[00:00:00] Gary Fischer, PE: Good morning. I’m Gary Fisher, the executive director of the Project Production Institute, and welcome. So how many folks are here to a symposium for the first time? Just raise your hand. Wow, that’s a majority of folks. That’s excellent. Welcome. You’re in for a special treat today. It’s really only fitting that we find ourselves here at Stanford, which has such deep roots in the research and education in the field of construction.
[00:00:30] Gary Fischer, PE: And I was doing some research on this and, digging into the history here. And man is it was impressive like in 1955, the construction engineering management program was started here by professors Clarkston Oglesby and John Fondahl, a couple of really familiar names. If you’ve been around project work very long.
[00:00:51] Gary Fischer, PE: Fondahl is probably one of the most familiar names famous for developing the precedence diagramming methodology as a non computer alternative to CPM. Oglesby authored two books, Highway Engineering and co authored the classic Productivity Improvement in Construction, along with Hank Parker and Greg Howell.
[00:01:12] Gary Fischer, PE: Hank Parker is known for putting Stanford’s construction program on the map. Both locally and globally. How earned, how, why earning his master’s in construction engineering here at Stanford pioneered the use of time lapse cameras and projectors to analyze work methods on construction projects. And then fast forwarding a little bit, Lauri Koskela published a PhD thesis, application of the new production philosophy to construction was really the foundation for the lean construction movement.
[00:01:44] Gary Fischer, PE: And I could go on and on. The list is just really impressive. Of educators and people that were educated here that went out to lead in business positions. Stanford is officially known as the Leland Stanford Junior University. That was a surprise to me, the junior university. It has continued to produce leaders in our industry, even today.
[00:02:11] Gary Fischer, PE: Like Martin Fisher, who leads the Center for Integrated Facility Engineering. He’s teaching a class right now, he’s going to be here a little bit later today. Not bad for an unaccredited university, huh? Or as the folks from Berkeley like to say, the junior university. Okay, so let’s get started. I found, I find Elon Musk and the way he thinks about what he accomplishes inspiring.
[00:02:41] Gary Fischer, PE: Follow him on X because I like to see how the guy thinks, how he thinks about using science to accomplish his results. So I found this little video, I want to start with that. Hopefully it automatically plays here. And
[00:02:55] Elon Musk: Yeah, this is pretty crazy. This is a custom built tower with arms that’ll that are designed to catch the largest and heaviest flying object ever made and pluck it out of the air.
[00:03:11] Elon Musk: That’s the theory anyway,
[00:03:17] Andy Krebs: I think it’s funny, people actually forget now that they’re actually bent to lift and stack the rocket. The cranes have such bad wind capability, but one time the booster legs were gonna weigh a lot, Elon just said delete the legs, delete. We’re like, oh, what? You can just, use the arms, and then set it again, and then go, wow, he’s serious.
[00:03:34] Andy Krebs: Okay, we better get on this, and now it seems normal. At least it seems plausible. It seems plausible, yeah.
[00:03:42] Elon Musk: It’s still super crazy, but the more you talk about it I think at SpaceX, we specialize in turning, in converting things from impossible to late.
[00:04:01] Elon Musk: But it’s pretty nutty because you’re gonna have this gigantic booster coming back. And that’s nine meters in diameter, not counting the chines or roughly 30 feet in diameter. And it’ll weigh about 250 tons, but on the heavy side, we’ll make that lighter over time.
[00:04:29] Gary Fischer, PE: Do you catch that comment? I think that was hilarious. At SpaceX, we specialize in converting things from impossible to late. And what I really like about, what I find inspiring about Elon is the, he understands science. He understands the limitations of science, but he uses science to help accomplish what he wants to do.
[00:04:49] Gary Fischer, PE: And how he comes up with these ideas, how did he come up with Starlink? How did he come up with this? It’s just amazing how this guy thinks. And that got me thinking about the Production Institute, Project Production Management. We’re in the business of doing the same thing. We’re in the business of taking things that were thought impossible and make them in a reality.
[00:05:09] Gary Fischer, PE: That’s what we do. Let’s stop and think about that for a minute. What would your business be like if your rock, if your project were rock solid, predictable and improve the bottom line or even better yet, what if your projects cost half of what you think they should cost or you think they’re going to cost or take half the time.
[00:05:34] Gary Fischer, PE: Or those two things combined. Think about how that could change the equation in your business. We’re going to hear some of the challenges of new energy kind of projects. Think about the, they’re terribly challenged economically. Half the time, half the cost. Would that make a difference? So at the production Institute, we’re all around trying to increase the value, what we do in construction, which is.
[00:06:03] Gary Fischer, PE: The whole project realm and how it affects society, getting more bang for our buck. That’s spent. How do we do that? We want our vision is that production management methods are used today by people developing and executing projects, just like the historical methods are. It’s just the way we think about things, the way we do things, our rules of thumb, our understanding of the science, we’re fluent in those, and we’re making decisions that enable production to be done efficiently.
[00:06:39] Gary Fischer, PE: We just want to change the world. No small goal. So how do we do that? This is the kind of things we currently have going on. We sponsor research. We have research activities going on with Stanford and Berkeley. And we’re going to talk about those a little bit more. We have certification, which is education and the basics of Project Production Management and the underlying science.
