How are government agencies navigating the current inflation environment on construction projects - leadership lessons in managing expectations

Welcome to Inspiring People and Places, where we interview national leaders in the architectural, engineering, construction, and development industry in an effort to educate, innovate, and inspire industry professionals to disrupt the status quo, improve their project teams, and steward public and private investments more effectively. I'm your host, BJ Kramer, president and CEO of MCFA. Allow me to introduce today's guest. We are going into unchartered territories here. This may be right before or right after the army navy game, but we have our very very first naval academy guest on the show today.

Eric Hawn, Captain Eric Hawn, welcome to the podcast.

Hey. Thanks. Appreciate you having me, BJ.

It's it's interesting. I I was reading over Eric's bio. We have a couple of things in common. Son of an air force officer, so both of our fathers failed us by letting us go to different services instead of the easy street of the air force academy. Andover, Massachusetts, I have a couple of buddies that call Andover home from the academy.

The people from New Hampshire affectionately refer to us as massholes. But if we need to cut that out, we can.

Not at all. New I'm Jersey.

All right. Okay. You get some... I'm sure you get some color Some coloralities there.

And then we both had... What I imagine are o three assignments doing construction management on more of the civil engineering side of of military construction. Eric comes to us from the NavVac, so let's jump in. Tell us a little bit about your career path. You know, what led you to the Naval Academy, and what took you from the Naval Academy to where you are now?

Sure. So thanks for that. Yeah, a number of things. I come from a family of service. My grandfather fought in the Battle of the Bulge during World War II.

A number of army officers and and enlisted. And then, on my side, my dad and my sister and my brother-in-law were all air force. My my oldest son is a second lieutenant in the air force. So, you know, kinda like you, I I didn't see the light necessarily. Chose the tougher road, but but I would argue I've been really happy with my choice.

I I do love the Navy. I I am parochial at times, but really, really proud to serve alongside some great leaders in all in all of our branches of service and and consider... I have very close friends who are marines and and it's funny how. So you can call me purple if you want.

I agree. We're I was just gonna say that I think coming from that background, like as a family, I've got two siblings that went to the Coast Guard Academy, my dad was in the Air Force. He was in the Marines before he transferred to the Air Force. We are are purple, I think it makes us more respectful of the of the other perspectives.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And there's, you know, that difference. Sometimes, we sort of have skirmishers about those differences in culture, but it it does it does make us the stronger force. So, you know, again, you know, thinking along the lines of, disruptive technologies, it's it's differences in thought that can really, enhance the team's performance.

And if we all think the same way, well, then we're... There's certain things we're just gonna miss. So so... Yeah. That...

And that that that applies, in in the construction and facilities world as well. Just a quick, I'll do the fast forward on the... I consider myself to be from America, but as I stated, know, junior high and high school outside of Boston there. And then what brought me to the Naval Academy actually was rowing, among other things. I think I had always intended to either look at the air...

I think I was more targeted on the Air Force Academy initially.

And So was I.

And, I was a rower in high school and really... Oh my gosh. Well, there you go. And and I really fell in love with, with the sport and was kind of, you know, it was a fixation for sure. And, you know, I just would be a very different person if not for rowing.

And and they have a team at, at the Air Force Academy, but but the the the quality and the level of play of the team at, at Navy, certainly was much higher. So, like, ultimately, it was my mom who said, hey. You know, you ought to consider checking out the Naval Academy too. And at first, I reacted like any teenager and kinda said, I don't wanna do that. But, but I did look into it and the and the, you know, certainly the the rowing and the academics and the location and all those things.

And then the career options afterwards seemed, more interesting. And so, that led me to the engineering world and and, you know, kind of an odd circumstance that I worked, I worked at the YWCA in Nashua, New Hampshire as a, as a maintenance guy in the summers.

