Interview– Victor Gorman
“Do not stress. Don't stress. Things will go wrong. Things are going to be missed. It's inevitable. When something goes wrong, it's easy to get upset or lose your cool or find somebody to blame. But it's not going to help anything, and it's not going to help remedy the problem. The important thing is just to kind of keep an open mind and cool off. Take a walk and come back and use your mind to fix it. Everything can be fixed.”
What would you recommend, based on your experience, to improve your knowledge base? Experience. That's what I recommend. I've been doing this for almost 15 years, but I don't know everything. I come to work every day, and I learn something new. I don't know much at all, I don't think. Because every day I'm like, ‘Holy crap, I didn't think about that. I didn't know that.’ So every day you come to work, and you hope to take something home that you didn't come with in the first place. With time comes experience. A year from now you’re going to know more than you know now hopefully.
And going to the site, you see how things are getting built. ‘Oh, I drew it like this, but this contractor is building it like that. Why?’ And you see how things are going. In the office, you don't know what's happening in the field. You assume it got built like you drew it, but you don't really know. What if you were drawing the detail wrong for 15 years, and meanwhile everybody's building it a different way? So, you don't know everything in the office. You have to get out there and see how it's being built and processed. I learn every day just by watching how things happen. Then it’s, ‘Okay, this guy did it like this. But on my last project, that guy did it like that. Why?’ And then sometimes maybe he's doing it wrong, so I could give him new information. But the same goes for everyone. You get details that you wouldn't have thought of.
Do you have a set of rules you make for yourself in order to excel at your job? Do not stress. Don't stress. Things will go wrong. Things are going to be missed. It's inevitable. When something goes wrong, it's easy to get upset or lose your cool or find somebody to blame. But it's not going to help anything, and it's not going to help remedy the problem. The important thing is just to kind of keep an open mind and cool off. Take a walk and come back and use your mind to fix it. Everything can be fixed.
But there's gonna be stress. There's gonna be people that piss you off. There's gonna be people who challenge what you're telling them because they think they know better. But staying cool is something I tell myself every single day [Laughs]. Because, you know, you have a lot of people trying to build the same thing. Something I see, you might not see the same way. So, communicating and staying cool and getting what you have to say out clearly, and without insulting somebody, is not always easy — but it's the biggest part of a project.
And open communication. You can't be afraid to offend somebody. Because, again, maybe you drew something, and I have to tell you, ‘That's not gonna work. That's not right.’ You can get offended if I say something like that, but I also can’t be afraid to say what I have to say. At the end of the day, if I build something, and the client hates it, or it's just gonna fall apart, how's that helping anybody? That’s gonna cost everybody more money and time. So, those are two things I tell myself: communication and staying cool. It's not always easy, but that's the challenge every day.
Who was your most memorable mentor or mentee? Why? It was a project manager I worked with at my last company. This was 10 years ago — I was pretty new. As a project manager, you’re more in the office. And you're just, kind of, detailing what's supposed to be happening in the field, and scheduling, and dealing with materials, and coordinating, and emailing. But this guy came from an engineering background where he was also designing the way things were happening in the field and how, logistically, we're going to move things around.
And on that subway job, he came up with the system to anchor the panels in; and he came up with ways to lift the panels onto the ceiling, which, when you get a set of drawings, you're not told. They don't tell you how you're going to get the panel onto the ceiling. They just tell you, ‘This is the panel. This needs to go here.’ So he was taking it upon himself to come up with different ideas and drawings and things to build to hoist these massive 2-ton panels onto the ceiling.
So, when I look back, I remember watching him at the time like, ‘Oh, wow, I didn't know that's his job.’ But it taught me to approach things in my job, as a super at the time, from a different way. So, now I'm constantly devising ways to do things that my guys might not think about. And it's just a different way to approach construction. I'm sure there's a lot of people out there doing it like that, but I didn't realize that's how you're supposed to approach project management, or even building. I thought, ‘There's always going to be an instruction. This is how you do it.’ So, I guess he taught me to think outside and use different means and methods that you might not think are supposed to be used to accomplish something that you're trying to accomplish.
Do you have a favorite phase on your jobs? It's a love/hate thing, but I guess the finishing. The end of the project — when you're doing finishes and painting and watching the entire project kind of come together as it was drawn — is my favorite phase. I love it. Because, at the end, you could be like, ‘You know what? That's nice. I like that. I did this. We built that. And this client is gonna love it.’ It's the most stressful phase because that's when the schedule crunches the most. You can take time in the middle of the project and drag things out, and you think you're always gonna have time to do the finishing; but the finishing takes the most detail — the most time to make it right. So you're always in a rush at the end of the project, when you have to finish it within that time frame, because there’s usually no going past that timeframe. So that's when your schedule really crunches. I love it, but it's also the most stressful point of a project. [Laughs] So, it’s a love/hate relationship with the finishing.
