Ep 25: The Best Construction Projects vs. The Worst Construction Projects

So archetesticals… architecticals… All right, so that joke went so full circle. It was funny the first time, and maybe the second or third, and then it was like, “Okay, we get it.” It’s not like we’re rolling our eyes, and then, I don’t know, a year later it got funny again because he’s still doing that shit.

It’s not funny for the same reasons anymore. No, it’s not funny for the same reason; it’s funny because he’s still doing it. Now he’s the joke, not the line.

Okay, there you go. All right, I have a topic. Lay it on me. I want to hear about the most complicated, fucked up, biggest dumpster fire of a project you were ever assigned and ran. Because everybody’s got one. They’re like, “Oh yeah, that one.” So I want to hear about the biggest dumpster fire you ever had to deal with.

They were all awesome, so I don’t know. I ran them like a top.

Sure you did.

Let me think… that was on fire… I’m trying to think if there were any… I’ve got a couple of thoughts on some, but they weren’t when I was P&L responsible. They were projects I was on when I was an APM or a PE or something like that.

Yeah, not your projects.

Well, look, I say this with all humility: I was a fucking good project manager.

So was I. But what I got handed was trash that I had to navigate my way out of.

So that’s an interesting point, though. I don’t think I ever got handed a project. There were people that did, where timing works and you’re coming off a job, “I got a piece of shit, I’m going to fire the guy that’s running it, you’re doing it now.” That didn’t happen to me. Okay, did you ever get handed something that was such a mess that it took you months to straighten out?

I did get handed stuff that was a mess. I’m trying to think… it seemed like I’ve got five that come to mind immediately. I’m saying this with all humility: I made mistakes and I fucked up a lot. I don’t think I created any dumpster fires.

No, but you’re never given a dumpster fire out?

I have this idea, this memory, this emotional memory of being like, “Yeah, I didn’t create any of this fucking bullshit. Not my circus, not my monkey, but I guess I solve it. So I don’t care, I’ll make decisions all day long to fucking solve this.” I have this emotional memory of that. For the life of me, I can’t think of what project that was. Why do I think that? I know it.

It’s like I’m going through my resume right now. If you can’t tell me about the worst project you were ever on, tell me about the best project you were ever on. That should be an easy one. Best… and tell me why it was the best project.

Oh, I can. Okay, so—and don’t play to the audience, it wasn’t Lenbrook.

I know it was better projects, you know. Lenbrook was a project we did together almost 20 years ago. Lenbrook was a very good project, and it was good for a lot of reasons. I got a great bonus from it. We made a lot of money. We executed the plan. Shh, don’t tell Lenbrook…

Well, I made a lot of money too. Contract terms are contract terms. We just maximized power design. I made a lot of money too; I made sure of that. We did well.

But no, my point is… little piece of a big pie, big piece of a little pie. It’s all good. You know, it’s so funny. I’m going to answer your question, but I answer it kind of in a roundabout way. We had a little reunion last night. I told you I was going over there, right? So it was a smaller group, but I was telling Greg this earlier. There’s like seven of us there, six of us, but these are people that I worked with for 15 years over a span of 15 years. And I was sitting there just… we tell the same stories over and over again. They’re funny as shit every time. But I just thought, it’s like a high school reunion. I’m so comfortable with these people. That guy taught me so much. That guy taught me so much. She’s so good; I couldn’t have done my job without her. Like, I really liked that guy. You know, I still like him. But we were talking earlier about, “I wish they told me that I was in the good old days” or whatever that quote was. Yes, I had that emotion last night. And so what made projects really good was the team, is where I’m going with this.

Okay.

I mean, yes, making money is a metric that we should be paying attention to, of course. But I contend that a good team and camaraderie and mutual respect and those types of things… which I can’t take credit for. I wasn’t building my teams at that point in my career; I was just given what they gave me. And of course there were… I mean you tend to forget about the bad stuff, right? Unless it was so monumentally bad that it defined your career or defined three years of your life. I still have PTSD from a couple of jobs 20 years ago. But I genuinely mean this: the good job, Lenbrook, was a good job because we had a really good team.

You did have a good team. Cole and I are still really good friends. That’s been a long time ago. Shout out to Cole Green, best superintendent I ever worked with.

That’s high praise. I mean it. Tag his shit in this video.

You better buy you lunch for that one.

We had good teams. We just looked after each other. We carried each other’s water occasionally. Everybody just looked after each other. That’s what made them good. I think bad projects, projects that went bad or didn’t feel good, if I went back through my mind at the end of the day, it really was about the people that were there that weren’t carrying their load. Because you can be a really good project manager, you can be a really good superintendent. We were saying a minute ago, this is a team sport. Are there projects that you can be a PM/superintendent and do it all? Yes. Not the types of projects you and I worked on. Not the scale of projects. You can’t do it; it’s impossible.

You could do a TI job by yourself.

