Unknown: 0:00

Hello, listeners. This is the Risky Planner podcast. Thanks for tuning in.

Albert Brier: 0:16

Howdy, folks! It's Albert here, flying solo for this one because my one and only job is to introduce these fabulous interviews I recorded at the AAC e conference back in June. Now you may remember from the last episode, I kind of roughly categorized this into two groups of interviewees. One were software vendors who were largely implementing AI products or doing things in project controls data management space. Let's hear from them first. What is your name? What is your job title? And what companies do you work for?

Unknown: 0:47

All right. So I am Garish Bhatia. My job title is I am the founder and CEO of ConstructMind AI. We have been incubated by Compass Consult. So that's our group company. That's our parent, and I love my job, so yeah.

Albert Brier: 1:03

Well, that's awesome. What's what's the special thing that you bring to projects?

Unknown: 1:06

We are working on crunching the schedule generation time from 25 days to 25 minutes using artificial intelligence. Now, while we're doing that, we gotta be careful, and we gotta make sure that there is human human in the loop. So we've got an architecture which takes into consideration human AI human, which is our core sandwich architecture, where AI does the things that are that it's good at, and we, the humans, get to do the things which we are

really good at: 1:34

our exposure to the industry, our experiences, and our validation, of course, because we can take liability for our for our work, AI cannot.

Albert Brier: 1:45

So that that leads pretty smoothly to the next question, which is, what does your AI do?

Unknown: 1:50

All right. So our AI is designed to convert project documents to a schedule that is with logics, durations picked up from first principles, resources assigned, and if you have cost embedded into your resources, you could have cost-loaded schedules as well. Not mandatory, but you could have them.

Albert Brier: 2:10

That's pretty cool. Which project, any project, anywhere in the world, across time and space, excites you the most, interests you the most?

Unknown: 2:18

Oh wow! Okay, so I think the oil and gas industry and the data center industry; these two industries are very close to my heart. I think the data center industry, the way it's working, the massive pace that we have, and the, I mean, the pace that it's moving. It's every one year you have at least 100, 120 data centers being built alone in Australia and the United States, so that tells you a lot. And all of the hyperscalers like Microsoft, Oracle, AWS, Airtrunk-they're all scaling up their teams left, right, and center. Even they are getting. I mean, I should not say this, but Oracle got rid of 10,000 people from their team to invest and fund their data center business. Right. So that's the industry that's exciting me the most. That's where the most growth is coming from. And the next industry that's going to be impacted or affected is going to be the power industry. So the power supply industry is the next exciting industry that we should be looking at, and I think energy, energy, and data centers. That's all you got.

Albert Brier: 3:28

So, what's a lesson that you learned, say earlier in your career, that you bring to your projects now?

Unknown: 3:32

Okay, I've seen that most projects in construction they fail because of all the repeated mistakes that we've been doing, I think we have not been learning from our past mistakes. Our industry has been a laggard in adopting technology. These are the issues that I have. That are the those are the complaints that I have from the industry, and I want this industry. I want to see this industry rise and grow and learn from its mistakes, and do not repeat them, and do projects better, get out of their silos, communicate better with each other, and have an open mind towards new technologies like AI. Yeah,

Albert Brier: 4:17

yeah, because you see a lot of folks who are a little scared of it still, and I think that's that's fair, right? Like, because there is some stuff that you know you need to be cautious about if you're using AI, right?

Unknown: 4:27

So, the the way we've been thinking about AI is completely wrong. The way we've been thinking is it's AI versus humans, but I don't know that's I don't know that's how that's that's true. That's not human beings are never going to be replaced by AI completely. It's not possible. We at ConstructMind have designed a simple architecture. We need a human in the first to bring in all the all the knowledge, all the industrial capability that we've got, and we've got AI to do things that it's good at. All the math and. And everything, and then we get have to have a human to verify and validate what the AI is doing. So AI is always going to be assistant; it's not going to be the boss. So if you're looking at AI as someone who's going to replace your job, I think the messaging has been wrong all throughout. The messaging has to be that AI has to increase the efficiency of a human being, rather than replacing them, and I think that messaging has to come across really well. I know a lot of companies are getting rid of their employees because they feel that AI is leading to some sort of efficiency in their business, but I think it's just the focus of investment that's changed. It's not that, I mean, if you look at it, AI has is not the one who's taken those jobs away. It's the focus in the people who know

Albert Brier: 5:51

how to use it. Of course, it's the

Unknown: 5:53

people who have embraced it. That's where the energy and the money is going. So if you look at, if you talk to anyone who's working with NVIDIA, if you talk to anyone who's working with Datacom, they'll tell you they they have no time for their family. They have been they have been getting so much work, and there's no no one being laid across those industries. But if you look at people who have not adopted their their day to day with with the use of AI, they are the ones who are getting replaced or thrown away, but I think everyone needs to embrace what is coming because it is coming, whether you like it or not. Anything else

Albert Brier: 6:30

you want to say to our audience?

Unknown: 6:31

This expo or the AAC Expo has been very, very nice. I think it's a good platform, and we all had good networking and good fun. So yeah,

Albert Brier: 6:41

thank you so much, Gary.

Unknown: 6:42

Thank you.

Albert Brier: 6:43

What's your name, job title, and who do you work for?

Unknown: 6:46

Philip Talbot. I'm an enterprise account executive for Nodes and Links.

Albert Brier: 6:49

And what is your secret sauce like? What do you bring to projects?

Unknown: 6:52

For us, it's a mixture of project knowledge, but it's also bringing AI to the scheduling space from an analytics perspective.

Albert Brier: 6:59

And what are you doing with AI?

Unknown: 7:01

We're allowing people to access their schedule in a way that they haven't ever before. Where you can probe your schedule and ask questions that are natural language questions, trying to figure out anything from what's changed to what risks do I have coming up.

Albert Brier: 7:12

And what is the secret sauce that you bring to a project?

Unknown: 7:14

Having the ability to use AI in a way that's not connected to the rest of the internet-it's actually using just your specific project data and isolating it to just your your information. No one wants to share their their information with anybody else. So the more we can isolate things, the more we can keep things secure, the better. I'm

Albert Brier: 7:31

curious across all of time and space, anywhere in the world, what project excites you the most?

