True Talks: Building Trust, Empowering Teams, and Sticking to the Plan: Keys to Successful Project Execution

Andy Verone 0:03
My name is Andy Verone and I serve as the firm’s chief strategy officer today.
I am very excited to be joined by Steven Patch.
Steven, welcome to the show.

Stephen Petch 0:15
Thank you, Andy. Pleasure to be here.

Andy Verone 0:16
Stephen, appreciate you coming on and excited to spend a little bit of time with you today.
Steven, we have a global audience.
We reach people all over the world, as does our product.
So if you wouldn’t mind, just spend a few minutes properly introducing yourself and and give us a little bit about your background.

Stephen Petch 0:37
Yeah, I’m. I’m Steven patch.
I’ve had almost 35 years of experience in project controls across my career, worked in both Australia and and Canada, lived in both Australia and Canada. Currently living in Canada.
Spent 20 years of my career in Australia working in in construction.
And in with EPCM firms.
Worked extensively here in.
In Canada with.
Epcm firms and with owners organizations across multiple industries.
So working across mining infrastructure, building multiple industries worked on shore and offshore in Australia.
So extensive experience across multiple industries in project controls and working in multiple countries and also working.
With companies around the world that have.
Sites, particularly in in South America, Africa, Australia, that’s been the main focus.

Andy Verone 1:42
Steven, let’s have a bit of fun.
So I had the opportunity in my career to work for an Australian company that then took me on a journey up into Canada, Fort McMurray. Specifically, what’s the attraction from for Australians coming to Canada?
It seems to be a pretty natural.
Migration and path is it.
Is it mining?
Is that?
What is that?
What the threat is that brings the Australians into Canada.

Stephen Petch 2:07
For me, what brought me into Canada honestly was I really wanted to live in the snow.
So somewhere where I could skiing is a is a passion.

Andy Verone 2:15
That’s great.

Stephen Petch 2:18
So I moved over to to Canada.

Andy Verone 2:19
Good.

Stephen Petch 2:21
Loved. Loved living in the cold and and going skiing and that’s what I did.
Unfortunately, I was in Toronto so it was not the best ski hills around. But you know we we made it the best of that and the kids and I certainly spent a lot of time.
On skiing up in Blue Mountain and then got an opportunity to move out here to to Vancouver, which has just been a godsend the last four years, it’s been fantastic.

Andy Verone 2:47
Yeah, that’s fantastic.
I appreciate you sharing that in in Vancouver is just a just an amazing, amazing environment in place.

Stephen Petch 2:50
Yeah.

Andy Verone 2:55
It’s it’s really great.
All right, let’s jump in.
See. But between the two of us, you would probably have about 80 years of experience.
So let’s start off with in all of your decades of experience in project controls and enterprise systems, let’s talk about the importance of the people, right, the process and the tool.
All too often, you know, organizations get focused on the tool.
What tooling are we going to use to be more efficient?
But let’s talk about the importance of all three.
The people that you need to do a major system transformation, the processes and the tools.

Stephen Petch 3:35
So you know extensively for me, I’ve worked on a lot of projects and the best projects I’ve worked on and the most successful projects I’ve worked on has actually been working with people having the right team with the right experience and not just about the the team and.
Experience. But how that team works together so that that is a huge, huge factor in in making successful projects.
Underlying that and underpinning that.
Both the tools and the the process.
So the the really important thing around the processes are that.
If you want to improve, you need to actually have processes in place that without the process you can’t improve.
So that and you need to be able to build on that, not just for the project itself, but you know for a company on a whole also around the tools, the tools have helped us to be more efficient.
And it provides us with a lot of data.
What what I see around with the the importance of the tools is that data and to have the data to be able to make good decisions. But to do that you also need the people with the right experience who can take and look at that data and look.
At those things and say, hey, there’s something wrong here or there’s going to be an issue coming up in a little while.
This is what we need to do to try and fix it so it allows us to actually look into a little bit more into the future.
To provide us with information to help us to make really good decisions on projects.
I mean, that’s the underlying importance, but I can’t stress more than anything in here.
It’s about having the right team.

Andy Verone 5:17
So yeah, let’s talk about that a little bit.

Stephen Petch 5:17
In in there to help us.

