November 17, 2025 • 53 mins
What does it take to build one of the world’s largest oil & gas greenfields? ⛽️
Project Controls leader Tarun Gohel takes us behind the scenes of the $20B West Qurna 2 Project, a massive upstream program spanning Iraq, Dubai, South Korea, Italy, and beyond.
In this episode of The Major Project Podcast, Orion speaks with Tarun Gohel—a project controls and planning leader whose career spans India, Kazakhstan, Ghana, Dubai, and now the U.S. Tarun pulls back the curtain on one of the largest oil and gas greenfield developments on the planet: the $20 billion West Qurna 2 Project in Iraq.
Tarun shares how he went from piping designer to senior project controls leader on mega programs across the globe—and what ultimately convinced him to join the UAE team executing West Qurna 2. He explains the scale of the program: 150+ wells, massive upstream processing facilities, gathering systems, export infrastructure, a 200–300 MW power plant, and global fabrication yards coordinated across Dubai, Iraq, Russia, Italy, South Korea, and more.
From planning to risk to culture, Tarun outlines the three pillars of mega-project success—a disciplined plan, the right people, and a healthy multicultural team culture. He walks through their approach to project controls audits, work breakdown structures, contract strategy, and performance incentives, including why owners need to incentivize contractors—not just penalize them.
They also dive deep into risk management, defining realistic triggers, and how to spot real schedule delays when contractors’ schedules stay “green” long after reality turns red. Tarun shares hard-won lessons from presenting to executive leadership and even the Iraqi Minister of Oil, including how to simplify complexity and tailor messaging for high-stakes rooms.
From global execution models to AI's emerging role in project controls, this episode is packed with practical, experience-based insights for anyone managing major capital projects.
🎧 You’ll Learn-
What makes West Qurna 2 one of the world’s most complex and expensive greenfield projects
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The three pillars Tarun uses to evaluate mega-project success: planning, culture, and people
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How early planning, work breakdown structures, and contract alignment shape project outcomes
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Why incentives—not penalties—drive better performance in large-scale contracting
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How to run effective project controls audits across global hubs (Dubai → Italy → South Korea)
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Approaches to defining, quantifying, and triggering risk actions before it’s too late
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How to present complex project data to ministers, executives, and senior stakeholders
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Early-career advice for those entering project controls—and why curiosity is the real superpower
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to the Major Project podcast, your inside.
Look at the high stakes world of billion dollar projects.
Welcome to the Major Project podcast.
I'm your host Orion Matthews, and today we're talking about one of the largest oil and gas greenfield developments in the world.
The $20 billion West Corner two project in Iraq.
(00:24):
My guest is Tarun Goel, a project controls leader whose career spans from piping design in the field to senior leadership roles on mega projects across the globe.
Tarun, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you so much Orion, and it's pleasure to be on the show.
Thank you.
Just to help the audience understand this project a little bit, and not to get any insider ball, but what were you guys doing? Like why was it so expensive? Um, like could you talk a little bit about like just the major scope of that project and what you guys were setting out to do? Yeah, absolutely.
(00:58):
So it, it is a public project and I think you can find, obviously a lot of information nowadays on online, right? It was, uh, it was one of the largest mega projects in the world in oil and gas industry.
Um, it, it had some proven reserves in billions of barrels, and, um, basically the entire project, uh, scope included, you know, building the upstream processing facilities which included, you know.
(01:24):
Your upstream, uh, you know, refining facilities, your, you know, accommodation camp drilling the wells, bringing, uh, bringing the oil from the wells to the upstream processing facilities, you know, processing the rock root, you know, getting the, the right products out of it.
And then finally shipping the rock roots out of the country.
(01:48):
And obviously whatever the gas associated gas was, that also included a processing of those gas in terms of making sure that those gas are gas is used.
Uh, in, um, generational electricities.
It also had it its own power plant because when you execute such a large projects Oh wow.
Mega scale, right? You have to have your own.
Uh, so if I'm not mistaken, I think 200 to 300 megawatt power plant, um, you know, combined cell power plant was part of that.
(02:15):
There was a large accommodation camp, like about 3000 people accommodation camp, was being built.
