Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and welcome to another episode of
Contruents True Talks. Today, we’re going to focus on the methods in the madness,
decoding capital programs and project delivery. I am really excited to be joined by two of
my colleagues at Contruent, Jack Pollock and Dan O’Connell.

Jack, Dan, welcome to the show. Thank you. Guys, why don’t we start with just a brief
introduction of your backgrounds and your current role at Contruent. Jack, why don’t you lead us off?

Yeah, great. Thanks, Andy. So, my name is Jack Pollock. I have been working in the construction industry for 30 years, possibly. The last dozen years, I’ve been working on some of the largest programs and projects in the UK. So,
High Speed 2, Lower Thames Crossing, Horizon Nuclear Power, Transport for London.
I’m working for client side predominantly, but through a lot of our construction
consultancies. So, I work with some of the best out there. So, Arcadis, Beethoven Gold,
Gleads, Mott MacDonald, PwC. I’m always representing the client, always pushing to improve the way that we do business. The last dozen years or so, I’ve been using Contruent from client side to drive pretty much business transformation. So, for me, joining Contruent, great.
It’s the next step. Very positive. So, thank you. Great to be here, Andy. Looking forward to this chat.

Jack, as always, appreciate you, buddy. And thanks for joining us today. And this will be the first of many. We’re going to bring Jack and Dan on throughout the year as we continue the True Talks. Dan, over to you, bud. What about a quick background and talk a little bit about what you’re doing here at Contruent?

Sure thing, Andy. Thanks. Similar to Jack, my background is that I’ve been working in construction for approximately 30, 35 years. I, as a professional client surveyor, started off before moving to the UK. Since being in the UK, I’ve worked on some of the major programs
that the British government has been funding, Crossrail, the Channel Tunnel Rail Link,
various other projects with Network Rail, also worked with Transport for London for a
long time. And finally, before joining Contruent, I was with National Highways on a major program they have there. So, similarly, started off in small projects and then moved, like Jack, into the larger area of managing portfolios. So, I’m really pleased to be here.
Appreciate both you guys. And it’s just amazing when we have the expertise and
experience that you guys bring into our organization. It makes our jobs a lot easier, guys.
I appreciate that. Guys, let’s dive in. Jack, I’ll start with this.
When you look back at the projects you’ve supported over the years, you’ve mentioned
many of them here this morning, when you started, when the people, the process, and
the systems were all in place before the project started, what were some of the expected
outcomes? So, when everything’s in place, in theory, it should all be easier. I’ve worked
on a few significant programs where we’ve had, on the face of it, we’ve had everything.
We’ve had the process, we’ve had the procedure, we’ve had systems.
But what we were lacking was the piece that connected everything. And for me, that’s
what we’ve found Contrurent provides, is that instead of having SAP, and Excel, and
ARM, and P6, and all of the other softwares, I mean, actually, one of the clients I was
working for had 600 different software packages. Making order out of that comes, I
mean, I think I’ve probably done half a dozen implementations using Contrurent software
before I joined the company.
Each one has been transformational in making the business communicate, making those
processes come to life. To make them, it makes them simple, gives you a framework
that understands, gives you consistency. I mean, for me, that is the joy piece.
Having everything available didn’t necessarily mean that it worked. You still end up with
the same challenges. So, working as an integrated team didn’t necessarily happen
because there was nothing pushing everyone together, sharing consistent information.
So, we didn’t have a single source of data, even with the systems and the process, even
with the process and procedure in place. We always struggled to communicate to
leadership. In fact, a recent client said he had three large programs all reporting to him
on the same day.
And the first 10 minutes of each presentation is figuring out what the message is,
because they’re all subtly different. They’re all using subtly different words to describe
where they’re at. So, I think the other piece that we don’t normally set up is how you tell
the story.
You know, at the moment, everybody knows why we added in 60 million pounds and a
six-month delay. But in 18 months, that record and that corporate memory will have
faded. Capturing all of the changes, and I don’t just mean change in scope, I mean
changes to forecast, changes to all of our expectations, why we did something
differently, adds huge value to where we are in a program.

