Speaker 1: Imagine you are tasked with building like a billion dollar,
Speaker 1: state of the art hospital right in the middle of
Speaker 1: a dense urban center. You've got the absolute best architects
Speaker 1: and top tier structural engineers, and mathematically the structural model
Speaker 1: they design is flawless. Every single steel beam is accounted
Speaker 1: for right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, on paper, it looks perfect.
Speaker 1: Exactly, But structurally the project is just completely doomed because
Speaker 1: while the industry has totally perfected the physical science of
Speaker 1: steel and concrete, it often completely ignores the chaotic, messy
Speaker 1: human friction required to actually put those materials together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is the ultimate paradox of civil engineering. And
Speaker 2: we look at a skyscraper and we see this triumph
Speaker 2: of material science, but we don't see the underlying organizational landscape,
Speaker 2: which is frankly incredibly fragile. So mastering the technical side
Speaker 2: of building a bridge or a high rise is truly
Speaker 2: only half the battle. The other half, and arguably the
Speaker 2: much harder half, is understanding the behavioral systems in the
Speaker 2: psychology that let completely diverse teams actually work.
Speaker 1: Together without the whole thing collapsing into litigation. Exactly Well,
Speaker 1: whether you are an engineering student prepping for an exam
Speaker 1: or a young professional trying to navigate your first major
Speaker 1: site without losing your mind. You are in the right place. Today,
Speaker 1: we're doing a deep dive into a truly foundational text
Speaker 1: for anyone in this industry. It's the sixth edition of
Speaker 1: Anthony Walker's Project Management in Construction, and Walker's.
Speaker 2: Work is just essential because it forces this massive shift
Speaker 2: in perspective. You know, it doesn't teach you how to
Speaker 2: calculate sheer stress on a load bearing wall.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you already know how to do that.
Speaker 2: Right, It teaches you how to architect the human organization
Speaker 2: that will eventually place that wall.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this because if we want to understand
Speaker 1: how to manage a modern megaproject, we first have to
Speaker 1: look at the historical blueprint of the industry, right, Like,
Speaker 1: why is it structured in such a uniquely fragmented way today?
Speaker 2: Well, to understand that fragmentation, we actually have to go
Speaker 2: back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to the era
Speaker 2: of the master buildings.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, okay, going way back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, think of monumental figures like Isn'm barred? Kingdom Brunell
Speaker 2: in the UK, he engineered the Great Western Railway and
Speaker 2: Brunell was just a polymath.
Speaker 1: He essentially held the entire vision of a massive infrastructure
Speaker 1: project just inside his head.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, he designed the bridges, he sourced the iron, he
Speaker 2: surveyed the land, and he directly managed the labor. So
Speaker 2: there was no fragmentation because the entire system literally ran
Speaker 2: through one person's brain.
Speaker 1: Right. But I mean, you just can't have a Brunell
Speaker 1: for a modern, multi billion dollar international airport.
Speaker 2: No, not at all.
Speaker 1: The Industrial Revolution just completely shattered that model.
Speaker 2: It did precisely because the Industrial Revolution triggered this unprecedented
Speaker 2: explosion in technological complexity.
Speaker 1: Right, Suddenly society needed vast housing tracks and deep level
Speaker 1: sewage systems and mechanized factories.
Speaker 2: Plus entirely new materials were emerging. Yeah, produce steel and
Speaker 2: reinforced concrete. So it just became physically and cognitively impossible
Speaker 2: for one single master builder.
Speaker 1: To know everything, which forces intense specialization exactly.
Speaker 2: And here is the critical pivoting construction history. As these
Speaker 2: professionals specialized, they formed highly exclusive clubs to protect their
Speaker 2: trade secrets and their social status.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the sources mentioned architectural clubs forming as early as
Speaker 1: seventeen ninety one, and civil engineer clubs even earlier in
Speaker 1: seventeen seventy.
Speaker 2: One, right, and those informal clubs they quickly solidified into
Speaker 2: very rigid professional institutions. So architects positioned themselves as the
Speaker 2: absolute elite. They are concerned purely with esthetics and spatial
Speaker 2: design and prestige.
Speaker 1: While civil engineers were viewed a bit differently.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were associated more heavily with raw trade and
Speaker 2: mathematics and a heavy industry. Then you had quantity surveyors
Speaker 2: occupying an entirely different run to manage finances.
