Stage 5 — Execution
The site is live. This is where a PM spends most of the job — capture, RFIs, VOs, claims, reports.
Execution is the heart of the job and the centre of your week. The site is active, trades are sequencing through, and almost every tool in the product is in play. If you learn one stage deeply, learn this one.
What's running at once
- Daily capture — your rolling field journal. Notes and photos, saved instantly, classified by the trade or issue they relate to.
- Site reports — the formal, client-facing documents drafted from your capture.
- RFIs — written questions to the client, designer or consultant that need a documented answer.
- Variation orders — changes to the contract scope, adding or omitting work and cost.
- Progress claims — your formal payment requests under the SOP Act, on the milestone schedule.
- The Gantt — planned vs actual dates across all sixteen trades.
Your job at this stage
Keep the site moving and keep the record straight. Sequence the trades so each has a clean run, raise RFIs the moment a question appears rather than letting it fester, capture variations as they happen so nothing is argued about later, and claim on time.
The discipline that protects you in EXECUTION is capture as you go. A variation you didn't record, a delay you didn't log, an instruction you didn't get in writing — these are the things that cost money at the end of a job.
What comes next
When the works are complete and the Temporary Occupation Permit is obtained, the project advances to Handover / TOP.