Andy Verone 5:20
So that that team, right?
That team comes from many different organizations as well, right? And and trying to get that team to all work towards that common goal of a successful project, let me just talk a little bit about your experience. Like how do you, how do you get those people and that?
Those teams align to the goal.
Of.
What are some of the techniques you’ve used?

Stephen Petch 5:47
So.
So some of the techniques that I’ve used so for just in, for me personally, I’m I’m when I’m working with my own team.
I try to empower my team to be the best that they can to allow them to do their jobs, not to be sitting over their shoulders, but to give them a good understanding of a good plan and work into that plan. And then if we’re working away from.
That plan to get back on to the plan.
So you know, that’s part of what I do.
But it also foster try and foster relationships.
So it’s really about those relationships that you’re working in.
It’s not just about the working relationships, it’s about the personal relationships that you have and you need to build those personal relationships because without the personal relationship, you cannot have the trust and it’s all about, you know, the teamwork is all about trust and you need to be.
Able to trust your team and but you also need to put in the checks and balances around those things to ensure that.
When we’re going down the path.
And we’re all all working down that path.
That’s how we that’s how we need to check. Have the trust that also that they’ll come to you and say, hey, Steve, there’s something wrong here, right?
And we need to, we need to find what those issues are in the in the big scheme of things across when you’re working across.
Multiple companies.
Multiple contractors. You still have to take pretty much the same approach. You have to build that relationship and you have to build the trust.
But you also need to be working to the plan and without working to the plan, if you’re not working to the plan, you won’t achieve it because there is no target set.
So we need to also make sure that we set really good plans, build the relationships and then work together to achieve that goal. And it’s it takes a lot of work.

Andy Verone 7:35
Yeah, for sure though.

Stephen Petch 7:35
Right. And and and sometimes in our when we’re working with our consultants and contractors, if they don’t have the skill set.
Is to help bring them up to, to have that skill set to help them to get there. What we see in the industry today, a lot is that we have a lot of companies out there who may not have the skill set that we’re we’re looking for they.
Have the people to do the actual physical work, but when we’re looking around, you know, managing to the plan, doing the reporting, managing the cost that some, some of those, they don’t have the right skill sets.
And so when we when we’re working.
In that environment.
We’ll have to help them to, to get to the level that we’re looking for and it takes a it could take quite a lot of work to get there.

Andy Verone 8:24
Yeah, for sure, Steven.
Appreciate those insights.
You know, I think I think that the key thing that rings out for me too is is to be able to work that plan, right?
You got to have everyone on the same the same data, right?
Everyone has to be looking at the same data.
Just Stephen.
Our our industry, the one that you and I have chosen to spend our careers in right building, you know, large capital programs across many industries, you know often gets.
And I say often, it seems like every day it gets criticized for not.
Using technology or the engineering and construction and mining and oil and gas and all the industries that we support, are laggards in technology. I actually take offense that I can remember 40 years ago. My first job was using software to design A roadway right to do the GE.
There was a software program, so I think the people that don’t cover the industry or have worked more importantly have worked in the industry.
You know, truly appreciate the the magnitude of technology that’s being used every day. And by the way, for many years.
What’s your earliest memory of of using data to drive a project?

Stephen Petch 9:37
So well, back in the actual first project I ever worked on was back in 901 says.
But 1988 back in Australia, in a in a construction company, a steel construction company, fabrication and construction and and we actually had a document management system that was written.
For us to be able to track all the documents across the entire project and we were running a construction of a of a major shopping centre, we had people working in in multiple cities.
And we had to track information from engineering, from the construction to the construction site. And we actually set that up.
With the company I was working with was written on an old VAX machine. Was an old which took up the computer, took up the whole room at the time, but from day one when I started working, we were using technology.
We were using technology there.
We were using technology in scheduling at the time.
I’ll I’ll scheduling software timeline.
An old 286386 machines long time ago. But you know we’ve been working with and I’ve been working with technology my whole career.
It’s part of one of part of the thing for me that I haven’t really enjoyed is actually helping to to develop and build those systems across across my career. And I’ve seen, you know, originally we had scheduling systems we had.
Document management.
Management systems, we had cost systems already laid out and from from day one.
So you know the technology’s always been there.
What we’ve been doing is improving on it as we go through it used to take a day to run a schedule to hit the hit the button on on timeline to run a, to schedule the schedule. Today it takes, you know, 2 seconds. So you know the things.

Andy Verone 11:31
I think so.