So it, it is a, it is a massive footprint connecting maybe over a hundred or 150 wells.
I think, uh, you know, bringing those small gathering lines to the central processing facilities, building these mega, mega mega center processing facilities and then, storing them and then finally shipping them.
(02:39):
So it's, it's an entire program, you know.
Yeah.
It's a huge goal.
And so then it was also a global program, right? So you were in the UAE, the facility was in Iraq.
Were there other major areas that were involved in the project as well? Yeah, uh, we, so we had, uh, offices, like you said, in, in, in Dubai.
(03:00):
Uh, I think the company where I was working, they also had, uh, offices in, uh, Moscow, in Russia.
So they were also controlling a lot from there.
We had, uh.
Oh Mo most of our major contractors, they were from different, different countries, so they were not local contractors.
So we had a contractor from South Korea, you know, Turkey.
(03:20):
We have contractor from Pakistan.
Uh, we had, you know, many different, uh, countries.
Like we had contractor from France basically.
So it, it was a, there were many, many different hubs where the project was being executed, but I think in terms of the core administrative function was being performed in, in Dubai.
So it is a global effort actually.
(03:43):
It's a, bits and pieces are happening all around the world.
So design is being done.
Design is being conducted in Italy, for example.
Right? We have contractors from different part of the world.
So it's a, it's a very, like a diverse, multicultural, efforts going on in different hubs.
And you had fabrication happening in other areas as well? Fabrication? Some in South Korea.
(04:06):
Yeah, some outside of the UAE.
Wow.
And you're, you were part of the project control team at that point in Dubai.
Yeah.
So how did you manage, uh, what would be your advice to someone, say they're setting up another mega project? I I guess from your lessons learned, knowing that you're gonna do fabrication somewhere and maybe design in another spot.
(04:30):
Like what's the advice for folks that are executing these major mega projects to kind of keep all those global pieces moving together? If you're sitting in a project controls team? 'cause sometimes it feels like, you're like, oh, that, that module's getting built over there.
You're just sort of like, I'll hear from them and they better have it done and maybe, I don't know, is that good enough or do you have some tips there for that you would advise? Yeah, absolutely.
(04:55):
So the, the key point I would highlight in terms of the project controls efforts, right, is to, as I mentioned, you know, you, you need to have a sufficient planning activities done upfront before even you start executing.
So I think this is where the core things happens, where you really, really define the project control requirements, right? Which, uh, because you want everybody to work on the same template, same format, same, you know, information needs to be exchanged.
(05:22):
So you don't want any, like, you don't want the information coming from, you know, a fabrication yard in South Korea and different work breakdown structure.
Then what you are reporting, right? Mm-hmm.
So it's like a absolute core is like define your project controls requirements define your work breakdown structure, cost breakdown structures very early on, and make sure that you impose and everybody follows that, right? All the contractors are aligned with that.
(05:46):
So we used to have this very.
Very great document.
We used to call project controls requirements.
It's like a 200, 300 page document.
Every contract we signed, it was embedded into that, the document.
Nice.
So it, it ensured that, you know, so we, we, first of all, we embed the document into the contract.
It means we make sure the contract signs on them that you are going to follow what, what we are telling you, right? And also, another important thing is that before you kickstart your project, during the kickoff, you go through that document with them and explain them, right? So it's not like just dumping document, it's like meeting them on the document.
(06:20):
Because we all need to understand that document itself is not gonna do the work, right? People are going to do the work, right? Document cannot walk, document, cannot do the concrete cubic meter or something.
Right now in the field.
Yeah.
People are going to do the work.
So document is as good as, you know, people are aware of that.
Right.
Otherwise there's no point.
(06:40):
So I think we, we also like learned these lessons that we do a lot of documentations work.
We make sure the contractor signs on the document, but then no one is trained on them.
Right.
Yeah, it's like it's a wild west, you know, you, there is document, then you get the report, which is not what you wanted.
And then when you ask and say, oh, planning engineer was hired three months ago, he wasn't there when the contract was signed.
(07:03):
So he has no idea what Yeah.
