The ABC's of working as a PM/PE at Graniterock

Being the new guy or gal at Graniterock isn’t easy.

When it comes to landing a job as a project engineer or project manager in the Construction Group, there is a lot of information and processes to master.

Sometimes it would be nice to have a cheat sheet!

Thanks to Construction Manager Matt Christie and Business Manager Angie Melnikoff there is a new PM/PE playbook that helps team members learn how everything works around here.

This podcast explains how the playbook helps project engineers and project managers do their jobs and how you can get your hands on one.

Plus, Angie shares how she started as a receptionist at a small construction company and grew to her current role as the Construction Group's business manager, while Matt takes us through his evolution from a summer intern from Chico State in 2007 to becoming one of Graniterock's construction managers in public works. 

Thanks for listening! 

Transcript

Shanna: 0:00

Hey, oh my goodness, a year apart, yeah.

Matt: 0:04

Yeah, so we just go back to back. You know, second grade twice in a row, third grade twice in a row, so it works out pretty good.

Shanna: 0:10

You're repeating everything.

Matt: 0:10

Repeat homework assignments.

Shanna: 0:12

Oh, that's cool. So let's jump into a little bit. On Angie, how long have you been at Granite Rock and how did you get to the company?

Angie: 0:23

I came on board in 2015. I joined the Concord team as the project analyst. In fact, matt was on my interview panel. Oh nice, yeah. And so, yeah, it's been quite a ride. I mean, here we are and I'm the construction business manager now. I've been doing that for a few years and it's been a great role. I'm excited for the opportunity that has been provided to me, and in between there was a financial analyst very small amount of time.

Shanna: 0:55

How did you get into finance and accounting, just in general, oh gosh.

Angie: 0:59

So I had a friend that worked at a small construction company in San Francisco and I wanted to get on board there. It seemed like a nice company, so I became a receptionist while I was going to school and an opportunity came up where the accounting person was leaving and they asked me if I wanted to take on the responsibility.

Shanna: 1:24

How long ago was that?

Angie: 1:27

1999. Okay, good for you. So I was there for a few years. They were a long time company had been in business since 1892 and decided to shut their doors. So I moved over into the general contractor world and got a job at top grade nice, yeah. So got some experience there with public works. I had only had private work experience prior and then ended up where I am today yeah, that's great.

Shanna: 1:56

Now you're the business manager, so you're seeing I mean you're overseeing all the numbers right for the construction group, and that's a lot well, me and a team. So it definitely takes. Yes, yeah, not just you by yourself.

Angie: 2:09

But definitely there's quite a few of us that look over the numbers and make sure everything looks good and yeah, what's your favorite thing about Granite Rock in the last nine almost 10 years?

Shanna: 2:20

The people.

Angie: 2:21

I love the people.

Shanna: 2:23

Yeah the great group the people I love, the people.

Angie: 2:28

Yeah, the great group you do have a great group. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, having become the business manager, it got me to venture out to all different parts of the company and meet a lot more people which you know great, wonderful, love it Very cool.

Shanna: 2:39

All right, Matt Christie, how about you? You've been at Granite Rock a little bit. Tell us how you got here.

Matt: 2:45

Yeah, so my journey at Granite Rock a little bit. Tell us how you got here. Yeah, so my journey at Granite Rock started as one summer, I think in 2007. I was going to school at Chico State studying construction management, and I grew up pretty close to the Redwood City hot plant, so I'd see, you know, paving trucks go by, mixer trucks go by all the time, and so I applied for a summer internship. John Torres and Barbara I used to be in HR here interviewed me and came down to our San Jose office one time and met Peter for a second interview and then Peter Lemon and ended up getting an internship and worked for Peter for the first summer, so that was pretty cool.

Shanna: 3:26

Did you In private works?

Matt: 3:27

In private works and a little bit of public works, and so started that summer and continued for a couple more summers and then graduated. The economy wasn't doing too good when I graduated in 2009. So I ended up working for St Francis Electric for a little bit and then I randomly got a phone call from Barbara one day saying, hey, what are you up to? And I just told her I'm all over here. And, long story short, we connected and then ended up making my way back to Grand Rock here and been here kind of ever since.

Shanna: 3:58

And what year was that? 2009?.

Matt: 3:59

That was 2009. Okay, yeah, so came back, was project engineer for a handful of years, became a project manager after that for numerous years and then just recently transitioned into this role of construction manager in public works and been just enjoying the ride ever since.

