re: Construction Management & Career Change

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What kind of money are we talking? I'm a commercial superintendent, made 120k last year with bonus.

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you're doing fine.
you aren't going to make a whole lot more than that until you become an owner

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I'm a commercial superintendent, made 120k last year with bonus

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In south Louisiana? That’s pretty good money. We didn’t pay near that much with that last company I worked for.

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I will say the hours suck. We build schools and it's rare that I work less than 60 hour weeks. Most weeks it's more like 65-70. Has gotten as high as 90 when I was on summer remodel work

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These were my hours as a commercial PM. I work 4-10s now, but I’m usually at work for closer to 4-12s, and I’m okay with that because I’m home Fridays. Sometimes it’s more, outages or issues and I’m at work for weekends or more. But still nothing like my hours in construction. And for significantly less money in construction. Significantly.

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commercial PMs

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When I did in 2007-2015, salary ranged from $65k-$85k. If I was still in I probably could’ve gotten $100-$110 now with 15+ years. This is in south LA.

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industrial PMs

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Where I’m at, $85k-$110k. Senior guys can get up to $135k range. Contract PMs can make more, but employment isn’t guaranteed. That’s pretty standard for industrial/utility across the industry.

Again, pros and cons. I miss building. I miss being able to go out and just do things. I’m also not in project management anymore, I’m in management.

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southside

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Yea, I'm young and I like to think I'm dependable. That means I get the shitty projects, which inevitably means shitty hours. My last two projects have been shite shows where they fired the original superintendent. I got put on cleanup duty.

I try not to complain too much, I'm only 28.

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Umm. You mess as mean 700? 7 isn’t major

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I meant $7MMM, just as I typed it. Which is 7 Billion Dollars, or 7 thousand million dollars, however you care to read it. Which is major/mega.

What are their bonus opportunities?


For those who are industrial PM’s, does that mean like Bechtel, Shaw, Fluor, etc?

OP, if you’re just burned out from the travel there are options that don’t require a very drastic career change. The two that come to my mind immediately are:

1. E&C firms that have more of an engineering/reimbursable focus. Specifically the ones that do a lot of scope development work for small to medium projects. A lot of these companies need PM’s with construction knowledge but they don’t necessarily need those PM’s to actually manage construction. And when they do, it’s often small, local projects.

The best example I can think of is a company like Hargrove, who does quite a bit of scope development work for local plants out of their BR office. From what I have gathered, these guys are mostly home every night and they don’t have to deal with the stress of managing large construction projects. That said, I’m not sure what your exact background is. Most of the PM’s I’ve met at these firms are engineers.

2. Manufacturers that have E&C services arms. Think tank fabricators, skid manufacturers, analyzer manufacturers/integrators, etc.

These guys usually manage multiple projects at a time, and they don’t spend a ton of time in the field because the field portion of those jobs doesn’t last too long.