Stephen Petch 11:33
The things that have changed in my career, that’s what I’ve seen things change.
To make this more efficient across the board, at the end of the day.

Andy Verone 11:40
Yeah. And so in the spirit of the name of this, this episode and this program is true talks and we always try to drive truths, right.
So I think that’s the the reason I’m so passionate about Steven is, you know, if if you look at, you know the the next generation, the, the the you know the young people that are coming up through, we have to make sure that we articulate that engineering and.
Construction.
The use of technology because this next generation they’ve grown up with it.
I mean, they’ve grown up with technology in their lives and and. And when I hear, you know, we’re laggards in in technology it, it does strike a chord with me because it is an industry that has been surrounded by technologies for as long as you and I have.
Both been in it.

Stephen Petch 12:23
Yeah. And if you can, just if you look today, there’s.
Engineering, procurement, construction. It’s all linked up through technology today, right?

Andy Verone 12:35
Exactly.

Stephen Petch 12:35
It’s and and the information needs to flow across those from from one to another, and that’s what we do today.
We actually move that that information and that from from one to another to another and we’re very data centric.
We’re really data-driven and and looking at what we want to do when you say when you say to me Andy, we need to be able to take this and for the younger people today, what they’re going to have the advantages is data is a lot of data.
Sitting, sitting there and using that data and utilising that data to and be able to see what’s in there, to look for trends to look at how things have performed before, look for issues that we’ve had before.
That’s the information that’s going to be super valuable going forward.
We didn’t have that before.
We used to do it project by project, but now we’re getting a a bigger storage of data that’s in there. Once we get the data.
AI can settle across a lot of that as well, so.

Andy Verone 13:33
Yeah, after two. Yup, it doesn’t.
It doesn’t have to be a A, you know a a unique project every time. You know you look at.

Stephen Petch 13:40
It does not have to be a unique project every time.
And that’s the that’s the thing.

Andy Verone 13:42
Look the.

Stephen Petch 13:43
I think that the legacy that, that, that we can leave from from what we’ve done because we’ve learned a lot and that’s what we’re putting back into the tools today, right.
We’re putting those things back, though.
That smarts that we, we had that experience that we’ve had over over 40 years, we’re getting them back into the tools to allow us to to, to help us in the future.

Andy Verone 14:06
Yeah. See, I think it’s really important.
I I think you know every day that that I wake up here at contruent it.
It’s trying to take that almost 30 years now, right back to the heiress Prism days. And and we have. We have experts on staff. Right and and what we’re trying to and what we do and try to do what we are doing is building that expertise into the.
Tool. So when it does come out-of-the-box as a SAS solution, we’re building that expertise in it and.
And if you, if you, if you wanna leave a legacy.
On an industry build that expertise back into something that people can reuse is super important.

Stephen Petch 14:41
Correct.

Andy Verone 14:42
So so with that.
Look, talk to the audience about a project that you were able to.
You know, really harness the power of the people you had to build good process and kind of wrap that with a tool.
What, what one project in in all these decades, Steven, that you love to talk about when you sit there and say, man, if I look back in my career, this is a project that had major challenges and and here’s how we overcame those.