Unknown: 7:35

That's a tough one because there's a lot of really good projects going on right now. We're we're on a large one in in England, HS2. It's a high-speed rail project out there that is the largest high-speed rail project in the world right now, and that that's an exciting one. Then there's the the massive projects going on in Seattle where they're doing a rail project as well. Data centers obviously are happening all over the U.S. and and that that's a really exciting place to be. The data center market is is really taking off, and and those owners and contractors are operating at a different level than what we've seen in the past.

Albert Brier: 8:04

So, what excites you about a data center project?

Unknown: 8:06

I think the speed of it. You've got these gigantic projects that the the main constraint at this point has been procurement of materials, and that's not really been a historic thing. You know, we run into there's not a a transformer is not going to be on site on time, but it's because they're doing things so quickly. The backlog in these projects is already you know five eight years out for for some billions and billions of dollars worth of work. So seeing all the coordination and all the effort and scheduling and planning that has to go into those projects so far in advance is extremely exciting.

Albert Brier: 8:39

What I found interesting about that sector is that they've tended to reject typical risk management practice. I'm like, you know, Roger's here with me, and he, Roger and I are risk management professionals, and they don't seem interested in doing a QRA. Like, this is not on my question list, but I'm curious. Why do you think that

Unknown: 8:54

is? I think some of it is the the large amounts of money that's being thrown at it. They they have backing, they have funding, so their main priority is getting the getting it operational. If it's going to finish a certain number of days late, that's probably in their contract with the contractor, where they're going to recover some liquidated damages, or the contractors understand that deliverable is there, so they're doing everything they can and that's in their power to hit those dates. And that's honestly that time where if they want to look at some QRA, a tool like Nodes and Links that performs that in a matter of you know two minutes to perform a 10,000 iteration analysis, those are the things that are becoming more and more valuable compared to some of those older, more more involved more involved tools. Yeah, exactly.

Albert Brier: 9:37

Okay, cool. So what what is a lesson that you've learned that that you bring to all of your projects,

Unknown: 9:41

I think the kind of the garbage in, garbage out methodology. You know, if if you are bought into a schedule as an operational document, not a contractual document, it becomes something that your whole or organization operates around, and it's it's the key to delivering a project on time and on budget, within the constraints of of the real world. So understanding how how the real world impacts what's going on and what we can do in a way from bringing technology to these groups to where information from project controls they're not a bottleneck anymore. Scheduling is not a bottleneck. The the field can actually benefit from the schedule as well.

Albert Brier: 10:15

Anything else you'd like to say to our audience?

Unknown: 10:16

We appreciate the time and check out notes and links. What's your name, job title, and who do you work for? I'm Rhys Phillips. I'm a principal deployment engineer at EPlan. And what is the secret sauce that you bring to projects? The secret sauce is the ability to leverage the world's largest dataset of historical project outcomes and machine learning models trained on them to predict on current and future projects to understand outcomes. How long might this project take? What might go wrong with that, and what can I do about it?

Albert Brier: 10:44

So, kind of already answered this one, but what are you doing with AI?

Unknown: 10:47

Well, Mplan's been an AI company since 2017, and predictive AI is at the core of what we do. We've been building, training, deploying models in the real world for nearly a decade now, and we work with some of the largest infrastructure developers, owners, operators, and contractors around the world.

Albert Brier: 11:02

So to pivot a little bit, what project, any project, anywhere across all of time and space, are you the most excited to think and talk about?

Unknown: 11:09

The easy answer for me there is the small modular reactor program, particularly in the UK, because as you can guess, I am from there and I spent a little bit of time working with Rolls Royce on their SMR program about six or seven years ago. But generally, I see SMRs as a scalable solution to the energy crisis, and I see them as something we can deploy quickly and effectively as infrastructure developers.

Albert Brier: 11:28

So, what is one lesson that you learned early in your career that you bring to all of your new projects?

Unknown: 11:31

The first lesson I learned was always trust your foreman, and the second lesson I learned was was to be curious,

as Ted Lasso says: 11:36

be curious, not judgmental. And I found in every situation, every person I've met, every project I've worked on, and every country around the world I visited-over 30 now. If you're curious, you will learn something, and that thing will be more valuable than anything you could assume without being curious.

Albert Brier: 11:51

Anything else you'd like to say to our audience?

Unknown: 11:54

Absolutely. By Mplan, let us know.

Albert Brier: 11:57

Thanks, Rhys.

Unknown: 11:58

Thank you. Take care.

Albert Brier: 11:59

What's your name, job title, and who do you work for?

Unknown: 12:02

Rohit Senna. I'm the CTO and one of the co-founders at SmartPM Technologies.

Albert Brier: 12:07

And I think we heard from you last year, right?

Unknown: 12:08

Yes, you did.

Albert Brier: 12:10

So, what is the secret sauce that you bring to projects?

Unknown: 12:13

Ah, the secret sauce we bring to projects is we bring everyone together on the same data, so that everyone is on a level playing field, and that's really what leads to better execution. We actually recently did a deep dive into every single one of our customers, and looking at their just the results data, right? Like, hey, how's their schedule quality doing? How's their actual execution metrics doing around SPI, around hit rate, things like that? I could tell you exactly who's logging into the system, and then I could go check the users list, and it matches 100% because we see the results and the data when everyone works together to deliver the project.

Albert Brier: 12:51

That's cool stuff. So, what if anything are you guys doing

Unknown: 12:53

with AI? Yeah. So we've got a few different things. One of the things is a lot of people are really heavily looking at the general-purpose models like your Clods, your ChatGPTs, things like that. The thing we found with all of the research and testing that we've done is they're not very good at construction. Right. So a lot of what we're doing is building custom models that are really focused on construction itself, and what that allows us to do is actually deliver high quality results to our end users because, I mean, there's a lot at risk here, right? You're not talking about hey, some really simple question, right? Like what's two plus two, right? We're talking about several 100 million dollars or billions of dollars being invested in a project. If you make the wrong decision because something told you, then that's a big issue. So really, what we're doing is we know that our data is calculated correctly because we've designed and battle tested those systems. So AI is really just we're leveraging it to do the things that it's very good at, right? Like converting our analytics over to text, but then also custom classification models. We're also leveraging it to link between different data sets, and really beyond that, we'll go back to things that we know how to deliver. So, really, we're using it where it's the right fit and the best tool for the job, and not necessarily trying to throw it on everything.

Albert Brier: 14:24

You know, I think that's the you were talking about secret sauce earlier. That's the secret sauce for AI. It's not trying to use it to just smear over every problem, right?

