Above the crew sits a management tier: plumbing superintendents and project managers who run construction work — the schedule, the budget, the subcontractors and the client — and service managers who run a shop's repair and maintenance side.
This page explains what each role does, whether a degree is needed, and what the federal pay data shows, including a $109,150 median for construction managers — the broader category BLS counts this work under — at plumbing and HVAC contractors.
What does a plumbing superintendent do?
A plumbing superintendent is the manager accountable for delivering plumbing work on a large or multi-crew job.
The superintendent schedules the crews across the site, sequences the rough-in so the other trades can build, keeps material flowing, shepherds inspections, and answers to the general contractor and to their own company's ownership when the schedule or the budget moves.
It is a different chair from the foreman's.
A foreman runs one crew, hour to hour, on the work in front of it — the day's installation, the crew's hours, the immediate problems.
A superintendent runs the job itself: several crews or several simultaneous jobs, the coordination between trades, and everything the schedule touches.
BLS measures the field's leadership in separate series — foremen count among the First-Line Supervisors of Construction Trades and Extraction Workers (SOC 47-1011), a category that covers construction-trade supervisors as a whole, while the construction managers series (SOC 11-9021) is the one this page's figures come from.
It is a large tier: BLS counted 380,360 construction managers nationwide in May 2025 — a count of wage-and-salary workers, so the self-employed are not in it.
The industries employing the most of them: nonresidential building construction (92,590), residential building construction (56,450), and building equipment contractors (47,360) — the industry group that also includes electrical contractors.
Plumbing superintendent jobs live inside that construction-manager tier.
If you are mapping the field side first, our plumber career guide covers the trade from the ground up.
The plumbing project manager role
A plumbing project manager owns the delivered work commercially.
After a contract is awarded, the PM runs the budget against the estimate, buys out the subcontracts and purchase orders, pushes submittals and approvals through the architect and engineer, bills the work, negotiates change orders when the scope moves, and keeps the client informed through completion.
Where the superintendent's questions are field questions — crews, sequence, inspections — the PM's questions are contract questions: what did we promise, what has it cost, and what does the change cost.
On larger jobs the two run as a pair, the superintendent in the field and the PM at the desk, working from the same schedule and the same number.
On smaller jobs one person wears both hats.
Whichever shape the chair takes, it pays to read the responsibilities in a project manager plumbing job posting rather than the heading alone.
The PM works from the number the estimator won: a good plumbing estimator has already learned the drawings, the labor hours and the money, and the PM applies all three to the job after it is awarded.
The plumbing service manager role
Service management is the other half of plumbing management.
A plumbing service manager runs the service department — the trucks and techs that handle repairs, maintenance, and the service agreements that keep customers on the books.
The work is scheduling and routing techs across a day full of calls, handling callbacks and quality, managing vehicles and stock, covering after-hours emergencies, and watching the numbers that make a service operation profitable.
The rhythm differs from construction management.
A superintendent's world is project-based: a job starts, runs, and closes out.
A service manager's world recurs — the same customers, the same systems, season after season — and the job is throughput: how many techs, how many calls a day, how well the work holds.
Plumbing service manager jobs sit at plumbing, heating, and air-conditioning contractors — the industry slice the benchmark below is cut from.
BLS's occupation data has no series for the title — no "plumbing service manager" line, and none for an HVAC service manager either — so the benchmark is the closest category, labeled as the broader category it is: SOC 49-1011, First-Line Supervisors of Mechanics, Installers, and Repairers.
Within NAICS 238220, plumbing, heating, and air-conditioning contractors, that series covers 31,350 jobs at an annual median of $81,800 (OEWS May 2025, released May 15, 2026).
Do you need a degree to be a plumbing superintendent or PM?
There is no degree requirement you can point to in the federal data we publish here.
BLS measures this work as construction managers and publishes wages and projections for the occupation — no education requirement appears anywhere in those numbers — and the title itself, plumbing superintendent or plumbing project manager, has no separate federal series at all.
Our sources measure pay and employment for the occupation, not its hiring requirements, so we won't invent one.
The record a hiring contractor can verify is the field record: years in the trade, licences you have held, jobs you have run end to end.
Our research did not confirm a standard route into these chairs; our plumber career path maps the field side of the trade, step by step.
If you are aiming at large commercial contractors, ask directly what they screen for — their requirements are theirs to set, and the degree question can land differently at a mechanical contractor than at a residential shop.
- Work toward journeyman and keep the licence current
- Take the lead role on your current job: layout, material orders, crew coordination
- Learn the paper side early — schedules, submittals, change orders — before you hold the title
- If the service side pulls you, learn routing, callbacks, and how agreements keep customers
Pay and lifestyle vs field work
Federal pay data has no series for a "plumbing superintendent" or "plumbing project manager."
BLS counts the work under SOC 11-9021, Construction Managers, so the honest benchmark is that broader category — labeled as such here — and, more narrowly, its slice at plumbing and HVAC contractors.
If you are weighing plumbing management jobs against staying on the tools, this is the data to weigh them with.
The narrow slice first: within NAICS 238220 — Plumbing, Heating, and Air-Conditioning Contractors — BLS counted 21,680 construction managers in May 2025 at an annual median wage of $109,150 (OEWS May 2025, released May 15, 2026).
The mean was $120,520, the 10th percentile $75,490, and the 90th $171,880.
The estimate covers plumbing and HVAC contractors together and excludes the self-employed.
Nationally, across all industries, the occupation covers 380,360 wage-and-salary jobs with a median of $114,990 ($55.28/hour) — half earn more, half less — and a mean of $124,360 ($59.79/hour).
The percentiles run from $69,690 at the 10th to $88,550 at the 25th, $151,640 at the 75th, and $189,440 at the 90th.
By state, ranked by annual median wage, the top-paying states for construction managers were New York ($155,360), Washington ($155,070), Massachusetts ($145,010), Alaska ($139,190), and New Jersey ($138,230).
The states with the most construction managers jobs: Texas (59,060 jobs), California (34,750), Florida (34,010), Illinois (19,160), and North Carolina (16,310).
The metro areas with the most construction managers were Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX (17,110), Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX (16,500), Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN (13,850), New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ (12,120), and Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA (10,120); the highest-paying metros by median were San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA ($166,030), San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA ($163,040), Mount Vernon-Anacortes, WA ($159,860), Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA ($159,430), and New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ ($158,000).
Outlook: BLS projects construction manager employment to change 9.1% from 2025 to 2035 (609.1k to 664.3k jobs, including the self-employed), with about 49,700 openings per year on average — against 3.5% projected growth for all occupations (Employment Projections 2025–35, released August 27, 2026).
Against the field: plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters — SOC 47-2152, the combined category BLS measures the field crew in, across all industries nationwide — had a May 2025 median of $63,800 on the same survey.
The two occupations are measured in separate federal series, not one before-and-after pay ladder BLS tracks.
BLS describes most plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters as working full time, including nights and weekends, and plumbers as often on call for emergencies.
One measurement caveat cuts both ways: OEWS excludes overtime, shift differentials, and non-production bonuses, so field earnings built on overtime and management earnings built on non-production bonuses both land outside these figures.
For the field crew's full tables — percentiles, states, and metros — see our plumber salary page.
Career information, not legal advice — the figures above are federal occupational estimates, not offers.
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