Stephen Petch 15:10
Well the the the project for me was actually back when I was working in Toronto.
I was working on a subway project.
There was working for the owner and what we had to do on that project was.
The owner on that job really didn’t have any process systems tools for managing the execution of a project of that size. A 3 1/2 billion dollar project.
When I came on on board, there was no controls.
People in there and we’re already in.
The feasibility phase, so it was.
It was.
It was really surprising to me when I when I went there, I was seconded in for a couple of months and ended up staying there for three years.
And so we took that that project and with the help of a really good project director, and this is this is one of the things it was really had some support from.
From the top, but we had to build everything in that in that.
In that project from cost management, document management, document control, estimating.
The the procurement management, the from from from start to finish that you know the process for managing those projects.
In typically was.
I’ll give it to the contractor and let them do what they needed to do.
But what we needed to do in that project was actually as an owner.
Be able to set up.
The the project in a in a way that we could see where that project was heading and not just being relying on on the the contractors and the consultants to do that that work at the time.
So you know we we we built that, we integrated it all.
We built the team on on that project.
There was, over there was over 100 people working on that project.
And really successfully working on that project.
By doing what we said before, any which was, you know, developing the team and that was a really big focus from from me, but also from from the project director to to develop that team and make the team be really successful, right and give you know if you.
Really want to look at some of the things in here that we we did.
We really started looking at things around Project health and Project Health isn’t just around and that’s what we set up.
To help us on that project, but it was not just about.
The the, the the health in terms of schedule and cost, but it was in terms of the health of the project team.
And so we looked at that from from all of those different aspects and that was for me, as it was a a really good project to work with and work on and work with the people on that project was was probably that was the best team I’ve ever.
Worked with.
And and the project director. And he’d had over 30 years of experience. He’d worked on multiple projects around the world.
He came back to me at the end of that project and said this was the best team he’d ever worked with.
And I think you know underlying that was because one we all we all work together.
We all had a good plan.
We all had. He put all the checks and balances in to make sure we were working towards that plan.
I provided all the data to show that where we were working to that plan.
But you know, we we had a good control on that project.
We had good control on on scope, good control on on the cost, good control on the schedule and we had a underlying all of that as well was the risk management system, which is extremely important.
So when we put all of those things together.
That made us a really successful project and well, I can say one of the indicators that we that we had on that project, that was that when we went from stage to stage.
To stage the cost really didn’t change.
So we had really good at the front end of the project from an early stage to to when we were we were about to to go into execution. The cost overall cost taking into account inflation, excetera escalation.
But it didn’t change from one stage to the other.
And that just tells us when we had good engineering, we had good scope management, we had good risk management.
And and as you and from that good estimation.
From from one stage to the next, and that really made it successful. Unfortunately at the time.
I left the I left that project before fully went into execution.
But that was the.
That was the the most successful project that I’ve worked on.

Andy Verone 19:59
Yes, Steven, thanks for sharing that. I think a couple of key takeaways right that as we you know, our audience listens to this, you have to have a project director that that has that vision, right? And has that experience of what good looks like and and by the.
You know his or her reputation is on the line, right. And and you know, as as you and I have, and as many people in this business, have you moved from project to project to project. And that experience is is so important. So having that project director that.
Has that vision is key? The other thing I love what you said was around the health of the project and not just SPICPI, right? It was down to the people, right it is.
How are we performing?
How? How is the organization? Sounds like a lot of leading indicators too, right? It wasn’t just.
Reporting back and I guess the yeah guy, please.

Stephen Petch 20:44
So Andy, just just one on my catch cry. One of one of my things that I’ve always said is, is healthy teams make healthy projects and and that is that is that’s what I found really.

Andy Verone 20:52
Exactly.

Stephen Petch 20:57
Across my career, working in a healthy team and I’ve worked in some unhealthy teams and not not all.

Andy Verone 21:02
Yep.

Stephen Petch 21:03
And when I’m talking about healthy, it’s not just about the project team, it’s about the big picture team, the contractors, the the owners.
The you know the EPCM, the Epcs, those type of people and and if you if you don’t have that full health across the board, you won’t have a healthy project.

Andy Verone 21:25
No question.

Stephen Petch 21:25
And and no matter what you do, you won’t be able to change it.

Andy Verone 21:29
Yeah, that’s good.

Stephen Petch 21:29
And that’s that’s unfortunate in in the industry, but that’s really one of the the the key lessons for me is is you know, trying to ensure that we get healthy.
Healthy projects and healthy teams, right?

Andy Verone 21:43
Yeah, it’s amazing.
Yeah. And I think the other thing for me, you know, listening to that, that story in, in, in that success is it then you can go replicate it, right.
So you can you can take what you learn from the Toronto subway project and then when you go to your next project, right, you take you take those artifacts and those processes and and that’s what it’s all about, right?
And that and for me just taking that experience to the next project, Steve, Good.

Stephen Petch 22:06
Yeah, Andy, just before we do that though, just going back when when you said taking it to the next project, we actually left that there. And one of the one of one of the people who was working for me back in at that time as a on that.
Project is now head of the the PMO and a lot of the learnings that we had through that project were now now went into and into that PMO into the processes into the tools.
That they’re using today.
Hi.

Andy Verone 22:37
It’s fantastic. I mean that that’s a success in itself, right?
That they not only not only replicated it, but then made it to standard right, made it made it to standard for the organization.

Stephen Petch 22:47
Yep.