Speaker 1: And the actual builders, like the contractors executing the physical work,
Speaker 1: were seen as mere tradesmen right exactly.
Speaker 2: I mean, for a very long time, an architect in
Speaker 2: the UK could not even hold a profit making position
Speaker 2: in a building firm and retain their professional membership.
Speaker 1: That is wild. So they literally built institutional walls between themselves.
Speaker 1: The architects refuse to get their hands dirty with the
Speaker 1: business of building, and the builders were locked out of
Speaker 1: the design phase.
Speaker 2: Yes, and this historical divide created what Walker calls the
Speaker 2: conventional method. It is a highly compartmentalized linear system where
Speaker 2: the design process is entirely divorced from the construction process.
Speaker 1: So the architect designs the building in a vacuum, finishes
Speaker 1: the blueprints, and just hands them off precisely.
Speaker 2: Then a contractor is hired, usually through competitive tendering, which
Speaker 2: just means whoever bids the lowest price gets the job
Speaker 2: and they.
Speaker 1: Have to actually figure out how to build it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I really like the analogy Walker uses early on to
Speaker 1: distinguish between two concepts that people always seem to confuse,
Speaker 1: like organization versus management.
Speaker 2: Oh, yes, that's a great distinction. Right.
Speaker 1: So, if a modern construction project is a computer, the
Speaker 1: organization is the hardware. It's the motherboard, the wiring, the
Speaker 1: static pattern of authority. But management is the operating system.
Speaker 1: It's the dynamic engine, the moment to moment decisions that
Speaker 1: actually force the hardware to do something useful.
Speaker 2: And under that conventional method we just talked about, the
Speaker 2: hardware is fundamentally broken. Right When you have these highly specialized,
Speaker 2: siloed experts who view themselves as belonging to separate professions
Speaker 2: rather than a single project team, you need a distinct
Speaker 2: operating system to force them to.
Speaker 1: Collaborate because they won't do it naturally exactly.
Speaker 2: Walker realized that management couldn't just be a passive phase
Speaker 2: of construction. It had to be its own independent science.
Speaker 1: Wait, though, if the hardware is broken, and we've known
Speaker 1: it's broken for decades, why hasn't the industry just fixed it?
Speaker 1: Because you look at all these famous government commissioner reports
Speaker 1: in the UK, like the Emerson Report, Banwell Latham, the
Speaker 1: Egen Report. They've been begging the construction industry to integrate
Speaker 1: for over half a century.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what's fascinating here is that those reports repeatedly failed
Speaker 2: because they treated the symptom and not the structural disease.
Speaker 2: What do you mean They essentially asked these fiercely independent,
Speaker 2: siloed professions to just play nice and collaborate better. But
Speaker 2: you are fighting centuries of entrenched professional identity.
Speaker 1: And financial structures that reward self interest.
Speaker 2: Exactly, you cannot just ask a fragmented organization to behave differently.
Speaker 2: You have to completely redesign the operating system.
Speaker 1: And because those traditional rigid or charts completely fail to
Speaker 1: handle the sheer complexity of a modern mega project, Walker
Speaker 1: argues we have to view projects through a totally different scientific.
Speaker 2: Lens right systems theory.
Speaker 1: Yes, specifically, viewing a project as an open system.
Speaker 2: Which is a huge shift because the traditional conventional view
Speaker 2: was essentially a closed system like a neat, predictable little
Speaker 2: box yeah, where the client pores money and eventually gets
Speaker 2: a building out the other side. But an open system
Speaker 2: recognizes that a project is actually a living organism. It
Speaker 2: interacts constantly with its.
Speaker 1: Environment, meaning it imports energy from that environment like capital,
Speaker 1: specialized skills, raw materials, and political goodwill.
Speaker 2: Yes, it transforms that energy through the chaotic process of construction,
Speaker 2: and then it exports an output, the finished facility, back
Speaker 2: into the environment.
Speaker 1: And that environment is never static, right, it's constantly throwing curveballs.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, economic markets crash mid build, new environmental regulations get passed,
Speaker 2: supply chains freese.
Speaker 1: Up, which introduces us to contingency theory.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is the foundational idea that there is absolutely
Speaker 2: no single best way to organize a project. It always
Speaker 2: depends exactly. The optimal organizational structure is entirely contingent upon
Speaker 2: the specific environmental forces acting on it at that exact moment.
