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Author: | October 28th, 2026

When Should You Hire a Project Manager?

A Contractor University Member recently utilized the Ask-The-Expert Q&A feature within the member dashboard by submitting the following question and received the response below.

Contractor Question:

“Our HVAC company is doing around $2 million in revenue, with 60% coming from new construction. With five installers and a growing workload, when does it make sense to bring in someone to help manage projects and daily operations?”

Contractor University Expert Response:

“As your company grows, it may be time to hire an additional Project Manager (PM) to manage either the residential new construction (RNC) or replacement side of the business, freeing up ownership to focus on the other and relationship building.

I would distribute duties like this: Let your new person handle takeoffs, rough material lists, staging jobs and working with crews to ensure labor efficiency. Ownership should maintain builder relationships and handle duct design and layouts.

I would also suggest early morning, daily stand-up meetings with your crews to ensure everyone knows the installation goals for the day and what’s coming up in the week ahead. These meetings should be 10 minutes max. It’s part of the 3 Cs of management: Communicate with Clarity and Consistency.

With this hire, you want scalable processes and greater efficiencies so you can grow the retail service and replacement side of your business.

Here are some things to consider: Having 60% of revenue coming from RNC is risky. If builders stop building homes tomorrow, can your business survive? Ideally, you want to grow replacement revenue so RNC accounts for 25% or less of total revenue. RNC typically doesn’t deliver the same margins as replacement jobs and can present cash flow challenges.

I was in those shoes when RNC accounted for 85% of our revenue. We fixed that in time for the housing and financial crisis of 2008–2009.”

Contractor University members can click here to log in to their member dashboard and submit a question through the Ask the Expert portal.