re: Whats the best major/minor to pair with Construction Management?

Work in the trade during summers. Learn the material, how it’s installed, how long it takes to install. Learn estimating. Take that knowledge along with your CM degree. You’ll be way ahead of anyone who didn’t. Your bosses will know who to promote first and it’s not based on degrees.

History
Theology
Botany
Criminal justice

All those go great with construction management

Home Econ will teach him how to use a broom since that will be his most used tool on the job site

Civil engineering opens more doors for him.

Speaking as a person that worked his way up from the field level to my current role as Director/VP in the Pipeline Construction field, I would say a CM degree with a minor in Accounting would give you a definite advantage. Taking Spanish as someone mentioned is a huge plus since that will be your predominant labor pool if you stay in the Gulf South, but my biggest piece of advice would be to try and either intern with a construction company or just just go get a field job in whatever construction element you want to go into. That experience will be invaluable and will give you a huge leg up over some kid that did nothing but earn a degree with no field experience.

After my Plan A goal in life back almost 30 years ago as a career Marine Officer got derailed because of an injury, I was forced to go to Plan B and that was Oil
And Gas. I went out and got hired on as a laborer on a pipeline job over a Summer after the Marines and redirected my school work to get a degree in Management with a minor in Finance. After that, I was hired as an Office Manager on a pipeline mainly because I spent Summers laboring and then operating. Trust me once you get into the PM role, field guys respect the managers that have been there and done that and know what they are going through every day. These days the kids that have PM aspirations are basically interns when they were in college. Very few PM’s in the pipeline construction field that come from college actually spent a ton of time working in the field which is kinda sad and once they graduate, we generally put them right back in the field as what we call Field Engineers or Field Clerks to help the PM over a project do their grunt work. Some might get a little bit more responsibility than just a regular intern by letting them start dabbling in estimating, costing, scheduling, etc…but we aren’t asking a ton out of them till they prove themselves. The ones that are good are the ones that fall under a good PM or a Supt that is willing to take them under their wing so to speak and really teach them. That development will usually put a CE making PM in 5-7 years post graduation.

We get a handful of engineers that for whatever reason decide they want to jump to our side of the fence and do construction but for the most part that is rare. The engineers usually go to work for the gas company or the engineering/design companies or in other words, the client.

every single time I did a job listing for a PM all I got were resumes from engineers

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Plus they're generally cheaper than the 55yr old PM

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The worst GC PM I've worked with recently was in his 60s, on a complicated $105m project and in way over his head.

He retired about 2/3 through and the 30ish guy that replaced him is miles better.

Of course that's just one example... have older PMs on other jobs that are great.

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The worst GC PM I've worked with recently was in his 60s, on a complicated $105m project and in way over his head.

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The worst thing about hiring in this industry is that it is impossible to tell a good PM/super from a bad just thru interview.

I have worked with many supers who were 55+ that were horrible. Bad managers, poor schedulers, didn't know shite about building science.

Most of these types were a foreman in a trade, then got on as an AS or APM and then jumped company to company every 3-5 years after that.

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Talk to your academic advisor.

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Bruh