Managing commercial construction projects can be chaotic. One minute, you’re trying to satisfy multiple stakeholders—the next, you’re struggling to procure different resources and equipment.
For The Beyer Boys, a 34-year-old multi-trade company, the challenge was tracking and sharing data from their construction department to the service team.
“The handoff of those jobs was never clean. We didn’t get the equipment put in, or the warranty put in, or we didn’t include drawings, or we have no customer history, or we don’t know the contractor. There were all of these things that we dealt with,” says Pat Beyer, the company owner.
As a commercial construction project manager, you probably know this frustration all too well.
That’s why we created this guide to walk you through the complexities of commercial construction management.
Here, you’ll discover what managing commercial construction projects means, explore the process involved, and pick up practical tips to ensure success.
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What is Commercial Construction Management?
Commercial construction management involves designing, planning, building, and coordinating various commercial projects, such as retail stores, office buildings, warehouses, factories, parking garages, and shopping centers.
It’s a long-term strategic process that ensures large projects—whether building from scratch or renovation—are delivered on time, within budget, and meet quality standards.
Some of the steps involved in this process include:
Managing the project’s finances.
Overseeing construction professionals—architects, engineers, and contractors.
Sourcing materials and ensuring efficient procurement.
Monitoring project progress and mitigating risks.
Ensuring compliance with safety regulations and building codes.
At the core, it’s taking full responsibility for commercial projects to ensure their success while maintaining clear communication with stakeholders.
Residential vs. Commercial Construction Management: What’s the Difference?
While they’re both building projects, residential and commercial construction vary significantly.
For starters, their purpose differs. Residential construction involves building or remodeling homes for families, typically using materials suitable for small buildings.
Commercial construction, on the other hand, includes projects such as large apartment complexes or commercial buildings designed to generate profit.
Here are other ways they differ:
Construction materials — Commercial buildings require steel and concrete because they have a longer lifespan and can support the building’s weight. Residential buildings use timbers for the framework and shingles for their roofs.
Also, because of the size, real-time tracking of equipment and stock levels is needed in commercial construction projects. You’ll need to automate equipment replenishment to avoid shortages.
Purpose — Residential buildings are designed for people to live in, while commercial construction serves the owner’s purpose, typically to bring in profit.
Regulations — Compliance standards for residential buildings are much simpler compared to commercial construction. The latter has very strict rules. For example, commercial building codes require sprinklers to put out fires (residential properties don’t need this). There are also regulations regarding plumbing systems, electrical works, materials, techniques, and even designs.
Budgets — Commercial building projects are way more expensive than residential construction, from materials to professional crew and maintaining standards.
Here, you’ll need job costing software to monitor expenses as they’re way more complex than residential projects. Instead of manually inputting material costs, commercial construction managers can use the tool to automate material updates as purchase orders are received.
Teams and stakeholders— The people involved in residential buildings are typically just a handful—the builder, owner, and perhaps, an investor.
Commercial construction, on the other hand, involves multiple stakeholders—an individual owner or a consortium, construction manager, architects, engineers, surveyors, general contractors, and subcontractors.
In addition, residential project managers typically only need CRM software to maintain detailed client profiles and service history, while commercial construction managers need a robust reporting tool. This ensures they provide constant updates and reports to stakeholders who need to track the project’s timelines and KPIs.
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What’s the Scale of Commercial Construction Projects?
The scale of commercial construction buildings refers to the depth of work needed to be done. In this section, we’ll walk you through the wide range of projects involved in commercial construction.
Small-scale projects: These could include property revampings where you’re repainting a shopping complex, adding a new floor or parking garage, and installing security equipment. Overall, they’re less complex construction projects.
Medium-scale projects: Here, you’re typically renovating or expanding existing structures. We’re talking about redesigning a property following a change in ownership or building new shopping strips.
Large-scale projects: For this kind of job, you’re literally starting from scratch—dredging, building foundations, and casting, for instance. Some examples of these projects include skyscrapers, factories, warehouses, and convention centers.
What is the Commercial Construction Management Process?
The commercial construction management process is split into six phases—from planning to construction and post-construction steps. Each stage is like a building block that relies on the previous one to ensure the project is completed successfully, safely, and efficiently. The construction process include:
Planning and development phase
This phase is where you lay the groundwork for your construction project, regardless of its scale. It involves defining the project’s scope, deliverables, and objectives, finding the job site—a new location or an existing one—and carrying out feasibility studies, and outlining the requirements needed to complete the project.
