Planning, design and construction: you could be overseeing every stage of a project as a construction manager. You’ll be responsible for timeframes, costs and the quality of a finished project. It’s a vital role, so employers ask challenging construction management interview questions to ensure they get the candidate who can keep huge projects on track.
Here we take you through some of the some commonly asked questions, so you can go into your interview fully prepared and ready to impress.
What qualities make you a good construction project manager?
It may well be worded differently, but at some point during your interview, you’ll have a chance to talk about your experience and skills, as well as why you’re a good fit for the role.
You should draw upon personal experiences if you can, highlighting organisational and leadership skills and other qualities that will tell the company vital projects will be in safe hands.
Tell us about your current role
Although this sounds quite straightforward, you’ll need to make sure you can express the full value of the job you do, concentrating on what’s most relevant to construction management. Your interviewers will also want to quickly see how your current responsibilities could translate into duties in the new role.
What do you do if a project starts running behind?
As you’ll know, project delays are sometimes unavoidable, so this is always a favourite for interview questions on construction management.
It’s a good idea to mention the importance of communicating delays honestly, so that everyone is kept informed. You could talk about pinpointing reasons for delays and adapting processes to avoid further delays.
How do you manage client expectations?
It’s not unusual for clients to have unrealistic expectations about timelines and costs. Managing them is a central part of a construction project manager’s job.
You can answer a question like this by detailing past experiences. Perhaps you gave a client examples of other, similar projects to demonstrate how long they typically take and how much they usually cost.
What do you do if a client changes what they want after the project has started?
Very few projects run completely smoothly and plans can change for any number of reasons.
To answer a question like this, highlight your ability to solve problems and think quickly. You could reply by saying that you’d try your utmost to adapt work completed so far to the new vision, speaking to your team about the best ways to do this. You should definitely mention that you’d communicate the cost and schedule implications of any changes to the client.
How do you deal with employees failing to follow safety measures?
Make sure the interviewers know you take safety measures seriously: after all, you’re responsible for employees’ safety on site.
As well as talking individually with the employee about the importance of safety measures, you might need to run refresher courses for the whole team. Make sure you incorporate this into your answer.
Don’t forget to prepare for general interview questions as well. Your interviewers could ask for an example of a time when you resolved conflict or used your leadership skills. Or they might want you to talk about your management style or how you deal with stress.
A lot of questions relating to construction interviews will be competency-based questions. Giving real life examples of situations on site and how these were dealt with.
You will definitely be asked about your work history, so ensure you can outline it in a way that leads to your current situation. It may be useful as well to take a portfolio of projects you’ve done previously as evidence of your work and the scale of their schemes.
And, of course, you should expect to be asked why you want the job. So make sure to do some research on the company and study the job description in detail.
We hope our construction management interview questions and answers will come in useful the next time you’re aiming to secure a role. Remember: preparation is everything when it comes to interviews, particularly for such a responsible role at the centre of multi-million-pound projects.
If you have any questions please do get in touch with our consultants in the construction team.
For our latest roles in construction please do visit our jobs page here