George Jergeas has over 45 years of experience in Project Management in industry and academia. He holds an MSc and PhD in Construction Project Management from Loughborough University, UK. Formerly a Professor at the University of Calgary, and he now serves as Professor Emeritus of Project Management. George specializes in project governance, team building, project management training, dispute resolution, project planning, and risk management. His methods have significantly impacted over 200 projects, enhancing their success and efficiency.
George has researched cost overruns in Alberta’s mega projects and has consulted widely across North America, Asia, and Europe. He has appeared as an Expert Witness in major inquiries like the Muskrat Falls project and mediated construction disputes in Alberta. Currently, he provides oversight for an Eastern Canadian mega project and acts as an expert witness in Western Canada.
He is the author of several books: Risk Navigation Strategies for Major Capital Projects: Beyond the Myth of Predictability, Benevolent Dictatorship for Major Capital Projects, Power Risk and Opportunity Management. An Owners’s Perspective and Evolving Toolbox for Complex Project Management – Contributor to the legal chapter
Welcome to today’s webinar the challenges of construction management featuring an interview of George jurgus uh George is an extraordinary individual in terms of his experience and his background a professor formerly at the University of Calgary in engineering but he’s not just an engineer he’s a humanist and the
Discussion today will be quite wide ranging he’s got a presentation prepared and I’ll be uh I’ll be interrupting him from time to time uh as we talk about well let’s start off with a a very important point I’d like to raise with you George and that is uh why why is
This topics even relevant today uh I’m not sure that people would even understand the the relevance of project management to to Canada so why you before your presentation why don’t you give a little bit of color of why this is important today thank you a great question thank you and Perry thank you
Very much for inviting me to this group I I saw a few of your uh colleagues videos excellent I am very much impressed with with the discussions you are leading thank you very much again why is it important I have investigated major Capital project the delivery of ma
Major Capital project uh from from a university professor as a researcher as well as I was a claim and dispute consultant in Calgary uh investigating project and what could go wrong and every major project we are exceeding cost overrun Beyond 100% so and repeated the same lessons
That we learned on a project it keep repeating itself again and again so Lessons Learned are not learned they are we should name them lessons to be repeated on the on the next project and it is it sound funny but unfortunately it’s happen I take me to a brand new
Project and go and introduce myself George gonna document your lessons Le they say George Perry what are you talking about we haven’t started the project okay basically you’re gonna repeat the same lessons that we we got on the previous thing so when we lose 100% more than 100% on recent project
I’ve seen bigger percentages why this is important really our future in in Canada Alberta at stake here the same lessons the same cost overrun the same delay happening so what we are doing we are affecting the confidence in the business Community as well in the delivery of our project and
So investment will go somewhere else so if we are more efficient we can build more project and more people employed it doesn’t matter what type of project nuclear oil and gas sustainable non-sustainable we need to deliver them more efficiently the other problem Perry is we know the
Problems we know the solutions I did a study on this one what are the problems they listed industry they know this we have brilliant people then I said okay what’s your solution they give you all the solution I said okay what are the barriers that preventing you from
Implementing the solution they gave me that one as well and where do you get as an answer oh different kind of answer they give you bureaucracy no empowerment we can’t make decision committees all of that thing and and it goes all the way this is why we all the
Way to government and management higher management executive the pressure on do doing it now and no no you can’t do it in billion half a billion you can’t do it in two billion it must be one billion so the the budget will be reduced and go
Go go what about engineering no no no go to Construction and and many of these and I’m going to touch on those some of them uh a little bit and so we know the problem we know the solution we know the pro the barriers to the solution to implement
But that Gap we are not doing better on the next project different bunch of people will come again and repeat the same thing let me let me prove that a second it would seem to me that private sector ought to be better than public sector than in larger
Projects because of the amount of bureaucracy in the public sector but I see you shaking your head maybe you can explain what what why yeah the private sector if private sector is driven by profit you would seem that the the reputation of the organization and the the loss of profit would be a
Significant impediment for poor project management they’d get better at it yeah unfortunately uh the private sector and when it come to Mega project did not do a good job either on any major Capital project so I can’t blame government here only um so so we we have a project I
Will not name them done since two th early 2000 until now uh private sector public sector the problem is Mega it’s a different animal Mega is big project too complex too many people and complexity not only the size size is one part of complexity and the other side of it is
Technological complexity so if you’ve been to Fort mcmu area and if I was lucky to see many of these major projects as an engineer I am proud of what our colleagues did um in in these major Capital project it’s very complex the problem is is because because of
This complexity and and size could overwhelm any one of us and it did private sector or public sector that’s my answer it was lieutenant governor Helen Hunley who warned me be very cautious of Mega projects she’s right she said break him down into smaller pieces but anyway done with your
Presentation this is this is a good beginning so you’re on George yeah you you cut this big elephant to to pieces and and manage each small piece in a project then we end up with another Pro complexity is the coordination between the pieces so really really we need uh a