So, I mean, for me, I think the expectation is always really high, but it’s how you bring
that to the fore and make everybody start to communicate. Jack, it sounds like that all
starts, even if you have the system process and people all lined up, it really starts with
tying it back to the original business case of the project. I mean, and you and I have
spent a lot of hours talking about that business case that kind of drives everything,
right? That original design intent.
And that, from what you just said, to me, you got to tie that up, right? Tie that back,
make sure the stakeholders are aligned, and then get to work on the processes. Do you
agree with that? Yeah, you’re absolutely right. I mean, the business case for me is the
start point, because that springboards from the estimate.
What I was saying about that corporate memory piece, it’s the same in the data too. You
need to capture what was the estimate and then use that to evolve it. And that estimate
informs the business case.
The business case then has all of the economic benefits associated with it and the wider
benefits. And then the piece of, right, how do you then start to utilize that to move into
your procurement phase? How do you then start to break out your estimate and the
elements that perhaps were unknown when you did the business case? So, I mean,
you’re absolutely right. It’s the start of the journey, is the estimate, the business case,
and then starting to edge towards procurement once you get that approval.
Yeah, I appreciate that, Jack. Dan, let’s pivot. Let’s think about a project that you
supported after the project started and was in cost, scope, and schedule performance
trouble.
What did you do to start that project recovery, and how did you use technology to help
with that? Well, Andy, it was one of the implementations of Contoured Enterprise that
actually brought that together. Jack and I were working together for a large
transportation company in the UK, and the project that we were asked to go in and
implement Contoured Enterprise was, at the time, the teams weren’t working well
together. They were a little bit in their own silos.
And one of the things of introducing Contoured Enterprise was that we brought together
the teams, and they started to work together and actually viewed the data that they
were producing. So, no longer was commercial trying to time phase work differently than
the schedule, et cetera. And one of the things that we did when we were doing that
implementation was we asked them to look at the scope, go back to the FBC, look at
what their remit was.
Unfortunately, in doing so, we found that there was a mismatch between the cost and
the scope and the schedule, which meant that the business actually then had to look at
itself and say, right, how do we pivot now to move to this world where we are using live information, which is being verified through change? And the business actually had to
look at itself and go, right, can we afford to do what we’re doing the way we’re doing it
and look for benefits and cost savings? So, that was one of the things that we did, and I
believe that project is now delivered on time to their latest baseline, which was real.
Yeah, that’s great. Jack, anything to add on that? Well, I think this is probably the point
where we fess up a little, but Daniel and I have been working together for 30 years.
So, we’ve been on this journey together, and for us, it’s become, when we both join a
program, and we did so recently, a major infrastructure program, in its development
phase, the first thing the two of us landed and pushed was we need to have a backbone
to this. We need to have an integrated system where everybody understands where the
data is coming from. So, I think the piece to add really is, you know, is once you get that
structure right and that communication piece corrected, and establish, it establishes
everyone’s position as well.
You know, Daniel mentioned commercial’s position. We both come from a commercial
background, so we’re very strong on what are the requirements of your commercial
team, but actually, in the control space, they have a huge role to play, but don’t often
get invited along in a timely way. You know, so you end up with, you know, the schedule
doesn’t really reflect how you contracted.
It doesn’t necessarily reflect the commercial milestones that you’ve utilized. It doesn’t
necessarily reflect the methodology within the contract. So, I mean, for me, that’s the bit
that it brings together is it makes the team work as a team instead of just being, you
know, groups and functions sitting in a shared space.
So, yeah, I think that’s the overriding piece. Yeah, I like that a lot, Gus. Gus, if we, you
know, we talked about projects a bit, you know, we’ve given a couple of examples, given
a couple of good examples, but if we pivot and think about capital portfolio
management, right, from, as you said, Jack, in the beginning, from an owner’s
perspective, right? So, you’re in there representing the owner.
The owner has a big capital portfolio. Talk about the value that you can achieve from
having visibility across all the projects in the portfolio and not just the projects, the
headers, the, you know, the pertinent information at the top, but having that visibility all
the way down, you know, to the control account level. What do owners, what do they get
from that if they have spent the time and effort, you know, to have that visibility across
their entire portfolio? And maybe it is inside a business unit.
Maybe it’s not the entire company, or maybe it is. I mean, maybe you’ve got experiences
that the entire capital program is being managed. What have you guys seen and the
benefits that come from that? I mean, I think everyone has a boss.
So, you know, if you’re in a business unit or you’re part of a large program, you know, you then report to, I don’t know, either shareholders or a government body. And the
biggest thing that, you know, not meeting your forecast, and I mean in terms of
progress, schedule, cost, that has a debilitating effect and a massive impact on your
reputation, you know. So, seeing that progress and being able to demonstrate it, I think
credibility-wise, there is nothing like it.
You know, doing what you said you were going to do when you said you were going to do
it. You know, there is nothing like that. I think it also offers you the opportunity, you
know, once you’ve got good visibility of your scope and the schedule and everything else
that sits around it, it gives you that ability to manage change.
I mean, construction is all about managing risk and change. It’s what we do. It’s what we
do every day.
And you’ve got to react to that. Sometimes you have to reschedule. Sometimes you may
have a different strategy you want to deploy.
I mean, Daniel and I worked on a large program where for many years we had 100 sites
that we needed to do in London. And for the first couple of years, we were picking off the
easy sites on the periphery, but it wasn’t providing any business value. So, what we had
to do was recut it to give us a strategy that would then provide the value directly on the
projects that we’re working on.
So, it gives you that ability to be able to deploy a strategy. You know, we’ve also been in
a position where because we’re meeting our forecast, we can see what work we can then
flex, bring it forward or push it back depending on business criteria. I mean, where we’ve
been publicly funded, there’s often, you know, if you don’t use the money in this financial
year, it may not be available to you in future years.
Or perhaps the converse, you know, there’s more money available. What can you do?
Having a better grasp of your scope and visibility of your schedule allows you to provide
that flex piece. I mean, Daniel, do you want to jump in there? Yeah.
So, one of the other things it allows you to do is look at your supply chain. Look how
overworked you are using supply chain. One of the things we managed to do in a
program was review all of the design houses that we were employing, making sure that
we weren’t overburdening one in particular and then relying, putting all of our so-called
eggs in one basket and saying, well, they’ll deliver, they’ll deliver.
When in fact, we were going to the wrong people, we should have been out there better.
I agree 100% with Jack about the ability to look at your finances. We were working in a
large portfolio of programs where we were coming up to the end of a cycle of five years
of funding.
And they were having challenges about where they were going to meet that in the next six months. Because we had a visibility of their schedule and when we were going to
need materials, we were able to join these programs together and say, right, if we go
ahead and buy this particular piece of equipment now, or this, we put an order in for
steel or concrete or whatever it was. We were able to buy it and place orders early,
secure our position in the supply chain, and also spend the money in an earlier phase.
Therefore, as everybody knows, if you spend today’s money today, it’s cheaper than
tomorrow’s money tomorrow. And that was a great benefit. Not only did the business
secure its funding and shown that it’s able to flex and move, but also we made a saving.
And that was one of the most important things we were looking to do. That’s a great,
those are great points, guys. And I think it kind of flows into my next question or my next
point, right? So here we are, we have the portfolio view up and running across all the
projects.
You have the visibility at the project level all the way down to the control accounts.
Daniel, you mentioned the importance of the supply chain. Is materials on site? Is it
available? Is it ready? But even with that, guys, I mean, talk about some of the
experience.
You’re ready to roll. You’ve done the hard work. You’ve got transactional project activity
happening.
What possibly could go wrong at that point? And then give us some examples of how you
recovered from it. And I can’t imagine, I think about some of the big projects that I’ve
been part of over my career. I don’t think there’s ever been a challenge like the supply
chain is today.
Everyone I talk to that’s still implementing projects around the world. I mean, it’s really,
it’s a huge challenge. But let’s talk about that.
What else have you seen can really derail even the best laid plans? And then how did
you guys recover from it? So we had a, we were working together with a company in
London and little did we know it, but we actually were procuring a piece of equipment
from Japan. And as you remember, a few years ago in Fukuyama, there was a tsunami.
That little piece of equipment put our project in jeopardy of being late.
So what we had to do was flex around our schedule, move our delivery dates around,
build in time to make sure we could accommodate that, what was an unforeseen, as
much as we could do. And then also just bringing to mind now, not so long ago, there
was a large tanker stuck in the Suez Canal, that would have affected its supply chain as
well. Plus, you know, there’s many things going on in the world today, which is affecting
the supply chain in a great way.
And if you’re in a bad way, if you’re able to manage that through having control over where and when you need things, you can actually adapt and maybe not be so affected
by it all. Jack, anything to add here? Yeah, I think one of the, I mean, I was smiling
because we all have plenty of experience of what goes wrong. I think it’s how you react
to it.
You know, as Daniel was saying about the couple of instances where it’s been, you know,
Mother Nature that’s impacted us. I’m putting the Suez one in there as well. Weirdly,
forgive me.
But actually, it’s the, our focus, when we found out that part was coming from Japan, our
focus had been on the quality of welding, where the major components were being
manufactured. And we had put all of our effort into making sure that we had a specific
capability available to us. And we’d completely missed the fact that our vulnerability was
elsewhere.
And so many times, when we’ve been doing a major program, you find that your
vulnerability is not necessarily on the critical path that you associated in the first
instance. I mean, one of the commercial roles I had was the commercial lead for SCADA
on a large electrification program, so supervisory control and data acquisition. So, you
know, the techies going out and recommissioning the sites to get the information back to
center.
You know, what you realize, those guys who are out there building substations and
throwing cable on the line, you know, actually, you can go as quickly as you like. It’s
limited by the 20 guys I’ve got available to recommission. So it completely changed the
critical path analysis.
But we wouldn’t have seen that had we not been looking at, you know, the desire to
show the whole program end to end. So instead of being, you know, focused in year or
focused for a contract piece, we were looking at the whole of the EFC, so the estimated
final cost. And in that, we were profiling the resources that were supporting it.
And then that’s where the epiphany comes as you go, hang on a minute, I can’t spread
that resource that thinly to keep up with the progress. So all of the acceleration
measures that were being put in place by aspects of the program, they were all for
naught. You know, we were spending money unnecessarily to accelerate, when actually
what we needed to do was slow down, make better use of our resources, make better
choices, and consider our, you know, our deployment methodologies.
You know, getting trains involved was slower to organize, but quicker to deliver. And I
think that, you know, that’s so true of, you know, our hook line being, you know, quicker
and faster to deliver, I was thinking of the word, faster, see, we’ve known each other a
while. And the faster to deliver pieces is all about consideration.