Here, the commercial construction manager collaborates with stakeholders, quantity surveyors, and geospatial surveyors to:
Create the budget estimate needed to complete the project using a tool like ServiceTitan’s Estimate Builder. It lets you build estimates by:
Leveraging estimate templates, which is ideal for repeatable projects like tract homes.
Creating a custom estimate by adding tasks, equipment, and materials one after the other right on the page.
Importing an estimate from a spreadsheet.
“Here, you can get as detailed as you want,” says Jonathan Beyer, manager of The Beyer Boys Install Department. He explains that he tries to keep the estimates simple with labels for Total Equipment, Total Labor, and Total Materials, and he links all costs into one of those three categories to determine total job cost.
Outline the zoning requirements.
Determine if the soil can support the construction or requires reinforcement using a soil survey.
Certify the construction site’s elevation by doing a topographical survey.
Overall, it’s doing a feasibility study to evaluate the project’s chances of success before you begin. Some questions to consider here include: What needs to be in place before construction starts? What are the risks involved? How long would it take and cost?
Design phase
Once the project needs, associated risks, and potential costs are clearly understood, the schematics and building design can be drafted.
This is where architects and engineers swoop into action:
Architects design the property and use 3D models to show an accurate representation of the building’s final outlook.
Engineers, on the other hand, focus on the practical side of the structure.
Electrical engineers design electrical systems.
Structural engineers draw structures to ensure the building can carry its weight and resist events like earthquakes or winds.
Civil engineers ensure the integrity and safety of the project.
Here, a construction manager’s role is to follow up with the architects and engineers, ensuring they get the drawings on the due date.
Pre-construction phase
The next step is to gather the building documents to obtain building permits and zoning permissions.
It’s also in this stage that you:
Send proposals to investors if it’s a large project requiring additional funding. Don’t know how to do that? ServiceTitan’s proposal builder can help you create detailed proposals using templates. The tool lets you download templates with all the information needed to create a professional proposal.
Begin the vendor bidding process, specifically for commercial services and material suppliers.
Request and qualify general contractors and subcontractors for the project.
Get insurance for your crew.
Define the storage area for the materials.
Procurement phase
It’s time to secure the materials needed for the project’s lifecycle.
ServiceTitan simplifies this phase by automatically populating the items from your estimate in the Purchase Order menu. This ensures you have full transparency on your project expenses.
Plus, you can source and ship the items to a preferred location—your warehouse or the project site.
You also want to involve professionals and sub-contractors in the selection process. Have vendors submit sample materials to the professionals for approval. This way, you can ensure construction experts have the quality materials needed to complete the project.
Construction phase
You’ve planned the entire project to the tee, designed the building plan, and procured the materials required. Now, the actual construction project is underway.
In this phase, the role of a construction manager is inspection—monitoring the project schedule, controlling costs, and tracking progress. You can do that using digital software like ServiceTitan. Here are some of the tools it offers construction managers:
Scheduling software: Plan the entire construction project. It’ll help you schedule which contractor or professional is handling what, their available dates, and provide custom tags to help identify different tasks and the tools needed.
Project portfolio: Get a comprehensive view of all your projects, their progress, and real-time insights. This feature helps you know which project requires attention. You can also filter projects by customer or project status for organization and granular insight.
“With our solution, you’ll be able to easily access all of your projects from the top navigation with just one click,” Jade Vasun, ServiceTitan’s Senior Product Manager, Jobs & Product, says. “You’ll have the ability to customize your projects so you can see any data point you want.”
Parent Project: This feature helps you manage large-scale construction projects by grouping smaller jobs under a larger project, providing managers with all tasks and dependencies across multiple project phases. It allows you to group projects into one higher-level hierarchy and bulk-create projects within that group.
Inventory management tool: This software centralizes inventory control for commercial construction, making ServiceTitan the single source of truth for inventory. You can monitor inventory levels across multiple project locations to ensure accurate stock count and that workers always have the parts they need.
Progress-tracking tool to monitor the project and streamline coordination.
This tool gives you a general overview of the project and individual tasks involved. You can also manage the project finances right from the software, allowing you to make informed decisions.
Post-construction phase
After the construction project is completed, the general contractor, construction manager, and client need to assess that the building’s quality matches expectations.
At this stage, you inspect technical specifications and quality standards and collect every documentation needed to operate the building.
If your project is divided into phases, ServiceTitan’s workflow automation feature can notify the next contractor to begin or the billing department to send an invoice when specific milestones are hit—ensuring no steps are missed and everyone stays on track.
You also want to outline any issues in a punch list and fix them before the grand opening. After that, a final inspection is required before the building is said to be complete.
What Are the Responsibilities of a Commercial Construction Project Manager?
