Concrete is the one trade where the work is irreversible before it cures.
Every other specialty trade has a correction window. Electrical conduit routed wrong gets pulled and rerun. HVAC duct installed in the wrong location gets cut and revised. Even below-slab plumbing — high-stakes as it is — can be jackhammered out if something is wrong.
Concrete placed wrong is there. Wrong elevation, wrong dimension, wrong finish, wrong mix — once the truck leaves and the concrete sets, the path back is either demolition or a deviation on the structural drawings. Neither is cheap. Neither is fast.
That’s what makes concrete project management different. Every pour is a one-way gate. The preparation before it and the documentation during it aren’t overhead — they’re the entire job.
What Makes Commercial Concrete Different
Residential concrete is mostly flatwork: footings, garage slabs, driveways. One pour type, straightforward forming, and the stakes are relatively contained. A residential footing poured at the wrong elevation is a problem. It’s not a structural problem that puts a building’s certificate of occupancy at risk.
Commercial concrete involves pour types that residential work rarely sees — elevated decks, shear walls, post-tensioned slabs, tilt-up panels — with structural engineering behind every one of them. The mix design is specified. The reinforcement is designed and inspected. The curing and stripping sequence is engineered. And the documentation — test cylinders, pour logs, weather conditions, inspection sign-offs — is the record that the structural engineer and building department will reference for the life of the building.
Commercial concrete also has a built-in PM challenge that no other trade has to the same degree: the formwork cycle. On a multi-story building, forms are the production constraint. You have a fixed inventory of formwork. The pace of the job is determined by how fast you can form, place, strip, cure, and move — floor by floor, bay by bay. That cycle is the schedule, and managing it means tracking every stage of every pour simultaneously.
The Phases That Matter
Pre-Construction
Concrete pre-construction is submittal-heavy compared to most trades. Before the first pour, the following need to be reviewed and approved:
Mix designs. Every pour type has a specified mix — strength (PSI), aggregate size, admixtures, slump. The mix design has to be submitted, reviewed by the structural engineer, and approved before the first delivery. Pouring with an unapproved mix design is a failed inspection and potentially a structural problem.
Formwork and shore drawings. On elevated pours and complex forming, the structural engineer typically reviews the shoring and forming scheme. OSHA also requires engineered shore drawings for reshoring above certain loads. These drawings need to be in hand before the crew starts building forms.
Phase-by-phase schedule and labor budget. Concrete jobs don’t have uniform labor profiles — forming labor, placement labor, and finishing labor are three different skill sets with different costs. A single “concrete labor” budget is useless for managing a job with all three. Set up cost codes and budgets by pour type and phase before work starts.
At this stage, lock down:
- Approved mix designs for every pour type on the job
- Formwork and shore drawings reviewed and on site before forming starts
- Phase-by-phase labor budget — forming, placement, finishing tracked separately by pour type
- Pour sequence from the structural drawings — some pours can’t happen until prior pours reach a minimum strength; know the sequence before you schedule the trucks
Forming and Shoring
Forming is the production engine of a concrete job. Everything downstream — placement, curing, stripping — flows from how well the forms are built and how efficiently they cycle through the job.
On multi-story work, shoring and reshoring are the safety-critical element. OSHA requires that shoring systems be designed and inspected. The daily shoring inspection — a physical check that shores are plumb, bearing correctly, and undamaged — is a required safety record, not a suggestion. Photos of the shoring system before each pour, documenting the as-built condition, are the record that the inspection happened and the shores were set correctly.
Embed coordination happens at the forming phase. Blockouts for mechanical and electrical penetrations, anchor bolts, hold-downs, column base plates — every item that needs to be in the concrete before the pour has to be located, set, and verified against the drawings before the forms close. A missed embed discovered after the pour is a core drill at best, a structural repair at worst.
What needs to be tracked:
- Forming progress by bay and floor — each pour broken into its own tracking unit
- Embed installation by location — verified against structural and MEP drawings before close
- Shoring inspection log — daily, with photos, by level and zone
- Hours against forming budget — forming labor per square foot of deck or linear foot of wall is your efficiency metric
Pre-Pour
The pre-pour phase is the last checkpoint before placement. Once the trucks are called, the clock is running — concrete has a limited workability window, and the inspector and structural engineer won’t hold the truck while deficiencies are resolved.
Pre-pour inspection covers: rebar placement and spacing, cover to form, bar sizes matching the drawings, tie wire not protruding into the cover zone, embeds in the correct location and elevation, blockouts secured, form alignment and level, and shoring plumb and bearing. Every item has to be right before the inspector signs off.
Photos of the rebar and embeds before the pour are the documentation that they were placed correctly. Once the concrete covers them, those photos are the only record of what’s below the surface. The structural engineer’s letter of compliance — if required — references the inspection record. The inspection record is the photos and the sign-off log.
