The Impact of Having the Wrong Trades

If You Have the Wrong Trades, You Don’t Have Pre-Con

There is a complaint that shows up in boot camps, in coaching calls, in direct messages, and on job sites across the industry. It goes something like this: “Jason, I believe in what you’re teaching. I want to implement it. But my trades won’t show up to meetings. They won’t do what I say. They won’t participate. I have the wrong trades.” And for a long time, when that complaint arrived, there was no good answer for it because the experience of consistently working with performing, participatory, committed trade partners made it hard to understand how the alternative was even possible.

And then the answer arrived, and it is one of those answers that is so clear once you see it that you cannot unsee it. If you have the wrong trades, you do not have a successful preconstruction system. That is the diagnosis. Not the trades, not the job site team, not the superintendent’s leadership style. The preconstruction process, the system responsible for selecting, interviewing, qualifying, and onboarding trade partners before a single nail is driven, is where the problem was created. And that means it is also where the problem gets fixed.

Why This Complaint Feels Impossible to Solve From the Field

Here is the frustration that makes this situation so difficult. A superintendent who inherits a project with non-performing trade partners did not choose those partners. They arrived to a site that was already set up with the wrong people, and they are expected to produce results that the selection process made nearly impossible to achieve. Every meeting where trades do not show up, every zone where crews are unavailable, every coordination session that produces nothing, these are field-level symptoms of an upstream system failure that nobody on the job site team can unilaterally correct.

The response to this from the outside is often a leadership critique. The super is being weak. The super is not holding the trades accountable. The super needs to lead harder. Some of that may occasionally be fair. But when trades genuinely do not want to participate, genuinely do not show up to meetings, and genuinely do not perform and the leadership response has been firm, fair, and consistent, the problem predates the superintendent’s arrival. The system failed them. They did not fail the system. And the system failure happened in pre-construction, not in the field.

What Actually Happens at Bioscience Research Laboratory

Here is a story that illustrates what a functioning pre-construction selection process looks like. On the Bioscience Research Laboratory, the approach to trade partner selection was treated as a production system decision, not as a procurement formality. Critical trades were not just bid out, they were interviewed. The project manager, superintendent, project director, and project engineers participated in those interviews. Trade partners were given a clear picture of what would be expected from them: meeting participation, pull planning collaboration, the production rhythms, the coordination standards. Buy-in was obtained before selection was made.

Trades that did not pre-qualify did not get selected. Trades that were not willing to participate in the production system did not get selected. When trades were brought on throughout the project, the interview process continued including conversations with the foreman and superintendent leads that would be assigned to the scope. The project team was not just selecting companies. They were selecting people. And the production system they were building needed those people to be committed before the first shovel hit the ground.

Now, even with that process, challenges arose. The concrete trade on that project struggled, not from attitude or complacency, but from a leadership gap that made it hard for them to put the right people in the right seats at the right time. That is a different kind of problem, and it was addressed differently: the project team stepped in and took over coordination of that scope for a period, not as a punishment or a hostile takeover, but as a support measure while the trade found its footing. That is what a functioning project team does for a trade partner who is willing but struggling. It is completely different from what you do with a trade that is simply non-performing and uninterested.

Why Ethically, the Job Site Cannot Own This Problem

Here is the point that carries the most weight, and it is one that every project director, project executive, and company leader should hear directly. You cannot ethically or morally set up a job site with non-performing trade partners and then hand that problem to the field team to figure out. That is not a staffing challenge. It is a leadership abdication. The job site team, the superintendent, the field engineers, the trade foremen are the value creators. They are the people who produce the work. Loading them with the weight of managing a trade selection failure that was made above them, without support, is using the people who can least afford to absorb the cost to pay for a decision they had no part in making.

If the plan requires burnout to succeed, the plan is broken, not the people. And a project plan built on non-performing trade partners requires burnout to succeed almost by definition. The field team will spend the project firefighting, chasing, compensating, covering, and absorbing, not producing. The superintendent who gets blamed for a project that runs poorly when the trades were wrong from day one was set up by the preconstruction failure, not by any failure of their own.