That that

can learned under the tutelage of of a of a utilities man from from Vietnam. This guy name was... His name was Milton Woolley. And so Milton taught me some things about plumbing and, you know, just how to do facilities maintenance and, you know, a range of different things that that I'd I'd helped him with as his apprentice. But but...

Yeah. So I think old c b c b Milton there was another reason that I came in the civil engineer corps and then had an opportunity to to serve twice with operational units there in in the in the US Navy Seabees. So so that's sort of how I I got to the CEC. As you've mentioned, number of tours doing.

For some of our audience that doesn't know what the Navy Seabees are, can you give us just a quick background there?

Yeah. Absolutely. So, think of, a force that is capable of building while defending itself at the same time. And the Seabees were invented in World War two when we had to, do the island hopping campaign, and they needed forward staging bases. So you needed people who, you know, could build piers and wharfs and runways and and, you know, birthing and dining facilities and all that, support facilities.

And so, construction battalions, CBs, so they... When they kinda changed it, we'll play on words there with s e a b e e, so CBs. That's how that came into play. And as we, we serve forward with the marines in in many different places now and, you know, over the past several decades as well. So so...

Yeah. And and naval facilities engineering systems command is a is a systems command that is responsible for design, construction, and maintenance of infrastructure for the for the US Navy. So so that's our role. That's how I came into this interview here. I'm I'm the...

Right now, I'm the lead of NavFac Washington, which is one of nine facility engineering commands for the Navy. That's a that's sort of a a very brief overview of me.

Yeah. A quick brief of almost a thirty year career. So one, thank you for your service coming on the heels of Veterans Day. I'll say beat Navy, but I I will also say happy Veterans Day. Us a little bit about tell us a little bit about what the mission is at NavVac Washington and and what is going on in in your command right now from a construction engineering standpoint, and and and maybe even how that is tied into the higher...

Hierarchy of DOD and and that... The Navy, from supporting the mission standpoint.

Sure. Sure. So, let me start with our assigned mission. We have two main lines of effort. So two things that NAFAC Washington does.

That is design and construction, and it's public works. We episodically assist with, what I would call expeditionary or or contingency environments. Last year, we had the opportunity to support Operation Allies Welcome in Quantico, and we built a 5,000 man camp for for Afghan, citizens that were, you know, were evacuated very quickly as we all kinda remember, last, it wasn't this past summer, but the summer before. But but as I say, design and construction and public works, that's our signed mission. My AOR ranges from, Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Southern Maryland up to, north to the naval support activity Bethesda, which has Walter Reed National National Military Medical Center.

And it it, it also... We we go south down to Dahlgren, Virginia, where there's a warfare center and a number of, three lower agencies that that are supported there. And the United States Naval Academy is another one of our sites. And here, I'm in... Coming to you from the Washington Navy Yard, which has a number of headquarters activities to include naval reactors, which is in charge of all of the, you know, the the submarine that are...

They're they're fit into the, the big navy construct. We're... We are an echelon four command, and and so they... As I mentioned, there's nine of those in NAVFAC. And then there...

We work for NAVFAC Atlantic, which, covers the the eastern half of the globe. And then you take the Mississippi River and NAVFAC Pacific does everything that's West Of The Mississippi and into the, the Far East and and and so on. And and then NAFAC headquarters then answers to the chief of naval operations as an echelon to command that, again, charged with, design and construction and expeditionary. Those are the big three line effort in the... Kind of the the...

With a obvious slant... Heavy slant towards facilities in particular.

Awesome. And then from a prioritization or or ongoing mission or or maybe even innovation happening inside of the Navy from a facilities infrastructure standpoint, what are the hot topics on your plate right now that that I'm sure wake you up at 02:00 in the morning, make sure you're on top of?

So one of them is, we have what I would consider to be five mega MilCon projects. So MilCon is military construction, and I kind of think of it as, well, larger construction. It's a separate appropriation that the congress gives to us to to construct, typically new facilities, but it can be for repairs. So we have five of those, and one of them, as an example, is a $600,000,000, hospital addition at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. So, obviously, very, very large facility there that we're we're adding to the footprint of that base to, to be able to take care of, our wounded warriors better, the...