What the document says or why Yeah.
Or why it matters at all.
Yeah.
That's interesting.
I almost think of it like, uh, I've never thought about it this way and I wanna circle back and talk about work breakdown structures a little bit.
'cause I think that doesn't get a lot of attention.
It might be something that, but did you, you include the work breakdown structures in the contracts.
(07:25):
Then as part of that 200 pages, you were like, this is major scopes.
And a breakdown of those things.
And we'll report based on that.
Being a client on such a mega project, I think you can only break down your work work to a certain level only.
Right? So you have to give a contractor of active flexibility.
So we normally break down the work breakdown to a level two or three, right? This is where mm-hmm.
(07:48):
This is where we decide, this is our control point where we as a client want to control, right? Yeah.
And then we let the below level breakdown, so le like breakdown below three and four level or five level, we let the flexibility built into that so that contractor can build whatever they want, break it down.
But because for us defining everything from the day one, it's gonna be challenging, right? Because you're talking about billions of dollars of contracts where things will change very rapidly.
(08:14):
Yeah.
So we, we have a high level control where we want to control, we define those critical points and then we let the contractor manage below those critical points, but we make sure that they, those below level rolls up to the higher level.
Right.
Which is very, very important.
Well, and I guess like, I'm sort of thinking through this here, but it almost seems like there's three levels that I heard.
(08:35):
One level is you're contracting with someone and you don't put anything in there about expectations, really, particularly around reporting.
And then you kind of have to deal with it off outside of the contract.
You sort of have no leverage to get what you need outta the contractors.
And then maybe there's like this level two where you've included, uh, your requirements, but you actually haven't gone over it with them.
(08:56):
And so you have a stick, but you sort of have an untrained recipient.
And so they will eventually maybe comply, but it's gonna be a lot more work and painful to get them there.
And then you have this third level, uh, that you talked about that is really cool, which is you.
You use the contract as a meeting of the minds, and really try to explain and get them to understand why it's so, why those requirements are in there.
(09:25):
So you have this like, alignment using the contract as an alignment tool since you're gonna use it as an enforcement tool.
And then that's a really great approach, I would say.
Absolutely.
And also, also I wanted to add one more point, actually very important just came to my mind is that normally the contracts are, in general, in, I'm not, I'm not saying in, in a, in a particular case, but in general, the contracts are viewed as a, you know, panel mechanism, right? You, the contracts are drafted in such a way to penalize the contractor, right? Mm-hmm.
(09:59):
So this is a general kind of consensus among the construction industry on a large project, so what we learned over the years that I think in order for you to execute the project successfully, you have to change that mindset.
I always give example to my, you know, to my colleagues that if you, for example, um, if you punish a small child, right? You always see the opposite reaction, right? Yeah.
(10:23):
Because small child is not gonna listen to, but if you incentivize and if you say, for example, if I saw, if I give my son a candy and if I ask him to do something, he will do it, right? So I think the contract mechanisms we have been dealing for a long, long time is a penalizing, so contracts as a liquidated images clauses, right? And then punishment clauses.
And if you don't do this on this time, you're going to pay such number of penalty, you know, we'll withhold your bonds we'll.
(10:47):
So mm-hmm.
What we learned that if you want to impose the project controls requirements on them, and if you want them to follow them, because every requirements you put them comes at a cost, you have to incentivize them.
So first of all, make sure that they price for it.
So yeah, whatever the requirements you're going to give, uh, you're going to ask for them.
You asked in the contract document itself, make sure you price for them.
(11:07):
What are your efforts for your project controls activities? Right.
Because it doesn't come, nothing is free, right? It comes at a cost.
Uh, second thing is when you have, uh, when you have those, those clauses and e even though you, after putting all those contractual terms, after all those things, even the contractor doesn't fulfill those requirements.
(11:29):
Then instead of penalizing, you incentivize them.
So like safety culture, right? Nowadays around the world, safety is more incentive culture instead of penalizing culture.
So yeah, so you don't have any clauses to penalize, but if you achieve certain manners safely, we will incentive advise you, we'll give you 1% of the contract value as a bonus or something.
