Heavy Highway Contractor

  • 1.  Ask the PM

    Posted 11-17-2025 17:26

    So I recognized during the last annual conference I was one of the few (if any) that raised their hand when a couple of session presenters asked if there were any Project Managers in the room! To that extent I saw a lot of questions and/or gaps between the accounting teams and the project management teams.

    I figured with my years in the industry with the majority of those in the Heavy Construction side as a PM or similar capacity I may be able to provide some valuable insights! If not at least some perspective from the operations side of the business. I will say my CFO and I see eye to eye and my PMs also are on the same page when it comes to the importance of their role in the financial reporting side of our business above and beyond their own projects.

    So this thread is intended to be a place to ask about that perspective, where and how I can help fill any shortcomings or oversights between the two teams! At the time of this post I have 8 PM's reporting to me so I could also leverage their perspective or I would also hope the other PM's within CFMA would feel motivated to chime in as well!

    So post your questions and let's fire up some discussion!



    ------------------------------
    Eric Heidman
    VP of Project Management
    Landmark Excavating
    American Fork UT
    (470) 707-8653
    ------------------------------


  • 2.  RE: Ask the PM

    Posted 11-17-2025 20:11

    Hi Eric - 

    Glad to read that you are willing to share your insights. I will whole-heartedly agree that when operations understands the financial life-cycle of projects, planning and business expansion are much more seemless. The organization I have joined is very new to financial operations and the timliness necessary of all transactions. I can tell you it is a part of the job that I gross under-estimated in that I expected that was already a best practice. Our team has had many discussions about whom and what and when deadlines need to be met. 

    I would love to ask you how you ultimately came together with like-mindedness with your CFO???

    Cheers,

     



    ------------------------------
    Kimberly Otto
    Controller
    Lincoln Cabinets dba Lincoln Woodworks
    Palisade CO
    (970) 819-8275
    ------------------------------



  • 3.  RE: Ask the PM

    Posted 11-18-2025 09:12

    Great one! I have had the pleasure of being part of the large multi-billion dollar firms and learned how business is done there as well as a "smaller" regional firm where the sophistication of best practices is there but on the lower end of the spectrum when paired next to say publicly traded firms. So I came to the table with expectations from past experiences.

    Our CFO is great and we have a weekly cadence of meeting and both picking each others brains and collaborating on how we level-up. Ultimately I hold the operations side to high standards/expectations, as this is the root of all of our financial data and management. If our operations team is not able to properly understand over/under billing, cash flows, projections/WIPs etc. then ultimately the operations team can drive things into the ground no matter the guardrails put up by the CFO. So I believe to answer your question, our CFO and I had like-mindedness from the get go, there was only refinement of our like-mindedness. Operations is the head of the dragon and the CFO/accounting is the tail of the dragon, money already spent can't be unspent..in most typical scenarios.

    There are a million variables to all of this and I lean into company size and scalability, the CFO can't manage every projects' financials at one point in size/revenue, so the operations team needs to comprehend their impacts so the CFO can manage at a higher level. 

    As for timeliness...if things aren't able to be closed and WIPs/projections completed in a timely manner how are things being corrected when they are so far in the rearview mirror? That is my driver for the team to understand the importance of timeliness. (plus we, and most GC's I've been with, utilize daily financial metrics to clue into things way quicker)



    ------------------------------
    Eric Heidman
    VP of Project Management
    Landmark Excavating
    American Fork UT
    (470) 707-8653
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


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