Maestro a conductor and in my classes I I ask what is the best definition of a project manager and and and CLA I ask those are Engineers ask them what’s the best definition of project manager none yet to re receive an answer saying he or she must be a good
Engineer I did not receive that everybody says the coordinator yeah uh facilitator right and and you see they pick the right responses I.E my definition is a a a project manager is a person who does absolutely nothing I want that one he or she act as a
Coordinator okay uh we we cut the elephant Parry to few pieces piece one give it to one project manager another piece to another project so what do you do then an engineering to one EPC company a procurement to another a project control to another you are the conductor no more the
Player the manager not gresy the player you used to be a good player fine now you are managing you don’t expect to play and that emphasizes do nothing project manager to focus on leadership on communication on decision making supporting the team empowering the team these are the missing thing you’ve
Described exactly how the brain is organized why don’t we uh set up our organizations so they function the way the brain does the motor system the sensory system with the brain doing the integration okay you’re on with your presentation excellent Perry we could go like this presenting by discussion so I
Will not not bore you please all of you and because I don’t want to go into detail but the importance of this we are not investing enough because the fear of cost overrun so if you hear any announcement in the future Green Line white line whatever line you have
Anywhere in Canada say uh oh what’s going to happen ottaa they just finished uh a project again um LRT kind of thing again another problem so so I I picked a few slide around these topics and and how project are delivered this is the life cycle of a project in the
Industrial sector especially the oil and gas most likely most of the oil and gas companies have this I deliberately pick this one because we are in Alberta and uh the government organization they pick a little bit there are differences but let’s watch this one look at uh so phases Phase 1 2
3 4 five great so basically steps the first one you identify and assess opportunity this is the business side why do we want to go where why do we want to build something why do we want to invest what is the opportunity the economic the MBA guys and and the
Business side here it decide the feasibility of the project yeah we need a project great and then you open the gate gate one go to phase two in phase two we generate alternatives how we deliver this project uh uh we could do it this way that way
This way that way all alternative okay put all the alternative on the table again on the table no biases the biases are killing us and and especially by people who have experience in something and ignore other Alternatives or other possible alternative maybe good maybe bad so so the advice here put all the
Alternative on the table then select the best alternative no biases and and and the reason I’m saying this because our uh there is a project in New Finland it’s called muskrat fall project they had one of the many problems I wish I could visit you again and just tell you
About what happened on muskrat fall I was appeared as an expert witness on that project before the Commission of inquiry there was investigation they ignored one alternative should have been better then you open gate to you go to gate phase three basically whatever you picked selected in phase two you develop it a
Little bit IE engineer it and in oil and gas industry there about 25% of engineering look at my red this is me now in red at the bottom 25% engineering is not enough to provide the required accuracy at the end because phase three is called FID or AF FID final investment
Decision or approval for expenditure or if you don’t like that call it budget okay so this is where the engineers and the Business Development people they go to the board of directors and say we need 3 billion 100 million it doesn’t matter but based on what on 25% engineering
Which tells you the scope really was not defined very well but for budgetary purposes this is only for budgetary purposes then we say yeah okay proceed to phase four which is execute we will do detailed engineering procurement and construction okay and the procurement of little thing but long lead items like
Big things should have been done in phase three look at the bottom of phase three long lead regulatory approval this is where government can help regulatory approval I want that very quickly I I don’t want the government to touch anything anymore but please this big one big project like uh Transmountain
Pipeline and the rest of it and and then approval done you move to phase three you do detailed design procurement one of the procurement element is you select construction contractors and Fabricators and in some organization commissioning is part of phase four Husky for example took the same thing and made commissioning a separate
One and made it a seate phase and called phase four uh commissioning fine while sunor have the same thing with the different terminologies they had commissioning phase 4 and operate phase five or sorry this phase four uh should be five I just found the typo the last
Phase is five and so but what is this this is the thinking process but what happens sometimes we go quickly we push ourself and and we make decision and regret it later one of them that’s relevant today to my discussion if we go prematurely to construction and and and I hope somebody
Here in procurement and so if I want to build a a mega project and it’s not designed well and I want a contractor to build it they say George I can’t give you L some price procurement I I give you cost reimbursable contract or cost a
Plus who is taking the risk in Cost Plus is the owner if you don’t Define the scope and design it well you can’t do it lumsum and there is more to that what risk you are giving or the contractor or asking the contractor to take because
They price it and it goes up and down and and I can elaborate on those issues look at this this is uh a picture I found a photo from synr 21 expansion and uh look at the complexity how many modu you see how many Crane in blue and white and yellow
And red small crane Big Crane each one of these is a contract fabricated in somewhere in Edmonton and in some project they try to fabricate in Korea and had another bigger problem than that when they fabricated in Korea and to send it to us port and it’s stuck into