(11:49):
So I think tho those kind of mindsets really, uh, encourages contract to deliver things.
You, you really want them, I think that's great advice.
And it seems like I know that.
Animal training went through that there's a number of fields that your first instinct is to use punitive approaches and you get these negative results.
(12:12):
You might get some out of people, but generally you have these sort of incorrect behaviors that manifest in different ways.
And so the, I think the, the game theory is sort of teaching us that the better, that the carrot approach has a little bit more finesse to it.
It's definitely not as easy to pull off, but the results are quite a bit better.
(12:36):
And I, it's pretty if game theory for these major project contracts, 'cause you obviously have different people with different incentives and the, and you're, you still wanna line everybody up and I think the contract's a great sort of pivot point vehicle to try.
Set all of those pieces in motion and make it a fun game rather than a dangerous game that you can only get hurt playing, but you have to play.
(13:02):
So that's really great insight and maybe talking, shifting a little bit along these lines.
Be interested to talk about risk with you.
So we kind of touched a bit on contracts.
So that's, you know, getting, getting the right data outta your vendors, having the right contracts, a little bit of planning is important now that you're in the project, like how do you make sure that you've identified risk and particularly in this Corona project O obviously it's, it's risky to execute the largest project in the world.
(13:34):
It might not have been the most stable area.
There's just a lot of potential.
Risks just in those two things alone, not, not withstanding all the other stuff that goes with a, a project.
What would be your advice and what kind of learnings did you have from that project? On risk? Yeah.
These kind of projects are very risk risky projects, right? I mean, we all know.
(13:55):
So, whatever you think could go wrong would, would go wrong, right? So it's that kind of, uh, that kind of analogy we have.
So, um, there are many different, uh, ways you can tackle this.
So when it comes to a risk, right? So one of the thing what we have learned and I particularly learned is when, when it comes to risk def defining the risk, what risk is, I think everybody just jumps on, starts defining, you know, di like defining the risk, quantifying them.
(14:23):
But I think the first and foremost, you need to ensure that whatever you are going to define your risk area, right? It has to be very realistic because.
Like, for example, there is a, there is going to be rain in, in South Africa, right? And you put that on a risk register, but how is it really impacting your project? It is not gonna impact your project, right? So very project specific.
(14:44):
And you also have to be very realistic because risks are everywhere.
And if you try and quantify the risk, your project will value will be double, right? So there is, there has to be some sort of reasonable approach, uh, where you know, what are the critical risks which are really going to impact your project, right? So this, this framework of risk defining is very, very important.
(15:05):
The second thing is the methodologies, right? Everybody has a different understanding of risk and, um, we, we sometimes, like some people think risks are positive, some people think risks are negative.
Some are very neutral in terms of the risk.
So, um.
That is also one important thing is that early on you, you have your risk management plan, which really brings everybody on board in terms of the, the language, in terms of the terminology you're going to use.
(15:32):
What do you mean by negative risk? Right? What is, what the risk means to you, right? When, when your project is impacted by $2 million, is it risky on, on a $20 billion CapEx or is it like a, so yeah, there has to be very, very threshold, right? If something is going to hit you, but the $10,000, is it that risky on a $1.5
billion contract, right? So those are the real, real thing, which you need to make sure that everybody's aligned before even you start defining, and then you have normal process, right? Where you conduct your risk workshop, right? Define, collect your, identify the risks very early on, uh, by collecting, uh, different party's input.
(16:09):
Then you do qualitative risk analysis, quantitative risk analysis, right? Build, build the mitigation plan and, you know, there are a lot of risks which we were faced with in terms of geopolitical risks, right? Having material issues, right? Supply suppliers, not delivering products on time or, material on time, contractor delays, which is one of the biggest risks, right? So one of our approach was that we, early on before even execution, we, we list out all the critical risks to the project during the basic design and concept design.
(16:42):
The earlier you define, uh, the more control you have, you can do a lot of things about it, right? And then obviously you define you, you quantify them, and then you put together some sort of risk mitigations plan.
What also we learned is that, you know, there are a lot of times where, uh, uh, risks are defined, but then no action is taken later on.