Yeah, that’s great. Great examples. Yeah.
Yeah, really, really good examples. And I think the thing that rings out to me is, without
that visibility of those examples, it would have taken you weeks, if not months to figure
out how to recover. So those are great.
Sorry, Jack, I didn’t mean to cut you off. No, it’s good. Thank you.
Yeah, that’s good. Yeah, great, great examples, guys. And again, the power of the data,
right, having it organized and having it communicating up, down, sideways and
backwards is critical to this.
Guys, let’s shift gears just a second. If you look back over the years and, you know, the
challenges and the projects that you’ve been part of in the programs, what innovative
technology today gives you excitement, you know, the capabilities that you’re seeing
today, and maybe, you know, maybe it’s not the hardcore, you know, project controls,
cost lifecycle management that we deal in every day, but what are some of those
technologies that you sit back and say, geez, if I had that capability in my previous
projects, it could have made a difference. The one that I always, and you guys hear me
talk about this often is, you know, the ability to capture progress, you know, real time,
you know, as often as you as you need to.
But what are your thoughts, guys? What do you see out there you get excited about?
Well, I think that the use of phones is actually quite impressive. I mean, as we were
talking about the other day, everybody is carrying a phone in their pocket these days, all
around the world. And the use of that technology to be able to give live current
information and share it.
So when something is constructed, or concrete is poured, or a hole is dug, or something
is commissioned, a photograph is taken, it can then be immediately distributed to the
whole team, so they know the work is in place. So that the use of mobile technology is a
great innovative leap forward. I was actually thinking about this the other day, and there
was a project that I was involved with, who designed a health and safety app.
And what they did over many, many months of using it, they were able to establish when
was the safest time to get a concrete load in, as an example, because they knew that if
they had a concrete load come in at eight o’clock on a Monday morning, people were
tired, more injuries would happen. But they worked out that maybe at two o’clock in the
afternoon, that was a better time to do it. And that’s the use of data, collecting this data.
And I think we can use mobile technology, mobile phone technology a lot more. Jack? I
think I’m going to take us back a little further. I mean, I remember when, I wouldn’t say
when we started, but a dozen years ago, the major problem was around data and size of
data.

