My advice to potential project managers is that it is not all about thrashing your suppliers and sub contractors to bring the job in at the lowest price.
-Pay attention to Planning
-Selection of quality suppliers and sub contractors
-Prefer quality ocontrol over quality assurance
-Dont stuff around at the astart of the job, everyday saved there is a day saved at the end of the job and thats where you make your money
-Every $1 spent in concept design is worth $10 is detail design, is worth $100 in procurement, $1000 in condstruction, $10,000 in commissioning and $100,000 fixing up stuff ups and finally $1 million if you end up in court.
-Let the field resources comment on the design for constructability and maintenance but dont let them change the design after that; unless it contravenes a code, the contract or the law, also if it wont work. If they change it to save a few bucks make sure time and cost of re engineering are borne in mind when considering field requests for changes. Most times it is not worth the effort to implement changes that late in the day.