Construction Trailblazers: Paving The Way to Excellence

Samantha C Prestidge: [00:00:00] Managing a construction team is one thing. Leading them without blurring boundaries or burning out, that's a whole different challenge.

Welcome to Construction Trailblazers Paving the Way to Excellence the podcast where we cut through the noise to uncover what truly drives success. In the building industry, I'm Samantha. C. Prestige your guide in simplifying operations and helping you make managing your team simpler. You can explore our past episodes@constructiontrailblazers.com and start your journey to excellence.

Today we're chatting with Ron Stein, who has spent decades in the field managing multimillion dollar projects and mentoring the next generation of construction leaders. In this episode, we're digging into what it really takes to set the right boundaries, have tough conversations, and build a healthy, productive team.

Alright, so Ron, take us back. You've been in the industry for a long time, so what really [00:01:00] pulled you into the industry initially and what's kept you in it all of these years?

Ron Stein: Well, when

I was a kid, my parents always said, you're gonna be a civil engineer like your uncle. My uncle was involved in roads, bridges and dams all across the world, and I didn't know any difference.

So when it came time to go to college, they helped me get into a civil engineering program. And the start of my second year, I realized that I didn't wanna be an engineer. I wanted to build stuff. You know, I was sitting in a, a class called Fluid Dynamics and they were explaining how you calculate a pipe size to get the right amount of water through it.

And at the end of the class, the professor said, and most of the time you just look it up in a book. And that was it for me. I had no interest in sitting in an office calculating pipe sizes and being an engineer. I [00:02:00] wanted to build stuff, so I ended up transferring to a construction management program, and it just was the right thing for me.

I, it, it clicked. My grades were, were much better and I really liked it, and I've been in construction management ever since.

Samantha C Prestidge: Oh, I, I love that. I think it's so easy for us to kind of just like follow in some family footsteps. And then luckily early on in your college career, you had the epiphany of like, Nope, this is not what I'm supposed to be doing.

My husband had something similar where he went to school to be to do aerospace engineering, and it was like. Some math class his second year and he was like, this is not what I'm supposed to be doing. And had a total switch to political science. So you at least stayed in a similar world with construction management.

Now, that's still not an easy place to be. Construction is tough, right? It's a tough industry. So what has made you fall in love with it over all these years?

Ron Stein: The [00:03:00] main thing is every project is different.

Whether it's a small little project for six months or it takes you three years, you're always moving on and it's never the same. My brother-in-law was a draftsman for a surveying company, and he spent his entire career at a drafting table at a computer drawing maps. I could never do that.

You know, in this industry, every project is different. Every project, you learn something new. Every project you meet new people, whether it's owners, design team team members, it's just always different. And, and if there's a bad project that you're on, it will end someday and you'll move on to the next one, and it should be better.

And all of the. Trials and tribulations you have becomes learning experiences. So the next time you run into something similar, you know what to do 'cause you solved that problem before.

Samantha C Prestidge: I, there's such [00:04:00] optimism and, and positivity in the wisdom that you speak it because, oh man, it's so easy to be like, okay, here are all the challenges I'm dealing with right now.

And just to kind of be consumed with that negativity. Now I think that. A lot of this positivity leans into some of the coaching that you do. So you work with construction companies, and I know a lot of smaller companies, they start by just trying to get the work done. But we know that in leadership and in managing people, that has, there's a whole new set of challenges.

So what's one of the biggest challenges you see when it comes to leading a team? And, and let's go one step further and, and think. What are the things that the leaders tend to focus in on the tunnel vision, they get in that negativity, and what should they be doing to really step out and have more optimism in their leadership style?

Ron Stein: Well, when you run into challenges, and, and I don't like to call them problems because they're, they're usually not, they're just challenges. They're roadblocks. [00:05:00] Yes. It gets you down. Yes, you get frustrated, but once you get past that and you start solving the problem. Start figuring out the solutions or you're working with your team to work through all the potential solutions and come up with the best one.

Once you do and you start moving forward, you don't worry about that issue anymore. You're onto the next big thing, you know, and there's a goal line ahead. And when you look at the three players in any construction project, you've got the owner, the contractor, and the design team. The reality is you all want the same thing.

You want to finish the project. Everybody wants to be happy. Everybody wants to enjoy their work. Everybody wants to make a little bit of money, so if you're not pitting yourself against the other team and you're all working for a similar goal, it just makes the project go much smoother.

Samantha C Prestidge: Oh man. Yeah, like [00:06:00] we, we have an episode coming out with an owner of a GC company, and that was one of his big pieces of advice is just remembering the good intentions, remembering that we're all on the same team, we've got the same objective, and it is very easy to just kind of forget that and have those three players kind of pitted against each other instead of remembering.

