Apartment CapX Budget Over Again

The Apartment CapX Budget is Over Again? How many times have you heard that statement in some form of fashion? And, I am sure – if you are anything like me – you just can’t understand it. Nor, in all fairness, do you take the time to understand it because you have a million other things that need your attention. But, I do have an idea as to why…

Humans Make Mistakes

Simply put – humans make mistakes. And, or they are innately incapable (not a dig – just plain reality) of thinking about every little nuance of a project. Or, they are too confident in their ability to forecast. But, most of all there are just too many steps in the process. And, the more steps there are the more opportunity there is/are for mistakes.

Apartment Project Management 

A project is set up as a series of steps and each step has a probability of failure. With that in mind, I thought I would list a few examples of where exactly things can go wrong:

bad process, choice of vendor, equipment/mechanic, technology, your expectations are mis-communicated or not well understood, wrong leadership, wrong manager, inexperienced leader, poor choice of incentives, deciding to try something new, ordering the wrong product, product ordering mishaps, shipping delays, delivering the wrong product, weather, ignoring the canary in the coal mine, killing the canary in the coal mine (no canaries were harmed when writing this post), no tracking, loose tracking, leaning on our ability to track it in our heads.

And, the list goes on and on and on.

Solution: Fewer steps.

I think it is easy to assume that the weak link defines the extent of the success or the failure of the project. And, with all of these areas of opportunity for error – it’s no wonder that many times we come in over. But, still not acceptable in my head.

It’s a problem I am thinking through from an operational perspective. It’s one I think is solved with less steps and fewer people. And, I’m sure it will result in some posts along the way.

Hope your weekend is a crazy good one.

Your consistently thinking about apartment project management multifamily maniac,

M