Unknown: 14:31

Yeah, absolutely. I agree 100% Right. I mean, there's sort of been this notion, not just in the content industry, but in the tech industry overall. Like, if you're not doing AI, you're behind, right? And that's led to sort of inefficient uses, right? Yeah. I mean, there's all of these subsidies right now with token usage, and so that's actually getting people to use it more and more and more, right? But they're using it. Just because they can, right? Not because it's the right tool for the job, and it's-I mean-it's cool, right? And if it helps you, go for it. But

Albert Brier: 15:09

and we're so so so new, right? It was so early in the process that there is some experimentation

Unknown: 15:15

is is good. Oh, absolutely, 100% right? We we should all experiment with it and see how can it make our lives better, right? But part of that is we have to accept where it's not the right thing, and then go find the right thing to do it, right?

Albert Brier: 15:30

Okay, let's change gears. So, what what project, any project, anywhere in time or space, excites you the most to think or talk about?

Unknown: 15:38

Ooh, I think overall the amount of innovation that's happening in the construction technology ecosystem right now is really exciting because we're one of the things that was fascinating for me. I've been in this industry for over 10 years now, right? It's seeing how much is wasted, right? How many emissions are unnecessarily put into the air because of overruns and inefficient planning, and being seeing that shift happen, where the construction industry is being more technology focused and also really leveraging it and trying to become as efficient as possible, is really fascinating to me because I think if we have a better built world, right, everyone profits from that. Yeah, it's not only about the monetary component of it; it's also about the at the world we live in, right? Like that, there's only one world, right? I know there are some plans to go live on Mars and the Moon and all of that, right? I don't know if we'll get not tomorrow though. Yeah, I don't know if we'll get there in my lifetime. So we got to maintain what we have here for the future generations, and I think we're making strides towards that. And the huge influx of startups and people trying to innovate in the construction tech industry, it all excites me, right? It's not just any particular project or company.

Albert Brier: 17:07

That's a great answer and one I haven't heard so far. What's a lesson you learned early in your career that you bring to all your new projects?

Unknown: 17:13

The biggest thing is to learn when you need to pass the baton to someone else, right? Like early on, we everyone did everything, right? But at a certain point, that just doesn't scale. We got to find the right people and put them in place so that we can actually help focus on the areas where we're the best fit and where we can provide the most value. And actually, I have a better answer. Okay, being customer focused, right? So that is one of our key things. And what I always tell sort of our customer success people is, for me, and for you guys, your goal shouldn't be about the renewal or expansion. Your goal should be making sure that the customer sees value, because the instant instant that the customer sees value, the renewal and the expansion is a byproduct, right? So really hone in on making sure that they're achieving ROI from using us as a solution. Also, the other thing is, I don't want a customer for a year. I want a customer for life. And with that focus, that customer-centric organization that we've built, that really ensures that those are going to be customers for life.

Albert Brier: 18:35

Anything else you'd like to say to our audience?

Unknown: 18:37

Yeah, I mean, it's great always being on this podcast, and really excited to see where we're headed as a company as well as an industry. I think there's just so many changes happening so rapidly that it is a very very bright future and it's exciting.

Albert Brier: 18:55

It sure is. Thanks so much, Rohit.

Unknown: 18:57

Absolutely. Thank you.

Albert Brier: 18:58

I mentioned on last week's episode that I was feeling like there was a disconnect between the software vendors and the practitioners that I met on the show floor. You're about to hear from those practitioners, and I'm curious if you agree with me. Let's listen. And what's your name, job title, and who do you work for? Justin Jacobson. I'm the vice president of innovation development for MVP. And what is the secret sauce that you bring to a project a structured way to identify and collaborate on risks in order to benefit the project. And what, if anything, are you doing with AI?

Unknown: 19:30

We're still in the exploration phase right now. There's a lot of different technologies that fall under the AI umbrella, and we find right now the most useful is leveraging AI to help us develop discrete software of our own to solve certain problems.

Albert Brier: 19:44

Sounds awfully familiar. So across all of time and space, anywhere in the world, what is the project that excites you the most? I

Unknown: 19:51

don't know about all time and space, but right now I'm I'm working with the Smithsonian Institution on the original headquarters, what they call the Castle. And we're doing a base isolation project, so we're digging out the foundation underneath a historic building and putting base isolators under it to protect for earthquakes, which is a really interesting project for a very significant structure in U.S. history.

Albert Brier: 20:15

That's really awesome. So, is is that a kind of is that a unicorn? Like, is it a only one of its kind sort of situation.

Unknown: 20:21

Yes, yes, very much so.

Albert Brier: 20:23

Because of the building or because of the technique,

Unknown: 20:25

because of the building, for the most part.

Albert Brier: 20:28

What is one lesson that you learned early in your career that you bring to all the projects you work on?

Unknown: 20:32

I think we underestimate the quantity and quality of communication needed to be successful.

Albert Brier: 20:38

Right.

Unknown: 20:38

There are instances where even even in my own company and my own work with my colleagues, we will communicate a message one time and think that that message was received and understood. In reality, you need multiple times of repetition to have a chance of that being understood, and you need to collaborate on that understanding in a way to make sure that it's it's understood in the same way. So many times in a say a risk workshop scenario, we'll have two people talking the same item in different ways, thinking that they're talking about the same thing. But in reality, me as a facilitator can identify there's a mismatch of communication that needs to be solved here.

Albert Brier: 21:16

Right, right. That's very good. So, is there anything else you'd like to say to our audience?

Unknown: 21:21

Listen to the podcast. I'm sure you have a lot of great content coming out of this. Thank you very much, Justin. What's your name, job title, and who do you work for? Matthew Schoenart. I'm a senior risk principal. I'm with Hatch Consulting.

Albert Brier: 21:33

And what is the secret sauce that you bring to your projects?

Unknown: 21:36

I have done a quarter trillion dollars of quantitative risk analysis. Wow. So I have seen a lot of projects and a lot of project teams, and I bring that insight to clients.

Albert Brier: 21:47

Nice. And what, if anything, are you doing with AI right now?

Unknown: 21:50

Nothing really. Although I've done some great talks here, and I'm thinking I should be incorporating some.

Albert Brier: 21:54

What project, anywhere in the world, across time and space, excites you the most?

Unknown: 21:59

There's so many. One of the nice things about working at Hatch, because I was independent before Hatch, is I got to work on some very large projects, and I'm bringing help to clients who are doing truly national level projects. And most of my projects are all in the billions of dollars these days, and it's just fun and exciting to do projects that create such a legacy.

