Construction Brothers Construction Brothers

This is repost of one of our old favorites.

If you want to stand out in business, don’t be a whiner. 

It’s a natural human tendency, for sure. That’s why avoiding it will help you stand out from the crowd.

Whining wastes time and strains relationships. The more you can suck it up and do the work when circumstances are tough, the better things will go for you and those around you.

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Today we're revisiting a conversation we had with Fouad Khalil in October of 2023. 

Fouad is the founder of and Principal at Modly, a modular construction consultancy that provides the building and real estate sector with market research, feasibility analysis and advisory services. Today he’s here to share some leadership insights.

We jump right into the conversation today with some talk about liability. Tyler asks Fouad to repeat what he had explained in an earlier conversation.Fouad says that your insurance carrier will tell you…
-Don’t say, “It will be done this way.”
-Don’t get on the job site and direct other teams’ workers on how to do their job.

When you do these things, you’re taking on liability.

Eddie points out that general contractors get trained to shed liability. This leads to gray areas within the hand-off territory where information degradation occurs.

Tyler mentions that some schools are unable to implement shop programs because of insurance costs.

5:03 - Sweden and Building Robust Teams
Fouad shares about his experience working on a project in Sweden. He recounts a conversation about potential leaks on structural wood components on the building. The answer about potential leaks was, “We’ll work on the solution together.”

Fouad shares about the critical path and lead times. He talks about schedule compression and how every single step in the process can become critical. A shortage of screws can result in a whole project coming to a standstill.

He mentions the insights he gained from the book Managing the Unexpected. This book focuses on high-reliability organizations like air-traffic control, NASA, etc.

In manufacturing, you can burn through your cash in no time. Efficiency is everything. Fouad wanted to apply this knowledge in his clients’ projects.

Fouad talks about the need for humility and honesty in regard to the planning fallacy. We underestimate.

20:36 - Key Lessons from the book

We asked Fouad here today to discuss some of the lessons he learned from a book he mentioned to us recently. The book is Managing the Unexpected by Karl E. Weick and Kathleen M. Sutcliffe.

Here are the five traits that the authors saw in high-reliability organizations:
Operational sensitivityPreoccupation with failureReluctance to simplifyCommitment to resilienceDeference to expertiseWe expand upon each of these briefly. Fouad quotes Churchill: “Plans are useless, but planning is essential.”

Eddie discusses the confusion he felt when his college coach told him to work at 90%. His point was to be deliberate and have a reserve. Maintain a buffer.

Fouad explains that these principles apply to managing crews of any size. If you don’t manage thoughtfully in these respects, your best people are going to burn out. He gives examples about how to institute quiet times throughout the day when there will be no meetings.

Eddie talks about creative use of red Solo cups in the office.

33:20 - Debriefing to Avoid Repetition of the Same FailuresTyler asks Fouad to explain how effective review of failures can ensure improved performance going forward....

Despite Tyler’s apathy toward football, today Eddie is encouraging us with a football analogy: stay in the pocket.

He explains that the quarterback who trusts his offensive line can examine his options while standing confidently within the pocket.

When you’re looking to move the ball down the field, you might be tempted to run off to the side or run backward to an area that looks so peacefully empty. This almost always ends badly. Hang in there and keep surveying your options.

Tyler translates this analogy to pickleball. When you’re tempted to slam it from the kitchen, it’s usually better to just keep it going.

Step into the hardship. Stay in that pocket. 

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If you enjoy the podcast, please rate us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to us! Thanks for listening!

This is a re-release of an episode that originally aired on September 27 of 2023.


00:00 - Introduction
You listen to us, and we listen to you. Today we welcome a guest who engaged honestly and thoughtfully with one of our LinkedIn posts.

A while back, when Eddie posted on LinkedIn to say that he wanted designers to have more money and more time in order to produce a better product, Nick stepped up to say that he didn’t think that was always the answer. 

Nick said that collaboration is also key. Nick is an owner’s rep for an automotive group, and every day he observes the complex dynamics of the construction process.

03:20 - When You’ve Tried…
Nick shares about times when he’s paid more for the “correct” design professionals. Sometimes it has panned out, and sometimes it hasn’t.

We discuss some of the design and structural characteristics that are unique to the construction of automotive dealerships.

Eddie asks Nick to describe the schematics that he hands to his architects. The plans are pretty detailed because space-planning and other elements are crucial to functionality of the space.

Nick talks through the accumulating delays that occur in the design stage. He explains how essential it is that designers who are given more time produce designs that are really, truly ready to go.

12:10 - Repeat Projects with Small Adjustments
Eddie talks about the unique challenges and advantages of working on projects that are essentially repeats of previous projects. Sometimes small differences in these repeat projects open the doors to slight cost savings–maybe using a 6” stud instead of an 8” one. When that happens, it can take an unreasonably long amount of time to get the designers to make that change.

