21 Habits to Project Excellence: Your Foundation to Construction Project Management

By Michael Tihey

This book is a great foundation to project management in the construction industry. It gives numerous tips, lessons (some painful!) and 21 Habits a pm will need to achieve project excellence. This book is based upon many years of global construction that spans all sectors.

Congratulations on taking this big step in growing your project management skill set!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jul 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9781716954894

Book preview

21 HABITS

TO PROJECT EXCELLENCE

Michael V Tihey

Copyright © 2020 by Michael V Tihey

All rights reserved

ISBN: 978-1-71695-489-4

Thank you to my kids. In all I do, you are at the forefront of my mind always.

Thank you to my father. I hope to one day give my kids all the same lessons on humility, ethics, and compassion that you gave me.

Thank you to all of the mentors I have had in my career. I hope to pass on the knowledge that you have given me.

Most Importantly: Thank you God for all the blessings you have provided me.

Contents

Introduction

Critical Commitments: Safety and Gratitude

The Start of It All

Habit #1: Adhere to the Contract

Habit #2: Own a Schedule

Habit #3: Learn Continuously

Habit #4: Get the Most Out of Your Team

Habit #5: Work Towards the Value-Added Task

Habit #6: Don’t Get Comfortable

Habit #7: Self-Awareness: Get Some

Habit #8: Find the Best Way, Not Just Your Way

Habit #9: Pursue Excellence, Not Perfection

Habit #10: Play Chess, Not Checkers

Habit #11: Build a Culture of Excellence

Habit #12: Pay Attention to the Money

Habit #13: Learn to Delegat

Habit #14: Focus on Time Management

Habit #15: Own Your Project—All of It

Habit #16: Track Your Project

Habit #17: Communicate Like a Professional

Habit #18: Document Everything

Habit #19: Reflect On and Apply Lessons

Habit #20: Add Value

Habit #21: Safety Leadership

Wrap-Up

Introduction

One of my favorite things about the construction industry is the numerous opportunities I have had to help others and give back. It is probably one of the most important things I have done in my career. In order to give back, I needed something to give back. I had to get skilled in the dark arts of project management. I am fortunate to have worked on projects that have taken me all over the globe and allowed me to be on a first-name basis with more pilots than I can count. I was afforded the gifts of diversity in projects, challenges, opportunity, failure, and lessons. I took part in a wide range of industrial, power, T&D, disaster recovery, commercial, oil and gas, and institutional projects.

Through all my years of projects, I had several great mentors and one amazing teacher: Failure. She was miserable, but boy could she educate. Often people believe that failure is the most terrible thing on earth. It is not. Being given a gift in the form of a lesson from failure and not effectively implementing those lessons that are the most terrible things on earth. Looking back, I am grateful for the projects that were absolutely punishing. I am talking insane work hours for many months that were filled with every issue you could think of in a Third World country, in a desert, or in a jungle hell. I experienced bad labor, bad decisions, bad engineering, bad customers, and every other excuse that could be had. Some of you know that experience.

None of those problems were anyone else’s fault but mine. In all the situations that arose that caused me pain, I did not react properly, did not plan properly or did not execute properly. I owned those projects and all that goes with them. Ownership, as I will discuss in this book, is critical if you want to grow in this business. Ownership means taking 100% responsibility for everything under you. It is empowering. It forces you to take your failure, dissect it, become educated on the issue, and develop and implement the fix.

Early in my career, each failure was a blessing. It was a gift of growth that helped to shape me and made me grow. Failures gave me direction and forced me to get better. Those projects taught me amazing lessons that helped hone my skills, which in turn allowed me to perform at a high but always-learning level.

This book captures some of the lessons that turned into habits that I utilized throughout my career. It explains these habits to the next group of hungry project managers (PM’s) who want to develop project excellence. I feel that knowledge should be shared, not hoarded. I hope that this book will help project managers who are new, fresh out of college, or coming out of the field, or who work with companies that do not have a path that allows them to be mentored by a more seasoned project manager or high-level, project-savvy individual. It is also for those with limited training opportunities inside their