A Man of the Situation

By Jamal G

It is 9.22pm on a Friday night.

You are out celebrating the weekend drinking a beer and your client “Mister Smith” is calling you for the 13th time of the day.

Do you answer?

It sounds a little bit extreme but this scenario happens every day, every week and everywhere, in building.

Especially when your work in the residential part of construction.

Maybe you are a designer, architect, cabinet maker, project manager, or just starting out, and you want to know if you are more a “residential” or “commercial” made type of person?

Here are some differences you can find in those two extreme sides of the construction industry.

Now go back to the party…You decide to not answer…and Mr&Mrs Smith is a 50 years old couple, they trusted you to renovate their 3rd house. They didn’t really look at the budget…They wanted QUALITY. And it is exactly what you sold them :

- “Mr and Mrs Smith, you can trust me, I am the man of the situation”…

But unfortunately you started your installation and one of your suppliers didn’t deliver today and didn’t even contact your client. You knew it because at 7am, you jumped out of your bed and called your supplier… who is behind and can’t do anything before next Wednesday…How will you explain that last minute delay to your client who took a day off for it…Stayed home to make sure that things will work well because he made the choice of working with “the man of the situation”.

Residential Construction is an area where you deal a lot with clients on an emotional level. A strong attention to detail, EQ (Emotional intelligence) and patience are a most have to survive in a jungle of laughs and tears. Residential clients are active during the day and more available after hours, so naturally will contact you at a time when they are more able to dedicate time to you and their project. They will see you as the boss of the company as you are the only contact they want to have, they loved you…The “I will ask to my boss” will naturally not be satisfying…Oh..and If you see 5pm as an “end” of the day…Maybe Residential Construction isn’t made for you.

Now go back to your party… Mr Smith is a now commercial client who awarded you a job you and your company tendered 5 months ago. Things are good but your installers on site forgot to install 50% of what was expected. You talked about it a 3pm with Mr Smith… and think you will call him back on Monday…

Not the best work ethic, but you won’t be blame personally to not want to deal with him as you judge that this is not your personal responsibility.

The commercial part of the construction is based way more on your technical and logistics skills. Are you a good team player? Do you like to delegate or are you good at communicating information in different areas of your company? Are you looking forward to leave work behind at the same time that you leave your office? Maybe you are more a “Commercial” match.

To conclude, my personal experience after 11 years across the globe is that if you like to make people happy and have a direct impact and control over your role in their job, residential is the answer. And if you are passionate about delivering quality but don’t miss hugging the end client and check the progress on site…Commercial is maybe a better fit.

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Transitioning from Head Contractor to Client Side