Welcome Our New Northwest Regional Manager!

April 12, 2023

Being a project manager may be very stressful since you have to manage people who all lead separate lives while dealing with time and financial restrictions.

We had the pleasure of speaking with Jerimiah Olson this week. who will be our northwest regional manager.

Can you share what led you to want to be a project manager?

It’s just something that I wanted to do, I worked in the field my whole life, I wanted to advance myself. I never really thought about it, I’ve been in the construction industry my whole life and wanted to do something different, new challenges, right?

Can you share your favorite part of project management?

I guess my favorite part is problem solving and creating the solutions to those problems. To me it’s trying to find creative solutions to unique problems.

Could you think of an example?

Collaborating with others, that’s when problems can arise, shipping, logistics.

While you are learning a lot, is there an aspect of project management that you find to be the hardest?

The hardest part is failing, losing money on a project. It can be caused by a number of things (weather, inspections, tradesmen, combinations) it’s never one thing, its general a combination of what one person did, or the weather did, in my experience anyways, no one’s perfect and it’s painting, industrial painting. We all strive to be better each day than the day before, or we should.

Through the various challenges of project management, how has becoming a project manager helped shape you?

In a personal aspect it has increased critical thinking.

What, to you, defines a successful project?

To me, it would go beyond the financial, a successful project is one where everyone’s happy, the customers to the contractors in what they achieved. To me, it’s always been construction, building the world, I guess it’s more the overall satisfaction of seeing what you did and knowing it and seeing it. Everyone needs money, it’s got be there, otherwise the company wouldn’t exist, and the financial aspect is important, but it’s more than that to be a successful project, because not all successful projects are financially successful, if the customer has a good product, they’re satisfied with it. If you spend all the time focused on the financials, you can lose out on the joy.

To other young project managers who may be reading this, what advice would you give them?

Don’t over think or stress about things, I use to stress about things really bad that you have no control over that you wish you had control over and it’s not healthy, and it’s not healthy for your family, don’t stress the small stuff, and to focus on the big picture.

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