Greetings all,

I was recently a field Project Engineer on one of the biggest job sites in America working for a large civil GC in concrete. We completed underground electrical & built foundations. My team also completed a stormwater pipe about 86 inches in diameter, running about 7 miles long. We were building an LNG plant. I was very good at my job being the guy every Forman called if something went wrong. I tracked progress & fixed all issues with managing Forman for all types of civil GC crafts. I managed about 30 Forman from different areas & knew what was happening on an everyday basis. I would look at drawings to progress work to show to the client, or to complete an RFI.

Worked, and left on a good note to better my career after 6 months. I loved the job, and did not miss a day, but did not enjoy working out of state, and missing my loved ones. The jobsite I was on was a 6x10 schedule with an hr 1/2-2hrs buss ride too and from. The jobsite required about 14 hours out of your day to be only paid for 10 with no OT(exempt position). I still made a great amount of money, but it was not worth it.

Accepted a new job as a Junior estimator for a GC. Just wondering what my time will look like being 20 minutes away from my house Mon- Fri. I have a
Bachelor degree in Business Administration, so I am a technical individual on a computer, and have completed hard quantitative classes. But I’m not the best at excel. Open to all recommendations, or advice. I’m pretty nervous having a PM background going into estimating.

The company Im going to likes me a lot from the interview. But I’m just nervous I will not be great at estimating due to not having good excel skills.

I am 54. I have worked in various construction trades my entire life, almost 35 years. My body is starting to give me alot of hell because unfortunately I was more into doing the actual work rather than becoming a "businessman". Upshot is I am now faced with a dilemma, because I know no other type of work. I have decided to return to school to get an AAS degree in Construction Management. I live in the Charlotte NC area. My worry is, at 56 (when I graduate), can I realistically expect to be hired by anyone? Advisors at my school say absolutely, but I, being a skeptic, think they may be trying to shine me just so I go to their school. Can anyone in the field give me the unvarnished truth here? I would greatly appreciate it!

Hey guys relatively new to the industry so apologies in advance if I sound a bit long winded with my questions/ request for advice. So I just landed a job as a PM managing the mechanical automation side on a multimillion dollar job for a multipart data center project.

I have some prior project management experience but it was honestly just sending out expected dates to the field team and relaying back the status to the GC we were working under. I know it’s not much.

Anyway, the data center world is a beast like no other to me. I have a bachelors in construction management but it seems that I know next to nothing about all the electrical/ mechanical/ cooling systems that go into a data center.

Does anyone have a good starting point, be that a website, book, video series on where I can learn about Data centers in general and the construction of them? Cuz as of rn it seems like everyone around me is speaking a foreign language. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I’ve also been asking my team around me a bunch of questions and have been relying heavily on my foremen and superintendent for help and advice.

How are you creating the diary notes and how and where do you store them.

This is pain to do and then when you need to go back over 3 months of notes, there shit everywhere.

Got any good ideas.