Project Managers: Shifting Roles

While the primary responsibility of project managers at M/E firms is managing projects, more than ever before their time is being dedicated to firm and office management, concludes a recent ZweigWhite survey.

According to the Natick, Mass.-based market research firm, project managers spend 40% of their time on project management while time spent on firm and office management has slowly increased over the past couple of years and is now at 16%. On the other hand, time spent on marketing this year decreased to 11%.

Other trends noted in the survey is the increasing percentage of project managers who are also officers in their firms (28%) and those who serve as owners (36%).

According to Jerry Novacek, an associate with ZweigWhite, one of the reasons for this trend may be that age has become less of a barrier to advancement.

“Younger people now have more opportunities to move up to senior-level project management and away from technical and design work than ever before,” Novacek said.

For more information on ZweigWhite’s 2001 Project Management Survey, log on to: www.zweigwhite.com .

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