(17:05):
And I think it's not that people don't want to take an action.
I think the one critical thing was missing was the trigger, right? Okay.
There, there is a risk that, you know, contractor is gonna delay, but at what point of time you should take an action, right? You're going to incentivize contractors.
The action, when are you going to incentivize, how long it'll be delayed before you take an action.
(17:26):
So I think every risk must have a trigger, right? When you got to have an action in place.
Because if you don't have the trigger, you don't know when, when to take an action to mitigate it, right? So that was one of the, the critical things we, we learn.
And, and obviously we, we use a lot of different kind of tools on our projects like Monte Carlo simulations, uh, pri risk analysis.
(17:49):
We quantify.
Everything comes down to a realistic picture of a risk.
So you don't want to have like, um, because if you, if you quantify every single risk, which is going to impact you with the highest maximum impact.
Your project will never get executed, right? So, so there are a risk.
You have to accept you, you can't do business without a risk, right? So you need to really clear pathway for what you're gonna accept as a business risk, right? And then will be more realistic, because at the end of the day, when you perform your risk analysis, you're going to come up with a contingency for the project, which is, uh, which you are going to factor into your estimates, right? So those are the the approaches.
(18:28):
Um, but yeah, in summary, there, there is a lot you can do.
We faced with almost all the major risks, okay? Mm-hmm.
And it's not that we prevented all the risks.
There were risks where we, we couldn't do anything about it, right? And I think where we couldn't do anything about it, one of the root cause was nobody knew what the trigger was.
(18:52):
When They take an action, And I guess like, dive into that trigger a little bit.
'cause I'm sure people are thinking now about their risk logs going, Hmm, I wonder if we have triggers.
That was it.
Like you had the risk defined, there was a trigger, but it was, confusing.
Who pulls it? What are it's almost like smart goals, right? Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely.
It's like, what's your, is there like a phrase for that, for triggers where it's like specific quantifiable I mean, how do you, 'cause I could see, because people don't wanna trigger risks or at least certain people are gonna be opposed to a risk triggering.
(19:28):
How do you write those triggers to kind of self trigger without the politics that might go into 'em? Absolutely.
It's art and science.
So there is no single way, single, you know, perfect way.
There, there are two type of, uh, triggers, right? The one trigger is, uh.
Where you know that now risk is happening, risk is occurring now, so that is one trigger and then risk is now ongoing.
(19:54):
At what point of time you take an action to mitigate it.
So that's a mitigation trigger, right? And every mitigation trigger must have mitigation owner assigned, right? Who is going to take an action on that when the action will be taken? So let's say something needs to be done in the month of October, for example.
Mm-hmm.
So did it happen or no? Right? And then you review them quarterly or monthly, whenever your, whatever your frequency, you have decided in the beginning of project, those actions are really taken or no.
(20:23):
The trigger really occurred or so, um, it's a, it's a very challenging, it's a lot of subjectivity involves that, but I think it all comes down to expert judgment, right? Where you, you say, for example, uh, a contractor is going to be delayed.
We have very big risk that contractor will delay this project by three months, okay? And the mitigation actions you have decided is that you are going to incentivize contractor to bring some equipment earlier by paying some more money, right? This is the mitigation action, right? Yeah.
(20:55):
So when do you take an action? So when the contractor is actually forecasting delay for one month, you take an action when the contractor is already forecasting two months delay, you take an action, right? Or when it, when it's forecasting three months, you take an action, right? And if you take an action, what kind of actions do you take, right? Okay, let's negotiate with the, with your suppliers and crash the schedule, right? By paying more for the resources, right? Is it feasible or no? So there, there are A, B, and C, right? If, if it doesn't work, then what else can we do? Can we do something in parallel? Can we bring the equipment and at the same time do the foundation work and then maybe just wait for a equipment to be delivered, uh, you know, and then, uh, put it onto the foundation or something like that.
(21:38):
So those are the, there's a lot of subjectivity involved, a lot of judgment involved.
You just have to be careful that whatever the terminology you phrase in terms of the trigger is understood easily by everybody right Then, then only the action can be taken.