Nightmare I will talk about it and then the weather condition imagine we are I think most of us are in Alberta and and and and people in the cold weather so productivity will drop and all of so there are many Factor what if engineering is not ready what if
The material is not ready tools not ready equipment not ready we pick the wrong contract so there are many factors who is where is the conductor this is the Muskrat fall project 6.3 became 13 billion Commission of inquiry established and the judge pushed the leadership extremely hard on
This it it blamed leaders of the owner organization nalcor it’s called nalcor and they experien problem with WEA geot technical Aboriginal environmental uh the team did not work they fired the engineer they changed the engineer oh I can go on and on but but the number one lack of leadership and
Lack of competence you don’t know this business none of you knows about Mega project and you have by the way we have lots of Publications so it’s not a new thing and judge said there is a lots of material available to you why didn’t you at least
Read it review it learn from Lessons Learned and and and despite the fact you don’t have experience as well you should have done it anyway after the fact so so today you see I can go in million directions but today we’re going to focus on the construction and and my
Colleague God bless his soul Bob mtag was the president of Optima engineers and Constructors we developed a report in 2002 on labor productivity in Alberta the government of Alberta said George Bob why labor productivity is low What’s happen what’s happening we investigated and we wrote a report and and Perry I
Can send the report if you want and uh we found out labor productivity this is why look at the title I don’t call it labor productivity it’s construction productivity it’s not a labor issue it is management issue it’s mismanagement management issue workers are idle yeah why workers are not productive why
Waiting for material tools equipment design information uh decisions nothing to do with the workers and lazy they are talking about the flames and adminon Oilers great where is supervision they go to the coffee break and their coffee break and it takes them longer where is supervision so it’s
Management as well so number one we need to look at ourself in the mirror so construction productivity very complex issue the interaction between of Labor Capital material and Equipment but regardless to everything I said there is a huge room for improvement we can improve we can do better I trust we have
Great engineers and workers and uh construction contractors we’re great technically I have no problem they are good we we can build anything you want we can room for improvement and any one of us we all of us has a role has a role all of us so to improve labor
Productivity I think this slide is useful I will not go into detail but you need to provide your workers with right tools right equipment at the right time you need to look at the human side and human resources of IT training competency of the workers and more
Engineering and design I just gave you a percentage 25% engineering of 40% is not enough I will give you the right percentage in a minute if you really want to go to construction and a process and procedure right material at the right time and also the environment surrounding the
Site and sight layout and and weather condition and there are many things please look at these little tiny bullets so we did a study and we found that in the oil and gas our performance is the direct cost look at the green it is 30%
Of work day in direct hour or we call it Tool Time 30% I.E three hours of the 10 are on the real stuff H so what happens to the other seven hours waiting Idol travel correcting mistakes and planning ah so nonproductive time the rest other than the green let’s call them
Non-productive or non-tool time some of it we need that like I receive information or instruction from my bosses from my side superintendent or reviewing drawings I am not using the tool I’m run to producing that’s good we need that but we need look at the opportunity what we can do to
Help if you cut a little percentage from each little piece why are they idle why are they waiting what are they waiting for and we do that travel like for example there is I need to go to the um to the um storage area to fetch something back and forth and go there
And the material is not there and come back all of that the travel time is used to go to your lunchtime to come back from your lunchtime we need to do a good study and we can and in my slide I have that so we can do better I want to leave
A positive message here not negative please we can improve our performance it’s not impossible we know the problem we know the solution and we know the barriers as I said but we have a role to play the owners the engineering contractor the construction contractor labor government and other stakeholders
Including politicians and the community and and so we can go through what is needed from each one of them so George let me interrupt you for a moment because you’ve already convinced me of something and I’m wondering whether not this happens are you ever called in to work with a project before it’s
Launched I am now working on a project in I I can declare it um renovation of a dam in new brunwick difficult name for me it’s called ma twac Dam it’s an old Dam and they’re going to re renovate it and refurbish it I am working with them
Exactly ahead of time at the beginning from planning hopefully I will stay all the way during to construction yes but very few times very most of the time I am late well I I ask for two reasons I one of them is if before launch you bring in a third party independent of
The organization to say okay we’ve done our very best before we launch let’s have a a third-party review of what we’ve got here and it would seem to me that any organization worth its weight and gold would want to say before we proceed let’s have a third party do a
Checkup on us excellent point I’m glad you you raised it a I was not planning to talk about it uh this is the life cycle what what owners need to do they need to have internal oversight and outside Assurance so my role with M dam for New Brunswick power MB power is
Providing them with Assurance are what are we doing in phase two so they are in phase two jumping into phase three so specific question at each phase have you done this have you done that a reminder show me so we are reviewing currently every single report done about project
