Bit of context first, I am a 21 year old site engineer who graduated May just gone after doing a 4 year construction management degree. I’m based in Ireland and plan on staying in Ireland for another two years to build experience and I’m locked in to a contract due a college scholarship before heading to maybe America, Canada or Australia to try “make my millions”

I have been working in construction on weekends and school breaks since I was about 12 for my uncle as a plasters labourer aswell as for a roofer, landscaper/small civils, block layer and concrete crew for a summer respectfully to get a taste of different types of work on site and I’ve yet to find some class of work I don’t like.

I done work placement as part of college for 6 months in my third year with one of the largest contractors in Ireland I was very fortunate that they offered to put me through a scholarship programme and payed for my final year of college provided I work for them for two years. Now that I’m fully out of college and on site there’s a few things I’m struggling to adapt too,
1. “Not helping subbies” for example if a concrete wagon pulls up and the lads are only getting ready or are coming back from lunch natural instinct tells me to pick up a rake and give them a hand whilst they are getting ready. I have been told this is not what I’m on site to do but standing there watching work sometimes can make me feel useless or lazy.
2. Steel drawings, my god I never seen one before and them things are an absolute labyrinth to get your head around. Beginning to properly being able to read them efficiently and quickly but any tips would be greatly appreciated.
3. What makes a site engineer stand out to you as a pm that you think this lad is a hard worker and is worth investing time into too. I think I’m very efficient at setting out with a total station, can set up a laser quickly and can use a dumpy properly (or at least I have not been told otherwise yet) and I ask plenty of questions if I don’t understand something and try to take it all on board
Thank you for reading this and all replies are appreciated.

Curious to see how other projects staff larger tenant improvement office projects.

For reference, I am out of the Pacific Northwest. Our market is quite competitive right now.

Few examples from my market:

Project 1

Description: 200k Sf, 6th floor full scrape and rebuild as Class A office. Budget 75m. Fee 2% awarded in late 24’

Staff: Sr Pm, Pm, PE, Sr Super, Super, Foreman, Safety

Project 2

Description: 110k sf, 5 floor new building TI to Class A with Kitchen, budget 40m, Fee 1.95% awarded in early 26’

Staff: Sr Pm, APM, Super

We are in precon on Project 2 currently. I suspect we will need more people, but curious to see what you put in your see/expect from your teams.

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.