What a Stronger Pre-Construction System Actually Looks Like

The fix is upstream. Strengthening the pre-construction system means taking the trade selection process seriously as a production design decision, not as a procurement exercise. Several things need to be true for this to work.

First, the pre-qualification process must be real. Not a checklist. An actual assessment of whether a trade partner can perform the scope at the production standards the project will require. References from recent projects. Conversations with previous project teams. A look at their current workload and whether they have the capacity to staff this project properly while honoring their other commitments.

Second, the interview process must happen before selection, not after. The project manager and superintendent should be in those conversations. The trade needs to hear directly from the people who will be leading the site what the expectations are; the meeting cadence, the pull planning participation, the zone standards, the communication rhythm. If the trade cannot commit to those things in the interview, they cannot commit to them in the field, and selecting them anyway is hoping for a different outcome from a decision that is already made.

Third, design assist and Integrated Project Delivery approaches are worth investing in specifically because they bring trade partners into the project earlier and at a deeper level of commitment. A trade that has participated in design decisions, that has shaped the installation sequence, that has been part of the procurement strategy conversations, that trade has skin in the outcome in a way that a trade who received a bid package and signed a contract does not. The commitment is different. The engagement is different. The project is different.

Warning Signs That the Pre-Construction System Is Not Working

Before the field team inherits a trade partner problem that should have been solved upstream, watch for these signals that the pre-construction selection process has been treated as a formality:

• Trade partners were selected on price alone, without any assessment of whether they can staff the scope or participate in the production system.
• The superintendent was not involved in trade partner selection or pre-qualification conversations for their own project.
• Trade partners arrive to the pre-construction meeting without having been briefed on the meeting cadence, the pull planning process, or the zone standards expected of them.
• The first pull planning session is the first time the trade’s leadership has heard the production system explained, and they are visibly resistant.
• The superintendent is three weeks into the project asking how they can force trades to participate in meetings when the right time to establish that expectation was in the interview.

Any one of those signals means the selection process did not do what it needed to do. The downstream cost is borne by everyone on the field team, and it is far greater than the upstream investment in a rigorous pre-qualification and interview process would have been.

The Deeper Responsibility

The pre-construction system is not the superintendent’s job to design. But the superintendent is the person who pays the price when it fails. That creates a responsibility for every person above the superintendent every project executive, every project director, every operations leader to take preconstruction selection seriously as a commitment to the field team. Selecting performing trade partners is not a nice-to-have. It is the upstream decision that determines whether the field team has a real chance of running a clean, productive, Lean project.

We are building people who build things. That starts with building the systems upstream of the field that give those people a real chance to succeed. If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow and build the preconstruction discipline that selects the right trades before the field team ever steps on site.

A Challenge for Builders

If you are in a position to influence trade partner selection on your next project, treat it as a production design decision. Interview the critical trades before you select them. Bring the superintendent into those conversations. Be explicit about what participation in the production system will require. Pre-qualify on more than price. Check references from recent projects. And if a trade cannot commit in the interview, believe them because the field will not change what the pre-construction process established.

As W. Edwards Deming said, “A bad system will beat a good person every time.”

On we go.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is “having the wrong trades” a pre-construction problem rather than a job site problem?

Because trade selection happens before the field team arrives, and the field team cannot unilaterally replace a trade that was selected upstream. The problem was created in the procurement and pre-qualification process, not in the field. The superintendent who cannot get trades to participate inherited a failure that predates their involvement on the project.

What does a real trade partner interview process look like?

It includes the PM and superintendent, covers the production system expectations explicitly, meeting participation, pull planning, zone standards, communication rhythm and requires the trade’s leadership to commit to those expectations before selection is made. It treats the conversation as a mutual assessment: the GC is evaluating the trade, and the trade is hearing what will be required of them. Both parties need to know what they are agreeing to.

What is the difference between a trade that struggles and a trade that is wrong?

A struggling trade has leadership gaps, capacity challenges, or inexperience with the production system but is willing to participate and improve. The right response is support, coaching, and sometimes direct project team involvement. A wrong trade is non-performing and uninterested in the production standards regardless of support. The first problem is solvable on the job site. The second should have been caught in pre-construction.