What's the goal? The goal is a good project. Let's work together to achieve that okay, so you've worked on everything from major city projects to mentoring those fresh out of college kid engineers. So what's something you wish more young professionals understood about the realities of construction management?

Ron Stein: Well, I hear a lot of people talk about they're not taught how to do their job. Everybody starts as a field engineer. You're sitting in a trailer and you're doing a lot of paperwork, you're doing RFIs and submittals, and they don't really teach that in college. You know, they teach [00:07:00] materials and methods and all kinds of other things.

But you know, I've heard people say, I started my job and the super said, write this RFI for me, they didn't even know what an RFI was, you know? So. There needs to be a little bit more education on the day-to-day processes that happen within a construction project, whether it's out in the trailer or in the office.

You know, you go in an estimating department and somebody gives you a stack of bids and says, level them up. What does that mean? You know, you need to understand these things. Nobody tells you that. So. The people that are giving the assignments need to realize that the younger people don't know what those things mean and you need to take the time and energy to show them and help them.

You can't just point them to a, file someplace and says, well just copy the last one. 'cause maybe the last one wasn't done right. [00:08:00] And, and it's, it's all about the why also. You know, why do I need to do this? Why do we do submittals? You know, sometimes people say, well, if I'm gonna put in what the architects spec, why do I need to submit?

Well, I've had situations where you submit on a pump and the engineer's reviewing the pump, and at the last minute he realizes the pump's too small. So he asked you to put in a bigger pump so it works well if you didn't submit it. You'd put in what was specified and then the project wouldn't work and everybody would be pointing fingers.

So it's that. Sometimes it's just that one last check to make sure that what is specified is the right thing for the job.

Samantha C Prestidge: Hmm. First off, we need to just have a petition to revolutionize the college curriculum across the nation so that there is more of just. Real world field application and what people are learning.

But also kind of leaning into your comments there on the why that's such a big part of being a good manager [00:09:00] and being a good leader in general is explaining to everybody what the why behind certain things are. I mean, I have to do that with my kids. If I don't tell my five-year-old why he can't do something, he will just do it again.

But it usually. And I'm, I realize I'm very blessed in this with how his brain works. If I tell him why I am saying no, he accepts it and he moves on and he doesn't do that again. So really helping people put whatever they're doing into the bigger context of the project or context of the company goals can revolutionize, team performance and how everybody gets along.

Is that something that you have to work on quite a bit with your clients, is getting them used to explaining the why.

Ron Stein: Yes. Especially when you're fresh outta college and you're spending a year pushing paper and you're getting frustrated that why am I doing this? You know, that's all I'm doing. Well, if you understand why it needs to be done, that's important.

The other process is what are [00:10:00] you really doing? Are you pushing paper or are you learning? When I was doing submittals, one of the things that I enjoyed was actually reading the submittal and learning about it. There were times where I knew more about the installation and the weather conditions to use the product than the super did.

'cause the super never read the submittals. So you can educate yourself tremendously if you are actually paying attention to what you're doing, instead of getting a submittal from the concrete guy and putting your stamp on it and sending it to the architect. If you take a little time to read it and understand it, you'll learn an awful lot.

Samantha C Prestidge: Oh, you know, that has a lot of alignment actually with how Mark Cuban, the big old Shark Tank guy, how he got his start. So he's got a super small business book, but he talks about back in the day, oh my gosh, I might get this wrong, so hopefully no one quotes me on this, but I think he was selling like hardware, kind of like Radio [00:11:00] Shack type of.

Store that he was a salesperson for, and he would go home and read the instruction manuals on all these different types of equipment so that then he could sell and answer questions really easily to customers. So he knew more about some of these products than some of the texts, like the the people to install the things just because he sat down and actually read the manual, understood the material, and then applied that knowledge.

So. I mean, a lot of respect to the time though it took to read all of those submittals back in the day.

Ron Stein: Well, and, and yes, you don't have to read every sentence of every one, but there's always some importance there. Something to learn. I was put on a very challenging project once to help finish it up, and I had two young women, fresh outta college as project engineers.

And every week we would go into a owner architect contractor meeting, and we were talking [00:12:00] about some pretty technical things and having conversations about why we would do things. And I realized that these two young women, the conversations were over their head. So after the second or the third one, we went back to the trailer and I said, okay, what didn't you understand?

