You have a Problem!

You Have a Problem: A Direct Message to the Construction Industry

There is a story about Febreze that Jason Schroeder tells often because it is an almost perfect mirror of what is happening in construction right now. When Procter and Gamble first launched Febreze, the product did something remarkable: it neutralized odors. Completely. Scientifically. The problem was that the people who needed it most could not smell what the product was eliminating. The person whose house smelled like cat urine had long since stopped noticing it. The smoker did not know they smelled like smoke. The product did not sell until they added artificial scents to it, because people needed to smell something improving before they could recognize that something had been wrong.

The construction industry right now does not know it stinks. That is the problem. Projects that would be considered deeply unacceptable by any reasonable standard are being called successful. Superintendents with thirty five years of experience are saying they have nothing to learn because everything has “always been fine.” General contractors are listing every external factor they can find as the reason their projects are suffering, while the actual reasons stand in plain sight on the job site every day.

This is not a small issue. It is a systemic one. And it is not going to get better until more people in the industry are willing to say it out loud.

The Victim Mentality Has to Stop

COVID. Supply chain disruptions. Workforce shortages. These are real factors. They are also, in too many cases, being used as cover for execution problems that existed long before any of them arrived. Jason is direct about this: if you are a general contractor, the project site is your world. You are the god of that project with a lowercase g. Everything that goes wrong there belongs to you. Not to the trade partners. Not to the owner. Not to material delays. To you.

That does not mean external factors do not exist. It means that the leader’s job is to anticipate, plan around, absorb, and adapt. When a GC’s first response to a struggling project is to list everything that happened to them, the crew, the trade partners, and the workers are the ones who absorb the consequences of that abdication. And the cost is not just schedule or budget. It is people. It is workers whose working conditions are unsafe or disrespectful. It is trade partners being pushed through the knothole on timelines they never agreed to. It is talented professionals leaving the industry entirely because they cannot stomach one more project that treats people as expendable inputs.

The victim mentality in construction is not just bad leadership. It is a failure of care for the people who show up to build every day.

What Bare Minimum Actually Means

Here is where Jason refuses to soften the message. The standards he is describing as bare minimums are not aspirational goals for exceptional companies. They are the floor. The starting point. The things that should be happening on every project before anyone starts talking about excellence.

A clean project site is construction 101. Not something to be proud of. Not a differentiator. The baseline. Workers deserve clean restrooms. They deserve a site where they can move safely without navigating piles of material scattered across every work zone. They deserve a job that looks like it is being run by professionals, because it is.

An organized logistics plan where deliveries arrive on time and have a designated place to land is construction 101. A procurement log that tracks what has been ordered, what has been received, and what needs to arrive and when: construction 101. Not advanced scheduling. Not lean innovation. The starting point for running a project.

A risk and opportunity register that tracks what could go wrong and what contingency covers it, alongside what could go right and what fee opportunity it opens: construction 101. A superintendent or project manager who does not have one is not running a project. They are reacting to one.

Flow in the schedule: this is where Jason’s frustration reaches its peak. The fact that Takt planning has to be sold, explained, defended, and argued for at this point in the industry’s development is, in his words, madness. CPM schedules that nobody reads, nobody understands, and nobody uses to make decisions are not schedules. They are documentation. Flow is how work actually gets done. Even workflow across a project, where every trade has what they need when they need it and the work moves predictably through zones: this is construction 101. It should not require a persuasion campaign.

The Basket Principle

There is something important underneath Jason’s passion here, and it matters for anyone receiving this message directly. Criticizing behavior is not criticizing identity.

When Jason talks to his kids, he holds up two baskets. One basket holds everything he believes about who they are: their worth, their potential, their character, his love for them. That basket is always full and never in question. The other basket holds what they did in a specific situation. The thing in the second basket can be wrong, needs to be addressed, and can be corrected. What is in the first basket is not affected.

The same principle applies to every superintendent and project manager who receives this message. If you have been running projects with dirty sites, reactive planning, and a victim mindset, that is in the second basket. It is a set of behaviors and habits that can be changed. It is not a verdict on who you are. The people Jason is most passionate about reaching are not the ones who cannot improve. They are the ones who do not yet know they need to.

What Finishing a Job Actually Means

When a GC says they finished a project, the real question is: finished at whose expense?

If the trade partners lost money, if workers were pushed through unsafe conditions, if the families of the people on that site absorbed the human cost of a project that ran people into the ground, if the owner got a building but not the relationship they deserved: then the project did not finish well. It finished on the backs of people who had no choice. And calling that a success is wrong.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow. The companies getting this right are not doing anything exotic. They are executing the fundamentals at a high level, treating people with respect, and refusing to accept the victim narrative when their projects get hard.

The Challenge for the Industry

Stop saying you do not have a problem. That is the starting point. Not a training program, not a new system, not a consultant. Just the willingness to walk your job site the way a visitor would see it, not the way someone who works there every day has stopped noticing it.

Walk the restrooms. Walk the material staging areas. Walk the areas where trade partners are working and ask yourself honestly: is this a site I would be proud to have anyone see? Is this a site that tells the workers on it that they are respected?

As the principle goes: the standard you walk past is the standard you accept. Every superintendent who ignores a dirty restroom has accepted that standard. Every project manager who looks at a disorganized logistics plan and says “we’ll fix it later” has accepted that standard. The industry will improve when more leaders refuse to walk past the things that need to change.

On we go.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Jason saying all GCs are the problem, or specific ones?

Specific patterns, not every company or person. Jason works with clients who are heading in a better direction every day. The message is aimed at the portion of the industry that is actively resisting improvement while blaming external factors for their results.

What is the first step for a superintendent who recognizes these problems on their own project?

Start with the site walk. Walk the project as if you are seeing it for the first time and grade it honestly. Clean or not clean. Organized or not organized. Then identify the two or three things that would most visibly signal a shift in standard, and make those happen this week.

How do you implement Takt planning on a project that has already started without it?

Begin with zone identification and a rough Takt cycle time based on your remaining scope. Even a simplified version of flow based scheduling will outperform a CPM that nobody reads. The goal in the short term is to introduce even workflow thinking into the daily conversation on the site.

What should trade partners do when a GC is running a project the wrong way?

Document everything. Protect your team. Communicate clearly in writing when conditions are affecting your ability to perform. And build relationships with GCs who do run projects the right way, because they exist and they are the future of the industry.

How does respect for workers connect to project performance?

Directly. Workers who feel respected show up on time, flag problems early, take ownership of quality, and stay on the project. Workers who feel disposable do the opposite. The superintendent who maintains a clean site, provides real facilities, and communicates with dignity is creating the conditions for a project that performs.