Albert Brier: 22:21

Oh, for sure. So, what's one of those legacy projects that's really getting you excited?

Unknown: 22:25

I'm really excited about working with Vancouver Port Authority and Robert Banks Terminal Two. I've been working with them for a couple years now. Working with BHP on Janssen One and Janssen Two.

Albert Brier: 22:33

Nice.

Unknown: 22:34

I'm working with another steel mill in the United States, which is awesome what they're doing. Director Drews Iron can't say the client name. Another client had the report out today about $5 billion. Can't tell you about anything about it, but critical minerals, and so all these projects they're fun and interesting because we're not just I'll smile building data centers or something common like that. We're building unique structures and unique items.

Albert Brier: 23:02

So it's that unique legacy piece that really gets to you. Yeah. So what's a lesson that you learned, say earlier in your career, that you bring to every project you work

Unknown: 23:10

on? All projects go over budget, and they all go over schedule. And one of the things I do, hopefully reasonably well, is I tell clients with a smile why they're not going to make their cost or their schedule, and how much contingency they need, and how late they're going to be, and how much more they're going to spend. And when I do my job well, they believe me and adjust their budgets and are not disappointed four years later.

Albert Brier: 23:32

Boy, if you've cracked that nut, then you're you're the next big project control celebrity. I think.

Unknown: 23:39

I'd like to say I do it all the time. Some clients, I can't convince them why the P50 should not be used and why you should use the mean instead. But sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

Albert Brier: 23:48

Oh, you know, my follow-up question here is like, if there's anything else you'd like to say, but before we get to that, I really want to know why P why why mean and not P50.

Unknown: 23:58

So this is back to high school math. Most people are familiar with normal distributions, which are symmetrical, and the p mean, the average, is the high point of the graph and is the median and the mode.

Albert Brier: 24:11

Right.

Unknown: 24:12

However, when it looks at cost distributions and schedule distributions of actual project outcomes, it's a log normal curve. Right. So the peak of the curve, the median, is not the P50. Actually, the P50 is to the right of the peak, and the P50 indicates where half of the scenarios are above and half the scenarios are below that point, which is great if you only care about scenarios. But what you really care about is money, and the mean is the value where all the cost overruns above this point equal all the cost underruns below this point, and that's what's important on a portfolio funding. You want to fund at the key mean value. That way, all your cost overruns in your portfolio are equaled by all the projects that underrun on your portfolio. That's and you're whole. You're made whole, and the problem though is the. P mean is more like about the P55. So instead of saying carrying 12% now you're carrying 16% contingency, and no one likes the higher numbers.

Albert Brier: 25:09

Well, that that is a really well reasoned take on that. I'm going to have to give that some thought. But is there anything else you'd like to say to our audience?

Unknown: 25:15

No, all good, fantastic conference. Thanks for coming. Yeah,

Albert Brier: 25:18

thank you, Matt. Appreciate it. Who? What's your name? What's your job title? And who do you work for?

Unknown: 25:23

Hi, I'm Michael Lapage. I'm the CEO, founder of Plan Academy. We're a training company with a big focus on scheduling delays, and we do some consulting too.

Albert Brier: 25:34

Excellent. And what is the secret sauce that you bring to projects?

Unknown: 25:37

I don't know if I bring this to projects, but one of the things I like to do is to just share information. So we have a popular YouTube channel. We make lots of videos. We want people to understand some of the weird nuances of scheduling or working, say, with P6 or Microsoft Project. And I think it should be widely available for all people. So we we create a lot of free material, and you know I hear about it. People really appreciate it.

Albert Brier: 26:04

And if you're listening to this and you haven't been to Plan Academy's website or their YouTube channel, you are doing yourself a disservice. Go there and check it out. It is awesome stuff. Next question: What are you doing with AI?

Unknown: 26:15

I'm trying to figure it out. Like a lot of people, I have run a couple training modules on how to plan projects from scratch using AI. I wouldn't say it's perfect. I I think there's a big learning curve on how to do it. There's an iterative process that we need to go through, and and I don't know if I would advocate that we should be building project schedules with AI, but there's lots of vendors here at this conference who have AI components analyzing schedules, crunching data. I think that's all amazing. Like I personally, we don't have that, but there's lots of leverage that we can.

Albert Brier: 27:00

And it's a tempting use case too, right? Like it seems like it would save a ton of time if you can do it right.

Unknown: 27:04

Absolutely, there's a client I'm thinking about who could really wants these reports done every time the schedule's submitted. Maybe there's an opportunity to like workflow it. The only thing that we really have developed with AI though is so for companies that use our training, we have a dashboard where a manager could go in and kind of preview how people are doing, progressing through courses, and we have built an AI component there where someone can go in and prompt, ask questions like, "Who's lagging?""Which student, you know, rocked it this week, stuff like that, and we launched that. So that's our that's our we dipped our touch. That's the marquee

Albert Brier: 27:43

feature right now. What project? Any project at all? Anywhere in the world across time are you the most excited about?

Unknown: 27:51

I like construction because we actually build things that exist in perpetuity or for generations, and the project I keep thinking of is the Burg, the Bur Khalifa. I would have loved to have even a small part, any association with that giant monstrosity of a tower, anything. I would have been amazing to just say, "Hey, I did, you know, I did something on that, or I was part of it.

Albert Brier: 28:18

Why? Why that one in particular?

Unknown: 28:20

I just think it's incredibly monumental. Like, you know, it was used in Mission Impossible movies. It's it's built on built on sand, you know, on the edge of the water in the desert. Like, it's crazy. I don't know. It

Albert Brier: 28:34

is totally crazy. So, what is the one lesson you learned sometime in your past that you bring to all of your new engagements.

Unknown: 28:42

The one lesson I bring to all my engagements, I I'm going to say it this way. I really want to understand. Like I'm a I think I'm a really good listener. So if I'm engaged with anybody, it could be here at the conference. I'm just talking to somebody who's struggling. I was just talking to somebody who's struggling with delay claims analysis and P6. I want to listen. I really want to hear what's happening. I don't want to get right to the work. I don't want to like, hey, I've got the solution. Let's do it. I want to hear all the nuance because I think the nuance is where the story is. So I would say I'm a really good listener. I want to understand. I will slow things down so that we can get the full story before we're like, let's get to it.

Albert Brier: 29:25

That's kind of your secret sauce too, then, isn't it? It

Unknown: 29:27

might be. I'm good at that. I like that.

Albert Brier: 29:30

So, anything else you'd like to say to our listening audience?

