forward motion, everything improved.

He also sees the inverse pattern constantly: people who have stagnated. The early retiree with no goals. The professional who coasted into comfort. They report the same kind of hollowness, the same restlessness, the same quiet dissatisfaction that comes not from having too much to carry but too little.

Stagnation and ease never was happiness. Construction professionals who understand this have a different relationship with demanding projects, difficult clients, and the relentless pace of building in the field. The pressure is not the problem. It is the arena.

Lesson Three: You Can Channel Stress Into Performance

Before a presentation, which instruction produces better results: “I am calm” or “I am excited”? Harvard Professor Alison Brooks tested both. The group that told themselves they were excited was rated as more confident and more compelling. Not because they had less anxiety. Because they channeled the same physical arousal state into forward energy rather than trying to suppress it.

The body’s stress response, the elevated heart rate, the sharpened attention, the heightened awareness, is not noise to be dampened. It is signal that can be redirected. The question is whether you interpret it as fear or as readiness. The body does not know the difference. Your interpretation does.

This same principle showed up in PTSD research. People who produced more cortisol during traumatic events were actually less likely to develop PTSD afterward. The stress hormone, doing what it is designed to do in the body without interference, supported processing and recovery. The instinct to suppress the stress response, to calm down at all costs, to flatten the experience as quickly as possible, can interrupt a process the body knows how to run.

Here is what that looks like on a construction project:

A superintendent heading into a tough owner meeting who tells themselves they are ready and fired up will perform differently than one who is trying not to look nervous
A project manager navigating a compressed schedule who channels the urgency into sharpened planning instead of catastrophizing will find better solutions faster
A foreman running a crew through a difficult pour who reframes the difficulty as the opportunity to show what this team can do will get more from the people around them

The internal narrative is not decoration. It directly shapes the physiological state and the quality of what follows.

What This Means for Construction Culture

The construction industry has a complicated relationship with stress. On one side, there is a culture that glorifies grinding to the point of burnout, where stress becomes a badge of honor disconnected from actual performance. On the other side, there is an emerging push toward comfort and minimizing difficulty, as if a reduced challenge load will produce a more engaged workforce.

Both miss the point. The goal is not more stress or less stress. It is meaningful stress, the kind that comes from doing work that matters, facing challenges you are equipped for with a team that is pulling together. That kind of stress is productive. It builds people. It creates the conditions for real performance and real satisfaction.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow. The leaders who thrive under pressure are not the ones who feel no pressure. They are the ones who have learned to interpret it as information, channel it into focus, and use it as fuel.

The Challenge for This Week

Notice the next moment when stress shows up. Do not try to suppress it. Instead, ask: what is this telling me? Is this the signal that something important is at stake and I am invested in getting it right? Can I use this energy to sharpen my thinking rather than to catastrophize?

The reframe does not erase the difficulty. It changes your relationship with it. And that relationship, not the difficulty itself, determines whether the stress improves your performance or undermines it.

As Theodore Roosevelt said, “Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” Construction is exactly that. Own the pressure that comes with it.

On we go.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does reframing stress actually work, or is it just positive thinking?

The research McGonigal cites shows measurable physiological differences between people who interpret stress as helpful versus harmful. The reframe changes how the body processes the stress response, not just how the person feels about it in the moment.

How do you distinguish between productive stress and burnout?

Productive stress is connected to meaningful work and comes with recovery. Burnout is what happens when the load never lets up and the meaning disconnects from the effort. The goal is not to eliminate recovery and push indefinitely. It is to stop running from the pressure that comes with doing things that matter.

What does this mean for leaders trying to protect their teams from overwork?

The goal is not to remove challenge from people’s work. It is to make sure the challenge is meaningful, the support is present, and the recovery is real. A team stretched on a project they believe in, with a leader who has their back, will handle pressure better than a team doing easy work in a dysfunctional environment.

How does this connect to the construction industry’s mental health challenges?

The industry’s mental health challenges are not caused by difficult work. They are caused by isolation, lack of support, and disconnection from meaning. Reframing stress as productive opens a path toward engaging with difficulty in a healthier way rather than either suppressing it or being defeated by it.

Can this mindset be taught to a crew or project team, not just individuals?

Yes. The way a leader frames challenges in front of their team shapes how the team interprets those challenges. A superintendent who says “this is a tough pour and we are going to nail it” creates a different team response than one who communicates anxiety without direction. The leader’s internal narrative becomes the team’s external culture over time.

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Making Elevating Construction Surveyors, Part 2, Feat. Brandon Montero

Posted on May 22, 2026May 22, 2026 by Jason Schroeder

Read 21 min

Five More Habits That Separate Good Surveyors From Great Ones

In the first part of this conversation, Brandon Monteiro and Jason Schroeder covered the foundational habits of situational awareness, task grounded preparation, tool belt refinement, work order envisioning, and plan reading. In this session, they go deeper into the habits that define mastery: understanding the math, using equipment with precision, keeping notes that serve as professional records, learning the CAD environment, and managing error proactively.

These are not beginner concepts. They are the habits that the best surveyors in the field apply at every level of their career, every day, on every task.