What acronym did we, did you use? What Thing was said? Do you wanna know why? My answer was what it was? And they were amazed that we spent a half an hour just discussing what went on in the meeting. So from then on, besides taking meeting minutes, they were writing down questions, and we made it a point every time after a meeting, the first thing we did back in the trailer was.

Talk about the meeting and I answered their questions and they learned a lot more than they would've if they just took meeting minutes and spit them out, having no clue what they said or why it was said.

Samantha C Prestidge: That is, [00:13:00] you're so generous with your time to do that. But the, like you said, what they're learning and how they're able to apply that and then grow in their role, that's a huge game changer just by taking that extra 30 minutes, and I, I can't imagine the level of gratitude they had toward you for that.

Now is that. Is this another thing that, that you teach your clients on how to slow down even when they're busy with all the challenges, not the problems, but all the challenges. We get so busy, we get so worked up on that and we forget to slow down for our team. Do you see that with some of your clients or the projects you work on now?

Ron Stein: Yes, I do. And what you have to explain to people is spending that time upfront gives you dividends further down. Because if people know what they're doing and why they're doing it. They can do their job better instead of just, you know, put a widget in the hole because I was told to put a widget in the hole.

And the next time I have a question, I'm gonna have to go back and ask why. 'cause I don't [00:14:00] understand. 'cause this time the widget doesn't fit in the hole. So sometimes slowing down ends up going faster.

Samantha C Prestidge: I mean, that is reminding me of some of our virtual assistant clients. So we have US based fractional admins, and I know sometimes people really delay on getting support that they need because they're afraid of the heavy lift at first.

To train someone up and delegate to them. And, I mean, I totally understand that sentiment. I don't wanna, you know, totally diminish those feelings. But at the same time, you currently don't have time to do all of your work. So if you have a little bit of time just to explain things up front, eventually then they get it and they're able to just work in rhythm alongside you.

Now I wanna go back to. The idea of weekly meetings, and this wasn't originally on our topic for today's interview, but I think it's an interesting point because too often we have weekly meetings as just like, well, that's just part of our SOP for this project, and the agendas are absolute crap [00:15:00] and everyone knows that it's just a kind of a useless meeting.

So how do you approach weekly meetings in a way that keeps it productive and, and really having a purpose to it?

Ron Stein: I run a very quick meeting and I make it go quickly. If something starts to develop into going down into a rabbit hole and getting off topic, I stop it and I say, let's put that in the parking lot.

It's important, we'll come back to it, but we've got 10 more items to finish in the next 20 minutes, so let's just stay on task. And I try not to dwell on any one thing too long. I. Unless it's the most important thing to resolve today.

Samantha C Prestidge: I agree with that. Yeah. I've, I've done that in meetings as well, where I'm like, this could either go in the parking lot or we could put everything else that we want to talk about in the parking lot and spend the rest of the time on this.

Like, you decide what you, what you want to have happen, but something's gotta go in a parking lot. We don't have time for all of this.

Ron Stein: Well, and the [00:16:00] typical meeting minutes have what's left over from the previous meetings.

Samantha C Prestidge: Hmm.

Ron Stein: I won't sit there reading through every line and, and reiterating again, it's like, jump to the chase on this topic, what's still open, and just discuss that and then move on to the next one.

And, I'll sit at many meetings where people start going off on tangents and I'll just go next. Oh no, it, and it brings everybody back to, oh, okay, let's, let's move on to the next item. And they laugh. Yeah. And we understand. It's part of my dry humor, but the point is, we're done. Yeah. Move on.

Samantha C Prestidge: Oh, I almost wanna get you one of those those red buttons, you know, that's say stop, but just have it say next.

And you just bring that to every meeting. Almost like a taboo buzzer and just,

Ron Stein: yes,

Samantha C Prestidge: buzz people out. Oh, and

Ron Stein: nowadays when we have tons of meetings where maybe half the people are in the room and half the people are on teams, [00:17:00] you know, we'll get near the end of a topic and I'll go, okay, who in the home audience has a question to make sure they're paying attention and they get their say and we move on?

Because the worst thing that happens is when they stop texting and doing the other things they're doing, when they want to go back to questions because they forgot to ask.

Samantha C Prestidge: Mm. I know that's a great meeting facilitation trick though. It's almost like high school teacher vibes where the, the teacher can see who's kind of snoozing or not paying attention, and it's like, you didn't raise your hand, but we're calling on you, so be ready to participate.

Ron Stein: Well, and I've been in meetings where it's mandatory to have your camera on so you know if they're paying attention. But a lot of 'em, the people want their cameras off and so you don't know. So you have to just sort of say, okay, the home audience, anything. Anything else to go over?