Unknown: 29:33

Keep learning, keep growing. That's kind of our our motto is like, keep learning, keep growing, go and find new things to do. I personally was just inspired. I heard somebody is developing software with AI. I'm like, how does that work? I like. I know you can prompt things, but this is like on a big scale. So like, how are they? They've got AI tools that are testing as a user. All this. I'm like, now I want to go learn. Like now I'm in interest. So keep learning.

Albert Brier: 30:01

Thanks, Mike, so much.

Unknown: 30:02

Okay, thank you, Albert.

Albert Brier: 30:04

And what is your name, job title, and who do you work for?

Unknown: 30:07

My name is Prakash Hundaker. I work for Volker Inc. And my position is project controls manager.

Albert Brier: 30:13

And what is the secret sauce that you bring to your projects?

Unknown: 30:16

My secret sauce is pure grit, determination, experience in the field for 20 plus years, being with in the trenches with inspectors, testers, whatever foreman, superintendent, whoever is there on the job site building the job, and me observing and documenting what all challenges that goes through a project in terms of every aspect: daily execution, planning, quality control, quality acceptance. So I was a quality acceptance manager on a major project. So that is what is giving me the confidence on managing schedules for many projects.

Albert Brier: 30:53

So it's that practical, boots on the ground knowledge, basically.

Unknown: 30:56

Yes.

Albert Brier: 30:57

What are you doing, if anything, with AI right now?

Unknown: 30:58

Well, we just started recently with AI in our company, so we got a subscription for Claude, and I am tasked to develop some projects. So we'll see how it goes.

Albert Brier: 31:10

Yeah, how great is Claude, by the way? It is the

Unknown: 31:13

best thing. I I was chatting with Chat GPT for almost two years, and I did some of my own personal things. But after people start talking about cloud, I tried it, and it was mind blowing.

Albert Brier: 31:24

Yeah, it really is different. What projects, any project at all across all of time and space, excites you the most? The

Unknown: 31:31

one project that I worked in Austin between 2004 and 2008-that was my very first highway project. That was the most exciting project. It's just because of I was young. I was absorbing a lot of information. Was new team people from all over the U.S. came there, and we had ample amount of staff to inspect and do the quality control, quality inspection. I missed that kind of staffing. What was

Albert Brier: 31:54

the project, if I may ask?

Unknown: 31:56

Highway project in Austin. They first design bid build major project Central Texas Turnpike. It was close to a billion dollar, and I was working on a $200 million interchange at SH 45 US 183.

Albert Brier: 32:09

That's awesome. So, what about that one? Was it mostly the team and the learning experience that that makes you remember it so fondly?

Unknown: 32:16

Yes, it was the team. It was experience. It was my manager, mr. Tony Bokai, maybe you can look him up. Sure, he was he was the seasoned, I would say, clever engineer who knew how to manage teams. He he let us fail in some things, but also he supported us in many ways. So

Albert Brier: 32:41

excellent. So, what's a lesson that you learned early in your career that you bring to every project?

Unknown: 32:45

Oh man, I probably made all the mistakes that I can think of in the book an engineer should make, right? So, first thing is I would say be on the job site if you're if you're a field person, be on the job site early. Building that trust with your staff is very important. Once you get that, the next thing I would say is courage. Have the courage to do whatever you plan to do, and then to build that courage, you know, you need some experience. So don't be afraid and have a vision for yourself. You know, set a goal, vision, five-year vision, and work on the vision. That's it.

Albert Brier: 33:21

That's good advice. Is there anything else you'd like to say to our audience?

Unknown: 33:24

No, it's it's exciting times right now. AI is changing a whole lot of processes. Just go for it.

Albert Brier: 33:34

Thank you, Prakash.

Unknown: 33:35

Thank you. And what's your name, job title, and who do you work for? Bear Richards, project director with the U.S. infrastructure team at Turn Townsend, and what is the secret sauce that you bring to your projects? Probably my dad jokes. Can you tell us a dad joke right now? Where do broken down Volkswagens go? I don't know. Where do broken down Volkswagens go? The old Volkshome. You're right. That is a dad joke. Dad, what if anything are you doing with AI? So within Turner Townsend, we've adopted the use of Copilot universally, and so I would say I'm using it pretty superficially, but I do use it to digest documents, reports, get over the proverbial writer's block. Get myself started on a document, or on a on a whatever it is, I'm preparing reports and the like. So, yeah, I would say it's it's pretty light, but it is it's becoming more and more a regular tool that I'm using. So you're finding that you're you're getting it integrated into your daily workflow now, for sure, for sure. What project, any project at all, anywhere in time, space, or history, are you the most excited to think and talk about? I would say the creation as recorded in the Old Testament of the Bible. We have, I think, just a snippet of it. If you. Get into the original, you know, the Hebrew and the Greek, and you look at, you know, what the real meaning behind some of the words that are used. It makes it even more interesting to me because there's a lot of questions that are still left there, and it leaves a lot of room for a lot of things. Because, for example, when God deity talks about seven days. Well, is it seven days as we know it, or is it seven very long days? Right. Right. So, really, truly, the

Albert Brier: 35:30

worst, the most protracted timeline in all of Project history. Arguably, if a day is a day, and it took a few billion years instead. Right.

Unknown: 35:38

Yeah. Could you imagine doing a TIA on that?

Albert Brier: 35:41

Yeah. No, I would rather not. I don't. I don't think TIAs had been invented back then, though. But I

Unknown: 35:46

don't think P6 could handle

Albert Brier: 35:48

it. No, probably not. So, what is one lesson that you learned early in your career that you now bring to every project you work on?

Unknown: 35:55

You know, one lesson I learned early on in my career is that we're all going to be stretched, right? I think that applies to any project or any endeavor that we are asked to be involved in. But it's it's important not to allow ourselves or others in that stretching like a rubber band, right? If you think about it, not to let the rubber band snap, right? Right, and just be cognizant of reaching that threshold where things seem like they're just going to absolutely fall apart. So I think understanding and being cognizant of limitations-that's

Albert Brier: 36:28

a tough one to learn. You know, anything else you'd like to say to our audience?

Unknown: 36:33

Already told you a dad joke.

