What is a Manager?

And what makes the difference that lead to a successful project? — Answers from the perspective that four decades of experience give.

As a brief introduction, I am a civil engineer, with 44 years of experience in managing construction projects in America (Colombia, the Dominican Republic, the United States and Cuba), Europe (Romania) and Asia (Indonesia, Cambodia and Vietnam).

Given the current circumstances, I have found myself doing an exercise in reflection on my accumulated experience and the people with whom I have had the fortune to walk sections of this path.

This is the first attempt in trying to answer some recurring questions… What is a manager? And what makes the difference that lead to a successful project? The answer I get, contrary to the simplicity I hoped for, is always complex, related to many elements and abilities.

A manager is someone who is expected to supervise everything, but apparently he does nothing and therefore he is expendable, and sometimes, it would even seem that things would be better without him, or that they work despite him.

It seems paradoxical that the more you delegate, the better the organization works, and the simpler the procedures, reports, organization, strategy, and controls, the better the results. I think it is in this apparent contradiction that the answer lies.

At the end of 1977, there was an explosion in a gas pipeline near Barrancabermeja (Colombia), knocking down the Railway Bridge over the Sogamoso River, paralyzing the movement of trains between Bogotá, Medellín and Santa Marta. The transport of cargo by train had been blocked, as well as a very popular holiday passenger service dubbed “The Solar Express”.

The bridge was a steel structure made up of two twin bridges measuring 70 meters in length, supported by their respective abutments on the banks and a common pillar in the middle of the river. The blast had literally blown up one of the two bridges.

The problem was serious; the Ministry of Public Works, Ecopetrol, the gas company, and the National Railways were all involved.

Engineer Hernán Duarte Esguerra, with whom I worked with at the time, proposed a masterful solution to the problem; to rebuilding the bridge in two stages.

In the first stage, six temporary intermediate pillars would be installed with the pipeline pipes driven as column piles, making it simpler and faster to build the deck of the bridge. No longer in a 70-meter free span, but six-meter spans, which would be the resulting free span between temporary intermediate
pillars.

In the second stage, with the bridge in operation, the truss girders would be rebuilt and the intermediate pillars would be removed, restoring the original structural and architectural concept of the 70 meter free span bridge.

Nearby, Ecopetrol was about to complete a suspension bridge for pipelines. The contractor for this work was HB Estructuras Metálicas.

Everything was set, the pipes, the contractors (Hernán for the piling works, and HB for the steel structures), and Ecopetrol for financial support.

This was how ‘everything’ was simplified; in an action that I have not seen many times, public entities acted quickly and supported the contractors without reluctance and the contractors had all their resources. The passage of trains was restored in less than a month.

I believe on this occasion, the managers understood the goals, the internal and external conditions, the difficulties, the opportunities, the risks, and the key elements. They were clear in their instructions, but attentive to the observations and comments of the other players.

Managers kept track of the jobs day and night, and secured the resources to maintain daily operations. The plan and strategy were flexible and adapted to the varying conditions. They intervened only when necessary, exercising their authority, leadership and conciliation skills, with serenity, integrity, clarity of
direction and empathy. They maintained their full attention until the goal was accomplished.

I can also affirm that it was, without knowing it, the first time that I participated in a project where cooperation was the core concept of work that was applied by intuition and by necessity, and made all the difference in the positive flow and result of the project.

A few years later, I found myself directing the construction of silos, smokestacks with sliding forms, and the construction of pipelines. The same principles of understanding, simplification, close tracking, flexibility, adaptation, intervention (only when necessary), empathy, and cooperation were applied methodically.

In the mid-1990s, I first heard the concept of “partnering” as a systematic condition in project management during the reconversion of the factory Cementos Boyacá (Colombia) from wet to dry manufacturing process while maintaining the operation of the plant.

I was a subcontractor and advisor to Construcciones y Montajes Distral (CMD), one of the construction’s contractors, in charge, among others, of the main project building, the preheater tower, which is the structure that marks the critical route for the schedule of the project.

Engineers Henry Golsdmith and Tom Ireland directed the project on behalf of the owners, Holcim Switzerland. They insisted on security and partnering.

Following the guidelines of partnering, the owner, the contractors and the suppliers worked together with the structural engineer and we achieved, despite the complexity of the building and its vicinity to the rotary kiln in operation, a design that allowed the use of industrial forms and large-scale
preassembly of reinforcing bars and steel structures, and an earlier erection of cyclones. As a consequence the time to connect the new preheater to the modified kiln was reduced; extending the operating time of the existing plant; minimizing interruption of the operation; shortening the execution time of the critical route, and completing he project ahead of schedule.

In 2015, I joined a “newborn” organization in Cambodia, Chip Mong Insee Cement Corporation, as Site Project Manager, for the construction of a Cement Factory; perhaps the most challenging project I have ever faced, due to its complexity and the conditions of execution, and in which the concept of
partnering was applied with greater emphasis. It is without a doubt the most successful project despite budget and resource constraints, and the ambitious goals for safety, quality, and execution time. The proposed objectives were achieved and improved. It was somehow a “case study project”, as I heard
Engineer Aidan Lynam, CEO of the Company say.

At this point in my journey, I am clear that the best route for project management follows the guidelines that Hernán intuitively applied to the Sogamoso River Bridge and that Henry and Tom systematized at the Holcim Factory in Boyacá and that we emphasized in the Cement Factory in Cambodia.

In these fast changing times it is necessary to be even more flexible and adapt more quickly to the unforeseen events that projects and life in general, bring, in accordance with what Aidan said to me laughing, one afternoon in Touk Meas, Cambodia.

“In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is.”