Employee Highlight: Jon Chacon – Superintendent

WHAT IS YOUR ROLE ON THE CPM TEAM?

I am an onsite manager for projects, managing the schedule, making sure that things are built according to the plans, working with the owner, the architect and also with subcontractors from various trades to make sure that we meet the deadline of the project and that the project is built to scope.

WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE TO GROW IN YOUR PROFESSION?

Truthfully I have this little bug in me that just wants to be the one doing the work, but this is one of those jobs where as a superintendent you get to kind of experience everything. I’m learning stuff everyday. I have also learned from a lot of mistakes. But this is going to be a good stepping stone because I told Shane, I remember sitting in his office, and I said, I want to be an extremely high caliber, fast paced manager of construction projects, who knows everything, knows what to do, doesn’t miss a beat, is constantly busy and keeping things moving. I want to be that guy.

WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR HOBBIES?

I have a wife and three kids, twin daughters and our son, they’re all under the age of 5. I just really like to spend time with them on the weekends. Outside of that, I love training and working out as I was a personal trainer in my past life. I do that six nights a week, even after a 11 or 12 hour day. I just try to hang out with my family a lot, and to me that’s like drinking coffee and watching the kids do silly things or playing Paw Patrol or whatever. And then just getting to dream with my wife on where we see our family going and what we want to do and what we want for our kids. That’s pretty much my my hobbies, cause anything else just really costs a lot of money so I try and stay away from that!

WHICH OF CPM’S VALUES DO YOU IDENTIFY WITH THE MOST?

The servant leadership part. Mostly because when people think of leader they just think of the guy or the gal at the top of the totem pole that just makes the calls and everyone does what they say. Rather, servant leadership is leading by example and serving the people that work for you and make things happen. If you want a better opportunity for your employees, you sit down and you tell them, and Shane has even done this for us, he’ll say: “Hey I’ll train you up and if you leave our company and you pursue something better or something different and you take that training with you, good! I want to help you get there.” That’s servant leadership. Same thing with anybody here. I try my best to help the subcontractors and they’ve had to help me a lot too. We try to work things out in a way that will make things better for them. I am often on the floor for instance and somebody’s doing some work in a room and they might see some stuff on the floor that’s in their way. Maybe a bunch of stuff that is left by other subcontractors or maybe by us. I could say, “Yeah just clean it up and put it somewhere else.” But actually what I do is I go get my gloves, because I’ve got hands and feet and I go pick it up myself and move it. I’m serving them and helping them, but at the same time I’m leading. That’s really important, it’s the most important part of the value.