We were limited by what you could get on a hard drive or store on a server. And then
that one went, and then it was about how do you integrate between different software.
Now, neither of them are particular considerations, both need to be dealt with.
But it’s that whole, to Daniel’s point where we’re looking at progress on site. Daniel and I
used to go out and play what we called the materials on site game, where he and I would
put on our hard hats and our clean viz, high viz, and we would go out and we would stare
at things and go, what do you think that is? And then we would try and measure it
because we were both young quantity surveyors. And we would be trying to measure
things.
And then we would go back and we would play the materials on site game with the older
guys in the office. And we would describe what we’d seen and they would tell us what it
really was. So, to Daniel’s point, you don’t have to do that anymore.
You can be far more accurate about vested materials, about what’s on site. Our field
management piece about progress is also exceptional. Where you’re getting data from
your contractors flowing in, that’s easy to check.
There’s photographs, there’s progress. None of our dodgy going out with a wheel to
measure things. You’ve got a far better way of progressing now.
For me, the other innovation has got to be people. So, in the recent past, you would have
a few people who were experts. To Daniel’s point about phones, everyone can navigate a
phone these days, certainly of working age anyway.
And I think the whole, the approvals process and part of what we’re very strong on is
that capture of change. You know, where stuff started off as one thing and it’s moved on.
And the approval of change, now you can workflow it.
You know, you can take advantage of, I’ve worked in organizations recently where the
hierarchy for approvals is so flat, you know, that the guy at the top is getting the
information on the same day as his functional and technical experts. And everybody’s
reviewing it and we’re putting lots of effort. Why not create the proper hierarchy? So, by
the time it gets to the program director, he’s reviewing it not on technical correctness,
but he’s reviewing on a strategic basis of, do I want to make this change? Can I absorb it
into my schedule? Is someone else paying? Am I paying? You know, what are the
significant impacts of it? I think all of those things start to change.
And, you know, that involvement makes the reporting piece much easier as well. You
know, the high level single point of access, getting in there, looking at dashboards. So,
you know, it won’t make you intelligent, but it’ll make you informed and it’ll give you the
opportunity to identify where are your issues and then drill down so you can get to a
person.