Nick explores the reasons that architects or engineers might not be able to jump on that change as quickly as one would like. Those people are usually working on multiple projects. He talks about how the navigation of this process changed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He goes on to share about a massive beam that unexpectedly appeared on the worksite of a repeat project. He and the other parties were able to find a more affordable substitution because he was willing to ask everyone involved and push for a creative solution.

22:00 - Lessons Learned, Solutions Found
Eddie asks Nick to share about some of the things he’s learned from years of encountering these kinds of challenges. Here are a couple things he mentions:

-Get together with equipment vendors. Discuss how to replicate parts of the project even when there are minor variations in projects.

-Take a close look at the process, including your role. See how you can tweak that process to minimize changes and increase the efficiency of addressing changes that do arise.

-Make sure you’re working with designers who actually know how to build buildings–people who actually know about the physical construction process.

-Make sure everyone is starting with the same vocabulary and reference points so that the content within designs can be easily understood by the workers on the jobsite.

We go on to discuss the timing of change orders and the complications that arise when they’re not timed thoughtfully.

Tyler asks Nick how he weighs the various variables in order to make decisions regarding change orders. Nick shares and Eddie contributes some thoughts from his experience.

48:40 - Is There Such a Thing as…?
Eddie asks if there is such a thing as a firm that can do top-grade work efficiently for a reasonable price? Nick says that the answer is yes but that it’s complicated. Since teams and partnerships are always changing, you might find your rhythm with one person or firm but then find that the chemistry with the...

Eddie’s been reading The Comfort Crisis, and from that he brings us this insight: “Hunger is the best sauce.”

He shares about his recent trip to the NASCC and an “exquisite” meal he had there. They didn’t go high-end, but it still tasted outstanding simply because they were so dang hungry. Hunger sharpens the olfactory senses.

Doing without something can make you really appreciate it when it returns. If you’re going through a dry spell, Eddie encourages you to be okay with that. Consider how much you’ll appreciate things when the tide turns.

Hunger is the best sauce.

Check out the partners that make our show possible.

Find Us Online: BrosPodcast.com - LinkedIn - Youtube - Instagram - Facebook - TikTok - Eddie's LinkedIn - Tyler's LinkedIn

If you enjoy the podcast, please rate us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to us! Thanks for listening!

We start out today with some swag talk and a chat about some recent opportunities to meet listeners.

(Note: Of course historicity is a word. Dictionary.com’s definition is “historical authenticity.”)

03:50 - The Panama Canal
There’s so much to discuss on this massive construction project. First, though, we insist on a deep dive on our Keurig machine.

Then we get to some specs: 
Parcel of land: 10 miles wide and 50 miles long85 feet elevation change from sea level to highest pointAvg. ship transit time: 8-10 hrs300,000,000 cubic yards of earth moved in project52 million gallons of water displaced for each transit (That’s about 742,857 bathtubfuls–roughly the amount of water that passes through Hoover Dam every 14 minutes)Cut the ocean-going distance from NY to LA from 13,000 miles to 5,200 milesSome calculations put the total construction fatalities at 500 lives for each mile of canal. (Total of around 25,600).  We discuss the history of Panamanian isthmus exploration by those who were interested in sea navigation. In 1513, Spanish explorer Balboa became the first European to realize that this area was a narrow isthmus b/t Atlantic and Pacific oceans. This eventually led to exploration for a navigable passage. Then in 1534, Charles V, the Holy Roman emperor, ordered a survey to determine if a route could be built. It is considered impossible. 

By 1881, France decided that indeed it was possible, so they began construction. That attempt led to more than 20,000 deaths–mostly from Caribbean islands such as Antigua, Barbados and Jamaica.

13:06 - Lock History and the Labor Force
Eddie runs us through the history of locks, which started in China and included some input from Leonardo DaVinci. 

Approximately 60,000 people were involved in the American construction project. White workers got the best jobs and the best lodging. Workers died at the incomprehensible rate of 500 for every mile of construction. Many of these deaths were due to disease, but many were also due to mudslides and a range of other predictable types of accidents.

19:09 - New Tools and Chief Engineers

We discuss a couple of innovations that made this project possible:

The track-shifter (Watch a video clip): huge crane-like machine could hoist a whole section of track–rails and ties–and swing it in either direction, to relocate it as much as 3 m at a time. It took less than a dozen men operating one day to move 1.6 km of track, a task requiring not less than 600 men.

The dirt-spreader (See a pic): A car operated by compressed air, the dirt-spreader had steel "wings" on each side that could be raised and lowered to level off material left along the track by the unloader. Did the work of approximately 6000 men working by hand.

Eddie lists the men who worked in the chief engineer role and the big money that they earned–more than any other public employee other than the president. The one who finally stuck around to finish the project was George Washington Goethals, who had no choice because he was assigned to this role as an Army general.  

27:30 - Economic Impact and Other Takeaways
We explore the economic impact of the canal. Shipping costs for goods that would have needed to pass south of South America immediately dropped by 31%. This leads to a discussion of the drought that has caused complications in the canal since last year. We touch on the huge impact caused when shipping lanes are shut down, including the recent bridge collapse in Baltimore.br...