[00:07:06] Gary Fischer, PE: We have one really good program at Texas A& M, it’s gonna, again, you’re gonna hear about these in a little more detail later on. And one here with Stanford called Modern Construction. We have a strong, diverse industry council, and we have working groups who are trying to bring like minded people together in a particular topic, like the Energy Working Group or the Superintendent Working Group.
[00:07:27] Gary Fischer, PE: To deal with how to solve the problems that they’re faced on a day to day basis and how to use production management effectively to get better results. We also have industry partners like the ECC, the Engineering Construction Conference Group, who gives us an opportunity to advocate what they do, but it also gives us an opportunity to get in front of those audiences.
[00:07:53] Gary Fischer, PE: to start educating and sharing what we’re learning about project production management. And then finally, we offer in house training or in house education for a company that wants to change a team, change a division, change a company on how they go about doing the work. So speaking of research, I want to give a shout out to a little bit of research we got going on.
[00:08:19] Gary Fischer, PE: Do we have the poster up yet? Oh, it’s back there on the wall. Rafael, where are you? Right there. There’s Rafael. Okay. So we’re wanting to interview you if you’re involved in industrialized construction and using those methods. So we’ve got the poster on the back wall there with the URL and Rafael is willing to sign you up.
[00:08:42] Gary Fischer, PE: And this is a little more than a survey. It’s got to be a little bit of a conversation to tease out what you’re doing. What kind of things you’re seeing, what you’re learning, and we’ll have those results published early next year. Now the PPI since its inception, has been looking out over the landscape and trying to catch people who are really leaders, thought leaders in how project production management is developed and how it’s applied.
[00:09:13] Gary Fischer, PE: And so we have an annual technical award that’s given out. And we alternate between academia and industry on a year, over year basis. This year, it’s academia, and I’m really pleased to announce our 2024 Technical Achievement Award winner, Yvonne Damvenajak, who is our point person at Texas A& M. And this guy’s just a real role model for being a partner with PPM, PPI, on how we educate people through that certification program at A& M.
[00:09:46] Gary Fischer, PE: He’s gone from no understanding at all about production management to now co teaching, co instructing that certification program. He’s linked us up with other organizations to get our message in front of them like the Rice University. He’s also got his own personal network, where he’s a strong advocate for the use of production management.
[00:10:08] Gary Fischer, PE: And he’s starting to look at how to bring this into the graduate curriculum. Tom. So that we start teaching people, teaching early career folks, how to come out of the gate with a really good understanding of these fundamentals. No use having to relearn. Unfortunately, he had surgery a few weeks ago, and he didn’t get doctor’s clearance to travel.
[00:10:29] Gary Fischer, PE: So we’ve got a really nice award for him that we’ve done virtually, and we’ll be getting this in his hands shortly. So let’s move on to today. Yeah,
[00:10:53] Gary Fischer, PE: I will let him know that you clapped when I made the announcement. He will, be he was sorry, that he couldn’t be here, but very understandable. So you know, here in this room, we have leaders who have experienced converting the impossible to possible and experience getting those phenomenal results.
[00:11:15] Gary Fischer, PE: That’s pretty cool. And you’re here today to share those experiences. And learn from your peers who are doing the same. We also have a number of people here today that have probably heard about it and are curious. And say what’s that all about? And we have a good group of early career folks here today who are, Man, I envy you so much.
[00:11:38] Gary Fischer, PE: Because you’re going to be able to get your career started with a good basic understanding of the science, how it applies in capital projects and production systems, so you don’t have to unlearn 40 years of stuff that I had to do. It is so painful to unlearn and relearn. So painful. So I envy what you’re going to be able to accomplish in the future.
[00:11:57] Gary Fischer, PE: So this next video is just a little bit dated, but, man, it’s a classic. So let’s see if I can get it to play.
[00:12:09] Apple’s Think Different advertising campaign: Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, Glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
[00:12:40] Apple’s Think Different advertising campaign: Because they change things. They push the human race forward. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.
[00:13:07] Gary Fischer, PE: I still love that video. I’ve seen it multiple times. Think differently. And if you want to unlock what you thought was impossible and make it a reality using production management, you’ve got to think differently. Open your minds to new possibilities and I ask you to set aside your preconceived notions today if you’re here for the first time or just getting exposed to this.
[00:13:29] Gary Fischer, PE: Need you to think differently. It takes drive, unbounded thinking, confidence in the science. That’s what I see in Elon Musk. That’s why that guy inspires me. It takes that to move a team, a project, or a company from accepting the status quo to a new reality. So our keynote is brought to us today by Todd Zabelle, who really needs little introduction.
[00:13:54] Gary Fischer, PE: He’s the author of Built to Fail, which, if you haven’t read, it’s required reading. If you’re gonna, if you’re gonna be involved in Capital Project, it is required reading. I think it’s a more important book than any of those other books that I referenced in my opening that were written by the legends here at Stanford.
[00:14:12] Gary Fischer, PE: It’s really an important piece of work. He’s the founder of PPI, the CEO of Strategic Project Solutions. He’s truly one of the industry visionaries. He cracked the code on applying operation science into the project environment. And that’s changing the world of capital projects. So I want to introduce my good friend and mentor, Todd Zabelle.