Albert Brier: 36:36

You can tell another one if you want to. Yeah,

Unknown: 36:38

no, usually one's enough. You can ask my colleagues that. I would say you know as important as work is, if that's all you've got, you've got problems. You need to have more. There's more to life than work, and if you find that work is it, you really need to reevaluate where you're at because there's so much more to life that brings, quite frankly, my experience so much more satisfaction than what we do day to day for our jobs. Words of wisdom, Barrett. Thank you very much. You're welcome. That's why I bring the dad jokes. And what is your name, job title, and who do you work for? My name is Belinda Hassy. I am the cost engineering manager for Transpower New Zealand.

Albert Brier: 37:20

And what is the secret sauce that you bring to your projects?

Unknown: 37:23

I would actually like to say it's about being a bit more of a generalist, and I think that's really important because you can drop in and drop out of so much more than the deep dive into being a specialist. So I think that's what I bring, and also, I mean, I'm I'm about getting it done. I actually want to tick it off my list, so I think I'm very much bringing that drive of let's just get it done, no faffing, let's just get it done.

Albert Brier: 37:45

Excellent. So what, what if anything are you doing with AI right now?

Unknown: 37:49

Doing a little bit. In my team, we've developed a couple of agents which we're using, but only to create output templates from a consistency point of view. Nothing more. We're just exploring what the opportunities are.

Albert Brier: 37:59

Now, to pivot slightly, what project, any project at all, across all of time and space, makes you the most excited to think and talk about?

Unknown: 38:06

Well, in my current role, it's about our HVDC project, which is our big upgrade for our cables between the North and the South Island, so we can make sure that we are up to speed for things that are coming to end of life. But it's going to be perfect since we're in Vegas, in my previous life, I was the service design manager for gambling in New Zealand, and I could talk about online gambling and the regulation in that space till the cows come home because it's amazing. But not today.

Albert Brier: 38:34

So, what is one lesson that you learned early on that you bring to every project you work on now?

Unknown: 38:38

I think you just got to roll with the punches and expect that things are going to change. You cannot, you can have the most beautiful gold-plated project plan, but it ain't going to roll that way. You've just got to be able to flex and change.

Albert Brier: 38:50

Anything else you'd like to say to our audience?

Unknown: 38:52

No, I think it's just we'll stick with that. It's very much. I think we just got to realize that change is constant, and you can't ever go into anything with preconceived ideas. You've got to be able to just move with the times and change, but then stay grounded to your principles.

Albert Brier: 39:07

Thank you so much, Belinda.

Unknown: 39:08

No worries.

Albert Brier: 39:10

And what's your name, job title, and who do you work for?

Unknown: 39:12

Diana Nada. I'm a director at Turner and Townsend in the advisory team.

Albert Brier: 39:17

And what is the secret sauce that you bring to your projects?

Unknown: 39:20

I bring a mix of academia and industry, so I worked in major programs in Dubai. Was very lucky to be there when it was booming. Then I stepped out and did my PhD, and I wanted to explore why do projects go sideways. Came back into the industry, worked on more projects. I work in major setting up major programs and helping clients improve on their cost and schedule. So whether it's setting up processes, governance, and PMOs, part of my research was around behavior. And psychology of major problems, so I see that psychology piece is something that I think we're struggling with because projects are people, and we're not improving on how we deliver. So I think we need to see why we do what we do all the time and go.

Albert Brier: 40:17

And you think the people angle might unlock something?

Unknown: 40:19

Yes.

Albert Brier: 40:20

So what, if anything are you doing with AI?

Unknown: 40:22

Not much personally at the moment, just like ChatGPT, etc. And maybe I want to explore like helping with presentation, something that that basically increases productivity. But I've not verged into this much. I think part of it, in my opinion, why I haven't, because I've been focusing mostly on the people piece, and I feel AI can expedite, but you still need the critical thinking. Like if it's like when the internet was out, you we're gonna use it. It doesn't matter. It will come. It will come, but you still need to vet the information you're getting.

Albert Brier: 40:56

What project? Any project at all across all of time and space are you the most excited to think and talk about

Unknown: 41:02

most of my projects are six months or eight months, maybe 10? So it's basically jumping in an intervention and helping with a problem and getting out. The longest that I've worked on was something was the waterfront Toronto development, and it was setting up the PMO for this big development and the flood protection in the Toronto region in the next 20 years basically will change the skyline of Toronto.

Albert Brier: 41:27

So, what is a lesson that you learned early in your career that you bring to all of your new projects?

Unknown: 41:31

I think knowing your team, see how to unlock their excitement and motivation. They are all not only working on a project to deliver, but also you need to know them, help them through their journey, and build the trust within the team, whether it's your internal team or your the clients you're working with, and that's the journey. And again, I'll go back to the the psychology piece. Even when we look at like collaborative delivery, which is the still the flavor of the months, if the people are not incentivized to do their job, you're not going to change how we're doing things.

Albert Brier: 42:06

What else would you like to say to our audience?

Unknown: 42:09

I I think on the AI topic, don't think too much about it. It will come, but it will definitely be if you don't use AI, you will be behind. But you'll just have to accept it. I see it, like I said, as the internet. I'm saying that because all topics are around AI right now, and it's expected. Like for example, I had a friend who worked on her PhD on AI 20 years ago. So you would she would talk to me about it, right? And I'd see it like, oh my God, this is never gonna happen. And now suddenly I'm hearing more about it every day, so I think we're gonna get there, and there is nothing to be fearful about. Just like the internet, it's gonna help us, but you just need to know the information that's spitting out and how to verify it.

Albert Brier: 42:55

Thank you, Diana.

Unknown: 42:55

Thank you.

Albert Brier: 42:56

What is your name, job title, and who do you work for?

Unknown: 42:59

My name is Holly Parkus. I'm the vice president of advisory services for SMA Consulting, and we're based in Edmonton, Alberta.

Albert Brier: 43:07

And we're in Calgary, so we're neighbors. Now, what is the secret sauce that you bring to all your projects?

Unknown: 43:13

It's risk, I would say. I think we view everything through the lens of risk, and that drives all of our other work in project controls and disputes and value engineering, all of our services really kind of arise from risk at their root.

Albert Brier: 43:30

So, what, if anything, are you doing with AI right now?

Unknown: 43:33

We're cautiously looking at AI. We are taking a maybe, let's say, a risk-based approach to AI. We want AI to be a tool rather than the driver, and we don't trust it entirely. But we're really interested to see what is out there and how to use it most effectively. And I think the there are some really fruitful areas where I think it can be very effective if we can solve the hallucination problem and the let's call it maybe the token problem,

Albert Brier: 44:05

right? Where token utilization winds up outstripping what it would have cost to hire a junior analyst in the first place.