Execution plan for example yeah and this this pre-audit instead of a post audit yes yes timely timely so we are moving with them and and that’s called Assurance I I think we need it especially you know why one thing is we found in many studies
There is a a Danish guy who who works as a professor at um Oxford University in in the UK his name is fber bent fber he talks about biases as well he talks about deliberate underestimation of the budget so the project will be approved I don’t and I will never say
That so so the f ID you know or AF deliberately uh underestimated so they got the project approved and and and then we are stuck with it pregnant what you can do and you can’t get out of it and so that we have a lot of study then
The bias is what killing me so we need somebody you know when they hired me MB MB power I told I asked the CEO I said please give me one thing I want from you don’t fire me because I gave you my honest opinion this is another problem Perry
Some people do not want to listen to uh news that they didn’t like it or opinion they don’t like it probably yourself and your members with your experience you’ve seen that so when you hire somebody as a consultant please give them the freedom to give you their honest
Opinion even if you don’t like their opinion and I did ask that uh because otherwise because I was fired on a mega project I said to them you are not ready to proceed with the project and they fired me they didn’t like that and I
Wish now they H they did not they did not even dare to ask George how dare you say we uh are not ready why they didn’t say that all of those people people been fired fired and the cost overrun is unbelievable this is what makes me unhappy anyway so how we improve
Productivity another report we did is what we do solution this is solution okay the first phases phase one two three is called front end the front end of a project so impr sometimes called front end planning or front end loading the beginning which is the planning the thinking improve
That seek input from procurement engineering construction and operation what I.E when you plan a project and you start designing it get the opinion of the people who going to operate get the opinion of people who going to engineer get most more importantly the people who going to build it because pure Engineers
Probably might design something too complex get somebody who built it before just the construct ability the workability engage major supply chain early and and require Contracting strategy that allow the the above what I just said and build collaborative relationship we are teams not a bunch of
Enemies and I’ve seen from my claims and dispute business I’ve seen how adversarial these contracts are it’s it’s it’s it’s saddening one day I will talk to you about stories and and enhance design and Engineering you see now you say George you you came here to talk about productivity look what I’m
Talking I’m going after the root causes if we ignore the root causes we’re going to repeat standardize modularize pra reduce the practice of fast tracking let me Define fast tracking fast tracking you go faster IE you overlap design with construction I while you’re designing you started construction meaning engineering is Half
Baked or quarter baked 25% engineering guess what there will be mistake you miss something when do you discover it during construction expensive expensive unless you must if I have a flood God forbid in Calgary and I am the mayor or somebody I will go fast track I want to
Save the community so there is reason sometimes to Fast Track fine but if we Fast Track we’re going to pay for it consider that in your budget consider that there is a brilliant study British study called and I would like you to Google now as I’m speaking the fast track
Manual the fast track manual by an association called ecii ECI stands for the European construction Institute based in at lfra University the my University that I graduated from and so happy to see that report please download it free of charge PDF and and basically it’s the FasTrack manual said
Okay if you going to Fast Track This is what you need to do and expect to pay this much even they gave you a percentage so if you’re going to budget and estimating so I am not saying don’t Fast Track I’m saying if you got if you
Are forc to fast rank if fast rack is needed then budget for the additional risk associated with it including making mistake because you’re going to make decision you can’t wait for all the information and facts to make a decision you can’t so so that’s consider constructibility during design that’s
Important more seek Lessons Learned and and Perry where I put seek lessons learned in the methodology remember Phase 1 2 3 in phase two and three I will put that statement seek Lessons Learned seek Lessons Learned then I later on I say document Lessons Learned document Lessons Learned what we learned
But at the very beginning anybody build a sagd project a water treatment plant project a tunnel project a Bridge Project okay what did we learn in the past we need to do that and apply industry best practices like constructibility value engineering teamwork stuff like that ah this is important here and uh
Enhanced design quality we need good engineering so 25% not enough apply the 8100 rule George gonna Perry somebody gonna ask George where did you get this number I asked your colleagues in Industry what is the best engineering we need to get construction to flow smoothly productively they said George
Apply the 80100 I said what is this 80% of engineering complete before mobilizing to site so don’t send your crew to Fort muray until 80% complete and 100% of IFC drawing before construction what is IFC IFC stands for issued for cons construction drawings I.E after we finished engineering detailed
Engineering that is important that’s important then the workers will have a final kind of good quality engineering but do GE do you expect changes absolutely do you expect mistake absolutely but less much less when we have this quality of percentage completion and if we don’t do that design review by construction
And operation operations actually they’re completely ignored during the early stages these are the people who going to operate the project really they are the real client of an organization I need because they’re going to commission the project so we need them for in many cases for many
Things they know what works before what technology worked what technology did not work the users are very important seek that the construction as well is the practical way of assembling the Lego set as well we need that we did a study with the at the University in in between