Speaker 1: So if you are building a highly standardized warehouse out
Speaker 1: in a rural area in a stable economy, a traditional
Speaker 1: linear structure might work perfectly well it might.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But here's where it gets really interesting, because, as a
Speaker 1: young engineer listening to this, you might wonder, does this
Speaker 1: mean every single time we break ground on a new
Speaker 1: project we have to custom build a completely bespoke organizational
Speaker 1: chart from scratch, right? Or are there templates we can
Speaker 1: rely on?
Speaker 2: Well, standard templates absolutely exist, things like management, contracting, or
Speaker 2: design and build models. But applying a template blindly without
Speaker 2: assessing the environment is a guaranteed recipe for disaster.
Speaker 1: So you have to evaluate the context first. Right.
Speaker 2: This is the concept of contingency fit. You must match
Speaker 2: the flexibility of your organizational structure to the uncertainty of
Speaker 2: your task. Okay, if you force a rigid linear structure
Speaker 2: onto a highly innovative, deeply uncertain project, that system will fracture.
Speaker 2: Walker illustrates this using the concept of negative.
Speaker 1: Entropy, entropy being the fundamental law of physics that everything
Speaker 1: eventually degrades into chaos and disorder.
Speaker 2: Yes, in thermodynamics, a closed system inevitably degrades into chaos,
Speaker 2: but open systems, like biological organisms or highly functioning project teams,
Speaker 2: they can survive by importing more energy than they expand.
Speaker 1: So in project management terms, negative entropy means the system
Speaker 1: actively fights off chaos by selectively gathering information about its environment.
Speaker 2: And adapting its internal workings. It requires intense, real time
Speaker 2: feedback loops.
Speaker 1: Could you give me a tangible example of that on
Speaker 1: an actual job site.
Speaker 2: Sure. Imagine a massive high rise project. Yeah, suddenly a
Speaker 2: global geopolitical crisis causes a massive steel shortage.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, Okay, that's a big shock.
Speaker 2: Yeah. A closed, rigid organizational system doesn't have the mechanisms
Speaker 2: to process that external shock quickly. They just wait for
Speaker 2: the steal. The schedule bleeds money and the project stops.
Speaker 1: Right. But an open system with high negative entropy has
Speaker 1: feedback loops built into its management structure exactly.
Speaker 2: They sense the market shift early. They instantly pull the
Speaker 2: structural engineers and architects into a roomy of the design
Speaker 2: to reinforce concrete, and the project survives.
Speaker 1: And that kind of agility requires bringing all those different
Speaker 1: specialists together, which feels like a huge paradox. Oh so, well,
Speaker 1: to handle a complex environment, you need highly specialized experts, right,
Speaker 1: the acoustical engineer, the sustainability consultant, the curtain wall specialist.
Speaker 1: Walker calls this differentiation.
Speaker 2: Yes, you are breaking the project down into incredibly specific,
Speaker 2: highly technical parts.
Speaker 1: But the more you differentiate, the harder it becomes to
Speaker 1: put those parts back together.
Speaker 2: And that is the ultimate human engineering challenge. Integration the
Speaker 2: coordination required to unify those wildly different disciplines into a
Speaker 2: single functioning building.
Speaker 1: But how do you actually force integration when every expert
Speaker 1: essentially answers to a different master.
Speaker 2: That is the million dollar.
Speaker 1: Question, because on a modern job site, an engineer doesn't
Speaker 1: just have one boss. They are caught in the dreaded
Speaker 1: matrix management structure.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the matrix.
Speaker 1: If you are a structural engineer, you have your functional
Speaker 1: boss back at your home engineering firm. That person pays
Speaker 1: your salary, decides your bonus, evaluates your career trajectory. But
Speaker 1: you also have the project manager on the actual construction
Speaker 1: site who is demanding your immediate time and energy to
Speaker 1: keep this specific building on schedule.
Speaker 2: And it creates a massive, inherent conflict of interest. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I bet a specialized firm's corporate goals, like maximizing their
Speaker 2: own profit margins, keeping their best staff utilized across multiple
Speaker 2: different jobs, those will inevitably clash with the project's goals.
Speaker 1: Which are simply completing this specific facility on time and
Speaker 1: on budget for the client exactly. Let's look at a
Speaker 1: real world scenario to show how this friction plays out.
