Let’s kick this one off with a bit of history. It’s the year 1848. Location? North America. What were folks up to? The Revolutionary War was over, but the Civil War had not yet begun. While I can’t speak for everyone since I wasn’t there, about 300,000 people decided to pack up their belongs, leave the family homestead and head to California, often on perilous journeys. The reason? The Gold Rush. Although gold had been discovered in California by local residents earlier, 1848-1849 is when the rush truly began to occur. Often referred to as ’49ers, people from all over the world began arriving in California – not only from the eastern parts of America, but also from Mexico, Peru, China, Australia, New Zealand, Europe and more. The prospects of wealth and prosperity – even through word of mouth and letters – was sufficient reason to give up everything, leave home and spend time digging or ‘panning’ for gold in the desert. In short, people wanted money and California was the best place to find it. While things in America are a bit more stable now, the idea of traveling to find prosperity is far from over – actually, that goes for any country of origin. While working from home is pushing things in a new direction, the prospect of traveling to find better opportunities is still relatable for millions of people. This group certainly includes people working in the construction industry, but there are many nuances to consider. If you came here after wondering “do construction managers have to travel?”, fear not – I aim to answer this with as much detail as I can.
Market Cycle
Generally speaking, construction slows down considerably in times of negative ‘bearish’ market cycles, and booms in growing, healthy markets. When more people have money – both project imitators and end users alike – more things get built. It’s a beautiful thing.
Sure, necessary construction projects happen in good and bad markets alike. The issue lies in the fact that there’s less work go around and thus, fewer players can be in the game so to speak.
As you know already, good-bad market cycles occur at different times across the globe. When one country is in the bottom of the trough, metaphorically-speaking, another is booming.
Heck, this can even occur between states or provinces in the same country, or even between cities within one.
In order to stay in business, many contractors will need to travel regionally in order to maintain a backlog of projects. In terms of construction managers having to travel, it’s quite possible that construction P.M.s will need to leave their home state/province or even travel overseas to find the opportunity they’re looking for, largely thanks to how markets are behaving and how much work is happening.
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Type Of Work & The Demand For It
Construction is a massive industry. According to Statista, approximately 12 trillion dollars were spent worldwide on construction projects in 2019. That’s a lot of cash. With this in mind, demand for a particular type of construction varies quite a bit.
Companies that perform basic home repairs typically don’t need to travel more than 20-30 minutes from their home base, good economy or bad. People need to fix their houses all the time – there’s plenty of work nearby.
Infrastructure construction is different. I personally worked for a general contractor in the bridge and highway sector, performing public works projects. It was not uncommon to finish a project 20 minutes away from the office, only to be assigned to a project two hours away after that. Our company would bid on projects all across the state, and eventually in nearby states, too.
For highly specialized types of work, such as nuclear power plant or deep sea construction, contractors will need to travel wherever work can be found – there’s either too few opportunities to pass one up, or the opportunities are too lucrative to pass on.
As one can imagine, Construction Managers travel in proportion to the amount of work available and the present demand for it.
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Company Reach & Allocation Of Resources
Just as projects come in all shapes and sizes, so do construction companies. ‘Mom and pop’ construction companies can be found all across the world in small towns. Just as we said in the prior section, those companies won’t need to travel very far to find new work; they’re likely one of the go-to construction companies in their area for all types of miscellaneous projects.
On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, some construction firms do business all across the globe. Construction managers travel between states, countries and even continents depending on what the company is doing and where the opportunities are. These massive companies send their own resources all over the place depending on needs.
I worked for a company that had a few dozen offices across the U.S. There were plenty of times we’d work with an office in another state or even look at specific types of projects in other states due to our office’s specific specialty (see prior section).
There’s a huge spectrum of middle ground between those two examples, but the amount of travel a Construction Manager will be doing relates largely to the needs of their company.
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Managing Multiple Projects
We all know how this one feels, so I’ll keep it brief. The more projects you’re managing, the more time you’ll likely spend traveling between them. This goes for small, medium and large construction firms alike.
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Working In The Office & Onsite
it’s no mystery that Construction Managers spend time both at the office and on job sites. The requirement to be present in both locations is essentially baked into the job description of construction P.M.s. With this in mind, Construction Managers travel between both routinely.
This can add up to quite a bit of time, even when the project isn’t located that far away. I’ve personally had days where I’d spend 2-3 hours on the road just traveling between locations in addition to a normal commute.
This didn’t happen every day (thankfully) but between project-specific meetings, monitoring progress onsite and doing ‘PM stuff’ in the office, I probably spent about 5 hours per week traveling between the office and job sites – thanks, traffic! That’s one hour per work day that’s spent just getting around between locations.
In this way, we all travel to some degree!
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In Closing
I hope this has brought new light to your questions of whether or not Construction Managers travel, and I appreciate you spending time at PM Problems. Thanks for reading!