Those that are coming back from from deployments in harm's way, and and it is also the president's hospital. But but the the main thrust in modernizing the hospital is to, is, again, to to provide that service to veterans, to active duty, and to wounded warriors in Bethesda. Another one that's really... Two others that are interesting. I'll just talk about two others.

One is a master time clocks facility at the US Naval Observatory, which is, near Embassy Row in Washington, DC. And so that that facility, has a very, important mission of providing precise navigation and timing, for for for the Navy for... So I I won't say too much because this is a unclassified environment, but that's a very interesting facility and obviously has very... Some very important assets inside of it to make sure that when we... Things that we want to be in a certain place at a certain time will, in fact, be in that place and in that time.

So... And then the last one is a a new, wargaming facility that we're building for the US Marine Corps down at Quantico, and that is to, to modernize and provide a really holistic and classified level, wargaming simulation facility that the Marine Corps is going to use to to be able to, to do warfighting analysis and and scenario, to try to really keep ahead of where our competitors are, how they might, whether they attack or whether they just... How they defend and and to kind of test game theory and and, as it relates to a strategic and operational planning. So So that's a that's

about a mega mill con

facility down there in Quantico.

I'm sorry. Cut you off. How much... What's the size of that one?

That's what... It's about a $100,000,000 that that we're getting facility. The one the one in Bethesda is is 600,000,000, and then the the National Time class is about a 100,000,000 as well.

So your five mega mil cons are well over 1,000,000,000.

Yeah. We're... Our business volume with the with the... We look at designs in, you know, construction, things that are either, you know, pending or or in active status. And then we also do with our public works mission.

We're about a $1.61700000000 dollar annual op... Operation here.

So not unlike the Corps of Engineers. Corps of Engineers has the the districts. They have the division, and then they have USACE headquarters. You have you have, NAFAC headquarters and then NAFAC East West, and then you're you're Washington. You're one of those nine.

You called it echelon two commands?

Full... Echelon four. Yeah.

Okay. I'm sorry.

Yep. And and then... No. No. That's fine.

And then working for us are public works departments at each of those six installations I mentioned before. Oh, I don't know if I ran through all of them, but but I I mentioned several of them.

Yeah. So when you have the public works, the corps of engineers no longer has, you know, the installation management that falls under income. You still have basically the public works department. Do you also have area engineers or resident engineers running your MilCom projects, or do they get assigned to those public works departments?

They're... They align underneath those those public works departments. There's a couple of rarities like at Joint Base Andrews is primarily an air force base. We have a a... The Presidential Aircraft Replacement hangar that's nearly finished over there, and that's a resident officer in charge of construction of ROIC.

That happens to be a ROIC operation as opposed to a a... Under a PWD. We don't... You know, they... They're separate and apart from the from the the Air Force civil engineer squadron that runs their public works on that base.

Cool.

One of the things that we're really focused on right now is in addition to really doing a better job of guarding time as it relates to, you know, scheduled performance on particularly those Milkon projects and the mega projects. But but time in general is a a performance to plan where we really lay out, you know, before the year starts, hey. This is the number of projects that we plan to to design. This is the number we plan to, do a contract award, and then, you know, the the completion dates, to to try to keep to those milestones, more tightly because our ability to be able to deliver in a timely way to those supported commands with a wide range of missions from research development, testing and evaluation, the test pilot school at the Tuxent River, the weapons manufacturing at... That happens at Indian Head, Maryland, that we need to be able to deliver as predictably, as reliably as possible, and to do it as quickly as possible with good quality.