Unknown: 44:10

I mean that 500 billion dollars turns out to be real. So million. Sorry, I should have said

Albert Brier: 44:17

either one really. So what project? This is a bit of a pivot here, but what project across all time and space, anywhere in the world, excites you the most?

Unknown: 44:27

I love seeing people do big things, amazing things. I'm from Massachusetts, and I grew up during the Big Dig. And when I say I grew up during the Big Dig, I mean it took 20 years, and I grew up during the big day, and it's a really it's an insane project. There's a there's actually an amazing podcast about it, which I would highly recommend to anybody.

Albert Brier: 44:50

We we recommend it regularly on the show.

Unknown: 44:53

Amazing, I love it. But yeah, I I love the I love the vision and the scope of it, and just how. Much it has completely reshaped Boston, and what a benefit it has ultimately ended up being. I mean, everybody holds it up both as a this insane case study of what how things can go horribly wrong, and you know it ended up costing 10 times as much as they said it was going to, and it took I think 10 times as long. But but it also dramatically changed the face of Boston, and it means that you can actually access the waterfront, and has had such a positive impact on life for millions of people. So, yeah, I would say that

Albert Brier: 45:32

I really couldn't agree with you more on the benefits realization kind of side of things. Like, it gets totally under accounted for when people have the "is your project a giant failure" conversation, I mean, when you're when you have something that has such massive, long-lasting benefits of that, like, isn't it worth whatever it costs?

Unknown: 45:51

You know, I mean, that's the case you have to make to the taxpayers. But honestly, people talk a lot about optimism bias, and Ben Fluvia has like his whole book about it, and I think you know. In some ways, I think that it actually is helpful because I think that if we really knew what we were getting into with some of these massive projects that you know are one of a kind and have never been done before, I don't know if we would do them. I don't know if we'd be able to convince anybody to do them. I realize this is crazy coming from somebody who does a

Albert Brier: 46:20

hot take. It

Unknown: 46:22

does risk for a living, and you know contingency. And I feel strongly about my projects being you know under budget. But but I also just from a from a public life perspective, I think it is important that we are doing these big projects. And and I think there is something to sometimes you just have to leap and hope for the best.

Albert Brier: 46:43

Yeah, I agree. And you know, we don't often put expected monetary values to long-term benefits, but we do put them to risk. So if you net those out, is is the number zero? And if the answer is yes, maybe you do your project no matter how much it costs, right?

Unknown: 46:56

Yeah, yeah. You know, I think that's really true.

Albert Brier: 46:59

Yeah, that was a good one. So, what is a lesson that you learned early in your career that you bring to all your projects now?

Unknown: 47:04

I think basically everything comes down to people and communication. Being able to communicate effectively is probably the most important skill that anybody can have, and particularly, I think, in the capital project industry. I'm not an engineer. I work with all engineers, basically, and they don't make them write enough papers. That's that's my other hot take. Is that it'd

Albert Brier: 47:31

be it'd be good to know what they actually have to say. And on that subject, is there anything else you'd like to say to our audience?

Unknown: 47:37

I think learn to love your risk register and think about it in terms of information design, and as a tool that you would want to use, as opposed to a tool that you would have to use. And you should do more Monte Carlo simulation. It's really valuable.

Albert Brier: 47:56

Fully agree. Thank you very much, Ollie.

Unknown: 47:58

Thanks so much. Really appreciate it.

Albert Brier: 48:05

And what's your name, job title, and who do you work for?

Unknown: 48:08

Rachel Fleming. I am the service line manager for risk and facilitated services at MBP.

Albert Brier: 48:15

And what is the secret sauce that you bring to projects?

Unknown: 48:17

Communication.

Albert Brier: 48:19

Say more.

Unknown: 48:20

Focusing on how information is messaged and where and how communication flows between stakeholders within a project

Albert Brier: 48:31

that relates pretty directly to our program research that we've done together.

Unknown: 48:36

Ah, yes, in terms of contingency management, where contingency is held and how that is managed and how stakeholders understand it. Absolutely,

Albert Brier: 48:44

and interface management and all kinds of other things too. So, what are what are you doing, if anything, with AI right now?

Unknown: 48:50

I'm still exploring and trying to understand where and how AI can be helpful, value-added, where it can help with efficiencies, and interested to see where the future takes

Albert Brier: 49:03

us. So to pivot to a more general question, what projects, any project across all of time and space, are you the most excited about?

Unknown: 49:11

What projects are today, and what projects will be in the future? How they will be more integrated systems working together, transit may no longer be just transit, but incorporating technology and just the idea that what we think of as a capital infrastructure project today might look completely different in the future.

Albert Brier: 49:35

So that that's a really interesting. I haven't had anybody answer like the future of projects is what excites me the most, but when you think about it, that really is the most exciting time for projects. Is whatever's coming next.

Unknown: 49:46

Yeah. What what will what will the future hold? What will we be able to accomplish as an industry? What we'll be able to build and collaborate on, and seeing what comes of it.

Albert Brier: 49:59

So, what's the one lesson you? Learned early in your career that you bring on all your projects these days,

Unknown: 50:03

listening, listening to understand what the true challenge is, uncovering what those root causes are, what are symptoms, what's really the challenge that's happening, and then how can the team work through it. But really, listening first to understand, and then being able to respond and react.

Albert Brier: 50:27

The way I learned that lesson when I was a brand new junior consultant was keep your mouth shut and your ears open. So that sounds like kind of the same thing.

Unknown: I've heard the classic: 50:35

we have two ears and one mouth.

Albert Brier: 50:38

Yeah, exactly.

Unknown: 50:39

Listen more than you talk.

Albert Brier: 50:41

Anything else you'd like to say to our audience?

Unknown: 50:43

Thanks for having me.

Albert Brier: 50:44

Thank you, Rachel. And what is your name, job title, and who do you work for?

Unknown: 50:48

I am Sarah Horsey. I am the project. I am a project controls director for Shakun and Benue USA Construction, and we are currently serving as the project controls manager on the Major Bridges P3 initiative,

Albert Brier: 51:01

right. So we're going to talk more about that in a second. But what is that secret sauce that you bring to your projects?

Unknown: 51:07

I think my spot is that I started as a field engineer. I started with my boots in the mud, and that I understand how things actually get built and how to actually close out the project. That's kind of my special thing. Is I'm always looking at how we're going to close the project at the end instead of just looking at we're doing right now.