Yep, sure. And not to take anything away from that. But I’m thinking about having a project team of three to 15 people. It’s about the people. It’s just about the skills, and then the soft skills more than anything, about them really wanting to be there and looking after each other. That’s what it felt like last night sitting there. I just looked around the table and I’m just thinking… I’m remembering things. And it wasn’t like specific memories, although we were telling stories; it was really more an emotional memory. It was just, I felt warm and I felt like I feel really safe with these people. Because that guy… I reported to him for 10 years. And I can distinctly remember me calling him losing my ever-fucking-loving mind, and he would talk me off the ledge. And it made me think about where I am today. And we’re running a business and we don’t have massive personnel issues, but we have them; just kind of goes with the territory, right? And made me go, “I need to think about how that was handled a little bit differently.” It reminded me that I was given quarter. I was allowed to bitch. And then he just mind-fucked me into getting back on track. Basically was really good at it. So I avoided your question. I didn’t mean to avoid.

I was going to say, it’s a great answer to a question I didn’t ask. I didn’t intentionally duck the question.

I can think of some project… well like you have a piece of art in your office that’s a job site photo that’s got a bunch of signatures around it. It’s for a project you did in Florida, in the panhandle.

Oh yeah.

Was that the best project you ever ran? Or how do you quantify the best project?

So it’s really interesting. You think it wasn’t the best because I was away from my family for 3 years building that job. That was during the recession. So I was in Tampa for a year doing precon four or five days a week. And then I was on the job site for another 24 months building the damn thing, going down on Mondays and coming home on Fridays. And there were a few weekends in there I worked, but not a ton. But what I do have fond memories of that job because I learned something. I learned how to temper my… we’ll just call it smartassery rage.

Was it? Well, I had some rage.

I smartassery… I have always been a smartass and I have a little bit of a problem with authority occasionally.

It is better to be a smartass than a dumbass.

Yeah, that’s true. So I was a contrarian is a better way to put it. I’m a bit of a contrarian. Given the right mood, I will go the opposite direction just for the fuck of it. I don’t care, I just go the other way.

So debate team. I got it.

Yeah, like I’m not doing it to piss you off. I do it because it’s fun for me. So it’s got nothing to do with you.

That’s right. It’s just fun for me to take the opposite side.

So I learned a lot.

I can relate to that. I’m still trying to think of a dumpster fire that I created.

Don’t worry, I’ve got half a dozen in my back pocket that were dumpster fires.

You know, it’s funny though, we always say this: you learn more from the bad ones, right? If it’s all going right, do you even know what you’re doing right? Make it happen that way. The phrase I learned like 20 years ago was: if you’re on a good job, nobody knows who you are. If you’re on a bad job, everybody knows who you are.

I’ve been on such a bad job they were flying in people from Europe. They come to the job site to meet with us to debrief to see if they could help, and then they would leave and I’d be like, “Well that’s a sharp team. It’s a dumpster fire.”

I had a call yesterday, a sales call… actually an existing client, a past client we may work with again. Repeat client. And so anyway, the issue is the board is paying attention. We’ll just leave it at that. And so I said, “Yeah, I’ve been on a couple of those projects where things are trending in the wrong direction.” And what happens is you start getting a lot of help that you don’t want.

That’s a nice way of putting it.

People start flying in and showing up and you have monthly full-on fucking audits and they’re booking their flights to your job. And I’m getting all the job cost. Yes, well we had to fly this person in, this person flew in… it’s all in job cost. Like, I didn’t ask. You’re not helping. I didn’t ask for this help. What you’re doing is making me sit in this conference room argue with you for 3 days when I could be out there making things happen. Asking for mitigation plan after mitigation plan after mitigation plan. What are you going to do about this? Well, in the time I explained to you what I’m going to do about it, I didn’t solve the fucking problem. So now I got another problem.

That’s right. Now I have to pay for you and your time to explain to you how fucked we are.

Yes. I’ve been on those jobs where there’s a lot of executives sitting in the room. I’ve said for a while, you know, we were talking earlier about just having the wherewithal or the passion to be like, “I don’t fucking understand. Tell it to me. Explain it to me in a way that I can understand it.” I’ve joked before that I’ve got a trailer MBA because I sat in those conference rooms and I worked for big corporate so there were a lot of finance bros around. And I sat in conference rooms and trailers arguing with regional finance managers and corporate finance managers and CFOs about my cost analysis. They’re telling me you’re not going to make the money you think you’re going to make. And I’m like, “Fuck you. Bullshit. Explain to me how that math… I added 2 plus two and got four and you got six. Explain that to me. How does that work? Like you’re not showing me your math. Show me your math.” And for years I argued with people because I refused to feel stupid. I’m not going to be made to feel stupid. I will argue. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. But you’re not explaining yourself yet.

Right, make a logical argument. All right. This has been a lot of fun getting to know you and your project history a little bit more. Yes, I always have more questions, but I’ll save them for the next episode. Thanks for tuning in. We’ll see you on the next episode of Construction Hot Takes.