Training your way to the top

By Emma Peterson.

John Kenney shares how training and education are crucial for project manager success in the roofing industry.

Everyone knows the importance of proper training for your team on the roof, but it’s equally important for the crew members working from the office. In this episode of Roofing Road Trips®, John Kenney stopped by to talk to Alex Tolle about his training, the Roofing Project Manager Training Program, and how it helps managers get the training and education they need to succeed.  

John is the CEO of Cotney Consulting Group and developed this training program based on his over 45 years of industry knowledge and experience. He explained a bit of what makes being a project manager in a roofing company such a unique position, sharing, “In a roofing company, the project manager can be filled as its own separate position, or it's also filled by the estimator/project manager. That happens especially in the growth cycle of a roofing company. But, overall, project managers are responsible for overseeing every aspect of the roofing project, ensuring it is completed on time, within budget and maintaining quality standards.” All these overarching goals can be broken down into daily tasks, such as planning and scheduling work time, managing materials and equipment, coordinating with stakeholders, working with subcontractors and more.  

Juggling and tracking these different elements is a lot, especially as this list doesn't account for challenges and problems that arise in every project. John explained, “Putting them in simple bullet points, the basic challenges you're going to face of course are labor shortages. Scheduling gets more and more complex. You have to balance weather disruptions and also multiple project timelines. One of the things that people forget about is that when one project changes or you have weather in one area, it knocks your whole schedule off because you have to juggle it to get it back on. You also have safety compliance and then of course cost management.”

All of these challenges and responsibilities are why it’s so important to make sure that your project managers have the training they need to succeed. John shared a bit about what his training offers, saying, “You want to use training to develop advanced problem solving and resource management skills because that's something you just can't learn on your own. This is also how you can use technology like project management software to your advantage, not just for the sake of saying I have it. Training's also going to give you some best practices and safety management and regulatory compliance because that's definitely part of the duties of a good project manager and roofing.” Whether you are training a new project manager or looking to help an existing project manager practice and level up their skills, training is the answer.  

Read the transcript or Listen to the whole episode to learn more about training and how it can lead to project management success.