Otherwise it's, it's really difficult.
And getting along those lines, the risk and triggers can face this hidden variable problem, which I think shows up in.
(22:08):
Sort of progress.
And when you go to contractors and you're asking them about that delay, like, Hey, how's schedule doing? And sometimes it'll go, everything's on time, everything's good.
I'm six months behind.
Um, and, and you've been tracking, you've been asking them, you've been sending the notes, uh, everything seems okay, and then everything goes from green to red.
(22:30):
Do you have any advice on people setting up projects? Maybe if there's things in the pre-planning stage you could do, or how do you, how do you approach that? Or what advice do you give to folks? Yeah, so We have done a very good, actually actually me and my team, I mean, the entire team whom I, with whom I worked, has a great learning from this.
And what we did is we implemented a, like you, you hear the word auditing, right? In the finance and all.
(22:56):
We implemented a project controls audit, so project controls audit is like, like you say, right? The contract is showing everything on time.
But then you don't know the true delays because they are going to show you what you want to see, right? They're not gonna show you what, uh, what the true delay is.
So we had this tendency that every quarter we go to a major contractor's offices or facilities where the work is being executed.
(23:17):
We audit them and we as a owner, we build, we take their schedule, and then we build our own internal realistic schedule.
And we, by doing this, we discover that contractor has already two months delayed on the project, not what the contractor, because always contractor schedule comes with a constraint on the finished date.
Right? Which is the, in the premier, the constraint, the date won't move, right? Yeah.
(23:41):
But, but then you have to build a realistic picture from your own own end.
If you ask contractor, can you gimme your realistic scenario, like what is your P 10, P 50, P 90 dates, they will never give it to you because they don't want to show any delay.
So here, here, you as a owner, as a representative, you as a owner's, project control professional, right? You have a responsibility to go.
And find out the truth, right? What is the real delay? So it doesn't happen that one month there is zero delay and the next month, six months delay.
(24:08):
So we implemented this on a very, on almost all of our large projects, we used to go there.
We perform a thorough audit and we, we don't perform a thorough audit.
So we, we perform audit in terms of how the contractors project controls management structure is, are they really staffed very well? Do they really have a good culture in terms of showing delays and all? And then at the end of, after doing all those organizational stuff, we do our own internal forecasting and we bring those data back and we show to our management and we show the true delays and we ask them to have a meeting with the contractor and start taking action early on.
(24:48):
What contractor shows is not aligned with what, what we as a owner's representative feels like.
And there is always, like, when we go to these kind of meetings, there is always back and forth contractors say, oh no, no, your assumptions are very wrong.
And then we say, okay prove me with your data or whatever your backup you have, right? And this is where the dialogue starts and we go into more detail.
And the more detail you, the more detail you go into that, the more things gets revealed, right? And it's, it's a lot of learning for you.
(25:15):
And then at the end of the day, after two, three months of brainstorming here and there, the true delay comes and contractor says, okay, we are not delayed by three months, which you are saying, but we are only delayed by two months now.
So we are, we're happy to show two months delay in our report.
So it's pretty fascinating.
And were you on some of those, I guess like I'm imagining two people on an airplane flying to South Korea to do an audit and.
(25:43):
You're gonna show up.
Was it hostile? How, how did you set those up to make 'em productive and sort of get your hands dirty on the factory floor? Like what, maybe just take us a little bit of story time through one of those projects.
Yeah, absolutely.
And, and this is all goes back to my project controls requirements, right? So when I, when we set up a project controls requirement, we, we put open-ended statement that owner has all their rights to do an audit whenever we feel, or at least quarterly or whatever the frequency we decided there.
(26:14):
Yeah.
We have all our rights and, and obviously we as an owner will give you pre.
Notification.
So we just don't go and jump there, you know, and just charge.
So we, we tell them, okay, like month in advance that you know we have, these are the dates.
Please let us know if those dates are okay with you.
We are gonna come there, we are gonna sit with you.
(26:35):
You will show us your, uh, engineering deliverable register, right? You'll show us all the deliverables, status to date.
You'll show us every deliverable if it has been issued for review.
