A responsible staffing decision must account for the real management demand—not simply the number of names on a responsibility list.
There are times in construction when a hard final push is unavoidable.
School projects are a good example. The opening date does not move easily. Students, teachers, administrators, and parents expect the building to be ready. As that deadline approaches, the general contractor’s field team and the trade partners may work extremely long hours to make it happen.
The deadline is real. But so are the limits of the people carrying it.
One question is rarely asked early enough:
How Much Work Are We Actually Asking Each Field Leader to Manage?
On one project, we had 70–72 subcontractors and vendors, with approximately 30 working on the site at any given time.
If the general contractor has only two or three field leaders managing that work, the assignments are rarely equal. One person may be responsible for 30 subcontractors. I have personally carried closer to 40.
Counting names on a responsibility list is a start, but it is not a workload analysis.
One Subcontractor Does Not Always Equal One Ordinary Assignment
One field leader may have twenty subcontractors who plan, staff, communicate, and execute their work well.
Another field leader may have one subcontractor that consumes 70 percent of the day because of:
- Difficulty understanding the drawings or approved information
- Insufficient manpower
- Poor planning or material readiness
- Low or inconsistent workmanship
- Repeated quality-control problems
- Missed commitments
- Constant coordination and follow-up
Those two assignments may look equal on a spreadsheet. They are not equal in the field.
A subcontractor requiring most of one person’s day cannot be counted as one ordinary assignment.
Low Bid Does Not Always Mean Low Total Management Cost
This issue becomes especially visible on school projects and other low-bid institutional work.
A lower subcontractor bid may appear to save the project money. But if that subcontractor requires additional supervision, repeated coordination, quality corrections, rework, schedule recovery, and closeout effort, part of the apparent savings may be transferred to the general contractor’s field team.
That does not mean every low bidder performs poorly, and it is not a reason to attack subcontractors. It means the staffing plan must recognize that different subcontractors create different management demands.
What a Practical Workload Analysis Should Consider
There may not be one universal subcontractor-to-field-leader ratio for every project. The work is too different for that.
However, a responsible staffing decision should consider more than total headcount:
- Number of active subcontractors and vendors
- Number of simultaneous work fronts
- Technical and installation complexity
- Interfaces between trades and building systems
- Geographic spread of the work
- Schedule criticality and turnover deadlines
- Inspection, documentation, and closeout requirements
- Quality-control and mock-up responsibilities
- Experience level of the assigned field leader
- Reliability and management demand of each subcontractor
- Hours already being worked and the duration of the current push
- Planned relief, rotation, recovery, and family time
The purpose is not to create a perfect formula. The purpose is to make the workload visible before one person quietly carries an unreasonable share.
A Necessary Push Needs an End Point
There are times when the team has to step up and put in the hours. That is part of construction.
But there is a difference between a necessary short-term push and making exhaustion the permanent operating plan.
Long hours stop helping when fatigue begins affecting judgment, communication, priorities, and the ability to recognize what matters most. When that condition continues, the project may lose more than productivity. People lose family time, experienced leaders leave the industry, and construction stops looking like a career anyone can sustain.
Good leadership asks:
- What must be completed before turnover?
- What can be completed after the building becomes operational?
- Who has carried too much for too long?
- Can responsibilities or shifts be rotated?
- Does the project need additional temporary or permanent leadership?
- What recovery time is planned after the push?
The project matters. So does building a career—and a life—that lasts.
Sometimes that means enough staff, enough recovery time, enough family time, and enough sense to go fishing.
FOR FIELD LEADERS
How many active subcontractors can one person realistically manage?
FOR COMPANY LEADERS
What factors do you use when deciding the proper size of a project’s field team?
FieldWise Training™ passes forward nearly 50 years of construction experience to help emerging professionals bridge the gap between college education and actual field conditions.
We teach you how to think, not what to think.
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