Elevate Construction

There are four zones in life: comfort, fear, learning, and growth. You cannot stay in your comfort zone forever or you will stagnate, regress, and make everyone around you miserable. But you also cannot live in your growth zone all the time or you will burn out. The key is pushing through the fear zone into the learning zone where you deal with challenges, acquire new skills, and extend your comfo...

This is not your typical solo podcast. Jason joins a live panel of lean construction leaders including Juan Sarastome, Adam Hoots, Jennifer Lacey, Spencer Easton, and Jesse Hernandez for an unscripted Saturday morning discussion about what needs to change in construction. The energy is high, the conversation is real, and the passion for improving the industry is contagious. From bashing CPM to cel...

Too many people arrive at their leadership position, organize their desk, and enter a state of comfortable hedonism where they stop growing, stop stretching, and stop becoming who they were designed to be. Draw a line on a piece of paper from birth to when you die. On the left side, write down the beautiful moments that shaped you. On the right side, write down what you want to accomplish before y...

Construction lacks kindness, and it's costing us more than we realize. There's actual science proving that kindness makes people healthier, more productive, and more resilient. Yet we treat trade partners like they're beneath us, we create toxic environments, and we wonder why our teams are struggling. Your job as a leader is not just to build projects. It's to create an environment where people a...

If you're managing six different scheduling systems and it's taking forever to update them all, you're missing the integration that makes everything work. Jason just had the epiphany that changes everything. The work steps in Takt planning translate directly into your weekly work plan and your sprint backlog. That means you're not recreating plans over and over. You're pulling from a collaborative...

You need to stop sounding like a professor and start using words that stick. Construction teams need simple, memorable phrases that rally them toward the right behaviors, not technical jargon that goes in one ear and out the other. A good buzz phrase gets everyone focused, re-centered, and moving in the same direction. When Jason created the rally cry "clean and steady" at the research laboratory,...

Not all owner's representatives are created equal, and how you work with them can make or break your project. Some have high expectations that stretch you into becoming better, and you should thank them for it. Others create chaos, overburden your team, and slow the job down while thinking they're helping. And some are completely hands-off, which means you need to step up and take control. The que...

Jason records from Southern California while finishing the second edition of "Elevating Construction Takt Planning." Opens with story: superintendent on failing project wants coaching, "That's not coaching, that's project recovery." Key warning: if your project is struggling and you start pushing harder ("I need more material, more manpower, keep pushing, rush it"), you're just extending the overa...

Jason shares Chapter 17 of "Calumet K" by Merwin Webster, the final chapter. Planning postponed Christmas dinner, need big hall, weather too cold for distributing floor. Max, Pete, Bannon making tables from planks and boxes, decorating with flags and scalloped shelf paper. Bannon offers Max assistant position on Indianapolis concrete elevator project: "It's going to be concrete from the spiles up....

Jason shares Chapter 16 of "Calumet K" by Merwin Webster. After the proposal, Bannon exhausted but wanders elevator aimlessly. Carpenter finds him at top of marine tower: "I ain't on this shift. I just come around to see how things were going. We're going to see you through, Mr. Bannon." Finest tribute he ever received, reinvigorates him completely. Pete physically forces Bannon to bed around 10pm...

Jason shares Chapter 15 of "Calumet K" by Merwin Webster. The national wheat speculation fight explained: Paige Company vs "the click", if Paige can't deliver by December 31st, he loses everything. Storm arrives December 18th, northwest blizzard, 60 miles per hour, two feet of snow. Workers don't change shifts for 24 hours clearing snow. Days of biting cold where "carpenters who earned $3 a day en...

Jason shares Chapter 14 of "Calumet K" by Merwin Webster. Victory's effect everywhere, Peterson won't sleep anymore this year, working harder than ever. Bannon has rare discouraged moment complaining about the job. Hilda diagnoses him: "You need excitement. The trouble today is everything's going too smoothly. You weren't afraid yesterday because you thought there was going to be a strike." Belt g...

Jason shares Chapter 13 of "Calumet K" by Merwin Webster. December 10th: three of four Koopala stories built, work progressing well. Grady appears with scout to reconnoiter. Bannon pretends to go home but stays hidden. Grady delivers ultimatum: "At 10:00, if your runway and dollies ain't working, the men go out." Bannon calls committee to office. "Have you voted to strike?" Murphy mumbles: "No, we...

