Chapter 1 Exercises

Work these with the chapter closed where you can. Retrieval beats re-reading, and it is not close. Selected answers appear in Appendix J; calculation items have their numeric answers in <details> blocks here so you can check arithmetic without checking judgment.

Difficulty legend: ⭐ basic recall and comprehension · ⭐⭐ applied analysis · ⭐⭐⭐ judgment, trade-offs, and multi-step work · ⭐⭐⭐⭐ extension and independent research.

Part A — Conceptual Understanding ⭐

A1. Write the chapter's definition of construction management from memory. Then underline every word in it that implies a promise made before the facts were known.

A2. Name the three continuous activities of a construction manager and give a one-line example of each from a project type you know — not from Northgate.

A3. List the nine phases of the project lifecycle in order. For each, name in five words or fewer the single document or artifact that phase produces.

A4. "CD" and "GC" each mean two different things in this industry. Name both meanings of each, and describe a specific sentence in which the ambiguity could cost money.

A5. Explain, in three sentences, why the delivery method determines how much influence a builder has over what a building costs.

A6. The classic triple constraint has three corners. The chapter argues that two commonly added items — safety and quality — do not belong as corners. Give the argument for each in one sentence.

A7. Northgate's guaranteed maximum price is $47,500,000 and Kestrel's fee is $1,804,800. Express the fee as a percentage of the GMP and say in one sentence what that percentage explains about contractor behavior.

A8. Define, without looking: substantial completion, liquidated damages, notice to proceed, authority having jurisdiction, request for information.

A9. Name four parties on a construction project and state what each is afraid of. Then say which of the four you would consult first about a problem with a foundation detail, and why.

A10. In the chapter's framework, what is the difference between "paperwork" and "documentation"?

Part B — Applied Analysis ⭐⭐

B1. A superintendent tells you: "The architect is deliberately slow-walking our submittals to punish us for the change order we filed last month." Using the incentives table in §1.3, give two alternative explanations that do not require anyone to be acting in bad faith. Then describe what you would actually do — the specific first action, not a principle.

B2. You are a project engineer. Your project manager asks you to "keep an eye on" the submittal log. Describe, in six steps or fewer, what "keeping an eye on it" concretely means so that it would have caught the Northgate anchor-bolt submittal before it sat for 11 days.

B3. A subcontractor's project manager calls and says her crew is being "stacked" on level 3. Explain what she means, why it matters to her economics specifically, and why it should matter to yours even though her contract is lump sum.

B4. Look at the "day in the life" table in §1.6. Ray was interrupted 31 times. Identify three specific interruptions from the table that were, in fact, the most valuable work of his day — and explain what makes an interruption valuable rather than costly.

B5. A first-year field engineer says: "I don't want to send this RFI, because it will look like I couldn't figure it out myself." Write the reply you would give, in under 120 words, that changes their behavior without embarrassing them.

B6. Kestrel self-performs concrete, rough carpentry, and general trades and subcontracts everything else. List three specific management problems that self-performing creates which subcontracting does not, and three that subcontracting creates which self-performing does not.

B7. An owner's representative asks: "Why do I need a construction manager? I have an architect who can administer the contract." Give the honest answer, including at least one thing an architect genuinely does better than a contractor.

B8. Reread the AHJ row of the §1.3 cast table. Describe a specific, concrete practice — something you could put on a calendar — that would keep a building official informed rather than surprised, on a job that runs 565 calendar days.

Part C — Calculations and Deliverables ⭐⭐–⭐⭐⭐

C1. The daily exposure, from scratch. Northgate's general conditions are $2,900,000 over 565 calendar days, and liquidated damages are $5,500 per calendar day.

(a) Compute the general-conditions burn rate per calendar day. (b) State the book's agreed extended-GC rate and the total daily exposure. (c) Compute the cost of a 12-calendar-day slip and a 45-calendar-day slip. (d) Express a 45-day slip as a percentage of Kestrel's $1,804,800 fee.

C2. Cost per square foot. Northgate is $47,500,000 for 132,000 gross square feet. Compute the cost per square foot. Then compute it again excluding the CM fee and the escalation allowance, and explain in one sentence why an owner comparing your $/SF against another project's might be comparing two different things.