Speaker 1: Imagine a major contractor owns a highly specialized, critical piece
Speaker 1: of heavy machinery like a massive tower crane. Okay, they
Speaker 1: have a deployed on Project A. Project A is slightly
Speaker 1: behind schedule, but the contractor's con on that job doesn't
Speaker 1: include liquidated damages.
Speaker 2: Which are those massive financial penalties applied for every single
Speaker 2: day a project is late.
Speaker 1: Exactly. Now, the contractor also has Project B across town,
Speaker 1: which does carry severe liquidated damages. What happens to the crane.
Speaker 2: Well, the contractor's executive team will pull that crane off
Speaker 2: Project A and move it to Project B.
Speaker 1: To protect their own company's profit.
Speaker 2: Margins, yes, and avoid the penalties, completely screwing over Project
Speaker 2: a's timeline. This happens constantly.
Speaker 1: That's crazy, and.
Speaker 2: This dynamic is exactly why Walker argues the true project
Speaker 2: manager must be entirely independent of the contributing firms.
Speaker 1: So they can't work for the contractor.
Speaker 2: Right If the project manager is an employee of the contractor,
Speaker 2: their ultimate allegiance is always to the contractor's bottom line.
Speaker 2: The title of project manager should have a reserved.
Speaker 1: Meaning a professional whose sole allegiance is to the client exactly.
Speaker 2: They must act as an independent objective tie breaker to
Speaker 2: resolve these matrix conflicts, completely insulated from the entrepreneurial interests
Speaker 2: of the designers or builders.
Speaker 1: Okay, so their ultimate legions must be to the client.
Speaker 1: But who exactly is the client?
Speaker 2: That was a great point.
Speaker 1: We constantly talk about satisfying the client's objectives, but Walker
Speaker 1: points out that simply figuring out who the client actually
Speaker 1: is can be the most complex part of the entire job.
Speaker 2: Because the client is almost never a single human being
Speaker 2: with a unified vision. It is often a highly complex
Speaker 2: system of competing interests.
Speaker 1: Like if you are building a new wing for a hospital,
Speaker 1: the client is technically the hospital's board of directors.
Speaker 2: Technically yes, but the stakeholders making demands include the chief
Speaker 2: surgeons who want top tier, multimillion dollar imaging.
Speaker 1: Equipment and the nursing staff who need highly efficient floor
Speaker 1: plans to monitor patients.
Speaker 2: Plus the government regulators demanding specific environmental compliance, and the
Speaker 2: local community protesting the increase in traffic.
Speaker 1: Not to mention, the finance department aggressively trying to cut
Speaker 1: the budget exactly. So, as an independent project manager, you
Speaker 1: have to extract a single, unified set of objectives from
Speaker 1: that absolute mess of competing voices.
Speaker 2: Which is why Walker breaks down the life cycle of
Speaker 2: a project into three universal subsystems to help make sense
Speaker 2: of it all.
Speaker 1: Right, First, this conception, which is identifying the fundamental business need.
Speaker 2: Second is inception, deciding exactly what kind of physical project
Speaker 2: will satisfy that need.
Speaker 1: And third is realization. The actual design and physical construction, and.
Speaker 2: Mapped directly onto those three subsystems is a crucial division
Speaker 2: of labor. You have the managing system and the operating system, right.
Speaker 1: The operating system consists of the people doing the actual
Speaker 1: technical work, the architects drafting the blueprints, the engineers calculating
Speaker 1: the loads, the contractors pouring the concrete.
Speaker 2: And the managing system sits completely above them. They are
Speaker 2: the individuals making the high level strategic decisions, setting the
Speaker 2: business objectives, and regulating the entire process.
Speaker 1: Wait that that feels totally counterintuitive.
Speaker 2: How so?
Speaker 1: Well, if the head civil engineer were the lead architect
Speaker 1: understands the technical reality of the building better than anyone else,
Speaker 1: why wouldn't we want them leading the whole process from
Speaker 1: day one, right from the conception phase.
Speaker 2: It is a very common trap, and letting the technical
Speaker 2: experts lead conception is a recipe for strategic failure. Really yeah,
Speaker 2: because the early conception phase is fundamentally a business decision,
Speaker 2: not a construction decision. Imagine a massive logistics company realizes
Speaker 2: they have a capacity problem. They just cannot process orders
Speaker 2: fast enough. Okay, If they bring an architect in to
Speaker 2: lead the conception phase, the architect will automatically say, you
Speaker 2: need to build a massive new.
Speaker 1: Distribution center, right, because designing buildings is what an architect does, exactly.
