The Impact of an Experienced Superintendent on Project Outcomes

When it comes to successful projects, the right superintendent is more than just a contract administrator—they create value. Understanding the real role of a superintendent can lead to smarter decisions, better financial outcomes, and a more collaborative project environment.

These days, bringing projects to fruition has never been more challenging. Our industry is confronted by price escalation, approval delays, and industrial action, all of this is on top of the usual complexities involved in realising a project vision. At Orion, we believe it’s more important than ever to have an experienced superintendent on your project team.

The Value of an Experienced Superintendent

The role of the superintendent is often seen as purely contract administration, however, our experience has shown that there are some other key benefits they can bring to a project. These benefits add value to both the developer and the contractor.

The value provided goes beyond the traditional responsibilities of a superintendent, and leans into their strategic perspective to help ensure the project delivers on its intended outcomes. It involves a deep understanding of construction and development processes to foresee potential pitfalls and implement strategies to mitigate them, before they become major issues.

At Orion, our teams across project management, civil design, structural design, WSC, surveying, and town planning seek out in-house construction expertise to assist with project problem solving. This sharing of knowledge directly benefits our clients and our people.

Following are some examples of how an experienced superintendent can add value at every stage of a project.

Design Constructability: Aligning Vision and Construction

What we are seeing is that most of the ‘easy’ sites in metro Sydney are gone, and those sites that remain for development come with challenges. These challenges often require substantial financial investment, the bulk of which becomes payable when project construction starts.

Applying construction knowledge in the early phases of a project can help provide a clearer understanding of the potential costs - and it’s never too early. When considering the feasibility of a site, having an experienced superintendent within the project team can help to form a more accurate estimate of the costs to complete the works.

At Orion, our construction team and experienced superintendents love to pull projects apart and dive into the detail. We go looking for the hidden and unforeseen issues. This approach allows us to address potential problems early by navigating a path through project road blocks.

We can also add value to the design phase by working with design engineers to design out risks. While a superintendent is unlikely to be able to tell you what size pipe you need to drain a certain size catchment, they can advise you of the risks associated with the installation of the pipe. Installing pipes around live services, within the zone of influence of a structure, or in a location that requires pedestrian or vehicle traffic management, can be extremely complex.

An experienced superintendent can provide practical advice, assess alternatives, and settle on a preferred solution. A constructability review that is undertaken before the design is finalised, and well before a contractor is engaged, can save time and money, even before works start on site.

Without this forward planning, we often see issues arise such as:

• Double handling material because ‘we have to’ in order to meet a deadline on project registration.
• Exporting large volumes of material to ‘get it out of the way’ so that we can physically start works.

While certain scenarios are unavoidable, we actively look for ways to avoid program or cost penalties by challenging the design.

Effective Tender Management

Once a project is designed and nearing approval, we typically shift our focus to tendering. Tender preparation by an experienced superintendent can help guide a tenderer.

Why is it important to guide tenderers?

Uncertainty for a tenderer is risk. To reduce risk, they will give themselves some additional budget or what is often known as ‘fat’. Adding extra cost is an insurance policy for perceived risk, and while most contractors will still look for potential variations, variation approvals are not always guaranteed.  An experienced superintendent can provide guidance and clarity during the tender process to help reduce perceived risk. This is turn, helps to reduce costs.

At Orion, we strive for certainty and clarity in our tenders. It involves setting up contracts or tender schedules with sensible, separable portions and additional pay items. We attempt to avoid submission of widely varying tenders by providing well-structured tender schedules and documents, which allows more time for the superintendent to:

• Ensure all tenders are inclusive of the same items.
• Complete a detailed analysis of rates, quantities, and inclusions and exclusions to highlight any potential issues.
• Consider cost pressures and / or price escalation issues that the tenderer may be facing.
• Consider appropriate mitigation strategies that share the risks between the principal and contractor.  

Involving an experienced superintendent at the tender stage reduces the developer and contractor’s exposure to risk, and helps to reduce variations to the contract.

Smooth Project Execution During Construction

We are now at the stage that superintendents live for – playing in the dirt with the big yellow Tonka trucks! This is where we run meetings and actively work with the client and contractor to achieve the time, cost and quality targets.

What does this mean in practical terms?

It means looking ahead for potential obstacles and identifying solutions, and jumping into the details of an RFI and resolving it effectively to avoid possible delays or cost increases. Project response times during construction can be reduced by a superintendent that understands construction methodologies, production time frames, and costs.

Our goal is to deliver a great project; a project that the contractor is proud of, that realises the client’s vision, and adds real benefit to the community. We work collaboratively with contractors and clients to make this happen.

Never underestimate the value of a good working relationship between all parties. Every successful project involves a contractor and client working well together, and Orion sees developing this relationship as a big part of our role. When it comes to decision making, we apply critical thinking and assess every situation on its merits, resolving issues impartially and with integrity.

That’s Only a Snapshot

At Orion, we’ve seen firsthand the value an experienced superintendent can provide at all stages of the project life cycle. As projects become more difficult to get off the ground, let alone delivered, the need for quality advice has never been more important.

There are many more ways a superintendent can add value to your next project. If you want to talk to someone on our team about how we can make a difference to your project, reach out to Wayne Azzopardi at [email protected].