Burnout

We work in a hard charging industry. We work hard to make frequent deadlines and then work longer than 40 or 50 hours a week in between deadline crunches. Add the stress making deadlines and uncertainty of our decisions to make deadlines or at the deadline and burnout can come frequently and last for periods of time. Some people burnout and stall their career, others change roles and others flat out leave construction. In an industry that is already short staffed, all of this is not good.

We work hard chasing work and stress about our bid and proposal decisions, then work hard to build a project and stress about our day to day decisions only to start stressing about getting more work as soon as we have our projects rolling the right way.

This is fairly common in the industry. How can we combat this? Should leaders all but force people using PTO to stay off their phones and out of their e-mails? Should we hire key people to reduce the average workload? Would saying no to more projects reduce burnout and focus effort on winning and building the most profitable work? How do we make it easier for people to schedule (and keep) personal appointments that must happen during work hours? Would helping people make plans to participate in family related events reduce burnout?

Part of why many of us like our industry is that it is challenging to succeed in. Success requires a mix of hard work, intelligence and dedication. The toughest often rise to the top. The trick is not burning out on the way there or stalling because of burnout. Let’s work as teams, companies and as an industry to keep from burning our coworkers and friends out so that we can do our best in building a better world.