Speaker 2: But an independent managing system, looking holistically at the business
Speaker 2: environment might analyze the data and realize, actually, you don't
Speaker 2: need a new building at all. You just need to
Speaker 2: invest in new software to optimize your existing supply chain.
Speaker 1: Or simply lease a warehouse down the street.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 1: Wow. So if you let the operating system, the builder
Speaker 1: and designers lead the conception phase, you will always end
Speaker 1: up building something, even.
Speaker 2: If building something is the entirely wrong answer for the
Speaker 2: client's actual business need.
Speaker 1: That makes so much sense. That's exactly why the managing
Speaker 1: system must remain structurally separate from the technical operating system.
Speaker 2: Right, the managing system decides if we build and what
Speaker 2: we build to solve the business problem. The operating system
Speaker 2: is then activated to figure out how to build it.
Speaker 1: So what does this all mean for you the listener?
Speaker 1: If you are a young professional stepping onto a chaotic
Speaker 1: site for the first time. All of this theory about
Speaker 1: open systems and matrix conflicts can sound great in a university.
Speaker 2: Lecture, but you need to know how to use it exactly.
Speaker 1: How do you actually map this out when you're staring
Speaker 1: down a real world matrix of angry subcontractors and tight deadlines.
Speaker 2: This is where Walker transitions from high level theory to
Speaker 2: intensely practical tools. He introduces linear responsibility analysis or LRA.
Speaker 1: What does that look like in practice?
Speaker 2: It is a graphical tool used to map out exactly
Speaker 2: who does what and who answers to whom within this
Speaker 2: complex matrix. You basically create a comprehensive grid.
Speaker 1: Right on one axis you list every single task required.
Speaker 2: And on the other axes you list every job position.
Speaker 2: But instead of just putting a generic X in a
Speaker 2: box to show someone is involved, use specific symbols to
Speaker 2: define the exact behavioral nature of their relationship to that task.
Speaker 1: So a triangle might indicate this person has general oversight.
Speaker 2: Yes, a diamond means they perform boundary control.
Speaker 1: A square means they are strictly monitoring the progress.
Speaker 2: And a circle means they're the one who actually does
Speaker 2: the work. It forces absolute clarity on a granular level.
Speaker 1: That's super helpful.
Speaker 2: But the true power of LRA is that it maps
Speaker 2: out the interdependencies between tasks. Walker highlights two critical types
Speaker 2: of interdependency here.
Speaker 1: Sequential interdependency is relatively simple. Right, task A must finish
Speaker 1: completely before task B can start.
Speaker 2: Right, you must pour the concrete foundation before you can
Speaker 2: frame the steel walls.
Speaker 1: But recip all interdependency is where projects live or die.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: This is when task A and task B must be
Speaker 1: done simultaneously, with critical information constantly passing back and forth.
Speaker 2: Imagine an architect and a structural engineer trying to figure
Speaker 2: out the load bearing capacity of a completely novel twisted
Speaker 2: glass facade.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I can already see the headache. Right.
Speaker 2: The architect tweaks the curve, which changes the load, So
Speaker 2: the engineer recalculates the steel, which changes the esthetics so
Speaker 2: the architect tweaks the curve again. They have to iterate constantly.
Speaker 1: And if we connect this to the bigger picture, this
Speaker 1: raises an important question how much time, money, and human
Speaker 1: energy is wasted just managing that reciprocal back and forth.
Speaker 2: Which introduces transaction cost economics or TCE into construction management.
Speaker 1: Right, because in construction, your production costs are the physical bricks,
Speaker 1: the mortar.
Speaker 2: And the labor, but your transaction costs are the friction.
Speaker 2: It is the time spent managing contracts, writing endless requests
Speaker 2: for information, resolving legal disputes, and try to bridge the
Speaker 2: communication gaps.
Speaker 1: Because remember what we established earlier, they are all in
Speaker 1: their own historical silos, fiercely protecting their own profit margins.
Speaker 2: Exactly if the architect and the engineer belong to different firms,
Speaker 2: every single tweak to that twisted glass facade becomes a
Speaker 2: battle over who is absorbing the cost of the redesign.
Speaker 1: And that friction is a massive transaction cost.
Speaker 2: Right. By understanding transaction cost economics, a young professional stop
Speaker 2: seeing a contract is just a pile of boring legal paperwork.
Speaker 1: They start seeing the contract as a behavioral tool.
