4 Reasons Real Estate Development PMs Get Promoted

Being a real estate project manager has never been more challenging as we head into the new year. An unreliable materials market caused by the pandemic, skilled labor shortage, and increasing energy regulatory requirements are all hindering project outcomes, leaving project managers to find creative solutions to ensure they are maximizing returns for owners and investors on each project. 

However, there is one advantage to the market conditions for project managers. Those who can build processes that can combat the unknown and complete projects on time and within budget will see their professional stock rise and position themselves for a promotion. 

Here are the top four reasons real estate project managers earn (and deserve) promotions,

They’ve Established Data Transparency In Every Project

Top project managers develop strategies to reduce the impact of external factors on their projects and have a good sense of what tactics will ensure development projects remain on track. 

But there are plenty of factors that get in the way of having complete visibility : 

• Teams are lacking a primary source of information and data to make the most informed decisions quickly
• The accounting team has too much command over development decisions
• There’s not enough data used to make critical decisions that keep projects on schedule
• There’s a struggle to keep a holistic overview and maintain a focus on the big picture of your project

It's easy to look at these common issues and give into the notion that there's nothing you can do, but top-performing managers find a way. You can't control what you can't control, but you can build a better system to manage the aspects of a project that are within your grip by removing process bottlenecks and data silos (common culprits of bad project outcomes). 

If project finances are managed through the accounting department, you're always relying on that team or system to understand the state of your project - or depending on your own manually tracked data, which may not line up with accounting's numbers. And when that happens, you're either operating off of erroneous data or spending too much time reconciling data discrepancies.

When you’re spending hours reconciling data, or worse, repeatedly inputting it into spreadsheets for tracking purposes, you're shortening your ability to make the impressive and necessary strategic decisions on projects that help you move up the career ladder. Understanding the different types of commercial real estate technology for developers can help you automate the tasks that eat up days or weeks of your time and allow you to refocus your time on your core expertise.

Project managers looking to earn a promotion can get ahead of their competition by understanding how automation works within their current workflows and how it can eliminate low-value tasks. 

They’ve Eliminated Project Data-entry Errors

Automation is an elite project manager’s best friend. 

Beyond giving you time back in your day to focus on making smart project decisions, well-implemented automation can significantly reduce, if not eliminate, project errors that lead to budget overruns and delays. 

When you’re tracking progress through manually updated spreadsheets, you are opening your projects up to human error. A misplaced keystroke here, a wrong number placed there, and you're suddenly making big decisions based on inaccurate data. Errors compound. And the project managers that uncover issues during their post-mortem review aren’t getting looked at for advancement. 

Automation platforms can sync with email-based workflows and extract the data from incoming invoices, proposals, contracts, waivers, and more, eliminating the need for manual data entry and double-checking project numbers to make sure they match the documentation exactly. And if you incorporate accounting platform integrations into your automation workflows, you won’t be spending time bridging numbers between two departments. 

When project data is accessible and accurate, you can see which budget lines are trending too high and make strategic decisions to counteract the increased costs. 

Project managers that empower themselves with technology to prevent projects from going over budget will earn the praise of senior leadership and investors.

They’ve Made Their Hard Work Visible to Leaders

Project managers do so much every day that it’s nearly impossible for leadership to understand the full breadth of the work. And managers tend to get blamed when anything on the project goes wrong or gets behind schedule even though there is too much admin work to stay on top of it all.

Walking leaders through all of the administrative work you need to do each day won’t earn you a promotion, but proactively solving this problem will. It’s up to the project manager to manage their time and duties effectively, which is made a lot easier if it involves researching tools that’ll allow them to focus their time on strategic tasks.

BY increasing visibility across the team, it allows leadership to see when your projects are under control and on pace to meet deadlines and budgets. And they know that it takes skill to accomplish those goals consistently. By taking action, like bringing in automation to reduce admin work, and project errors, you’re able to better showcase your talent and put forth the type of hard work those responsible for your promotion like to see. 

Be a proactive leader. If you see that a project is doomed and the workload headed your way is unrealistic, make the change that will put your project back on track instead of simply giving into your circumstances.

They Impress JV Partners

It’s no secret that investors like to place their money into projects that’ll generate predictable returns. The team that manages the development of a property is a big part of the investor’s decision. If your firm has a history of bringing in projects predictably, you’ll see interest from investors. And if your management skills are contributing to predictable outcomes, your firm’s leadership will take notice. 

Joint ventures are increasingly analyzing how development teams are going about project delivery. As more and more firms adopt automation, data analytics, and AI to help their project outcomes, those that stick to traditional methods will begin to see investor interest wane. 

By becoming as tech-savvy as possible, you’re not only future-proofing your value as a project manager; you’re helping your firm earn more business, and in turn, positioning yourself as an asset to the team. Not a bad bargaining chip when angling for a promotion. 

So, where do you start when it comes to finding technology for your development team? Northspyre is the first cloud-based intelligence platform built specifically for real estate project delivery. It combines automation, data analytics, and AI to help you earn the predictable outcomes that help project managers go from run of the mill to stardom. 

Want to learn more? Book a demo of the platform today to eliminate stress and remove uncertainty from your day-to-day work.