So this performance to plan concept is one where we've we've taken, you know, industry advice to say, what are the key performance indicators that that, help you track along those timelines well? How do you, maintain those schedules? And so looking closely at design start and and award timing and mobilization within a certain period of time, that's another thing that we're we're we're really stressing right now. And then I would say we're we're looking a lot at our, utility systems. We've got a utilities campaign plan that we're developing, and we're heavily focused our preventive maintenance program on utilities and and HVAC.

And so, it's my assertion that the closest thing that we have on the infrastructure side to, operational availability, this is a sub o that you can think of maybe a ship or an airplane. It needs to be ready for tasking. Can it can it either go off and do its sortie or get underway and do its mission? For buildings, it needs it needs its utilities, and it needs its HVAC. Otherwise, it's really like

Not mission capable. Deadline,

I guess, you can... To to put it in technical, terms. So, yeah, not mission capable. And so looking at, shifting our efforts, prioritizing... Really prioritizing planned maintenance, preventive maintenance, to get ahead of disruptions, again, to sort of, hedge against, you know, utilities outages.

And and, and then also understanding that most of our bases were built, in World War two time frame, several of them in this area before that. And so that, those distribution systems are aged, and it's time. I I don't think, that's an uncommon thing for universities, for, for... I'm sure that counties and and cities are, you know, are all having sort of a similar problem where, certainly, things that are underground, they don't... People don't wanna spend the money on underground stuff until they do.

It's like I joke that nobody cares about wastewater until they care, and then they really care. You know? So it's it's getting after trying to prioritize, you know, a long list of worthy requirements to to to try to recapitalize those utilities generation and distribution systems to to to try to, again, bolster the the reliability of, you know, our infrastructure as it provides key support to the the mission owners, those warfighters that I talked about. We're in the business... In the end, we're in the business of preparing for conflict.

And so the... To the extent that our infrastructure can be trusted and counted upon, that's, you know, that's that's our role here at NAVFAC. And, you know, I think it's, again, common threads that we're probably seeing across the services, but we're on on those things I just mentioned.

So one of the biggest things impacting construction in general and projects is, and I know with appropriations and budget approvals is supply chains and the delays that they're causing. And then on top of that, with that, I guess, is inflation and it's an impact on the cost of doing business in the construction engineering industry. How is NavFac navigating that? Are you are you feeling that yet? And and maybe that's more in the out years, but talk to us about that.

Oh, it's it's right now, and absolutely, we're we're feeling that. And, you know, we are in close partnership with the association of general contractors and tracking, you know, some of those important metrics and and other other, agencies that that, look after those cost indexes so that as we develop and, package up and define the the requirements of a project, we understand what those costs are gonna be. So a couple of things that we're doing now is hiring additional cost engineers. So people who are who are trained in cost engineering to to get better estimates. I mean, our our people do a reasonably good job, but, in this environment in particular, it's important to really understand, hey.

What are the cost drivers in this specific project gonna be? So understanding those cost drivers best. Also, having a tiered approach to the, to those estimates. And and there's, you know, there's a there's a system for this that we're adopting, the industry uses. I won't remember it well, but suffice it to say, we're we're we're definitely latching on to some of the industry techniques as a as a a level one, level two, level three estimate.

And and the confidence factors when you start at the at the beginning is about a 50% cost, you know, the... Or sorry, 50% confidence factor. And as you refine and as you do additional cost engineering and you do additional design, as the design becomes more clear, then you can go back and say, okay. Now let's update the cost again, and that gets us into a cost schedule risk analysis. You know?

And and the interplay between cost and time is obviously huge. So we're we're on those bigger projects that are, you know, multimillions. In in many cases, we have some now in that effect that are in the billions, literally, single projects that are over 1,000,000,000. And those right now are are in our our public shipyards to do... To recapitalize dry docks for nuclear maintenance of submarines and and aircraft carriers.

We... We've got... We're applying those techniques of of CSRA, the cost schedule risk analysis, to, you know, try to do the best we can and and being predictable. And so when we say, hey. The program amount should be x, that we have a confidence factor associated with it.