Shanna: 4:17

That's awesome. Well, let's backtrack, since we're talking about project engineers and project managers today. What is the role of a project engineer? Talk us through. You know what is that job? What do the people do? Who are in that position?

Matt: 4:32

So our project engineers and project managers it's kind of dependent on the job. It's an awesome job. One of the coolest things, I think, is we never build the same project twice, essentially right.

Shanna: 4:46

Never build the same project.

Matt: 4:48

Never build the same project and everything's different. There's a different set of plans, a different set of specs to abide to every single time. So it gives a lot of opportunity for especially project engineers to develop on these projects, because some are more complex than others or the project manager may be managing multiple projects, so that gives an opportunity for the project engineer to take a more lead role on that project. But day-to-day tasks that they do are cost engineering, pre-planning, coordinating subcontractors, developing schedules, monthly forecasting, working hand in hand with our field supervisor, understanding, hey, what are we building today, what are we building tomorrow and what are we building three weeks from now? To stay on top of the project and keep us moving in the right direction.

Shanna: 5:43

So constantly looking ahead, right Like what's coming? How do we keep this project on schedule, correct On?

Matt: 5:50

budget On budget Keep these guys. Safe and on budget is the most important. And then the project manager. Sometimes they won't be as far into the weeds as the project engineer is. They'll be looking longer term down the road sometimes multiple months really, depending on what the project is or what critical issues arise and more have a hands-on relationship with the owner's representative versus the project engineer. Sometimes is a little bit more reserved and they're more coordinating with the day-to-day field operations.

Shanna: 6:22

Angie, from your perspective, what's important for these project engineers to be paying close attention to? I mean, there's a lot of quantities and forecasting and keeping those numbers straight, right. What do you think?

Angie: 6:33

is crucial for them. I believe in communication with our project analyst team, so they have to communicate all of that information to our project analyst and they're responsible for getting that information into our accounting system accurately.

Shanna: 6:49

So is that heavy job? Or what's the accounting system? Is it heavy job or jde, jde, okay, yeah. So what's the relationship between project manager and project engineer? How do they best work together without duplicating work right or stepping on each other's toes?

Matt: 7:09

Really, it just starts with communication and splitting the tasks up based on the individual skill set, right, and that really varies on what the project engineer's skill set is and the project manager's skill set is.

Matt: 7:22

For me, when I was a project engineer, I was delegated with a lot of tasks because I asked for a lot, and most people here will give you as much leash as you want and so when I became a project manager, I had all my project engineers, you know I told them I want to see you spend a lot of time out in the field. I want to have you understand how we build a job from the ground up, right, because the administrative stuff it's kind of the same on most jobs, right, there's different issues that come up, but our procedures that we use and how we manage the jobs and the documentation is relatively the same, but what we're building is constantly different, right? So my main focus for the development of project engineers would be spend a lot of time out in the field, you know, chat with your field supervisor, learn from them, because they're the ones really doing the doing, like we say, around here all the time, and so that really helps the career growth of that that project engineer develop.

Shanna: 8:22

Yeah, Talk about the forecast. Who's responsible for the forecast and how important is that for the success of the project?

Angie: 8:33

So our forecast, the responsible person for our forecasting, is our project management team. It's very important because that's what drives our financials. So all of that information that they provide roll into our financial information, that we roll up into the company corporate financials. So very important to get that right.

Shanna: 8:50

And that's something that's done. What monthly or how often is that?

Angie: 8:53

We do that monthly.

Shanna: 8:55

Yeah.

Angie: 8:55

So we put together spreadsheets and send them out to the teams. They've got time to go through all their job costs and run all their reports, make sure things are accurate, work with their project analyst team to get things adjusted if needed and then, when once we finalize, me and jade go through all the financials, make sure everything looks okay. Close the month we do actually meet with the project teams and the construction managers and the directors to make sure everything's in alignment with what they expected and then we're done.

Shanna: 9:26

and then the accuracy must be so important as you move along the project, because some of these projects are years, years in the making, Right, and so you're going along each month and you want to get to the end of the project and have a big surprise either up or down, right.

Angie: 9:40

Yeah, of course. Yeah, that's what. That's what they're looking for the project teams when, when they're reviewing their forecasting and, like Matt said, you know, for the project teams when they're reviewing their forecasting and, like Matt said, looking long-term and short-term and just looking at the bigger picture and trying to get that as accurate as possible.

Shanna: 9:55

Yeah, that's a tough job. It sounds like a tough job Very, very detailed and tedious right.