If You Do Not Know the Math, You Cannot Check the Math

Brandon tells a story that is hard to forget. Property corners had been set in the wrong place on a job. In reviewing the field book of the crew lead responsible, Brandon discovered something that explained everything: the crew lead did not know the math for doubling an angle. He knew that the company required him to double angles, so he was writing down his first turned angle and then some other number in the field book. There was no back checking math that would have flagged anything wrong. Errors compounded silently through the entire task.

The math is not just a formality in surveying. It is the only mechanism that tells you whether the work is done. And if you do not understand the math, you cannot check whether the instrument’s output is correct, whether your calculations hold, or whether the numbers in your field book reflect reality.

Brandon’s challenge is direct: do not depend on the data collector to do your thinking for you. The data collector does not know what a wrong answer looks like. You do, if you know the math. Make it a standard practice to understand the math behind every task you perform and to QC your work in accordance with that math. If you are not yet at that level, the path is repetition. Put yourself in positions where you have to perform the math functions. Chase the thing that is uncomfortable until it belongs to you.

If you do not know the math, you will not be able to check the math. And the work that cannot be checked will not be caught when it is wrong.

The Work Is Done When the Math Checks Out, Not When the Task Is Finished

Before moving to equipment, Brandon returns to something from the math section that deserves its own emphasis. He has seen too many surveyors run level loops, come back with numbers that do not check out, and essentially complete the task for nothing. The field work was done. The math was not. That means the work was not done.

This reframe applies everywhere in construction, not just surveying. The pour is not done when the concrete is placed. It is done when the placement is verified. The layout is not done when the marks are set. It is done when the QC confirms they are correct. The schedule is not done when it is printed. It is done when it reflects reality and the team can use it.

Build the habit of knowing what a complete result looks like before you go to the field, so you know when you have actually achieved it.

Learn the Equipment Beyond What You Were Told

Most field professionals learn equipment the way they were shown by whoever trained them. Brandon’s challenge is to go further. Read the instrument manuals. Watch instructional videos. Understand not just how to operate a piece of equipment but what its inherent error characteristics are, what best practice methods exist for each task type, and how to use the equipment to QC your own work.

He also introduces a discipline worth internalizing at any career stage: time yourself and beat your time. If you are learning instrument setup, measure how long it takes you. Then measure it again in a few months. Continuous improvement is not an attitude. It is a practice. It requires measurement.

The broader question Brandon keeps returning to is: with your mind in the on position, is every step in the process actually necessary? Are you creating rework somewhere? Is there a faster or more accurate method that you have not explored yet? The surveyor who asks those questions and chases down the answers is the one who compounds their capability over time. The one who does not is the one who has been doing it the same way for twenty years.

Always have room to broaden your knowledge and grow.

Notes Are Your Professional Record

Brandon teaches surveying at Arizona State University and has reviewed field notes from beginner to intermediate level. His observation is consistent: a large portion of task failures trace back to inadequate note keeping. Not enough starting information. Incorrect formatting that made the math hard to follow. Descriptions that only the person who wrote them could understand.

The field notes are often the only official record of what actually happened on site. The data collector stores point values, but notes can contain everything else: instrument and rod height revisions, fuller descriptions, sketches that explain how the work was carried out. In many cases, a great set of field notes can become the exhibit shared directly with the project team, saving hours of CAD drafting work on the back end.

Every type of survey task has a note keeping format that makes sense for it. Three wire leveling, traverse work, monitoring surveys: each has a format that allows others to follow the thought process, verify the math, and understand what was done without having been there. Learning those formats is part of becoming a professional.

If note keeping is uncomfortable for you, that is the signal. Chase the area that is uncomfortable until it belongs to you. Look up the format for the specific task you are performing. Practice it until it is a reflex.

Learn CAD to Understand What Your Client Receives

Brandon offers a framing that reorients the way most field surveyors think about their work: your client is the draftsperson. Not the project owner. Not the civil engineer. The draftsperson is the person who will receive your data and turn it into a deliverable that the engineer will use to design the site. If your data is difficult to interpret, if the lines do not connect, if the coding is inconsistent, you have failed your client.

That means the surveyor who understands AutoCAD, even at a foundational level, will perform better field work. They will code and label things in ways the draftsperson can render. They will take photos that resolve ambiguity. They will draw field sketches that translate directly into exhibits. They will collect the data the draftsperson needs to build a clean surface, not just the data that seemed complete at the time.

Brandon’s practical challenge: take your own topographic work home. Try to connect all the dots in AutoCAD. Create a surface from the point data. See if what you collected actually builds into what was supposed to be built. That exercise will tell you more about the gaps in your field practice than any instruction from a supervisor.

Managing Error Is Not Optional

Error creeps into every survey task. Human error, instrument error, environmental error: it is unavoidable. The professional’s job is not to eliminate it entirely but to foresee it, plan around it, and use best practices that average it out or alleviate it altogether.