And and also, it's requiring a, even on top of that, a bit of a, an additional contingency, because as we we have seen, the market's changing pretty quickly. In the government, and you remember this if if you were, you know, doing it, in the services that the timing and the the long ramp to funding, it doesn't lend itself very well to this current market. Yeah. And we're typically creating estimates three years in advance. And and it's my assertion that, you know, congress expects us that to get to get it right.

But in some ways, it's just in today's environment, it's a little bit unrealistic, to expect that something that was developed three years ago and considered budget ready when it finally gets appropriated three years later, well, so a number of things will have changed. And so we're we're we're playing smarter. We're also, trying to structure our our contracts in a way that will, you know, allow us to have options, and and we we really get down to the the brass tack scope, of what what is the minimum viable project. Right? So what's the...

Truly, like, making some hard decisions on, hey. What's... What are the most important elements of this this, this program, this project? And so not not to maybe kinda using it as the, hey. Well, this is our chance.

It's like, no. We're gonna make the hardest decisions. We're gonna we're gonna set a you know, a critical, you know, critical set of scope elements, and then, you know, we'll we'll chase all of the program that we want, but knowing that when it comes time to do the the, the procurement, there may be some, you know, some things that need to say, hey, we're going to set this aside because we have our minimum viable project.

So so real time... I mean, I want to... For for our non DOD folks, you know, the the process is what what Captain Hunt's talking about is a thirteen ninety one... DD thirteen ninety one is where a requirements document in the first phase of rough order magnitude costing or estimating comes in. And as as you would want as a stewardship of the public dollar, the the, you know, NAVFAC is responsible for gathering that information from a mission and and then sending that up for competition or prioritization or triaging from, you know, Navy budget office up to up to the Pentagon.

But the timeline is really a three year window that projects compete and move through the palm. Captain Hong, correct me on anything that, you know, I may be a little outdated here. And then the projects get approved and author... Or authorized, and then what's... I always confuse this because a project that's authorized doesn't necessarily mean that it's funded.

So you have to have authorization and funding. Correct. And then and then And appropriation.

Yeah. Authorization and appropriation.

There you go. I knew there was two a's. And then it can go into construction. And what Captain Hans is talking about is once it's back in the field to the navfac command or, you know, the construction team, and I call it the team because you've got the NAVFAC or the government side and the contractor. Everybody's on the same page.

Contractor competed for the job. They want to go execute the mission and support NAVFAC. NAVFAC has to be the steward of the public investment there, and they're trying to manage those costs and the schedules to deliver for the mission. But in real time, inflation's happening and labor market's going crazy. So the only option you really have is to start descoping and really prioritize what does the mission need.

So talk to us about leadership lessons at your level right now, I want to hear where things are going because you get to be the stucky between Congress appropriating and the mission not getting everything that was on their wish list because of what's going on and you become the bad guy.

Right. I I I think that's, that's... I kind of see it in a similar way. It's it's not necessarily, an easy place to be, but I think that, what I find is that engineers in general are able to, you know, just be pragmatic and kinda lay it flat and stick to the facts, and, and the facts will win the day. So our ability to communicate what we consider to be, hey.

These are what we would advise are the most critical elements and having those kind of conversations on, you know, what are things that, you know, would still allow for the mission to continue and and create a complete and usable project and complete and usable facility because we want for those taxpayer dollars to deliver the, you know, the the intended, outcome. It... It's, aligning those expectations can be tough. And one of the things that we've found, successful and we're able to do it on some of our... Most of our bigger projects, In fact, we do it on all of our big projects, is a is a...

Called the governance team. And so we have we have three three levels. It's project level team, which you might imagine is the construction manager and the the the officer that's in charge of the construction office. It would be the the contractors, their on-site construction manager, and then there'll be mission owners that participate, at the site. So consider it the...