Matt: 10:01

Yeah, and one of the most important things a project engineer can do is quantity tracking. Right Is work with the field supervisor going and measuring quantities, making sure our quantities are accurate so we know we can compare, that, get an accurate daily cost that rolls into a weekly cost, into a monthly cost. So at the end of the month we're forecasting it doesn't become an event, becomes a project where it's a couple hours, not an all day type of thing. So it really starts on the project engineer's level to get those accurate quantities and it becomes the full circle, going back to the accounting side of the world when we report our financial results on a monthly basis.

Shanna: 10:38

Attention to detail.

Matt: 10:39

Absolutely.

Shanna: 10:40

It's super key here sounds like. Well, let's jump a little bit into the playbook that you guys have been working on. Kind of give me a broad scope description of what exactly is a playbook as it relates to being a project engineer or a project manager at Granite Rock.

Matt: 10:59

Yeah, so our playbook that we had was approximately 10 years old.

Matt: 11:05

So there was an existing one there was an existing one that we kind of took and we've revamped it and updated it quite appropriately for all the policy changes and just the amount of growth that we've had at Granite Rock, right, if you look back 10 years ago, we've at least doubled in size, if not tripled, on the construction division, right. So this manual, or playbook we call it was really developed to come up with a system for everyone to reference back to that could create a uniform process where we could really align ourselves together and have every project manager, project engineer work along the same lines, right, instead of just kind of chaos.

Shanna: 11:47

So it's the same for everybody, like same expectations for everybody, same processes yes correct. So what kind of work went into putting this together. You were you working from the old playbook yes, so we were.

Matt: 12:00

We took the old playbook and we divided it up into a bunch of sections to update and add to. This was well beyond me and Angie. There was a whole team of people behind the scenes doing their day-to-day job that I want to give a special shout-out to because they were doing the heavy lifting. Yeah, do some shout-outs Names Angie's got a list of names here that she can shout out.

Angie: 12:23

So we've got Brian Jones, mariana Vieira, jeannie O'Donnell, michael Robles, armando Hernandez, alec Ching, jackie Ria Gomez, myself, matt and Rogelio.

Shanna: 12:38

So all of these people put in time and effort to create this updated playbook.

Angie: 12:45

Yes, and when Matt and I got together to put the team together, we were making sure to be mindful that we had people from the accounting side or our project analyst team and also project management team and also, you know, a little bit of estimating here, just for an all around general general.

Shanna: 13:03

Yes, yeah. How long was this project in the works? Like, how long did this group work together? This is like a few months.

Matt: 13:10

No, this has been probably about a year and a half in the making.

Angie: 13:15

We started in the summer of 22, which was probably not the best idea, right. Yeah so we couldn't spend the time and so we had to put it on pause. So really I'd say a year like full on monthly, really meeting every month and making it, making an effort to do that.

Shanna: 13:33

And where did you see the need? Were you just seeing a lot of project engineers and project managers doing their own thing and kind of getting off course, so to speak? Just maybe some chaos? Where did the need even drive that, hey, we need to get back and get, get aligned.

Matt: 13:48

Where did the need even drive that, hey, we need to get back and get aligned. Well, the need to was we've hired a lot of new project engineers and project managers. And then they would start at Granite Rock and say, well, where do I find a RFI template or a submittal log? And then we'd look around and everyone was using pretty much something different and we decided you know, we really need to button up our document control, because that's one of the most important parts of our job is organization, communication and have everything documented. So that kind of transitioned into looking at what we had existing and realized that, hey, we are completely years behind here and we need to get this up to what we're doing now. So that's kind of where it all spearheaded from.

Shanna: 14:31

Let's talk about what's in here the pre-job setup, cost engineering, monthly forecast, which we touched on a little bit, field engineering contract control, job closeout and then master contact list. So how are you using this? You hand this to someone that comes in new to the construction group.

Matt: 14:53

Yes, so right now we are distributing it to all project engineers and project managers and any new hires that we have. Obviously, it's just a guide for them to reference back on. It's not just hey here, this tells you what to do, figure it out. We don't like that. So it's a good tool for them to have to look at what their essential job accountabilities are and reference back if they need to. If not, right, ask your manager, ask the project manager you're working for. We pretty much have an open door policy here at Granite Rock, so anyone's obviously willing to help with that. So it's just a good another tool to have in the toolbox.

Shanna: 15:32

Is there in-person training when it comes to this, like implementing and explaining what's in here?