Jason shares Chapter 12 of "Calumet K" by Merwin Webster. November 22nd telegram: Marine Tower added mid-project. Brown's letter: "This elevator will make or break them. You can have all January for vacation if you get it through." Bannon describes St. Lawrence River to Hilda, big, open country, forests that make Michigan pinewoods look like weeds. Grady has poisoned the injured hoist worker: "He...

Jason shares Chapter 11 of "Calumet K" by Merwin Webster. Bannon holds council of war on wharf with Hilda, Max, Peterson. Explains Grady's blackmail won't deliver: "He'd call the men off just the same after he'd struck us for all he thought we'd stand." Can't reason with laborers directly, "they don't want facts or reason, what they like is Grady's oratory." Key principle: "Strike as high as you c...

Jason shares Chapter 10 of "Calumet K" by Merwin Webster. Grady sees opportunity: rush job plus Peterson's leaked information equals blackmail leverage. Visits Peterson trying to manipulate him into ousting Bannon. Peterson refuses: "You was the boss here now, and I was only the foreman of the night shift." Peterson finally tells Bannon about Grady's visits. Bannon confronts Peterson directly: "Wh...

Jason shares Chapter 9 of "Calumet K" by Merwin Webster. Riley returns with union business agent. Bannon handles professionally: "If you'd like to investigate, I'll give you all the opportunity you want." Agent leaves satisfied. Grady appears on distributing floor delivering speech to laborers about being "driven at point of pistol." Bannon forces Grady to ride the hoist rope down 90 feet, Grady t...

Jason shares Chapter 8 of "Calumet K" by Merwin Webster. Saturday afternoon: every worker knows Bannon pulled a gun on Riley. Some angry, most relieved, "a good workman is surer of himself under a firm than under a slack hand." Max and Hilda disappointed, don't understand difference between dropping hammer (careless) vs overloading hoist (calculated risk). Bannon builds wooden elevator box to take...

Jason shares Chapter 7 of "Calumet K" by Merwin Webster. Bannon waits for clear insubordination case. Carpenter Riley deliberately drops hammer into bin where men are working below, laughs. Bannon fires him. Riley rushes at Bannon, Bannon pulls revolver, ends confrontation. Brown's letter arrives: 2.2 million bushels must be in bins by January 1st. "Never mind what it costs you." Peterson protests...

Jason shares Chapter 6 of "Calumet K" by Merwin Webster. Friday morning: 62 laborers show up (night work exhausted them), but work proceeds on elevator and annex. Hattie Vogle working through the books as new stenographer, produces clean balance sheet "as business-like as a metropolitan bank cashier." Bannon sends progress update to McBride Company: cribbing going up, Koopa timber ready for framin...

Jason shares Chapter 5 of "Calumet K" by Merwin Webster. The cribbing arrives by steamer earlier than expected, Bannon offers double pay and tells the men they're working all night to unload it. The railroad section boss tries to stop them from opening the fence to cross tracks. Bannon bluffs confidently: "We'll telegram the general manager right now." The boss backs down. Walking delegate Grady a...

Jason shares Chapter 4 of "Calumet K" by Merwin Webster, a story that demonstrates resourcefulness, speed of execution, and creative problem-solving in construction. Bannon discovers the G&M railroad is blocking his cribbing delivery. Instead of waiting for lawyers and legal battles, he creates an alternative solution in one hour: organize farmers to haul lumber by wagon 18 miles to Manastagi, the...

Chapter 3 of Calumet K continues the story as Bannon refuses to accept "we don't have the cars" from anyone, working his way up from the lumber yard to the division superintendent to a message sent directly to the general manager himself. In this episode, Bannon pieces together that a wheat speculation scheme is behind the deliberate delay of his cribbing, and then immediately pivots to find an en...

Charlie Bannon has arrived at a struggling project, assessed the situation in a single day and is already moving to solve the most critical constraint standing between his team and the finish line. In this episode, Chapter 2 of Calumet K continues the story as Bannon sizes up the two weeks of lost time, has a direct conversation with Peterson about what a superintendent's real job is, and then qui...

About 30% of superintendents who come through Elevate Construction training say they struggle with developing a genuine sense of urgency, and this book is one of the most powerful tools to fix that. In this episode, Jason Schroeder introduces the continuation of the Calumet K audio series, a public domain story written nearly 100 years ago about an American superintendent named Charlie Bannon who...