Commercial project managers plan the entire construction management process discussed above.
Their task is to ensure commercial construction projects are completed efficiently and on schedule. Here are other responsibilities commercial project managers are tasked with:
Resource management and planning: This includes budgeting, purchasing raw materials, sourcing vendors and contractors, renting or buying equipment, awarding contracts, paying bills, and planning construction activities.
To do this effectively, use the ServiceTitan software. It offers different tools to help with planning and management.
For example, the Project Portfolio feature gives you a bird’s eye view of all your projects, allowing you to monitor performance and identify areas that need attention.
Project Tracking helps transfer items from your estimate into the Purchase Order tab, where you can source and ship project equipment.
Time management: Managers are in charge of defining the project’s timeframe, delegating tasks, and following through to ensure everything is completed on time.
ServiceTitan’s Dispatch Board simplifies this responsibility by enabling you to allocate tasks and plan project schedules over weeks across multiple projects. Instead of switching between tools to see who’s doing what, the Dispatch Board centralizes everything so you can assign, follow up, and track progress from one place.
Cost management: Aside from creating budgets, construction managers are responsible for managing the costs—estimating the time required for the project, materials and equipment, and labor.
With ServiceTitan’s Job Costing software, you take charge of the project’s finances. It provides real-time insights into labor and inventory costs so you can keep the project within budget, manage cash flow, and maximize profitability.
Quality control: Managers function as quality assurance officers, ensuring the property meets specific industry standards and client expectations. They also ensure that contractors and on-site workers strictly adhere to standard procedures.
For a streamlined workflow, you can create a quality checklist to follow so nothing slips through the cracks with ServiceTitan’s Form feature.
It allows you to set up triggers for each form and rules that mandate you to complete them before proceeding to the next construction task.
For example, you can create a 'pile foundation checklist' form to be signed by a structural engineer before the project continues. This ensures you identify errors early on.
What Are the Best Practices for Successful Commercial Construction Management?
Every commercial construction project comes with its own challenges and requirements. As a construction manager, relying on the same strategies for every project may not yield the best results.
While having your preferred workflow or style is valuable, staying relevant in the construction field means incorporating the best practices outlined below.
Communication and collaboration
Communicating is an important task in construction, as a lack of it can lead to delays and costly mistakes. It’s how you:
Inspire confidence in workers and stakeholders.
Resolve issues before they become problems.
Enable smooth collaboration with different teams.
Maintain consistent dialogue and ensure everyone is on track.
However, the real challenge is communicating with several stakeholders and teams to get them on the same page. To address that, leverage an asynchronous communication tool like Slack. You can even integrate Slack with ServiceTitan using Zapier, allowing you to easily track the project and keep everyone informed in real time.
Risk management
Commercial construction projects are typically huge and expensive projects. As such, you need to make it a practice to identify potential risks during the pre-construction phase and mitigate them early on.
That’s another reason why it’s important to keep open communication with stakeholders and contractors. It’s from these frequent interactions you can identify possible disruptions, material shortages, labor shortages, or weather delays and address them.
Beyond interactions, regular site inspections, proactive planning, and creating contingency budgets can also help identify and minimize disruptions.
Using field management software
With the complexities of construction management, you need an effective management tool to streamline operations, improve productivity, and ensure nothing slips through the cracks.
Many commercial contractors turn to software like ServiceTitan, which offers a powerful office interface for managers and a mobile field app for construction workers.
The desktop app helps you automate workflows, create estimates, track large construction projects, generate invoices, uncover granular insights into project performance, assign and schedule tasks for effective time management, and more.
On the mobile side, field workers can log their arrival time at job sites and switch between tasks. This enables accurate time-tracking on specific jobs and ensures you pay the correct labor rate. Plus, it provides insights into labor costs across multiple projects, helping you understand overall profitability.
Continuous improvement
The construction industry is always evolving with new tools and approaches being invented. To remain relevant in the field and to stakeholders, it’s important to evaluate your processes regularly. Identify what’s working and inefficiencies so you can make adjustments to boost productivity and outcomes.
Essentially, cultivate a habit of continuous learning and innovation so it’s easy to adapt to changes, gain a competitive edge, and improve future project outcomes.
What Are the Common Challenges in Commercial Construction Management?
Most commercial construction projects, especially the high-value types, are typically large and complex. As a result, they present multifaceted challenges that a construction manager needs to be familiar with to ensure a successful project.
Here are a few of these challenges and ways to solve them.
Managing complex projects
A commercial construction manager has plenty to manage when it comes to complex projects, from overlapping timelines to unexpected expenses and unavailable resources.