Matt: 15:37

So that's what we're working on right now. I've enlisted the help of, actually, dave Olivas. He's going to help myself set up some monthly trainings here that we're going to. We're actually finalizing the curriculum right now and so hopefully by mid August we'll have that officially sent out with some invites out to our project management team, and we're going to kind of just go, you know, step by step, and really have you know, we'll hit the highlights that we think we need to hit. But if someone brings up a topic that hey, I need to learn a little bit more on this right, how do we do a quantity um overrun adjustment right or underrun adjustment?

Matt: 16:11

or we know, hey, what is force account? Right, We'll, we'll talk about all that stuff and, uh, help you know, develop our, our project engineers and project managers.

Shanna: 16:20

And Dave is so perfect for something like that, right Cause he's like he's a veteran, something like that. Right, because he's like, yeah, he's a veteran, he's super organized, he's, you know, just perfect for being that instructor for new people coming in.

Matt: 16:33

Yeah, I'm excited about the future state here. I think I think we got a good rollout coming up and looking forward to it.

Shanna: 16:40

How's the playbook being received with the new people coming in? Because I've seen there's a lot of interns that are in the construction group and a lot of those interns come back summer after summer, just kind of like yourself, right? So having something, a manual like this, that they can keep and reference must make their jobs a lot easier.

Matt: 16:59

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we've had nothing but positive feedback. I've actually had a superintendent ask me for it so they can understand what our job accountabilities are, and then we've had another individual in takeoff ask for it. So there's people out there that are excited to read this, understand this. So it's been nothing but great feedback so far.

Angie: 17:21

Same with our project analyst team.

Angie: 17:22

So part of this playbook and including them was their jobs overlap I shouldn't say overlap or intertwined quite a bit the accounting group and the PM teams.

Angie: 17:32

And so the accounting team, the project analyst team, had put together their own manual several years back, which has been a great tool, and so we made sure that we incorporated some of those expectations of what we're saying hey, project analysts, this is how you process the change order, this is how you work with your PM team, this is their expectation. And that all got incorporated in here as well, which kind of like touching on the chaos a little bit earlier, kind of helped hopefully get rid of some of that, or helped even the PAs help train, you know, because they spend a lot of time with the engineers when they first start out to trying to say hey, this is how you need to give me the billing, this is what I need from you to be able to put in a good billing with the owner and and how we, how we look at things from the accounting side, because it's definitely different than the operation side. They're kind of ahead of everything and we're going back in time. So, for example, we just wrapped up June there in July, right.

Shanna: 18:27

Yeah, they're looking at August. Yeah, they're looking at.

Angie: 18:29

August and we're trying to go back in time and dial everything back in a month back. So this has been a great tool for also our accounting team, and we share our PA manual with PMs and PEs as well, and we actually gave a copy of this to our PA team too, that's awesome, yeah, yeah, good deal.

Shanna: 18:49

And so everybody from this committee that you listed, they all had input and kind of helped provide the content that should go in here.

Angie: 18:56

Yeah, what we did is we. I was going to ask who actually wrote all this, because this is a lot of work.

Shanna: 19:02

This is a lot of detail.

Angie: 19:03

Well, there was an existing document that we just basically took and then we put it all in a spreadsheet and then we divvied it out based on well volunteered, but based on what the section was about. So if it was an accounting-related thing that touched on accounting side, then our project analyst took that on. Or if it's something more project management-related, they took that on, and then we'd all meet and get together and make sure that it made sense and it aligned with our PA manual, which is significantly larger than this one Really yeah it's very detailed.

Angie: 19:35

Wow, but it needs to be because it's accounting right.

Shanna: 19:39

A lot of detail, yeah, so at the end of the day, we're hoping that this manual will drive efficiency and deliver quality 100%, 100%, yeah. Awesome. So team members who might be interested in getting their hands on one of these PEPM manuals how would they go about doing that?

Matt: 19:58

So they can reach out to me or Angie or their construction manager. We distributed them at our last construction annual meeting here at corporate to everyone in attendance and then we gave a bulk extras to the construction manager. So they have extra copies if need be. But if they are out of copies or if you just want one in general, please feel free to reach out to myself or Angie and we can get you a copy.

Shanna: 20:24

Sounds great, all right, well, hey, you guys. Thanks. I know you made the trek here to Watsonville to be part of the podcast. I appreciate you taking the time and the effort and getting up on the microphone today. Thank you so much.

Matt: 20:36

Yeah, thank you Absolutely. Thanks for having us yeah thank you, appreciate it.