Brandon uses the phrase “it’s on the cap” to describe the mindset he is pushing against. A measurement that falls somewhere on the survey cap is technically acceptable. But acceptable and accurate are not the same thing. A five second gun that reports exactly 90 degrees is reporting something that could be up to five seconds off by construction. Is there a best practice that eliminates that error? Is there a different tool that backs up the measurement? Is there a way to alleviate the error at the source, like using a mini prism at ground level instead of a rod that introduces angular error?

These are the questions that professionals ask during the task, not after. Building the habit of asking “how does what I am doing introduce error, and is there a better way?” is what separates surveyors who produce reliable results from surveyors who produce results that mostly check out.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow. The habits in this conversation, and in the Elevating Construction Surveyors book being built from these sessions, are part of a broader framework for professional development in the field.

The Challenge Across All Ten Habits

Jason closes this session with an observation worth carrying: these concepts are not just for surveyors. If you write a book for superintendents, ninety percent of the concepts apply to project managers. These are universal truths about professional excellence in construction. Absorb your environment. Prepare specifically for the task. Know the math. Verify the work. Keep records that others can follow. Understand the full process from field to finished product. Manage error proactively.

Whether you are holding a rod or running a billion dollar project, the discipline of asking “am I doing this right, and do I know how to verify that?” is what separates the professional from the technician.

On we go.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you start learning the math for surveying if your training never covered it properly?

Start by identifying the math behind the specific tasks you perform most often. Look up the formulas. Practice working through them by hand alongside your data collector outputs. When the numbers match, you understand the process. When they do not, you have found a learning opportunity. Put yourself in positions where you have to perform the math functions rather than always deferring to equipment.

What is the minimum level of AutoCAD knowledge a field surveyor needs?

Enough to understand how a draftsperson will work with your data. You do not need to be a CAD technician. You do need to understand how point data becomes a surface, how line work needs to be coded for clean rendering, and what a drafter requires to produce the final product without rework. That understanding will change what you collect and how you document it.

How should a surveyor decide which error reduction practices to apply on a given task?

Start by identifying where in the task human or instrument error is most likely to creep in. Then ask what the cost of that error would be. High stakes tasks with tight tolerances warrant more rigorous error management. The key is making that assessment consciously rather than defaulting to the same practices regardless of the task.

What makes a set of field notes truly professional?

Anyone who was not present should be able to read the notes, follow the thought process, verify the math, and understand exactly what was done and why. If the notes require the person who wrote them to explain them, they are not complete. Great notes include full descriptions, sketches, instrument and rod height records, and enough detail that they could function as a standalone exhibit.

How do these surveying habits connect to the broader principles Jason teaches for construction leadership?

Directly. The habit of envisioning the full process before performing it mirrors the principle of planning before building. The discipline of verifying math before calling work complete mirrors the standard of finishing as you go. The practice of continuous tool refinement mirrors the lean principle of constant improvement. The specific application is different. The professional discipline underneath it is identical.

If you want to learn more we have:

Discover Jason’s Expertise:

General Offerings

Company Offerings

Systems

Why Zero Residuals Are Not Good News: Surveying Mastery for Construction Professionals

Applied Resection: The Math Behind the Setup

Plan Your Daily Tasks Before You Arrive at the Site

Applied Leveling and Level Loops

Layout Basics: Understanding What the Equipment Is Actually Doing

The Challenge From This Session

Frequently Asked Questions

The Overnight Success That Took 15 Years: O’Shea Builders’ Lean Journey

The Flywheel in Real Life

What the Lean Principle of Respect for People Actually Looks Like

Why the Last Planner System Was the Catalyst

The Evidence From the Field

The Challenge Harry Left Behind

The Challenge Tyler Left Behind

Frequently Asked Questions

The Ten Commandments of Construction Change Orders Every Project Team Must Know

Commandment One: Know Thy Contract

Commandment Two: Do Not Give Away Thy Leverage

Commandment Three: Never Perform Change Work Without a Written, Signed, Authorized Change Order

Commandment Four: Depend Not on the Attorney to Bail You Out

Commandment Five: If Thou Ask Not, Thou Receive Not

Commandment Six: Time Is Money

Commandment Seven: Surprise Not Thy Owner

Commandment Eight: Be Persistent

Commandment Nine: Thy Bargaining Power Equals That of Others

Commandment Ten: Thy Job Is Not Finished Until the Money Be Collected

The Challenge for Your Next Project

Frequently Asked Questions

Stop Running From Stress: What Construction Leaders Get Wrong About Pressure

Lesson One: Stress Is Only Harmful If You Believe It Is

Lesson Two: Stress and Happiness Belong Together

Lesson Three: You Can Channel Stress Into Performance

What This Means for Construction Culture

The Challenge for This Week

Frequently Asked Questions

Five More Habits That Separate Good Surveyors From Great Ones

If You Do Not Know the Math, You Cannot Check the Math

The Work Is Done When the Math Checks Out, Not When the Task Is Finished

Learn the Equipment Beyond What You Were Told

Notes Are Your Professional Record

Learn CAD to Understand What Your Client Receives

Managing Error Is Not Optional

The Challenge Across All Ten Habits

Frequently Asked Questions

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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)

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

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

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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