Andy Verone 22:48
Steven, my last question and I’ll leave you with any final thoughts that you want to to express.
See, but what?
What is the change in the role of the owner? So you gave a great example that the owner of the subway project really did care and wanted to have more control instead of just.
Pushing the risk out to the delivery teams in 2025.
What do you think the role of the owner is?
Do you think more owners are saying, hey, I want, I don’t want to just roll the risk. I actually want to manage.
It would.
Do you see a change over over your career and where we are today?

Stephen Petch 23:24
Actually, it’s a bit of a cycle.
Andy, so you know, back when I first started in the industry, the owners used to run the projects.
They had their own, you know, a lot of their own engineering, a lot of their own project divisions, and then it moved away.
From that to to EPCEP CM type type setups different in different industries because if you if you look at the the work in the petrochemical industry, they’ve stayed pretty much with the same type of model for for.
Quite some.
Some time I think in the mining industry, it’s shifted.
And and if you look back today.
Or you look at today from from where we were even five years ago. The owners are seeing.
And and I’ve been working with an owners team over the last, you know, 5.
Or eight years I’ve been working with owners teams.
You can see a shift to the.
To the owners, moving more to managing the execution themselves.
Which is a risk. But what’s coming along with that?
Will it is.
They need to manage that risk on the projects.
One of the things I’ve seen in there is the owners, particularly they, they may be taking the risk on, but managing the risk has not something that they’ve typically done.

Andy Verone 24:48
Right.

Stephen Petch 24:50
And and in some cases.
With one of the owners that I was working with, they were absolutely all over the risk.
And so.
Managing and taking that risk was a key component of managing the project, so it’s a little bit different in, in different industries. The way I the way I see I see in the in the mining, it’s a, it’s a little less.
Around.
A little bit less, I say it’s a little less risk management, right, however.
The shift is more to managing the execution themselves.
And that’s a big risk.
So from the owners, they’re going to need to put in the tools, the systems, the processes. But it’s the key here for for the owners is that they’re not an integrated team.
What they what’s going to happen with that is they’re going to be integrators, which is a really big risk and they’re going to have to manage that risk and part of managing that risk will be with the processes.
And the systems that’s going to be able to integrate.
That across again the team and the people are super important.
But what you’re gonna need to do, and what the what the owners are going to need to do if they take that work on is put in those systems to allow that integration across.
Across the across the engineering, procurement, construction and that is a really big risk that I see today for the owners.

Andy Verone 26:24
Yeah, for sure, Steven.
I and I also think that’ll drive them to different delivery models, right?
So like you said, it’s it’s cycles, right?
So you don’t.
Maybe they shift shift from a a delivery model of EPCM to, you know, you know integrated project delivery, right?
I mean it it you’ll see changes in those delivery models as well as as the owners take on more risk and they they need the delivery model that’s gonna best you know suit them for that particular projects. So really important.

Stephen Petch 26:52
Yeah, we see that today.
Where where the projects will and projects team will sit down to develop what that that model is going to look like.
But it’s I’ll say this with a bit of a bad Andy, but the it’s something I’m not sure that the owners really understand how much work it takes to be an integrator versus being someone in an integrated team, very, very different.

Andy Verone 27:16
That’s the.

Stephen Petch 27:17
And that’s going to take a lot of work.
To to be.
You know, a really successful model.

Andy Verone 27:25
There, therein lies the opportunity for both of us.
Me as the tool provider and the system integrator and you as you know, bringing that experience of of successful project deliveries.
Steven, we are at kind of time. I try to keep these to about 30 minutes.
So the audience you can can consume them, but first and foremost, you know, thank you.
You’ve been incredibly gracious with your time and I appreciate.
So does the entire not only contruent organization, but the entire project controls community?
So folks out there in the audience, please keep this conversation rolling.
Use your social media channels.
Ask Stephen and I questions.
Comment on the content we we definitely want to.
We want to keep it rolling here as we had the opportunity to key up, you know tee, tee up some really great topics.
Stephen, thank you so much bud.
Appreciate your time and I’m sure we’ll have you on again and and have more to discuss.
In this ever changing world of project delivery and project controls. Thank you.

Stephen Petch 28:30
It’s been a pleasure, Andy.
Thank you for thanks for having me on.

Andy Verone 28:34
Appreciate everybody.
Thank you. See you soon.

Stephen Petch 28:36
Cheers.

Andy Verone 28:37
Cheers.