If you were to go back, would you choose the same career path? Yeah. 100%. I've had a lot of opportunities to do different things. I didn't go to school for building. I went to school for accounting. I was young, and I wasn't thinking, really, where I wanted to end up. I started working construction with my father, in my teens, doing labor work. They would have me move piles of dirt from one side to the other just to do it. And then they’d come with a bulldozer at the end of the day to move it back.
So, I started in construction. I tried to get away from it for a while. I did accounting, then I was gonna go to law school, and then I started my own business in freight transportation. And I ended up back in construction — because I love construction. At the end of the day, I like to see things go from nothing to something and see a team make something that didn't exist before you started. So, if I could go back, I wouldn't change anything. Everything happens for a reason.
If you could change anything about the way this industry works, what would it be? Getting people on the same page is always nice — when the client and the architect and the builder are all on the same page. That's fantastic. It's not always the case. If I could change it, I would make a client understand 100% of the design intent of the architect and the way we're approaching it. But that doesn't happen. I haven't seen it happen anyway. I haven't been on a project where the client comes in and loves every single aspect and every design. There's always going to be something that they don't understand — that they don't like. And they don't see it during the build process, but maybe they see it at the end. So, if I could change anything, it would be just to bring more cohesiveness to the design team, the build team, and the person paying for it all — and to get everybody to see the vision that's gonna end up without trying to cause an uprising in the middle of the project.
What do you value most from the people that you work with? Having the same qualities that I do [Laughs]. Or just working the same as we're trying to — coming at things with patience and critical thinking. Respect my time. If I'm taking the time to do the work, I want somebody else to put the same effort in. Building something is a team effort. And from the concept to applying the finishes, if there's a weak cog in the link, the hard work others are putting in won’t matter. So respecting my time, or our time, or your time, is important for everybody, right? If you have to do everybody else's work or work twice as hard because this person is not pulling their weight, that's not fair.
So I think that's something I value from people. When you find a good sub who's kind of on the same page as you and goes the extra distance, it makes a difference. One sub, who did the canopy with me, is one of the best metal guys in the city. He will take the project and say, ‘Okay, this, this is not gonna work, Victor.’ Anybody else might say, ‘Have this architect redesign that thing.’ But he's like, ‘This is how I suggest it gets done.’ And he draws it out. It's all by hand. And it's not his job. He doesn't have to do that. But that's something I value: respecting everybody's time. And making things happen on schedule and not just putting the ball back in somebody else's court is key. So everybody pulling their weight in the project is one of the biggest things that I value. And that's why, when you find a good sub, you stick with them.”
What is something you wished you’d known when you got into the industry? When I got into it? [Laughs] How stressful it was gonna be. I take my work home with me — it's impossible not to. Sometimes I'm jealous of friends who, they go to work, their work is at work, and then they go home. And they're not bothered at home, or they're not replying to emails all night, or thinking about what they have to do the next day. Because their work is their work that day, and then that's it. My work is my work for the next project, or the next three projects I’m on. And it doesn't end when I go home. I have to think about what's happening the next day, and I have to plan. On vacation I'm planning, and I'm emailing; and I don't really get the break. But that's part of the job.
That's something I didn't realize. But that's something that also makes this job unique. Every day I come in, it's entertaining. I love my job. I wake up, and I'm excited to go to work; and I come home, and I'm excited to get to the next day of work. Because every day is different. I can't picture myself in a position where I'm doing the same thing every day.
What differences have you noticed within the industry this past 15 years? Design — the way projects are getting built and designed. I only have a small window to look at things through because I've only been with a handful of companies. I don't know other companies or what they're doing. But designing on projects seems to be going towards, like I said at the beginning, certain details that I'm noticing on every project, from every architect; whether it's a recessed base, or reveals on everything, or everything is white [Laughs]. That's something I've noticed — which is cool, because I like that. But why is that the thing, you know? Is it something where, like, 30 years, 40 years from now are we going to be ripping out all these recessed moldings? And that's something I've noticed change. Every building that's going up is strictly curtain wall, it seems, right now. It's all glass curtain wall. That's not how things got built 30, 40, 50 years ago.
But, you know, you change with the technology and the times. They didn't have the technology to build these massive glass panels that would bolt onto a building. Technology and time change things. But that's something I've noticed change. I’m wondering about the next 10 to 15 years. I just saw something the other day about this new flexible concrete they designed to go into earthquake zones and withstand winds. So, who knows if that's going to be incorporated in the future? Maybe we'll see floors and buildings that are wobbling back and forth in the wind and don't break or crack.