It would be someone higher than a building manager for certain, but, but somebody who's, you know, kind of in a... At a medium level of the organization, that's the PLT. And then there's an executive level team, which is typically at the the o five and o six level. So that's... And I guess if you like GSs, you would be a GS 14, GS 15 level that would have a monthly battle rhythm of, hey.

Here's how this is going. We have to make these decisions or we're having this challenge. And so the PLT, the project team, elevates the ELT. And then quarterly is a senior level team, which is made up of flag and general officers at that level, and senior executives in the in the corporation, for the contractor where you're at the VP level, at least, sometimes it could be higher. It might even be the the CEO themselves depending on the firm.

And and so we find that, you know, the ability to fix or elevate is is good, and there's a communication ladder that's established at, at the initial kickoff meeting for the project to, you know, ensure everybody understands the communication ladders, that that will then be implemented when it comes time to make these kinda hard choices. And and that it's, it's, you know, setting the tone early at a very senior level in the project, that it's our project, everyone. It's it's the the the NAFAC government. It's the the mission owner government, and it's the contractor. Together, it's it's a shared responsibility.

It's shared risks. And, you know, it's a kind of the next level of partnering, I would say, that helps us to, to try to manage some of those difficult conversations, you know, about, hey. What should we do in this case? How do we manage the the... What we're gonna deliver?

So I I hopefully that kinda got after your

It does. And I I wanna highlight that because, you know, we've we've had a number of guests that talk about it from the owner side as well as the private sector side. But I think to your point, the senior executives setting the tone that it is our project and that we're here to to, you know, if it was easy, we wouldn't have jobs. Let's start there. And and it's our job to navigate through whatever's going on in the environment, you know, and and, you know, a contractor has to bid it and make a fair profit and provide for their labor force and get things done.

So I think maintaining those lines of communication and constantly managing expectations and then solving the problems. And I agree, engineers are way better at being pragmatic than some of the owners we've dealt with that are emotional and you know, I I want it and I want it now, you know, type mindset. So I think that's... I think it's a great leadership lesson at all levels that, you know, engineers, you need to be able to rely on on the logic and the pragmatics, but you also have to be able to communicate and manage expectations.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I I I... Another one I I like to...

It's overly simplistic, but, know, the triangle. Right? Cheap, fast, and good. That's right. Any two.

I used... And then when I was in Afghanistan when I was in Afghanistan, I said pick one if you're lucky. I helped with the Afghan National Police, to build build out their infrastructure for a year over there, but all over the place. But...

Yeah. Inspiring People in Places is brought to you by MCFA. MCFA is a CVE verified, service disabled, veteran owned small business. At MCFA, our why is to inspire people in places through project leadership. We provide planning, strategy, program management and construction management support services to a wide variety of public and private sector clients.

So switching gears a little bit, what do you do outside of the office? Family family, nonprofits, hobbies? What are you involved in?

No. Thanks for asking. I, I had a number of years. So I have, I have three older boys. Mentioned I have my my my second lieutenant son and, you know, and then he has two two brothers.

One's in in, so Ethan's out at Wright Patterson, and then my my middle son is in Tennessee, and my youngest is at University of Washington, my youngest son. And I have a six year old daughter. So my... She's my, my my happy surprise. And so I definitely...

I really enjoyed her and, you know, helping her learn to read and count and all the different things. But I did spend a number of years in scouting. I'm I'm an Eagle Scout and spent a good five or six years really pretty heavily involved in in in boy scouts and serving as, you know, assistant scoutmaster and a scoutmaster and pretty heavily involved in the troop. I'm a runner. I've run probably...

I should know the number. I wanna say it's 14 marathons. But Oh, wow. I I haven't done a lot of I haven't done a lot of rowing, unfortunately, although I do miss it because running is just very logistically easy. Had done a number of triathlons, but, been a few years since I've done the the triathlons.

