Taking over a project halfway: the first two weeks
It is your first morning on a job seven months into an eleven-month schedule. Your predecessor moved to another project on Friday, leaving a one-page note, a shared drive and a promise to answer his phone. The owner's representative wants to meet on Thursday.
Start with anything that has a clock on it — notices, change requests, payment dates and permits due soon — because those can be lost while you are still reading. Then work through the contract, the money, the schedule, the open issues and the people in a planned order, and report what you found by the end of week two. A handover note holds what your predecessor remembered; the risk sits in what they did not know was unfinished, such as a priced change never sent or a notice period quietly running.
The first ten working days
- Days 1–2: find the clocks. List every deadline in the next 30 days — notices, unsent change requests, the next payment application, permits, inspections — and act on anything due this week.
- Days 2–3: read the contract or its summary for notices, changes and payment — see reading the contract.
- Days 3–5: rebuild the money: budget, cost to date, commitments, forecast, billing, holdback, and every change by status, drafts included.
- Week 1: walk every area with the superintendent against the schedule, and read a month of daily reports and notes for instructions nobody passed on.
- By the end of week 2: meet the owner's representative, the consultant and the key trades; ask what each is waiting for and was promised.
- Day 10: send your manager a takeover report: what you found, what is at risk, what you did and what you need.
Common mistakes
- Reading the files in order while a deadline runs out.
- Trusting the last forecast or schedule update without walking the site.
- Assuming that what is not in the files did not happen.
- Criticizing your predecessor to the owner or the trades.
Checklist
Ask your predecessor on day one
- What have you promised anyone that is not in writing?
- Which changes are priced but not sent?
- Which notice, claim or payment dates are running?
- Who on the owner's side really decides?
- Which trade worries you most, and why?
- What would you do first if you stayed?
Check your understanding
On day three a subcontractor says your predecessor agreed by phone to pay for two Saturdays of overtime. Nothing is written. What do you do?
