Kirk Kendall | Building Trust on Complex Industrial Projects

Kirk Kendall

Trust might be the most underrated factor in project success. You can have a brilliant design, comprehensive plans, and experienced crews. But if the stakeholders don't trust each other, if the contractor doesn't trust the owner's clarity about requirements, if subcontractors don't believe the general contractor will back them when issues arise—you're building on a foundation that will crack.

Kirk Kendall has managed enough large-scale industrial programs to understand that trust isn't soft stuff. It's the condition that makes everything else possible.

On one project, a complex industrial facility expansion, there were inherent tensions. The owner needed to continue operations while construction proceeded. The contractor's schedule was aggressive. Regulatory timelines were fixed. Any of these could have created an adversarial dynamic. Instead, the team established something different: a commitment to transparency and shared problem-solving.

That sounds like management buzzwords. Here's what it actually meant. The contractor reported honestly about progress, including delays and challenges, not in the polished form of official reports but in direct conversation. When an issue emerged—a supply chain delay, a site condition that complicated work—the owner and contractor discussed it as a shared problem, not a contractual dispute. The owner understood that problems were inevitable in a project this complex, and the conversation was about solution, not blame.

Did that prevent issues? No. But it changed how they were handled. Instead of being hidden until they became crises, they were addressed immediately. Instead of the contractor trying to protect themselves by filing claims, they were working to find solutions. That saved enormous amounts of time and money that would have gone to disputes.

The foundation for that trust was something concrete. The project manager and the owner's representative met regularly—not in formal review meetings, but standing on the site, looking at actual progress. The contractor delivered what he said he would deliver. When he couldn't deliver something, he said so before it became a problem. The owner treated setbacks as part of managing complexity, not as failures to punish.

That builds trust. Trust based not on optimism but on patterns of honest dealing and reliable execution.

There's a category of projects where trust breaks down because one party has incomplete information. An owner thinks a schedule is more aggressive than it really is. A contractor doesn't fully understand what the owner needs. A designer isn't aware of site constraints that would affect their design. These gaps don't get filled because people are guarded.

On well-run projects, Kirk has seen teams that deliberately address this. A contractor brings a superintendent to design review meetings—not to critique, but to ask questions about how the design works in practice. An owner brings site leadership to planning meetings so they understand what's really feasible. A designer walks the site with the contractor's team before finalizing details. These conversations aren't efficient in a narrow sense. They take time. But they fill information gaps and build common understanding.

There's also the trust that comes from acknowledging uncertainty directly. A project manager who claims everything is on track when actually there are real risks is burning trust. The team stops believing anything he says. But a project manager who says, "Here's what we know. Here's what we're assuming. Here's what could change our plan. Here's how we'll monitor for that"—that builds trust. People know they're getting straight information.

The military background shapes how Kirk thinks about this. In operations, trust literally keeps people alive. You follow your commander because you've seen that he makes decisions based on actual information, not wishful thinking. You trust that your team has trained for likely scenarios. You trust that if something goes wrong, the response will be coordinated. That trust doesn't come from popularity. It comes from competence and clarity.

On projects, that same dynamic applies. Teams work harder, take more care, and solve problems more creatively when they trust the leadership. Not because they're nice people doing favors, but because they believe their work actually matters and they believe that problems will be solved thoughtfully rather than reactively.

There's also a dimension of trust that involves reliability in small things. A project manager who returns calls and emails promptly. A superintendent who shows up when he says he will. A supplier who delivers what he committed to deliver. These seem minor, but they accumulate. People notice and develop confidence based on a pattern of being reliable.

The opposite is also true. A team leader who's vague about timelines erodes trust. A contractor who overpromises and underdelivers erodes trust. A subcontractor who disappears when problems emerge erodes trust. Once broken, trust is remarkably hard to rebuild.

One of Kirk's principles is that good leadership removes ambiguity. That's directly connected to trust. When expectations are clear, when plans are realistic, when success criteria are shared—trust builds naturally. People aren't second-guessing. They're not trying to protect themselves. They're focused on doing good work.

On industrial projects, especially large ones, trust is the infrastructure that everything else runs on. The best teams Kirk has worked with had this quality: people who trusted each other enough to acknowledge problems early, who worked together to solve them, who didn't waste energy on politics or blame. They had confidence that the team would handle challenges.

Building that takes intentionality. It requires project leadership to set a tone of transparency and shared problem-solving. It requires following through consistently. It requires acknowledging when you've made mistakes and fixing them. It's not automatic and it's not soft. It's a practical requirement for managing complexity at scale.