The construction Owners Association of Alberta uh the acronym is Kawa and CI the construction industry Institute and my team at the University of Calgary and we found that really the 80 to 100% is the best percentage that we can go with so twice I got the same information so
Improve what else we can do proper management of construction ah now how we manage construction especially up north Camp facilities a travel to that site access to site and layout and I can go through all of these man proper management of all of these tools equipment scaffolding
Scaffolding uh now I don’t want to go too much in detail but in cost of plus contract the owner pays for the labor hourly rate and the material use and all of that so if I have this bulb to do I bring the scaffolding build the scaffold
SC up and finish and change the B finish finished my task disassemble the scaffolding and then another guy comes in I oh we have this valve there okay build the scaffold again and and dismantle scaffold so we need the proper management of everything on this list
And please I don’t want to bore you more and and improve uh supervision and and supervision to labor ratio provide adequate labor um be accountable for scope so workers need to be engaged uh yes we look after them health and safety motivation accommodation but we need to
Empower them we need to plan activities so all of that thing if you don’t if I isolate myself from my Workforce I say to project leader and project manager I if you are on a camp go and sit on the bus when the with the when the worker
Comes from camp at 6:00 a.m. drive two hours or one hour whatever go through the gate with them and while you are sitting on the bus talk to the next guy next to you say Hi how are you I’m George and and be part of that team
Those workers are not robots they are people and and if you treat them with respect and know their concerns and their issues they going to serve you you would not believe it so we don’t isolate ourself from our Workforce as well we look after them apply this our core value
System just trying to work two or three shifts at a construction site advance or or reduce the lapse time and does it just add more cost yes shift and and O overtime at cost as well so because there is overlap and unproductive time like overtime been studied end shifts
And it actually drops in productivity give you an example regularly if we work eight hours and go home great but if we start working 10 hours 10 hours a day people are tired and we see drop in productivity downward so so what we need is to provide incentive and and if we
Must have overtime then do it but take take that into consideration that will be people just tired yoga Yogi is not looking at overtime he’s talking about bringing in multiple workforces yeah but then Force number one leaves and then the night shift comes there is overlap in between then
Shift two gonna work at night and and missing this missing that that overlap that overlap will be a loss of productivity okay you’re at slid 18 you got 31 and we’ve got about 20 minutes to go oh oh yes thank you but give your Workforce a voice I really wanted uh us
To think reward Milestones completion we need to start dealing with everyone and in a respectful manner in a caring manner then we are one team workers contractors suppliers subcontractors and so on enhance communication clarify roles and responsibility and authorities and and and this is a big one you know I have
Seen people sign contract without reading it okay as simple as that so um so we need to to help ourself into building a team lines of communication what’s my role ground rules what’s your roles how we going to behave all of that needs to be done in advance I am
Throwing at you a lot since this group of people uh I’ve seen talking about procurement okay what type of contract EP engineering procurement epcm EPC engineering procurement construction management or engineering procurement construction or CM or just C so different kind of contract advantages disadvantages which one we use how we’re
Going to pay the compensation model Lum suum Cost Plus unit rate not difficult but we need to do it we can do it but which one suits where big project small project I can guarantee Mega project nobody will give you lumsum nobody pick the biggest Flor back all put them all
Together they will never give you a lumo never and they can’t and so we need to break it into smaller chunks and then which one if I have engineered it well go lamsam and I have to go fast and I don’t have to engineer it well go cost reimbursable if you go
Cost reimbursable expect cost overrun drop in productivity and so on government agency I want them to Grant timely approvals remove barriers including including labor mo mobility improve infrastructure and so on number eight I think we need as industry to treat productivity like we treated safety have a safety officer have a
Appoint somebody with experience to become the champion for productivity instead so we have productivity champion and so I’m going to suggest two things and and I will stop talking two phases we need to do we need to audit project Readiness for construction are we ready before we
Go are we ready to mobilize to construction what should I do are we ready to start productive construction and in phase two we need to conduct regular tooltime analysis or analyses regular regular are we productive and to prove that or to summarize this phase one and phase to
It’s a pipe I would like you to audit like uh per we said early so before we open we go to construction we need to ask a few question and I will show you the major list of it the question and then in phase two we do to the job side
And measure Tool Time how many out of the day how many minutes spent using tools how many minutes uh they went to fetch something to asking for something waiting for something and we’ve done this I have done it personally when I was student in the UK I went to a job
Site and that and shadowed a crew and watched every single minute where they go where they come so we know how to do it so for example to be productive how do we do a good job you do a good job if you know if you do a
Good job in cost Management in schedule management agement in work planning in monitoring progress of productivity in quality management Safety Management so if you look at 14 item I divided and we developed a weight for each one of them so we can verify if the team is ready to
