Most successful individuals who act as an Owner’s Representative have a unique skill set and personality. Owner’s representatives must be able to balance a wide range of demands while ensuring their client and project team that importance of big picture. Communication, leadership and the ability to organize are three qualities that we often see in successful owner’s representatives.
1) Good Communication – Successful owner’s rep. effectively use meetings, status reports, and emails, to communicate ideas, get decisions made and to diplomatically resolve conflicts. They are able to understand the language of various trades, read body language and can sense non-verbal clues.
2) Ability to Lead – owners representatives must be able to lead the project team in the right direction to achieve success. Even during times of confusion, the owner’s rep must be able to coordinate the different disciplines and keep the project moving in the right direction but be mindful at all times of the big picture objective. They also have to make sure the project team works together even though the team will be made up of individuals who come from various companies, trades, and backgrounds. Real estate project is a team effort but requires a strong owners rep to lead the way.
3) Must be Organized – real estate and construction owner’s reps. have a keen ability to stay organized. Between email communication, scheduling of meetings and ability to prioritize; a project manager has to stay on top of the project from every aspect. Every detail during each stage of the project must be accounted for and this is only possible through extreme organization.
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