Construction superintendents are professionals that are responsible for the supervision of staff on a construction site and for handling the project schedule. A construction superintendent can also be referred to as a construction foreman. Your main duty is to lead and manage the on-site construction team. Also, you are to ensure that completion is done within the specified time frame. Aside from leading and managing construction staff, you are also to coordinate with engineers and contractors. In addition, you are to manage expenditure and budgets while purchasing necessary materials and equipment. Producing daily progress reports is also your responsibility as a construction superintendent. More importantly, you are to ensure that all safety regulations and policies are implemented to maintain a safe and healthy workspace for every worker.
Most construction superintendents study civil engineering, business, or construction management. You must hold at least a bachelor's degree in any of these fields. Construction superintendents make an average salary of $78,616 per year.
How to Become a Construction Superintendent
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a construction superintendent. For example, did you know that they make an average of $42.81 an hour? That's $89,039 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 10% and produce 46,200 job opportunities across the U.S.
What Does a Construction Superintendent Do
There are certain skills that many construction superintendents have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed analytical skills, business skills and customer-service skills.
How To Become a Construction Superintendent
If you're interested in becoming a construction superintendent, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 46.8% of construction superintendents have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 4.3% of construction superintendents have master's degrees. Even though most construction superintendents have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become a construction superintendent. When we researched the most common majors for a construction superintendent, we found that they most commonly earn bachelor's degree degrees or associate degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on construction superintendent resumes include high school diploma degrees or master's degree degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a construction superintendent. In fact, many construction superintendent jobs require experience in a role such as superintendent. Meanwhile, many construction superintendents also have previous career experience in roles such as project manager or construction manager.
Construction Superintendent Career Paths
In addition to switching up your job search, it might prove helpful to look at a career path for your specific job. Now, what's a career path you ask? Well, it's practically a map that shows how you might advance from one job title to another. Our career paths are especially detailed with salary changes. So, for example, if you started out with the role of construction manager you might progress to a role such as project manager eventually. Later on in your career, you could end up with the title director of construction.
Average Salary for a Construction Superintendent
What Am I Worth?
Top Colleges for Construction Superintendents
1. California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo
San Luis Obispo, CA • Private
2. Ohio State University
Columbus, OH • Private
3. Texas A&M University
College Station, TX • Private
4. University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA • Private
5. Harvard University
Cambridge, MA • Private
6. University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA • Private
7. New York University
New York, NY • Private
8. Ferris State University
Big Rapids, MI • Private
9. University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA • Private
10. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Blacksburg, VA • Private
Top Skills For a Construction Superintendent
The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 11.6% of construction superintendents listed project management on their resume, but soft skills such as analytical skills and business skills are important as well.
Choose From 10+ Customizable Construction Superintendent Resume templates
Zippia allows you to choose from different easy-to-use Construction Superintendent templates, and provides you with expert advice. Using the templates, you can rest assured that the structure and format of your Construction Superintendent resume is top notch. Choose a template with the colors, fonts & text sizes that are appropriate for your industry.
Construction Superintendent Demographics
Construction Superintendent Gender Distribution
After extensive research and analysis, Zippia's data science team found that:
- Among construction superintendents, 3.0% of them are women, while 97.0% are men.
- The most common race/ethnicity among construction superintendents is White, which makes up 77.4% of all construction superintendents.
- The most common foreign language among construction superintendents is Spanish at 70.6%.
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Best States For a Construction Superintendent
Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as a construction superintendent. The best states for people in this position are Hawaii, Oregon, Nevada, and California. Construction superintendents make the most in Hawaii with an average salary of $146,284. Whereas in Oregon and Nevada, they would average $126,347 and $121,222, respectively. While construction superintendents would only make an average of $120,852 in California, you would still make more there than in the rest of the country. We determined these as the best states based on job availability and pay. By finding the median salary, cost of living, and using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Location Quotient, we narrowed down our list of states to these four.
1. Nevada
$121,222
Avg. Salary
2. Hawaii
$146,284
Avg. Salary
3. Oregon
$126,347
Avg. Salary
How Do Construction Superintendent Rate Their Jobs?
Top Construction Superintendent Employers
Most Common Employers For Construction Superintendent
| Rank  | Company  | Average Salary  | Hourly Rate  | Job Openings  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Exxon Mobil | $126,373 | $60.76 | 13 |
| 2 | KB Home | $126,166 | $60.66 | 46 |
| 3 | Horizon Retail Construction | $111,849 | $53.77 | 12 |
| 4 | CyberCoders | $111,494 | $53.60 | 33 |
| 5 | Mark Young Construction | $103,475 | $49.75 | 11 |
| 6 | Balfour Beatty plc | $102,937 | $49.49 | 11 |
| 7 | Meritage Homes | $102,914 | $49.48 | 11 |
| 8 | Beazer Homes | $98,074 | $47.15 | 16 |
| 9 | Trillium Staffing | $97,279 | $46.77 | 22 |
| 10 | D.R. Horton | $95,030 | $45.69 | 83 |