Samantha C Prestidge: Next call,

Ron Stein: we're gonna end the meeting.

Last call. What do you wanna talk about?

Samantha C Prestidge: And there's also just a, a bit of compassion in that, right? Like I, I know you come across, like you [00:18:00] said, dry humor a bit direct, but also it is difficult for those people that are working remotely to always chime in. 'cause you can feel like you're just interrupting the people that are actually sitting in person.

And so it is helpful to have someone like you really pull them back into the conversation and remind them that like they can. Interrupt or speak up with whatever their questions are. And that kind of segues into managing people, relationships and relationships matter so much but oftentimes people feel as though there's this fine line between being a great leader and also.

Being too friendly with their teams. So how do you think business owners and project leaders can set boundaries with their team without losing trust?

Ron Stein: I always had a philosophy that you can be friendly with the people you're working with, but you really shouldn't be friends. And that's a fine line to cross.

I worked with a vice president who [00:19:00] started in the ranks. You know, he was originally a laborer, worked all his way up to a super, a project manager, and then he is a vice president and he played cards with some of the people in the company on, on Thursday nights. And one day I said to him, you really think that's right?

I said, how are you gonna fire one of your card playing friends? And he looked at me like, well, I can fire anybody. And I'm like. You're gonna fire your friend. What are the other people in the card game gonna think? And I think he thought about it a little harder after that,

Samantha C Prestidge: And that's different than like friends getting together to start a business, or even families kind of getting together. I think when friendships are formed after. Like there was always an employee relationship first and then the friendships formed after that. That's really, can get very tricky and, and there's a lot of, a lot more emotions at play there.

That's kind of a, an intense example though. Someone playing poker, let's back that up to, we do still [00:20:00] want to be vulnerable with our teams. We still want that human connection. And. Friendly relationships. So what are the other ways besides pulling outta a poker game that managers and leaders can establish that?

Ron Stein: Well, it is a tough line to stay on one side or the other. I mean, you wanna establish friendships with the people you work with. You want them to be happy. You want them to talk to you, confide in you, but if you're somebody's supervisor, you have to stay in that role. And sometimes it's very difficult.

On the flip side, you don't have to like everybody you work with, you know, you don't have to be best friends. You don't ever have to go out and have a drink with somebody after work, but you have to be cordial and you have to listen to them, and you have to respect them. So there's both sides to that situation where it can go one way or the other.

The best teams are people that can work together [00:21:00] and enjoy working together, but still understand that there is a hierarchy. Mm-hmm. And sometimes the boss has to tell you what to do, hopefully in a nice way, and you have to follow through.

Samantha C Prestidge: Yeah. Now you just saying supervisor kind of reminds me of like when people are promoted from those frontline field roles into a supervisor role.

And I think that's usually where we see the buddy to boss dynamic a little bit harder than maybe in upper levels of leadership or even in office teams. So what, what your advice be for those that have formed friendships with their coworkers? 'cause they were on the same level before. For, but now they're the supervisor.

Now they're going from buddy to boss. How can they balance that without coming across as a total asshole?

Ron Stein: Well, if you're in a small company and there's one crew and you're with those same people, it's a little more difficult. You have to work at being a good leader, [00:22:00] and that can be difficult for people that haven't had proper training.

In a bigger company where there's different crews, sometimes it's better to make sure that your best friend isn't on your crew anymore, so that you don't have to face that situation on a daily basis. And again, it, it's not a, it's not an easy situation, but it's one that you have to respect and figure out a way to make it work for both the supervisor and the employee.

Samantha C Prestidge: Yeah, I mean, it's reminding me of, Rachel from friends when she worked at the coffee shop. It's like she should not have been serving anyone coffee. She got everything wrong all the time, but Gunther was in love with her, right? It's like, no, he should not have been her manager because she should have been fired from this coffee shop.

So sometimes you've gotta just kind of force those boundaries in place or force. Distance on certain work projects so that you can maintain the right relationships and the right dynamics where they matter most. That's [00:23:00] kind of what I'm hearing from you.

Ron Stein: Well, as a project manager, I once worked with an owner's rep that we hated, absolutely hated, didn't do his job, put his work on us, but we never told him that.

Whenever he came around, we were nice to him, we helped him. We did everything we could to make sure our job went well. And when he left the trailer, there were some harsh words said, but again, you have to learn how to get along with people and how to manage people. You don't necessarily have to like that.

Samantha C Prestidge: Oh but I could also feel for him walking out of that trailer, and I'm gonna assume he probably had a low awareness of than everyone else's feelings if he was just the, the person no one wanted to work with. But I've been in situations where it's a very gossipy culture and I leave a project meeting and I'm walking out and I know everyone is sitting in the conference room.

