Skip to content
Review.Live

Leadership and closeout

Delegating to a new assistant superintendent

By Review.LivePublished 3 min readHow we write

At Monday's operations meeting you meet your new assistant superintendent: six years as a framing foreman, keen, never in charge of an area. Your mechanical coordination is behind and the owner wants a walk every Thursday. It is tempting to hand over whatever is urgent and check all of it tonight.

Three workers in hard hats and high-visibility vests check a block wall with a tape measure.
Photo: Glenov Brankovic on Unsplash

Delegation fails in two familiar ways. Hand over a task without the authority to finish it, and the assistant keeps coming back for permission; hand over authority without the standard, and the work is done differently and redone. Both come from delegating tasks instead of an area with limits the assistant knows in advance.

  1. Choose an area with a visible finish line: a building, two levels, the parkade, or site logistics.
  2. Write the handover on one page: what is theirs, what stays yours, and what they decide alone, and add it to the responsibility matrix.
  3. Name what comes back to you the same day: anything that adds cost or time, any stop-work or injury, any scope question from the owner.
  4. Show the standard once, then hand it over: do one inspection, one daily report and one coordination meeting together, and let them run the next.
  5. Set check-ins and reduce them on evidence: 15 minutes a day for two weeks, then twice a week once the area shows it is under control.
  6. Tell the trades who decides in that area, and send their questions to your assistant.
  7. Judge results, not methods. Correct in private; back them in public.

Common mistakes

  • Delegating the unpleasant tasks and keeping every decision.
  • Rechecking everything behind the assistant's back; the trades notice and go around them.
  • Keeping daily check-ins for months, or dropping them after one good week.

Checklist

Before you hand over the area

  • The area and its finish line are named
  • One page says what is theirs and what stays yours
  • Same-day escalation triggers are written down
  • Check-in times are in both calendars
  • The trades know who decides in that area
  • Safety training and duties for the role are confirmed

Check your understanding

Your assistant makes a call you would have made differently, but the result is safe, on time and on budget. Should you reverse it?

Show the answer
No. Reversing a decision that meets the standard tells the assistant and the trades that the area is still yours, and they will come back to you with every question. If the difference matters, talk it through privately; judge the area by its results, not by whether it was done your way.

Sources

  1. Occupational Health and Safety Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. O.1 (section 1, definitions of supervisor and competent person; section 25(2)(c), appointing a supervisor; section 27, duties of supervisor)Government of Ontario, e-Laws · Ontario, Canada · accessed
  2. O. Reg. 297/13: Occupational Health and Safety Awareness and Training (section 2, supervisors)Government of Ontario, e-Laws · Ontario, Canada · accessed

Related articles