What needs to be tracked:
- Pre-pour checklist by pour — rebar, embeds, form alignment, shoring, all verified
- Inspector sign-off status — jurisdiction-specific, but the inspection typically has to clear before placement begins
- Truck delivery schedule confirmed — number of loads, target placement rate, finish crew mobilization
Placement
Concrete placement is time-compressed and crew-intensive. The mix is ordered to arrive in sequence, the pump or crane and bucket is staged, and the crew places, consolidates, and screeds as the concrete comes. Weather conditions at placement — air temperature, wind, humidity — affect the mix workability, the finishing window, and the curing requirement.
The pour log is the placement record: start time, end time, truck ticket numbers (each truck has a batch ticket showing the mix design, water content, and batch time), slump test results, and cylinder break samples taken. Cylinder breaks are cast on site and sent to the testing lab — the 7-day and 28-day break results confirm the mix achieved the specified strength. The structural engineer uses the 28-day break to authorize form stripping on elevated pours.
Photos of the placement and finishing — the pour in progress, the screeding, the final finish before curing compound is applied — are the field record of conditions and quality. Weather photos at pour time are the documentation for any admixture added or extended cure time required.
What needs to be tracked:
- Pour log by pour — start/end time, truck tickets, slump test, cylinder samples
- Weather conditions at placement — temperature, wind, RH
- Cylinder break schedule — 7-day and 28-day, tracked by pour
- Finish type by area — broom, trowel, exposed aggregate, each carries a different labor unit
Curing, Testing, and Stripping
Curing is not passive. Concrete achieves strength through hydration, and hydration requires moisture. In cold weather, heat is required. In hot or dry weather, curing compound or wet curing is required. Skipping or shortcutting the cure is how you get low break results and a structural engineer who won’t authorize stripping.
The 28-day cylinder break is the gate for stripping elevated forms and shoring. Until the structural engineer reviews the break results and confirms the concrete has reached the specified strength, the forms and shores stay. Stripping before the break results come in — or before the engineer’s authorization — is a liability the concrete contractor owns.
Progress tracking by pour — placement date, 7-day break result, 28-day break due date, strip authorization status — is how you manage a multi-pour, multi-floor building without losing track of where each pour stands in the cycle.
What needs to be tracked:
- Curing method and duration by pour — type, start date, completion date
- Cylinder break results by pour — 7-day, 28-day, lab report received
- Strip authorization status by pour — engineer sign-off before forms and shores come down
- Reshoring requirements — some elevated pours require reshoring below while the floor above is poured
Flatwork and Finishing
Slab-on-grade flatwork is its own phase on most commercial jobs — warehouse floors, parking levels, exterior flatwork — and it has different PM requirements than elevated work. The key variables are subbase preparation (compaction), vapor barrier installation, control joint placement, and finish specification (FF/FL flatness and levelness numbers on industrial floors).
Industrial floor flatness (FF) and levelness (FL) specifications are measured after placement. A floor that doesn’t meet specification has to be ground or overlaid — expensive remediation that starts with understanding why the floor didn’t meet spec. Documentation of subbase compaction tests, vapor barrier installation, and placement conditions at the time of the pour is the record that gives you a defensible position if the flatness numbers come in low.
What needs to be tracked:
- Subbase compaction test results by area — required before placement on most commercial jobs
- Vapor barrier installation documentation — laps, penetrations, tape
- Placement and finishing crew times — flatwork finishing window is weather-dependent and compresses fast in warm conditions
- FF/FL test results by area and date
What Your PM System Actually Needs
Cost codes by pour type
Footings, walls, elevated decks, slabs on grade, and flatwork all have different labor profiles. Running them in one “concrete labor” code is useless for managing the job or bidding the next one. Time tracked by pour type and phase against a pour-by-pour estimate is how you know in week two whether forming is running to budget before you’ve committed the placement crew.
Pour documentation captured at the point of work
The pour log, cylinder break schedule, and placement photos need to exist the day of the pour — not assembled from memory at closeout. A photo documentation system that’s part of the daily workflow means the structural record is built as the job runs, not reconstructed when the engineer asks for it.
Forming cycle visibility
On a multi-floor job, the forming cycle is the schedule. Task tracking by pour — forming, inspecting, placing, curing, stripping, moving — gives the PM a real-time picture of where each pour stands in the cycle and when the forms will free up for the next floor. Without that visibility, the schedule is the foreman’s memory.
Progress tracking by pour and floor
Strip authorization, rebar inspection, and cylinder break status all vary by pour. Progress tracked at the pour level — not the whole job as a percentage — is what the structural engineer, the GC, and the building department need to see. It’s also what you need to catch a missed 28-day break before it delays a stripping sequence.
Running a Tighter Concrete Job
Commercial concrete jobs go wrong the same three ways: an embed or blockout is missed before the pour and discovered after, the formwork cycle slips because no one is tracking strip authorization against cylinder breaks, or flatwork flatness numbers come in below spec and there’s no documentation of placement conditions to understand why.
A project management system that maps to how commercial concrete actually flows — forming cycles, pour logs, cylinder break tracking, strip authorization — gives you the visibility to catch those problems before the concrete cures around them.
For another trade where phase sequencing and documentation are the job, see how commercial drywall jobs are managed by phase.
See how LogLoon works for concrete contractors, or check the pricing — it’s on the website.