Do a good job in all of these things and then if where what is missing Safety Management say go back labor relationship go back what about how you going to manage material what does it mean good job in material Management number nine and and so we verify all of those
Tool Time look at this one tool time we look at crew crew one crew two crew three this is a real life project we did in the US and as you can see in the color like Matt his team was working 60% and 14% of the time look socializing
H they were talking about the the Super Ball and Greg poor guy 36 so we go Greg what happened here Greg what happened why and socializing 16 16 16% and so we can tackle these look at Mike Sheely well than 75% of the time they were
Productive H so so the idea is not to blame this should be done with the workers with the team with the contractor this is done when we they asked us in the US in Louisiana uh the contractor and the owner were engaged with the workforce
Committed to it it’s I I know it’s could be sensitive but the idea was to do it and we did this exercise okay do you remember we have a a break like we start at 8 let’s assume are we starting at 8 if we we have coffee break we have
Lunch and then we go home packing so we investigated that 10:15 to 11:00 break and look what we found we found some people come early 20 to 6 minute people come to early to the coffee break 15 to 11 minutes earlier and so on or 10 minutes to Six Minutes
Lots of workers and then they leave later that’s who is responsible for this I am enjoying I’m talk myself with my colleagues we’re talking about family our grandchildren hockey and football and Taylor Swift all of that thing and so somebody must be there there must be there so this is what we
Do and to apply best practices I’m going to finish very quickly and look at this on the left hand side Tool Time on a project in in Calgary was 45.9 five% with applying best practices after with that we improved it to 54.6 and we can monitor performance uh and
And basically survey number one number two number three and you can see the trend going up and up and with this I thank you very much Perry thank you and team for the opportunity and I wish you great success I hope you see the relevance the relevance is we all share
And have responsibility to get the job done efficiently to encourage owner organization investors government organization to invest in our project including new road construction well easier said than said I mean this is not these Mega projects have extraordinary complexity to them which is uh Illustrated in a number of
The points that you’ve brought to brought to bear I’m I’m G to call on Yo Yogi’s got a very specific question which he’s going to pose to you so uh Yogi go ahead thank you Perry great discussion George you know I was thinking that there don’t seem to be any political
Consequences for this senior Executives who are pushed to start the site work before your start criteria have actually been met it seems like they’ve been congratulated for getting this thing on the road and they’ve been promoted and they’ve moved on long before the disaster that you outlined actually
Occurs is am I making this up or is that consistent with your experience absolutely uh you are absolutely correct uh on two things I will add I say to my class as well if you are a project manager and on a project somebody says George uh I would like you to be the
Project manager of this major project I ask my student to ask the following question am I the first project manager if they say yes I say to my Engineers don’t take it because you will be fired if they say you are the third project manager take it because you’ll
Be going to become the hero finishing the project and blame the other guys so usually they blame the project manager but the the these are escapegoat project manager has nothing to do with it it is the higher level it is the decision and to invest to no biases to develop the
Alternative Alternatives select the best Alternatives don’t rush I I I know of stories where they go to the AF and say this is a budget they say sharpen your person go back all of this and then they produce another number and just to approve the project we been through it
But to answer your question Yogi y Yogi is on muskrat Falls the senior level manager including the CEO lost his job and the major director lost his job as well you touched on something so you must have been looking at my resume George because the projects that I’m
Most proud of I definitely was the second project manager touch you both touched on a project that I’m well aware of in Edmonton with the LRT where they’re having some failures uh the analysis that was brought to my attention whether or not it’s ever been acknowledged or not was
There were numerous changes of project manager over and over and over again it went on for years like three years before they ever got the project done and all I could do along the way was keep on firing the project manager it seems to me that that might have been
The major contributor to the problem yeah I one day I thought I will put a mirror in front of the CEO of a company just a joke so they can look at themselves in the mirror they are the root cause because they could hire you I I’ll give you an
Example one project in Fort mcmi Senior Management decided to fabricate in Korea South Korea nothing wrong with South Korea great engineering they fabricate anything you want but we could fabricate in Edmonton and Calgary as well good quality nothing wrong with it but the company head office in Houston said
Korea and some of you probably remember what I’m talking about which project so they fabricated in Korea so if you are Yogi you are the project manager congratulation y you are the project manager and by the way don’t worry about fabrication we already finished it for you you know the
Made decision it’s Korea okay great what happened they manag they put the biggest module on a ship they they can great because this will reduce the manh hour on the job site in Fort mmur great there is no way you can download these big mons in Vancouver you know because of kicking
Horse okay now kicking horse is straight line let me talk about that one in a minute if I can kicking horse now it’s straight line so went to a port just south in the US and downloaded everything in the US then Idaho in Montana said you are taking these big
Modu monaster on our Highway you’re going to damage our Highway which is right now what we going to do they already delivered the modules they cut them into smaller pieces took them on a smaller lores trucks and took them to Edmonton welded them back and S them to to Fort McMurray congratulation project