But, yeah, running is kinda my, that's my centering activity, I guess. If, the chips are down, I need to clear my head and, you know, it's time to go for a run. And so I enjoy doing that. And, you know, I like to camp and and be out. I like to be outside, so that's that's one thing.

And I also like to cook. So Uh-huh. I'm not I'm not too shabby in the kitchen. I'm not sure I'll open a restaurant, but... And try to sell food, but but I'm not half bad in the kitchen either.

So

Are you in charge of Thanksgiving dinner?

Well, it's funny you should ask. I I like to smoke my turkey. So I've got a a green egg, and and so and so my build... My routine on Thanksgiving morning is to is to get up, light that that smoker, put the bird on, and then I go off to, there's a five miler in Alexandria here, so the turkey trot. And, my my daughter's in the jogger, and she rides.

I push her, and then we come back and check on the bird. So looking forward to that.

That's awesome. Favorite quote?

So, George C Marshall, it's amazing what you can get done if you don't worry about who gets the credit.

It's a great quote.

I mean, I I think it speaks for itself.

It's all about the team.

Ah, absolutely. Absolutely. Again, kinda back to the pragmatics that we are. I think engineers are great at it. And, I mentioned Afghanistan, and I really enjoyed working in the combined joint, environment where we had a...

We called it CJ Enge, there at Camp Eggers in in, Kabul. And we had French, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese, and and this... All from different services. And then we had Air Force, Army, and and Navy engineers, all of us working together, Australians and and Brits. And it was amazing, though we all came from very different backgrounds to extend my my comment about, you know, purple and how engineers are are cut from the same cloth.

It holds true. Intern... Internationally holds true. And it was kind of amazing. It's like, wow.

You know, you kinda... It's like if you're born to be an engineer, then, you know, you think a certain way. And and, so it's kinda cool to see how how much we have in common despite, you know, geographic and cultural different... And language differences. So...

Yeah. That's cool. How about must read books?

Boys in the Boat. I mean, again, I'm sticking with the... I mean, just...

Right. You're the second person I think in in a month that has said that.

Oh, is that right? I I will admit I'm not the most voracious reader, so, it's obviously been a while since that one came out, but, it is one of my favorites. I like Undaunted Courage too, but, but, but there's not, to me, clear example of teamwork than watching an eight man shell with the coxswain, you know, do its thing. I mean, it's just still... There's no superstars.

You know? There's no quarterbacks. There's no point scoring. It's it's, it's fully team. So

And grueling.

Yeah. Well, that that too. It's not for the faint of heart. It's, yeah. People wonder like, man, that seems like it wouldn't be very interesting.

It's like, well, you could be kind of right about that.

So I I was a swimmer and, you know, people say the same thing. You stare at a black line and just go back and forth all day. So misery loves company, something like that. Dead or alive, if you could hang out with three people for a day, who would they be? What would you do?

Man, so, I will admit I'm not maybe the most prepared to answer this well. There's a number that that that come to mind, you know, kinda sticking with the, one of the... Actually, of the people that comes to mind is, is Shackleton. So, you know, he's an explorer, and, kinda reading. Again, I didn't mention any books about him, but just Endors.

How he and his his right hand man, you know, what... How they overcame adversity. You know? So when I think about... Think I'm having a bad day and things are hard and, gosh, these projects, they're not going smoothly.

I think about old Shackleton, and it's like, that was literally life or death. And, he was able to, you know, maintain a positive attitude and do some problem solving. You know? So that's that's that's a guy I would, what what I would do. I'm...

I know exactly. Just be able to, you know, have conversations and, you know, maybe maybe go on a on a hike with a guy like that. So that... That's one that comes to mind. Another one is, you know, from a, again, from a leadership, things that could be learned, grace under pressure is is Winston Churchill, you know, about, again, being able to, to to maintain clarity and to keep a team focused and moving forward, in the face of very extreme adversity.

