Yesterday I made my weekly commute through the Columbia River Gorge. The Gorge is beautiful and impressive. Beautiful for its great canyons, mighty river, expanse of forests, and waterfalls. Impressive because of the hydroelectric dams, wind generation, highway, river and rail transportation systems.

I've made this trip along the Washington/Oregon border so many times that the enormity of it often passes unnoticed. Perhaps most dramatic, the Bonneville Dam, sits in an amazing setting of cliffs, trees, and river pools. Built in 1929, this Dam provides 1,000 MW of renewable energy to the Pacific Northwest and beyond. The dam is also skirted by the impressive Historic Columbia River Highway and newer Interstate 84.

The decision to use an outside firm to perform construction management and/or inspection on your projects is sometimes an obvious one.  The common problems that owners face include:

• Hiring and firing staff to cover temporary upswings in construction volume

• Inefficient staff utilization in between projects

• Projects with specialized construction techniques or heightened regulatory compliance that exceed the capabilities of in-house staff inspectors

If your group has experienced any of these, you’re probably already familiar with the reasons for hiring a consultant.  However, there are some not so obvious advantages that are also worth considering.

Safety is Job #1 for everyone on your team: employees, consultants and especially your contractors. Your contractors should be running effective meetings to set the proper tone for safety on your sites. These meetings are a valuable way to teach best practices, share lessons learned and make your team aware of potentially hazardous job site activities.

Every project manager knows that understanding the drivers of a project’s progress at any point in time is essential for forecasting milestone completion dates.  With the intense financial and regulatory pressure most energy projects are under to be completed on-time, understanding a project’s critical path (and what can be done to manipulate it) is, well….critical!