Talking about things and I almost [00:24:00] wanna turn around like, hey, if we've got an issue, like just tell me what's up. You know, like let's talk it out. But I know I'm walking away feeling awkward 'cause they're all sitting there. I know they're talking about stuff, you know?

Ron Stein: But if you did your job and you did it well and you did it professionally, then it's their problem.

Samantha C Prestidge: Oh yeah, absolutely. Like I, I know I have. I, I know I have some integrity to stand on as far as work performance goes and their gossip culture is their problem. As much as I'd like to eradicate it for them. But thank you for that reminder to not beat myself up about it.

Ron Stein: But you weren't there for a personality contest.

You're there to do a job right? That's true. So you're, you're not there to win friends, you're there to do your job. And if you're doing your job well, and some people don't like the way you do it, that's their problem, not yours.

Samantha C Prestidge: Yeah. I mean, I, I might wanna be crowned Miss Congeniality, wanna have a little Sandra Bullock moment as Miss Congeniality, but you're right, it's, it's.

You're, you're there, you're there [00:25:00] for a job not to win everyone over. Right.

Ron Stein: If you, if you want a crown, don't be in construction.

Samantha C Prestidge: Absolutely. I mean, I could take a little dirt on my crown. I'll be okay with that. Okay. So kind of further on that point, we're touching on a lot of different sprinkles of wisdom as far as leadership and management goes and in these boundaries.

But I'd also love to know, just because you've seen it all, all the messy types of projects, all the messy types of teams. What's been a leadership lesson that has just stuck with you over the years that you have applied consistently from project to project or team to team?

Ron Stein: When you are putting together proposals, whichever side of the table you're on, you need to minimize your risk.

You need to put together the best grouping of trades and to make it easier to do your job, even if [00:26:00] it costs a little bit more. In the early days when I was doing subdivision work. A lot of times we would divide up the, the site work and the gravel from the paving. 'cause we could save a little bit of money.

And then when it came time to pave, the paver would come back and say, well, it took a hundred tons more. I need to be paid for it. And you'd say, but why? Well, the subgrade wasn't right. Well, over the years I learned if you package it all together for one number, that's the number. Whether it's one contractor or he has subs, it becomes his problem.

And just trying to put together those best packages makes your life easier and helps control the cost.

Samantha C Prestidge: Yeah, going back to what you're saying about managing risk, though in so many other industries, we think risk is really is just like. Our contracts and our insurance and [00:27:00] construction especially is one of the great examples where there's risk all around you all the time, not just in those contracts and not just in your insurance and workers' comp and all of those things, but in the people that you're working with in your proposals and just again, all around you.

Have there been moments where you've had to just have those harsh direct conversations with clients of like, look, this is at risk and we need to be aware of that and change course here

Ron Stein: many times. And, and I'll give you another little example. Working out as a gc, we wanna bid later on. We found out that the mechanical contractor had left some things out, so that's why we were underbid.

So the project manager decided that. He would buy all the HVAC equipment directly and save the markup and save the insurance and other things, and then just hire the contractor to do the [00:28:00] install. Well, when it came time to do the install, the condensers they bought didn't match the air handlers and the system wasn't working right.

The installer wouldn't warranty it. He said, I didn't buy the equipment, so we had to go and buy new condensers to match the compressors and it cost us more money because of that little mistake than it would've had we bought the entire package directly from them. Let them get their markup, let them share the the cost, let them share the risk.

Yet we ended up buying the risk.

Samantha C Prestidge: I mean, that goes back to several things we've touched on.

First off, slowing down so that you can have that attention to detail. And also like what is the objective? Is it to have a good project or is it to have the cheapest project? And when we can keep our objective in mind and also remember to slow down, we can avoid some of those costly, slightly embarrassing [00:29:00] mistakes well thank you Ron so much for sharing all your drops of wisdom that you've learned over the years. We've really appreciated it.

If you enjoyed what Ron had to share today, we'll include his LinkedIn in the show notes for you to connect with him and reach out. And our shameless plug that our sponsor company, Oxo Business Services, does provide fractional administrative assistance. So if there's something outside of your zone of genius that you wanna get off your plate so you can focus on what you really like in your business.

Like, Hey, maybe you don't wanna do expense reports anymore. Maybe you don't wanna update your CRM with contacts and networking stuff and all the boring things that take you out of your zone of genius, then we can help with that. Reach out to me on LinkedIn or at hello@constructiontrailblazers.com and we'll see you next time.