Speaker 2: Yes, it is a deliberate organizational design choice aimed at
Speaker 2: lowering human friction, which.
Speaker 1: Is exactly why we have seen the rise of modern
Speaker 1: procurement structures like design and build or partnering right Exactly.
Speaker 2: They evolve specifically to lower transaction costs by forcing the
Speaker 2: architect and the contractor into the same financial boat, aligning
Speaker 2: their incentives from day one so they stop fighting each other.
Speaker 1: And using that linear responsibility analysis chart helps you visually
Speaker 1: identify the pinch point.
Speaker 2: Yes, when you look at the grid and see a
Speaker 2: dense cluster of reciprocal interdependencies between two fiercely independent firms,
Speaker 2: you know exactly where communication is most likely to break down, so.
Speaker 1: You can preemptively focus your management energy right there before
Speaker 1: the friction turns into a lawsuit.
Speaker 2: You are no longer guessing about human behavior, you are
Speaker 2: anticipating the friction and designing an operating system to resolve
Speaker 2: it before the sparks start flying on site.
Speaker 1: This has been incredibly eye opening to distill our key takeaways. Today.
Speaker 1: Construction project management is emphatically not just filling in a
Speaker 1: gaunt chart or tracking a spreadsheet.
Speaker 2: Not at all.
Speaker 1: It is the dynamic, scientific management of a temporary, highly
Speaker 1: complex matrix organization. The ultimate goal is to take fragmented, specialized,
Speaker 1: fiercely independent firms and align them into a single, open
Speaker 1: system entirely dedicated to the client's true business objective.
Speaker 2: And achieving that alignment requires constantly reading the external environment,
Speaker 2: mathematically mapping the independencies of your team, and actively managing
Speaker 2: the transaction costs that naturally arise when humans try to
Speaker 2: collaborate on massively complex tasks.
Speaker 1: As promised, we want to give you a short review
Speaker 1: exercise to reinforce what you have learned today.
Speaker 2: Grab a piece of paper.
Speaker 1: Think of a very basic construction task, like pouring a
Speaker 1: concrete foundation. Sketch out a Mani linear responsibility matrix. On
Speaker 1: the top axis list the client, the independent project manager,
Speaker 1: the structural engineer, and the general contractor.
Speaker 2: And on the side axis list the specific steps required
Speaker 2: to pour that concrete. Now to find who has approval,
Speaker 2: who exercises monitoring, and who actually does the work.
Speaker 1: Pay very close attention to where the boundaries overlap. Look
Speaker 1: for the reciprocal interdependencies. Who absolutely needs to talk to
Speaker 1: whom before a single drop of concrete can actually be poured.
Speaker 2: It fundamentally changes how you see a.
Speaker 1: Job site, it really does, And before we go, we
Speaker 1: want to leave you with a final provocative thought. Throughout
Speaker 1: this deep dive, we've talked about the managing system as
Speaker 1: a fundamental mentally human activity.
Speaker 2: Right resolving matrix conflicts, mapping interdependencies, reading the unpredictable environment.
Speaker 1: But we are currently witnessing the rapid rise of building
Speaker 1: information modeling or BIM and artificial intelligence in construction.
Speaker 2: Which are at their core massive automated feedback loops and
Speaker 2: flawless integration tools.
Speaker 1: So if an AI algorithm can perfectly map those interdependencies
Speaker 1: across thousands of variables, track transaction costs in real time,
Speaker 1: instantly calculate environmental contingencies, and provide flawless feedback loops.
Speaker 2: Will the human project manager eventually become obsolete?
Speaker 1: Will the managing system become entirely digitized, leaving human engineers
Speaker 1: as nothing more than the physical operating system blindly executing
Speaker 1: the algorithm's design.
Speaker 2: It is a profound question. I mean, if the chaotic,
Speaker 2: messy human organization we've been discussing can eventually be perfectly
Speaker 2: modeled and corrected by software, where does the human leader
Speaker 2: actually fit in?
Speaker 1: It makes you wonder. We started by talking about the clean,
Speaker 1: comforting precision of the physics behind a skyscraper versus the murky,
Speaker 1: chaotic human organization required to build it. Maybe the ultimate
Speaker 1: organizational structure of the future won't just look like a
Speaker 1: pristine mathematical model. Maybe it will actually be one something
Speaker 1: for you to ponder on your next site visit. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us on this deep dive