Manager has nothing to do with with the project manager decision already made in Phase One 23 project manager in phase four so so talking about Good successful project I will give you uh cild and 37 Avenue and Jeff reminded me that was a fastra project between the
City of Calgary and they brought the contractor I think PCL and the engineer and I was the team building role on that project I was so happy with the collaboration and the team they functioned as one team we are in it together and to finish this project it
Was fast trck and I did also I don’t know Jeff and uh I did a survey on that project why this project was successful do you know the answer I got it’s leadership it’s decision making leadership that made it working collaboratively I when I go to went to
The site I don’t know which one is a contractor which one is the engineer they were working hand in hand the the contractor and the engineer the engineer name I ISL that’s one talking about kicking horse my role was on that project and is just team building between Consortium of contractors and
The Ministry of Transportation of BC and the team worked nicely working together so we can do many things but that government organization and its Road the percentage of engineering is much better but they have their own challenges anybody drove there just look at the Geography okay and so we all have
Challenges but we need to do a better job in working together leadership leaders have responsibility I published a book called benevolent dictatorship for major capital projects I deliberately said benevolent dictatorship I want the leaders to they have a role to play it’s not to blame the project manager of their Ro I don’t
Have I don’t have the list in front of me that you gave us I think it had 10 different items in it uh that you and you had percentages of how much uh uh effort goes into every one of them how how many of those 10 or let’s say 100%
How many of them were human issues as opposed to Concrete Construction and our engine is trained in human resource management no I I’m lucky to say and I’m proud to say um I did that on our uh in our courses how to build a team how to
Sustain the team how to so we evaluate the performance number one is communication right decision making uh yeah I pay less attention to how we manage cost and time and all of that and decision making is the team empowered uh at the lowest managerial level or it’s dictatorship and nobody empowered
So usually but to answer you industry for a long time focus on the focused on the technical side including project management associations as well even the discipline of project management is about time management cost management risk management M and Human Resources is coming stakeholder management look at stakeholder management how you deal with
Native issues Community issues people don’t have confidence even to deal with these issues they are afraid it’s political and I don’t know what to say in politically correct or not and they are they can’t do it they can’t do it this is the buffer between technology
And humans uh clous you’ve got a point you want to make here and then I’m going to going to come back and wrap it up I’ve got a one last question for George go ahead clous if he’s there yeah you’re muted close you’re M you’re muted there we
Go sorry I wasn’t expecting to speak here H George I I agree with everything that you you’ve identified here and it’s certainly stuff that I’ve run into uh all the time I mean uh I was with uh mamut the uh Crane company that put all
The modules brought them all up to uh uh to Fort McMurray but they were never part of the initial design contract they were a subcontractor when it was too late to change things so had they brought in mimo uh right off the bat they would have figured out that you you
Couldn’t do what the guys in Korea did and and put up the modules I still am a very big fan of put building the modules here in Edmonton where you didn’t have the 2hour bus ride to decide in all sorts of weather and um and they had the
Equipment to do that and and yeah I really agree with you is that there’s not enough money having been in the engineering business to ever do it right you never do a proper job of detailing what’s needed and then it becomes very adversarial between between you and a
Contractor who you’ve never met because he was one of three people that low bit to job to begin with and now there’s a big issue between you designed it wrong to you can’t build worth the uh sort of thing and that just becomes a big issue and it and we’re getting in
These big Mega projects you know one of your uh bullet points was it has to be a trusting team and collaborative but there’s a dunbar’s number Dunbar said you can never have a tribe more than 150 people before you lose control of communication you cannot be part of a
Tribe and know enough about that person to trust them and be good of it that’s more than 150 well these workforces are much bigger than that they come from all different directions and that sort of thing uh every time you hand off something uh you lose something in the
Communication and that sort of thing so I think it’s part of it is is the pure size and part of it is not spending enough time at the beginning to see if you were solving the right problem to begin with so so I’m really I really like how
You’ve how you’ve set out the uh the problem I’m not sure if any of us have any of the solutions I know the big fad right now is integrated project delivery where you put everybody in the same room at the same time but again uh somebody has to make a decision at
The end of it sort of thing uh every decision has winners and losers and how do you uh how do you trust people enough to look out for you as well and all this stuff looks really good in concept I’ve never seen it work in uh in real time
You want to comment George yeah I think I I I no I’m not losing uh faith we have done it uh we have few project um I think we can build the team but the owner need to decide what they want design it very well I want a house
Okay what type of house how many bedrooms great five three what about kitchen what do you want in the kitchen and if we don’t develop that and and then we keep my wife comes in and say I don’t like this and don’t like that and
Then we have a problem so the owner need to start the owner they need to develop the the scope Define the scope design the scope and the owner need to do another thing proper risk allocation this is a big area if I’ve seen like some owner organization basically pushes the risk
