Field Supervision interview prep.

Behavioural questions to expect

1. Walk me through your background and the jobs you've run as a Super.
2. Tell me about a job you ran the deck on from groundbreaking through turnover.
3. Why field supervision - and why the Super seat vs PM, project engineer, or owner's-rep?
4. Why this building type - office / healthcare / data centre / TI / education?
5. Why the firm?
6. What's your read on our project portfolio and recent work?
7. Tell me what you understand about how we run the field - safety, LEAN, self-perform, technology.
8. Walk me through a sequencing or schedule recovery on the deck - a job that fell behind and what you did at the wall.

Technical concepts to master

• Trade sequencing + look-ahead

  Critical-path activity at the wall · 3 / 6-week look-ahead · Pull planning + Last Planner System · Weekly work plan + PPC · Pre-installation meeting

• Field safety + competent-person duties

  Competent-person designations · Daily JHA / pre-task plan + toolbox talks · OSHA 30 + OSHA 10 · Hierarchy of controls + stop-work authority · Lift plans + critical lifts

• QC, mockups, and jurisdictional inspections

  Reference mockup + first-work inspection · AHJ + jurisdictional inspections · Special inspections (IBC Chapter 17) · Punch list strategy · RFI / spec / drawing fluency at the wall

• Site logistics + manpower + weather

  Site logistics plan · Hoisting strategy · Manpower forecast + curve · Weather management + winter conditions · Owner + neighbour relationships at the deck level

Practical drills

• You're Super on a 12-storey $80M mixed-use job. MEP rough + drywall + framing are about to overlap on floors 4-7 over the next 6 weeks. Combined peak daily manpower forecast is 180 workers (60 MEP, 60 framing, 60 drywall) split across those four floors. The site has one buck hoist rated at 6,500 lb / 25-person capacity with a 90-second one-way cycle, and one tower crane. Walk through whether your hoisting + manpower plan holds, and what you'd change.
• Eight months into a 14-month $90M healthcare project, in-wall MEP rough on the patient floors is 15 working days behind the dry-in milestone. The fire-stopping inspection is on the critical path right after MEP rough close-up. The owner has a hard move-in date with $30k/day liquidated damages. As Super, walk through what you do this week - not what the PM does, what you do at the wall.
• You walk the job at 10am. A subcontractor's crew is installing in-wall MEP on a leading-edge floor with 6-foot floor openings around stair cores; you see two workers within 4 feet of an opening with no fall protection - no guardrail, no PFAS tied off. The crew's foreman is on the deck. Walk through exactly what you do in the next 60 minutes and the next 24 hours.

Smart-question anchors

• Project mix + signature recent jobs by building type
• Field leadership structure - general super + area supers vs single super per job
• Self-perform scope + foreman bench depth
• Safety cadence + EMR / TRIR posture + stop-work culture
• LEAN / Last Planner maturity + PPC tracking + pull-planning cadence

Sourced from

OSHA 29 CFR 1926 (Construction Industry Standards) + recordkeeping 29 CFR 1904 · Lean Construction Institute + Last Planner System materials · AACE International Recommended Practices (52R-06 Time Impact Analysis, 29R-03 Forensic Schedule Analysis) · International Building Code (IBC) Chapter 17 - Special Inspections + Tests · ENR (Engineering News-Record) Top 400 Contractors + safety + LEAN awards