C3. The truck count. Margo tells Dani that Northgate exports 32,000 cubic yards of material measured in place, that it swells to roughly 40,000 loose cubic yards in a truck, and that trucks haul about 14 loose cubic yards.

(a) Compute the expected number of truckloads. (b) The earthwork subcontractor invoices for 3,180 loads. Compute the difference and, at an assumed $92 per load haul rate, the dollar value of that difference. (c) Name three legitimate reasons the real count could exceed the estimate, and one illegitimate one.

C4. Build the charter's success criteria. For the Willow Street Community Center ($6,800,000, 425 calendar days, $1,200/CD liquidated damages, 5% retention), write five measurable success criteria — one each for cost, time, quality, safety, and relationship. Every one must be a number or a yes/no that could be evaluated by a stranger without argument. Then, for each, name the single document or report you would use to measure it.

C5. The stakeholder map. Build the §1.3 table for Willow Street: at least ten rows, four columns (paid to do / actually wants / afraid of / what I need from them and by when). Municipal owner, prevailing wage, and public bidding change several rows relative to Northgate — say which and why.

C6. Triage, again, with different items. It is Thursday morning on Willow Street. Rank these by what it costs if ignored for 24 hours, using the four clocks, and justify each:

• The gymnasium roof joist submittal has been in the structural engineer's office for 19 days; the contract allows 14.
• A masonry crew is laying block in a section where the underground plumbing has not been inspected.
• The city's project manager has asked for a written schedule update by Friday.
• Your excavation subcontractor hit the existing 8-inch water main that was supposed to be relocated first.
• Two laborers are working in a 5-foot-deep trench with no protective system in place.
• Your certified payroll for week 3 has not been submitted, and the contract requires it weekly.

C7. Read a fee. A contractor proposes a fee of 4.0% on a $45,120,000 cost subtotal, and separately proposes 5.5% on a $12,000,000 job.

(a) Compute both fees in dollars. (b) Explain why the percentage is higher on the smaller job, in terms of what the fee actually pays for. (c) The owner asks you to cut the fee on the small job to 4.0%. Compute the dollar reduction and describe what specifically you would have to stop doing to absorb it.

C8. Price a day. Willow Street's liquidated damages are $1,200 per calendar day. Its general-conditions budget is $680,000 over the 425-calendar-day contract.

(a) Compute the general-conditions burn rate per calendar day. (b) Compute the total daily exposure to slipping substantial completion. (c) A subcontractor asks you to accept a 9-calendar-day extension on the gymnasium roof, which is on the critical path, in exchange for a $6,000 credit. Compute whether that is a good trade and state the answer in one sentence a non-technical owner would understand. (d) Name one non-monetary factor that could reverse your answer to (c).

C9. Turn a slogan into a measurement. "On time and on budget" is not a success criterion because two reasonable people can disagree about whether it was met. For each of the following statements, rewrite it as something a stranger could evaluate on a Tuesday with a specific document in hand:

(a) "We will maintain good communication with the owner." (b) "We will run a safe job." (c) "We will deliver a high-quality building." (d) "We will treat our subcontractors fairly." (e) "We will manage changes proactively."

For each rewrite, name the document or report that provides the evidence. If you cannot name one, the criterion is still a slogan — try again.

Part D — Judgment and Ethics ⭐⭐⭐

D1. Your superintendent tells you a crew can finish an elevation on Friday if they work through a rain forecast and skip re-tagging the scaffold, "because it's the same scaffold as yesterday." Your schedule needs Friday. Write down: what you say, in the actual words you would use; what you write down afterward; and what you would change about the schedule so this conversation does not recur in three weeks.

D2. Curtis Boone bid-shops his subcontractors: after he wins a job, he calls the second-low bidder and asks them to beat the low number. It is legal in most private-sector contexts and it lowers his cost. Make the strongest possible case for the practice, then make the case against it in terms of what it costs him — not in terms of fairness. Which case is stronger, and what does that tell you about how to argue ethics with a colleague who is winning?