To the contractor Anything could happen anything could go wrong it’s your responsibility and give me one fixed price and contractors do that they give one price so they try to price these risk and something happened and they end under estimate or we pick the lowest compliant bidder okay and the
Lowest basically made more mistake than the others and then they we get stuck in in dispute as well so proper risk allocation work on the team design it well and then communicate well you trust me or I don’t no problem but at least we deal with each other in a fair manner
Fair George there there’s a new tool of a a new player in this game um and may may have significant implications for the future project management I know I’ve used this tool myself recently where I was asked to analyze 72 different projects uh and what their uh how remote
They were and what the significant implications were there on the final project and I got the work done in in less than 20 minutes what do you think the relevance of artificial intelligence is going to be AI learning language models in the project management I like
It actually and I started using it and I tell you what we do on a project I do something called health check so I go up on project and I have list of questions about many things so and I ask him to score between one to five and give me a
A reason y one y 2 one is bad five is really good with good answers and what I do as well I see their answers I see their problems then we go to Ai and I ask AI CH GPT and actually we are getting good answers and they laugh
The team I said this is your problem this is how you identified it this is your solution and by the way CH gbt agrees with you or suggest something and and and sometimes they SC not very well but they don’t say what’s they suggest I say I I said this what do
You think and so I I I am happy with that I I think it can be used in project and project management uh and teaching it can be used uh I I’m glad I am no longer a professor so I don’t know how to
Mark I think I mean the thing that I I have found extraordinary is its capacity to do deal with complexity yes with dealing with with a situation where the variables are extensive and it’s extremely difficult for a human being individually to man it’s it’s extraordinary in that in that in that
Respect well you know we’re over the hour this has been delightful uh uh I am I am very pleased that those who joined us today have been part of our earlier uh seminars and seem to be noding their head along the way George so you’ve reinforced much of what we’ve touched on
And with the depth of your experience the only question I’ve got left is when when you come on to a job site do you scare the hell out of all the project managers or are they glad to have you there as their uh as their coach uh I
Think I I go as a coach uh and they like me because of that I am nice uh person a few times I lose it but uh in this capacity I’m not uh I I try to be honest with all side uh and give them my
Opinion in front of each other so it’s no hidden agenda so so the review of these questions in front of them this is what you told me this is what you said these are your suggestion those are CH GP this is my opinion and they hear it
In front of them and all of them so in general if you start uh from day one on a project it’s great I’ve been into project at the very end when they have a mess and one case successfully resolved and by making them to strike an agreement a compromise and one case
Recently I could not uh convince one side I could not they were more adversarial read the contract contractor you did not read the contract sue me if you want I tried my best to convince and and I said to them I wish I am an arbitrator not a mediator the the reason
Mid arbitrator decision is binding and I said this to the owner who did not like my suggestions so but but this is life this is life Sharon uh you uh you had your hand up any any parting comments you’re muted Perry I was just congratulating and thanking George for just a terrific
Presentation today thank you so much for giving us your time and also um in an orderly way your thoughts on how productivity can be increased uh and I will say that um Perry to pick up on your comment from I think from what George laid out today it is certainly
The pre- audit that just makes so much sense to me and and having that list of of conditions to meet before you go on to into actually to me it’s kind of common sense but maybe it isn’t common sense as we have seen in so many failed projects which I
Am so frustrated at hearing in both Municipal provincial and at Federal levels on a regular basis so we we need George to replicate his ideas and and uh and have them sent out to people who count I want to say on the topic of artificial intelligence just today um
There has been a new um research report Le that’s talking about AI plus human decisionmaking and what they’re showing is I’m going to read you the numbers here um this is humans plus AI on a five day idea Sprint um they took it down
From um to into two and a half days from five and that they’re getting two to three times more ideas that are legitimately useful ideas so IIA is here with us to stay and it will be up to us to be able to um be open to AI learning
And applicable to all Industries so it’s here to make a difference abut thank you thank you I appreciate that thank you it’s a good point to wrap up on is new tools arriving to help us with the decision making that becomes increasingly complex as our systems mature and particularly relevant in
Canada it it’s astounding what what is happening with our Mega projects in Canada and I’m glad to see the relationship of those to productivity which has a significant bearing on GDP in Canada somebody should be W woken up and I and I did see that Freeland has asked management uh in business to
Address the issues of productivity so yeah look at this this is the first one I did for the government of Alberta on Deerfoot Trail right in 202 uh 2001 yeah okay look the first question how is communication difficult guarded on one side easy up front that’s not engineering is the flow of information
Between Alberta infrastructure and carax the contractor look at that top management support where is the techn where is the engineering in this so George uh what you really have done is translated project management is really fundamentally About Management yeah and management of it happens to be applied to construction
And construction is about people just like Commerce is about people it’s management that’s failing yes thank you thank you I really appreciate the opportunity I wish you best of health to you and your families