Spurred by what I learned about project management while conducting our most recent Structural Engineer’s Roundtable (see "Project management: Philosophies and strategies" feature), I wanted to dig a little deeper into the data we collected for the compensation survey. Specifically, I investigated the duties most commonly reported by those respondents who described themselves as project managers.

As reported in "The sixth annual Compensation Survey: Examining the value of employee offerings" in the May issue, 9 percent of the survey’s respondents selected project manager as the title that best describes their job, and 7 percent selected senior project manager. Given a list of various duties, at least 75 percent of these respondents selected the following:

• For project managers 94 percent attend external project team meetings; 83 percent set and maintain project budgets and schedules; 79 percent contribute to contract document production; 78 percent manage internal staff; and 75 percent perform computer analysis.
• For senior project managers 90 percent attend external project team meetings; 90 percent set and maintain project budgets and schedules; 82 percent manage internal staff; 82 percent are responsible for technical writing; 80 percent contribute to contract document production; and 76 percent perform computer analysis.

As you can see, attending project team meetings and setting and maintaining project budgets and schedules are the two most common duties of project managers and senior project managers.Where these two job titles differ is in the duty of managing internal staff, which is more common for the senior position.

Additionally, technical writing is a common duty for senior positions; but didn't make the list of most common duties for project managers.

One final data set I analyzed is years of experience. The majority of the respondents who selected project manager as the title that best suited them also reported that they had from 5 to 15 years of experience (51 percent). The title of senior project managers was less tightly reported and the respondents indicated that they had from 8 to 25 years of experience (55 percent).

While the reported responsibilities of a project manager are consistent with what the panelists in the roundtable described, the variation in the years of experience would indicate that the pace at which engineers arrive at the position is determined differently for each firm and for each person. And while some firms have structured and clearly defined career paths up to and through the ranks of project manager, others have a less formal approach dictated by staff readiness and ability. Regardless of the method embraced for advancing to the position, once in place, the project manager’s duties are clear and critical.