D3. You discover that a change your assistant superintendent allowed to be built has no written directive and no time-and-material tickets for the first four days — the CO #14 situation. It is Wednesday. List, in order, the first five things you do, and identify which of them protect the project and which of them protect you personally. Be honest about whether those two lists are the same.

D4. An owner's representative asks you, informally over coffee, whether a particular subcontractor on the job is "any good." You have concerns. Describe what you can say, what you should not say, and why the difference matters both ethically and contractually.

D5. Your company's safety statistics are excellent and one reason is that minor injuries are quietly treated in a way that avoids their being recorded. Nobody has been seriously hurt. Explain what is wrong with this beyond the regulatory exposure — specifically, what it does to the information the company runs on.

Part M — Mixed and Interleaved Practice ⭐⭐–⭐⭐⭐

This is Chapter 1, so there are no earlier chapters to interleave with. Instead, these items force you to combine the chapter's own strands — lifecycle, cast, roles, constraints, and money — which is how the job actually arrives: never one topic at a time. From Chapter 3 onward, Part M will explicitly mix in named earlier chapters.

M1. Take one event — the curtain wall submittal comes back Revise and Resubmit — and trace it through four lenses: (a) which lifecycle phase it belongs to; (b) which four parties from the cast table are affected and what each of them wants; (c) which internal roles must act and in what order; (d) which of the four clocks it is on and what it costs in dollars if the resubmittal cycle adds 18 calendar days to a critical-path item.

M2. Rebuild the "day in the life" table for a superintendent on a residential subdivision running eleven houses at a time on a 92-calendar-day cycle per house, rather than one 132,000 SF building. Keep the hour-by-hour format. Then write three sentences on what structurally changes about the job when the product repeats.

M3. You are handed the Northgate GMP build-up table and asked by a board member: "Why is there $1,320,000 of contingency in a guaranteed maximum price? Isn't the point of a guarantee that you already know?" Answer it in under 150 words without using the word "buffer," and without implying the contractor is protecting itself at the owner's expense. Then say what would have to be true for that contingency to be returned to the owner.

M4. Using both case studies, build a single comparison table: Suite 400 versus Dr. Boadi's renovation, with rows for delivery structure, number of contracts, who owned sequence, who owned scope gaps, who held retention, how changes were priced, and outcome versus plan. Then write the one-sentence conclusion the table supports.

M5. Estimate the total labor cost of Ray's 31 interruptions in one day, making and stating your own assumptions about how long each cost him in recovery time and what a project manager's fully burdened hour is worth. Then argue against your own conclusion: identify what would be lost if those interruptions were eliminated.

M6. Combine the lifecycle table and the cast table into a single "who enters when" diagram — ASCII or a table, your choice — showing at which phase each of the fourteen parties first appears on a project and at which phase each one leaves. Identify the two parties whose engagement is most often started too late, and say what that costs.

Part E — Research and Extension ⭐⭐⭐⭐

E1. Go look at a real project. Find a construction site you can legally observe from a public sidewalk. Spend thirty minutes and record: the number of distinct trades you can identify by truck logo or activity; the material staging and how far it is from where it will be installed; the site access and how deliveries enter; whether the fence, signage, and permit posting are in order; and any hazard you can see from where you stand. Then write half a page on what the site tells you about how it is being managed. You will be surprised how much is visible from the sidewalk.

E2. Read a real contract. Obtain a real construction contract — many public owners post their standard front-end documents and bid packages publicly, and the standard families (AIA, ConsensusDocs, EJCDC) publish descriptions of what each of their documents does. Find and read the clauses covering time of completion, liquidated damages, changes in the work, notice requirements, and differing site conditions. Write down, for each: who owns the risk, what triggers the obligation, and how many days you have to act. Then compare the notice periods with the rhythm of the "day in the life" table and say honestly whether a busy project manager would meet them.

E3. Find your jurisdiction. For the state or country where you expect to work, locate the primary sources — not a blog summary — for: contractor licensing requirements; mechanic's lien or equivalent security-of-payment deadlines; prompt-payment requirements; and prevailing-wage obligations on public work. Note the date you looked. These rules vary substantially between jurisdictions and change over time, and the single most dangerous professional habit in construction is carrying a rule across a state line.