A short instructional monologue by Mike Andes about project management practices in landscaping. Andes emphasizes empowering project managers, creating clear estimate and job notes plus a walkthrough video from the estimator, and avoiding micromanagement or reasserting control—so the estimator need not return to the job except for exceptional circumstances.
Okay, so this goes right back to how to streamline your projects notes and your video. We'll go back to that in a second. Are very, really important. The next thing is the minute you show up on a job site, if you take ownership of the job, like dominate it and like you're talking to the customer. Like, as soon as you talk to a customer after the project managers there, you've completely disarmed him. Because the customer will always want to talk to you if you're the estimated, the owner, whatever. They will always want to think that you're the decision maker if you ever show back up on that job. So our goal is for the estimator never have to show back up on the job unless it's like something's terribly going wrong or a project manager got sick or something crazy and it's not a good thing if he has to show up. And so how you do that. Clear job notes, clear estimate notes. The project management video is simply after the estimate is done, the estimator takes a video of everything that was talked about in the walkthrough with the customer, and then that video is sent to the project manager and the entire crew that's gonna be on site and they literally see the estimator point things out on cell phone with a video on the job. So that paired up with the estimate note should be very, very clear. And the big thing is they need to know that you're not going to step in and overpower them, that they can take ownership. You give them responsibility, you back up their decisions if they decide something. There's a balance there too, obviously. But you've got to be able to empower them and not like step over them. And even if you think that they're doing something wrong not to just show up and dominate, because if you do that, they're just gonna step back and let you do your thing. And the customer's gonna always want to talk to you and it's gonna become a mess. You're gonna be tied to that job forever. They need to be given the tools, that is the notes in the video to do the job. And then you need to let them go die on their own sword and figure things out. There's a balance there. Again, supporting them, trying to help them as much as possible, and also making them accountable so that they take ownership of the job. Very fine balance there. But having the notes and the video very important. And then not disempowering them later on the job by showing up or just making decisions for them. Or being the liaison between them and the customer, they should be in direct communication with the customer, and so there's not any issues with communication. So that's my two cents on that.
