You’re the Bottleneck: Building the Banks of the River So Your Team Can Flow, with Scott Borroughs | Ep. 398

A superintendent’s wife wakes up at 2 a.m. to find him pacing the bedroom for the third night straight. He can’t sleep. He’s heading into work. She looks at him and says, “This isn’t going to work. For anybody.” That superintendent was Scott Borroughs. The project was Deep Space, Epic Systems 850,000 square foot auditorium, blasted 80 feet down through limestone before a single yard of concrete could go back up. Scott was the general superintendent. He thought he had the whole thing locked in his head. Then the pace of construction outran him, and he realized the problem wasn’t the project. It was him. This episode is about what happened next.

What you’ll learn:

• – How to recognize when you’ve become the bottleneck on your own project
• – The “banks of the river” framework: define the banks, let people flow between them
• – How to step back from the weeds without feeling like you’ve stopped working
• – What to do when your team solves a problem differently than you would
• – How JP Cullen turned one project’s lessons into ten company-wide SOPs
• – Why you should never confuse activity with accomplishment

Listen or Watch the Episode

The Project That Outgrew One Man’s Head

Picture a donut. The center is a 100,000-plus square foot auditorium seating just under 12,000 people. The ring around it divides into six more sections. Seven distinct areas, 850,000 square feet total, all of it starting 80 feet below grade. The soil nail wall alone ran over 800 feet with close to 3,000 nails and more than 3,300 micropiles. Cullen built the bowl structure on the ground on concrete cribbing piers, with steel trusses using members that weighed roughly 900 pounds a foot, then jacked the whole thing into place with a UK firm that normally lifts offshore oil rigs.

Scott had never done most of this before. By his own admission:

“I was probably too naive and ignorant to really realize the magnitude of what we’re about to do here.”

Why Epic Systems Chose Cullen Anyway

Relationship. Jim Schumacher had been building trust with Epic Systems since the mid-1990s. By the time Deep Space came around, there were ten or fifteen years of relationship behind it. The job was design-build, open book, designed as they went. Nobody hands you that delivery model without trust. If you’re wondering how to win work you’ve never done before, the answer was built a decade before the RFP.

The Decision-Making Funnel

Scott came up through project management, where he loved puzzles and solving problems. As general superintendent, he planned every detail in his head and served his area superintendents by helping them make decisions. Then they jacked the bowl, the floodgates opened on all six surrounding sections, and the structure of his leadership collapsed under the load.

“I could no longer keep up with the pace of construction in my head. I kind of became a decision-making funnel. And it was overflowing. I became the bottleneck.”

Every decision ran through one man. The whole job slowed down because of it. His superintendents were dropping not-so-subtle hints: come on, let’s go, this isn’t working. But the moment that landed was at 2 a.m., from his wife.

“I think everybody needs one person in their lives that has that ability to recalibrate perspective for you. She definitely gives me feedback with the bark on.”

The Reset: Milestones, Not Decisions

Scott met with his area superintendents and changed his job. Instead of making their decisions, he defined the milestones. Here’s where we are. Here’s where we need to be. You tell me how you’re going to get it done. Every one of them came back with a plan. In hindsight, he says, that’s where they should have started. They were waiting for the light bulb to go on.

The meetings changed too. High level, milestone-driven, and built around one question: what do you need help with? The problems flowed up. The decisions stayed down.

The Banks of the River

The concept came from Jim Schumacher, the division manager on the job. Define the banks. Let people flow between them however they want. On Deep Space the banks were safety, quality, the milestones, and communication. If your work crossed into someone else’s area, you coordinated it first. Inside those banks, your plan was yours.

Cullen later turned this into company SOPs. Four leaders sat down and asked one question: what activities, if we do them on every project, give us the highest rate of success? They had hundreds of checklists. They narrowed it down to six SOPs for project managers and six for superintendents, with two overlapping. Ten total.

“As long as you do these on all of our projects, you have the liberty to navigate between the banks of the river however you want.”

Letting People Solve It Differently

Stepping back feels like not working. Scott calls it a fear of missing out, and he had to be intentional and deliberate about pausing before inserting himself. The payoff showed up twice.

First, the bowl. The superintendent’s logistics plan wasn’t the plan Scott would have run. They debated it hard. Scott went back to the banks of the river: one road in, one road out, coordinate anything that crosses another area, and it’s your plan. The superintendent executed it and finished on time.

Second, the escalators. The project manager proposed prefabricating all 42 escalator trusses off-site in a rented warehouse while excavation was still going down. Ironworkers dropped them through openings in the roof and set all 42 in three days. Scott figures it saved the better part of six weeks. Not the way he would have done it. That’s the point.

“If you don’t allow those people the opportunity to lead and grow and be responsible for what they’re supposed to be, you really inhibit their growth and you also inhibit your own growth.”

The First Shift for Micromanagers

Scott’s prescription for any superintendent or operations leader stuck in the weeds. Clearly define and communicate the end goal and the milestones that measure progress toward it. Trust the people you’re accountable for. They earned their roles. Trust, but verify. Then build the banks of your river and let them develop their own plan, because buy-in and ownership live on their side of the line.

And the last one, worth putting on the wall:

“Don’t confuse activity with accomplishment.”

Is what you’re doing actually moving the needle toward the end goal, or are you just staying busy? Run your week through that question. If a task belongs in somebody else’s quadrant, give it to them. That’s not abdication. That’s the job.

Subscribe and Connect

If this episode hit home, share it with a superintendent or operations leader who’s stuck in the weeds. Subscribe to Construction Genius wherever you get your podcasts. Leave a rating and a review. Visit constructiongenius.com for coaching, courses, and the book.

Connect with Scott Borroughs on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/scott-borroughs-63999a19

JP Cullen: jpcullen.com

The Epic Systems Deep Space Auditorium project: jpcullen.com/portfolio/epic-deep-space-auditorium