You know, it's... I think he's a he's a he's a good example. Trying to think, trying to think who else. Actually, you know, my my grandmother, who, who lived to be 92, and she passed away in, gosh, oh, I don't know. I think it was 2013.

It's been ten years now. But I I I I often say that... And she was sharp till the day she she she left us. But I often say I... She was born in the wrong century because I really wonder what would she do with the op...

You know, the way that... Now there are much... There's more opportunities. There should be a lot more opportunities, but there are more opportunities, for women, than there will say that there were in her era, you know, born before the depression and lived through that. And and so, you know, being able to go back to, you know, baking, she taught me how to make pie crust and and and some other things and just, you know, make some jelly with her, I guess.

I know it sounds like the most random thing, but but... And just talk about, you know, what what would she do if she could do some of the things that, you know, we watch some great female leaders out there, you know, in industry and and in in government, you know, that we're we're seeing some really impressive people out there come to the fore. And I just wonder, would she be the first woman president if she was born in the right right time? I, you know, I So don't I I just think, a really, really amazing person.

So Sounds like a special lady. To wrap us up, legacy, what do you want on your tombstone? How do you wanna be remembered?

Team builder. Right? I think that's the that's the bottom line. Team builder, the the leg... You know, it's in it...

As far as a legacy, I I guess I don't, I just... Well, first of all, I hope that my my four children are good citizens and good people, kind of helpful and humble. That's my that's my pitch with my boys and my daughters. Like, hey. You wanna...

Those are three things you gotta be when you... As you as you... Doesn't matter how old you are, where you are, what you do. Do those three things. But but I think, somebody who is a, a unifying force, I think...

I hope that's how I'm remembered as somebody who brings people together, you know, and, again, kind of developing a common purpose and and, you know, that... And I guess implicit in that is is inspires a team to do maybe a little bit more than they thought they they could.

That's awesome. And then to close us out, any any words our audience spans, engineers coming right out of college up to senior executives of private sector and public agencies. Any words of wisdom that you want to close us out with to the industry?

Well, for the industry, I guess I'll I'll I'll say we need, innovators. We need people who can can push us to break from what we're comfortable with as builders and maintainers. We we need to think differently. We have seen some opportunity in working through the pandemic. You know, what the new normal is, I'm not really sure.

But, certainly, it's taught us that we can leverage technologies like this one we're using right here, to to collaborate, to to, again, to maybe build teams and and to, to solve problems. And and so how do we use space? Right? How should we use space? And I think there's some responsible choices that we can make.

And our our DOD is... Struggles with divestiture, I guess, to put it really kinda succinctly. I I would love it if we could actually have money for demolition, and we could, you know, get rid of stuff at its intended service life. But but I do think that, we're at a point now where as we look at what we what we are able to do, in '20... We'll just say in May 2020 when we're...

Many of us were in lockdown is... It's amazing. So, you know, what what is the... What's the kind of the the... What does about right look like as it relates to the amount of brick and mortar that we should be using?

How much face to face interaction should we have? Because I believe that's important as well. But, certainly, we don't wanna revert to how we were in 2019 before the pandemic. We probably don't wanna go back to how we were in in in May 2020 either. You know?

So what what... What's that middle ground, and what should we be seeking to try to to to, you know, reduce our our footprint, you know, to put it simply. So that's a that's a maybe a word... Food for thought, and and I... I'm seeking any advice that other agencies, other organizations have found successful.

We're doing some of that on our own here, but it would be great if we could get our DOD to really latch onto that.

Yeah. No, that's a great topic and and you know, talk about the office of the future and and what does that look like? And then, you know, I I always say that the AEC industry stands for archaic, expensive and complicated. Any any way we can be innovating in in what what can be a a slower adoption to innovation industry, I think is is always good food for thought. So thank you.

Thank you, Captain Holland for for being on inspiring people and places. We we really appreciate your time and insights. And go army, beat navy.

Beat army.

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