If it has been issued for construction.
What are the dates? Everything right? You will show us your technical document register.
You will show us your procurement register, which will have all the purchase order listed.
(26:57):
What is their status? Are you in the inquiry stage? Are you going through a commercial evolution? Are you going through a technical bid evolution? And when do you expect to place the po? Right? And then we have a construction detailed quantity list, right, which is, uh, every activity broken down by certain high level quantity, because very early on, you don't know, you don't get a lot of quantities.
So we just go very high level in the beginning where we define like cubic meter of concrete total, you know, uh, running meters of the cable length for the electrical and piping inch meters or inch diameters, things like that.
(27:31):
We go there, we, we tell them that this is all we are going to take from you.
We are going to review them.
We are going to match every deliverable ID with your premier P six id.
And we are going to see that those dates are truly reflected in your P six, right? And if not, we need to see the realistic scenario.
What is it going to? And then you, you build those.
It's an effort intensive job.
(27:53):
It's not an easy, obviously, yeah, take their own schedule.
But the important thing is you make sure that they are aware that you have your, you have, you have your right, which you put into the contract itself, and give them sufficient notice that you're going to go there, sit with their project controls teams and owners project controls.
And we are gonna discuss everything one by one, right? In detail.
(28:14):
And, and sometimes you don't need to go into more much detail, but when you see the area of concerns, you start going into detail saying that, oh, like for example, you, if you're going buying a centrifuge pump from uh, Europe, the delivery is a 52 weeks.
And now, uh, we as a owner, we also deal with those vendors and we get a quote from them and they said that the delivery is going to be 80 weeks, for example.
(28:37):
And then we say, contractor, how can you tell that you have 52 weeks delivery when they gave us a proposal for 80, 80 weeks of delivery? So what is your basis? So show us the document, right? Do you have a confirmation? Do you have signed PO with the vendor? Are they going to deliver that? What are the potential, you know, risks there, whether they're gonna deliver on time or no.
So there's a lot of effort goes into that.
(28:58):
It's not, it's not an easy job, but I think if you do once in a quarter or maybe like twice in a year, it is still manageable.
And this will really give you better control.
This will.
As an owner, you, you sitting in your, your, uh, in your offices, you have no con control over what contractors are doing and you have no idea what is happening.
(29:19):
I think this is an opportunity for you to go and learn as well as gather the right information so you can give your management the right amount of information, which can allow them to take a lot of early actions, which can prevent the true delay happening to the project.
Well, and I imagine if you're talking with their project controls teams and meeting with them, you probably find both resistance but also allies.
(29:42):
Maybe you make some friends and then you have this connective tissue between you and a contractor to kind of marshal things forward.
'cause ultimately you are both shooting for the same goal.
So there might be maybe outta those audits that also is helpful in other sort of non-technical ways, but the culturally helpful, to connect with them and.
(30:03):
And they know that you're, what you're really aiming for example.
And just have cut through all those different layers of communication and just get straight into it.
That's really good advice.
I wanted to shift then, 'cause we just talked about getting data from the contractors, and then you mentioned that maybe you go to do audits.
I know that you do reporting cycles.
(30:23):
I'm curious to talk a little bit about how you present on, uh, one of the largest projects in the world.
What, what's tips do you have for anybody listening that's about to get into one.
How do you present to management? How do you present to ministers potentially that you might have had to talk to? Like what's, do you have any presentation tips and stories for project controls folks? Yeah, yeah.
(30:44):
Uh, yeah, it's a great question.
Um, so when you are dealing with such a large project the reporting, uh, you know.
Is a very, uh, strict and very, you know, structured requirement.
And it's a lot of effort.
Intense driven, right? Um, you have so many various stakeholders on a particular project like this.
We have government, right? We have, uh, we have a head office, we have uh, we have contractors.
(31:09):
We have a external parties who are depending on, you know, our reports.
The the program team who depends on, you know, what, what you're doing within the, the project, the management, for example, in the Moscow office or in, in your, in other part of the world.
Um, reporting is very challenging.
Uh, I think the important thing we can do is systemize everything, right? And, uh, it's all lot of data driven activities.