It’s equally challenging to align the project’s objectives with the client’s vision or goal while ensuring the building design reflects the stakeholder’s requirements or accommodate new ones.
Solution: To solve this challenge, get stakeholders involved in the project from the planning and design phase and clearly communicate expectations. You can also use ServiceTitan to manage complex projects by streamlining operations and centralizing workflow. Here’s how:
Project coordination and tracking. ServiceTitan’s Project Portfolio provides a comprehensive view of projects with real-time insights. It helps monitor the different aspects of the project, using filters to group projects based on clients or status.
Inventory management. No need to struggle to track the resources and materials needed for the project anymore. With ServiceTitan’s inventory management software, you can monitor supplies on and efficiently allocate resources to ensure techs have what they need to work.
It allows you to request inventory items from vendors, track usage, and kickstart the procurement process to restock items, all from the app.
Data insights. ServiceTitan’s Parent Projects grant you access to advanced reporting of everything that happens in your project. It offers detailed visibility into specific jobs, tasks, and dependencies—across multiple phases of the construction process. We’re talking financials, purchase orders, jobs, and more
Staying within budget
With the volatile cost of materials, construction managers might have a hard time staying within budget. Other times, the project’s cost shoots up because of:
Scope creep, initiated by a change in the client’s need or unforeseen circumstances.
New regulations you have to meet, often requiring additional work or modifications to the initial design.
Inaccurate cost estimations that lead to underfunded projects.
Delays from different factors such as supply chain disruptions that can cause you to increase the timeline and increase the overall project cost.
Solution: To tackle this challenge, you want to leverage strategies like cost estimation, contingency planning, risk management, and cost tracking to ensure the budget is managed effectively.
Alternatively, use ServiceTitan’s job costing software to track the project’s costs—monitoring labor, materials, overhead, and change orders so you can stay within budget and manage risks.
It integrates with accounting software like QuickBooks to track financing from estimates to invoices and predicts profit using real-time project data. You can control how the budget is spent and make informed decisions.
Meeting deadlines
There are different reasons why delays happen in commercial projects. It could be because of the different construction tasks, weather disruptions, or delays in material delivery. Regardless of why it happens, it makes completing the commercial project on time quite difficult.
Solution: Use project management tools like ServiceTitan’s progress tracking software to track the project’s progress regularly and ensure tasks are executed on time. Assign responsibilities to subcontractors and on-site field workers, complete with due dates, using our Dispatch Board.
The Dispatch Board also allows you to allocate resources and manage capacity across multiple projects. This ensures you can create a long-term schedule with confidence.
This proactive approach prepares you for unforeseen delays, helps you anticipate challenges, and keeps your project’s workflow on track.
Over to You!
Effective commercial construction management helps ensure projects are delivered with the highest quality standard possible while navigating evolving stakeholder expectations.
It’s not just about completing projects but using the right strategies and practices to deliver excellent buildings that align with industry trends.
The tips and steps we’ve shared above can set you up for success in construction management.
In addition, use tools like ServiceTitan to streamline the construction workflow and simplify the various tasks you need to perform. You can manage the project’s costs, create proposals, monitor material inventory, and track progress.
ServiceTitan can help commercial construction managers centralize scheduling assignments, allocate resources, track budget, and oversee the entire construction project, keeping everything on track and within budget.
Join the train of construction project managers using ServiceTitan to simplify and scale their workflow.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What skills are required to become a commercial construction manager?
A commercial construction manager that can effectively oversee the start and completion of commercial buildings first requires a bachelor’s degree in construction management, engineering, or architecture, and years of experience in the construction industry. They also need the following skills:
Effective communication.
Teamwork and management.
Construction and cost estimation.
Knowledge of construction materials.
Construction bylaws and codes.
Project management.
What are the common types of projects in commercial construction management?
Here are some common types of commercial construction projects:
Medical facilities e.g. hospitals or care homes.
Office building spaces.
Hotels and resorts.
Industrial buildings e.g. refinery or manufacturing plants.
Sporting facilities e.g. stadiums, fitness centers, or courts.
Educational institutions e.g. universities or high schools.
What tools or software are commonly used in commercial construction management?
The following are tools professionals use in commercial construction management:
Project management tools to streamline project planning, scheduling, and on-site reporting, such as ServiceTitan’s Project Portfolio or Parents Project.
Construction estimating software to estimate costs and materials needed, like ServiceTitan’s Job Costing tool.
Collaboration platforms for seamless communication between stakeholders and team members.
Inventory management to track equipment usage and availability, e.g., ServiceTitan’s Inventory Module.
ServiceTitan Software
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