What Is A Land Development Project Manager?

Project Management in Land Development:

I have held two distinctly different project management roles over the years in land development. The project management tasks associated with each role were similar in many ways, but the day-to-day reality of each job was entirely different. Having your own land development and project management company for private investors is a world of difference from the same tasks in a corporate role. At least in my experience.

Private Land Development Company:

I dropped out of a sales director position with a large pharmaceutical company on December 27, 1993 and two days later I incorporated my private land development company. Between the 30 day notice I gave the pharma company and my end date I was offered a chance to take over about 3,800 acres of residential land development projects by a private land owner.

I accepted the offer and had my land development company open for business. One problem though: I didn’t know a single thing about land development. As I progressed over the next few years I somehow managed to survive, although in the beginning it was hit or miss. The learning curve was steep and rocky.

As far as being new to the business, like I was, I would suggest anyone considering land development as a new undertaking read this article:

Is Land Development For Me? Is Land Development For Me? — Land Development Realities

My role as a private land developer has been all encompassing. It’s more than project management as a single focus, although project management is the primary function.

My company has identified acquisition properties, handled all inspections and due diligence, negotiated and signed binding contracts, pushed entitlements, supervised construction, had sole fiduciary responsibility for all development assets, managed all consulting professionals, conducted marketing and sales, and of course, handled all problems.

So, my experience as a private guy has been more than project management, as would be typical of any one-man small business where you have to do everything yourself. Once I mastered the role (mostly) it was a genuine once in a lifetime opportunity that I have always been grateful for!

Then I moved to from the NW to the SE:

I always said I would never leave the Pacific Northwest, so of course I did (which is what you always get when you say never)… and for what else? L.O.V.E. I arrived in Florida in 2017, leaving my land development company and 62 years of past life behind. Glad I did.

Off to Flahraadaah and a new life:

Besides finding love, that’s when I also found corporate project management in land development. Read on…

Corporate land development project management:

I was in SW Florida for about year and out of the blue I got a call from a recruiter in Wisconsin. Don’t know how she found me. It was a land development project manager job with a huge national builder / developer in their southeast division. I agreed to sit with the director of land development and the president of the division. Bam! … off to work I went!

Project management in corporate land development:

I was the project manager for 3 counties. I had 13 projects with just under 13,000 acres of land actively in entitlement or construction. I honestly don’t remember the exact number of lots, but it was in the thousands.

How it went:

Volume and speed are the drivers with production builder / developers and this was no exception. The project manager role was almost exclusively land entitlement and construction management. The project managers also sat on the HOA Boards of their projects, which was a great idea in my opinion. Everything else was handled in other departments. There had been a revolving door of project managers over the last couple of years and I came to find out why later on.

I shared an office with another project manager and he was good. Like me, he was a guy with a lot of experience and had been around for about 6 months. He knew his stuff and he was good to brainstorm problems with. We had other things in common since he was also an older guy and had moved to SWFL for love. He knew what he was doing and was good to have around. Plus, he was a CCIM - one of the only two professional real estate designations that require significant and proven skill sets, not a bunch of B.S. alphabet soup letters stacked up behind some guy’s name.

Typical day:

I was up at 5:00 AM, at my desk at 6:00 AM, home at 6:30 or 7:00 PM. The only time I had a moment without some crisis or another was the first and last hour of the day. That’s why I routinely came in on weekends so that I could actually get something done. Of course so did everyone else, so it became an unspoken agreement that we would all leave each other alone (for the most part), so that interruptions were minimized and we could get out of there with some weekend left.

My inbox would cycle anywhere from 50 to 75 emails per day, most with multiple attachments - the kind you have to pay attention to. At any given time there was an equal backlog of inbox leftovers also demanding action. Of course every one was important to the person sending it and everything was time sensitive. It soon became clear that I had to apply serious prioritization skills and handle the most time-pressing stuff first. That, along with as much delegation as possible to support staff provided it was consistent with good professional practice.

The Florida market was red hot (as it has always been since I’ve been around). I got my job done and my plat subdivision timelines to completion were on track. Unfortunately, that was a clue to the executive team that I could take on more, so they asked me to take on 2 more projects. One of them was a project that got put on hold back in 2009 during the Great Recession, but was scheduled for resurrection. It was a design and engineering mess. I came to find out later that the project manager back then had screwed up and there was some major infrastructure tearing-out to do. Tearing out infrastructure was a definite first for me.

In fact, there were a lot of firsts and some of them were not consistent with my view of quality. The last straw for me had to do with a significant geotechnical issue that should have prevented about 160 lots from being placed in a certain location. The fix could have been easily handled in almost no time and with minimal cost. My modification recommendation was rejected in the interest of speed so I gave my notice shortly thereafter. I stayed on for 3 additional months at their request so they could find a new guy and they sure took their time doing it!

Upside and downsides of corporate project management:

Upsides:

In my experience the upsides of corporate project management in land development can be many. If you are a talented go-getter and apply yourself there is the good chance for upward mobility and the opportunity to move almost anywhere with a national company. Of course, this is contingent on successfully meeting and exceeding the assigned objectives. In my experience a person could also get about twice the project management experience in about half the time of private project management.

Exposure to varied and large-scale development opportunities and challenges is also a plus. I met some super good engineers, lawyers and multiple consultants that I have great respect for. If you work your butt off and produce results, you get noticed. You also get paid relatively well, with great benefits and there was a bonus schedule based on division production that really added up.

Downsides:

The downsides of corporate project management are almost entirely related to the single-minded focus on fast and massive production. This can affect the quality of the finished product and speed can mean shortcuts that lead to quality and consistency issues.

The other one is work load. I am pretty fast with things even though I am an old guy, but there is a limit to what any human can reasonably do no matter how dedicated you are. The corporate ethic was to move, move, move. Taking any action, even if incomplete or even guessing for heavens sake, was valued over inaction. Not really my cup of tea.

What is a land development project manager?

Well, that is my experience. I may have been a little rough on the corporate guys, but that’s what a I saw. A different company or a different area might not be the same and it’s true that there are plenty of folks that have survived and thrived in that environment.

Good land development project managers in either the corporate or private sectors are tough to find. If a person can find a way to learn the ropes and succeed you can become a valued commodity in the business, to yourself and to your career. Good luck!

Contact me at: ldr@landdevelopmentrealities.com

Photos courtesy of www.unsplash.com - Nikko Macaspac and Luis Villasmil. Thank you!