Albert Brier: 51:22

So, what if anything are you doing with AI?

Unknown: 51:24

At the moment, we haven't really started doing much at the project level. We're starting to investigate it a little bit at the company level and seeing what it can do. We're using it a little bit on the project level for like consolidating safety statistics and metrics, but we haven't really started implementing it on the project control side.

Albert Brier: 51:40

To pivot to a more general question, I bet I know what the answer is. But what's the project you're most excited to talk about?

Unknown: 51:46

I mean, right now it's the major bridges P3, so it's billion and a half dollar P3 initiative for PennDOT, replacing six interstate bridges, and so we've got four on I-80, one on 78, and one on 81.

Albert Brier: 51:57

Say more. I'm curious to hear how things are going and what you think about

Unknown: 52:01

it? The project's going pretty well right now. We're on track for on time and on budget completion for the construction joint venture. At least we've got some complicated phasing. Right, I-80 is a heavily used truck route through for the interstate, so making sure that we're keeping everything open to traffic and keeping the traffic flowing, while also balancing that, you know, having trucks come through your job site at 75 miles an hour is not really ideal. So the safety needs of the project, so we can keep everyone going home at night.

Albert Brier: 52:27

And what is the lesson that you learned in early in your career that you bring to all of your new projects?

Unknown: 52:32

Don't be afraid to say that you screwed up. Right, the sooner you get it out there, and right, the sooner you try to fix it, the better off everybody is. If you go, if you try and hide it and hope that nobody notices, it's going to be worse. If you come out to your boss and say,"Hey, I screwed this up really badly, and but I think this is how we can fix it, it's going to be much better for you overall.

Albert Brier: 52:52

And anything else you'd like to say to our listeners?

Unknown: 52:54

Not really.

Albert Brier: 52:57

Okay, fair enough. Thank you so much, Sarah.

Unknown: 52:58

Yeah, thanks.

Albert Brier: 53:00

And what's your name, job title, and who do you work for?

Unknown: 53:02

Tracy Lung. I am currently the vice president of Environment, Health, and Safety at Ontario Power Generation.

Albert Brier: 53:08

And what is the secret sauce that you bring to projects?

Unknown: 53:10

My secret sauce I bring to projects is probably I bring the human side of projects. Projects isn't always about getting the pump installed and getting the concrete poured and or cost and schedule. There are people receiving the benefits at the end of the project, and there are people executing the project. So I think that side, people side, always fascinates me, and I enjoy addressing that side of the project.

Albert Brier: 53:32

And and what if anything are you doing with AI right now?

Unknown: 53:34

I would say more on the administrative side of things. Like we rely on AI, for example, in my role to check on compliance to law and regulations, I would like to see one day where we can do more in the AI area. But that is until we have a bit of a you know governance and data maturity and a way to use it safely.

Albert Brier: 53:57

So to pivot a little bit, I want to ask you what project, any project anywhere across all of time and space excites you the most to think and talk about.

Unknown: 54:06

Probably right now for me is probably the Wesleyville site where Ontario Power Generation is potentially building up to 10,000 megawatts of nuclear power. It's it's been a while since anybody spend build a large scale nuclear facility. So that's exciting.

Albert Brier: 54:25

That is very exciting. Can you say more about that one, Mike? How did that come

Unknown: 54:29

to be? Basically, it started when Ontario realizes if you project our energy demand out to the 2050s, we don't have enough. Yeah, it's scary. And absolutely. And if you rely on things like you know solar and and wind, not to say that they're not you know great renewable energy options. The footprint it takes up is just way too much for a densely populated city like Toronto or even the areas around Toronto. So that nuclear is a great option given. That and also it is low carbon.

Albert Brier: 55:02

Totally. So, what is a lesson that you learned early in your career that you bring to all of your new projects?

Unknown: 55:08

Something that I have learned in the last, I would say, two years. Projects now is heavily dependent on the input from the indigenous communities. But the but the problem is, we're still learning about their culture, how to support their capacity, and how to work with them, because a lot of them may not have a very, you know, for example, for nuclear, have a deep understanding how nuclear works. So, basically, how to work together collaboratively.

Albert Brier: 55:40

Yeah, and Nate and I talk about this on the show a fair bit. It's very much an unsolved problem of how to bring Indigenous partners together as true partners instead of just another permitting hurdle, which is a totally unfair way of thinking about them.

Unknown: 55:54

Absolutely, I think people are getting better now. Like, like showing genuine respect to want to work with indigenous people, but somebody put it very, you know, eloquently. It took about 200 years for us to damage that relationship. It's going to take a while for us to repair that relationship, and we have to give it time. So recently, you probably saw the news that the Darlington New Project, which is the small modular reactors, sign a deal with the Williams Treaty First Nation. Basically, it's an equity investment of $700 million into the small modular project. I think this is a great news showing collaboration between Indigenous nations and a company working together on any large infrastructure project.

Albert Brier: 56:41

What else would you like to say to our audience?

Unknown: 56:43

Let's just say if you want to go travel somewhere, let's say to Japan, in order to fully appreciate the country, you would learn the language, you would learn the food they eat, you would learn their cultural practices. So, if you want to be true partners with the indigenous nations, I would say do take the time to learn a bit about how how they think, what's important to them, their culture. So I think that knowledge is not something that you can study a book and learn overnight. It accumulates. So I would say do a little bit of that every day.

Albert Brier: 57:12

That's great advice, Tracy. Thank you so much.

Unknown: 57:15

Thanks.

Albert Brier: 57:16

So there you have it. I hope you enjoyed this extended look at those interviews I had at the AACE conference, as much as I enjoyed recording them, and I want to thank everybody once again for their time and for being so generous with their opinions and for really settling in for some interesting conversations. And on that subject, what do you think? Did I get it right? Are the practitioners out of step with the vendors? Are the vendors offering more than the market is able to bear at the moment-is it on we, the project controls professionals, to pick up that slack, or is it on the vendors to better help us understand what it is that they're trying to do? Tell me what you think. Sound off in the comments. Reach out to me on LinkedIn. Let Nate and I know what we should be talking about in this regard, because as you know, how AI and how technology fits into our practice is a huge, huge focal point for us. So let us know, reach out to us on LinkedIn, leave us a review on your podcast platform of choice, and while you're at it, head over to egbommusik.com. That's e-g-bomusic.com to hear more lush, gorgeous jazz piano like what you're listening to right now. Until next time, this has been the Risky Planner podcast, and I'll see you out there.