Maybe you’ve got, dare I say, a bad, a poor performer or a great performer. And you can
pick that out of the system because everything’s going as it should or everything’s not.
Or, you know, why is it a particular thing we never managed to do it? To Daniel’s point
on the safety, you know, it’s because all of our poor start at half seven on a Monday
morning.
Oh, hang on a minute. That’s why we keep not getting these right. That’s why we keep
running out of concrete or we’re not prepared or the steel needs, you know, it just gives
you that, it gives you a more rounded data set to make decisions on.
And I think that’s the innovation. And everybody is far better with data these days
because you don’t have to deal with the raw data. You’re now looking at something
that’s been shuffled into far more usable packages.
So for me, it’s people, accessibility, all of those things are the innovation all carried
forward by developments and software. That’s great stuff, guys. And, you know, the
words that kind of ring out to me, you know, for listening to you is, you know, it has, you
know, reliability.
It has resilience, the workload, the size of the data workload, just enormous what we can
handle today. And by the way, from an owner’s perspective, it all impacts cashflow,
right? Having that availability of what was installed and who can I pay? Who should I
pay? More importantly, for the work completed, all great stuff. Guys, I smiled a couple of
times because you guys were walking right into my next question is, you know, what
advice would you give to the up and coming, you know, the next generation program
and project controls professional based on all of your experience? Just make this a quick
hit, guys.
We’re coming up at the top of the hour. What advice? I’d love to hear from both of you.
What’s one thing you’d want to share with that next generation? So, I mean, for me, I
think it’s getting that grip of the basics and doing the basics well.
We quite often find that the basics have been overlooked in the desperation to get
ahead. You know, the schedule, it’s not a schedule if you haven’t got a means of
progressing it. And if you can’t align your costs to it, then you can’t see what you’ve
spent.
I mean, it’s just getting those basics right. And even I’ve jumped ahead there and the
basics are get the scope right first. Get the scope written down and agreed and
understood.
So, I mean, for me, it’s the basics still need to be in place. And then, I mean, I’ve seen
some some great stuff from, you know, they may well be new into the control space. But
these these young people, I say young people, you’ve got to sound about a hundred.

The people who are now landing in the workplace, they’ve been using technology all of
their lives. They have an expectation that it will do what they want without being
burdened by that, oh, it doesn’t have that capability. So, that expectation drives
development, drives innovation.
I think that is the piece, get the basics, never lose that expectation that it should do
what you think it should do. But also remember, when you set your scope of work, you’re
not expected to know everything precisely.