(31:36):
If you don't have the system set up in the beginning, I think you, you're gonna suffer a lot, right? Because you have to collect so much amount of data and then.
You have to analyze them and report the right matrixes.
Right.
So like earned value management systems, you have to report on a weekly or monthly basis.
Right? And then you have to report your cost, you know, actual cost, plan versus actual.
(31:58):
And then we also had a different type of contracts.
Like we had a lump sum contract, uh, time and material contract.
We had a unit trade contract.
So every, every contract has a different reporting mechanism.
And then you have to, at the end of the day, you also have to summarize everything at the, at the project and program level, right? So it's a, it's a great, uh, efforts driven.
Um, I was fortunate enough to, um, to, to deliver presentations to a very large audience, sometimes even to executive leadership team of our, our company and, uh, and a few times to the Minister of Oil, for example, in, in Iraq.
(32:34):
Wow.
You know, and, um, and a lot of, uh, government, uh, executive.
In Iraq.
So, um, it's a, it's a pretty fascinating, and, uh, some of the things which I learned is, uh, like I, I went to one of the presentation and I, I completely like, bombed it, you know? Yeah.
People didn't like it.
(32:54):
So, for example, I had to deliver something and I just straightaway delivered whatever things I had to deliver without, thinking what the, the context was, what the culture was.
So some of the things you have to learn is that whoever you're going to present to, either it is a minister or, you know, very high level executive in your company, I think you have to understand what is the context, right.
What, why the information is being asked.
(33:17):
What why you're presenting this information, right? And also, if possible, you have to do a little bit of research about who you're going to present to.
So always think about what the other, other person is, because when, when we go and present something, we always go with the mindset that, oh, everybody knows what I know.
Right.
But you have, you have to keep a mindset that you're going to present.
What, you know, to somebody walking on the street, right? Some guy walking on the street who has no clue about what the project is.
(33:43):
So it's like explaining to your mama Yeah.
What the project is.
So sometime you have to have that kind of, uh, attitude with you.
Where one of the cha most challenging role is to simplify information as much as possible.
And sometimes there is a kind of gray area where you too much simplify.
Then, you know, they ask for more detail and you have more detail in this.
(34:05):
And this is too complicated for me to understand, you know? So there is a kind of balance and very subjective balance.
You don't know what is the right amount of information you want to deliver.
So when you deliver to like, for example, ministers and you know, executives, uh, these kind of presentations, uh, it's very important you do a lot of research in advance, understand the context and simplify the information because.
(34:28):
You have to understand the opposite person has no involvement in your project, what you're going to tell about, right? They just want to know if the project is going well or not, right? Mm-hmm.
Or they just want to know what are the critical areas where that person needs to take an action.
So if you're presenting to a, a minister of oil and if you are your project is, you know, 2% behind the schedule, he wouldn't mind, you know, he, he wouldn't bother about it.
(34:52):
But when it comes to finance where we say, oh, this project has a variation order for $50 million, which you have to approve, then he's very interested into that.
He will go into detail and say, okay, $50 million, it is going to come to my desk for approval.
Then I want to know every detail what that $50 million is going to be.
Right? Yeah.
So those are the, the things which you can, focus on.
(35:15):
I mean it in terms of the presentation of knowing your audience.
I think that's really.
Excellent advice.
And then I guess I would just ask for a couple other tips.
'cause I know you're a speaker, you've done some really good presentations, uh, over the years.
And do you have any advice for people just kinda getting started maybe that have, are listening to this going, like, I have my first presentation with an oil minister.
(35:41):
I don't want it to bomb.
How do I, like, what, how do people get started with becoming good? I mean, do you, do you advise project controls people to like, take public speaking courses? Like what are some like simple tips for people to get better at presenting? Yeah, to be honest, I'm still scared to, to speak publicly.
So it's not, uh, yeah, I mean, um.
(36:04):
It takes a lot of, uh, time and effort to realize what what you can do.
I mean, yeah, project controls is, uh, is a very vast area, right? And you can go in any direction and some point of time you, your career will grow to a level where you have to, you have no other option but to address a large audience, right? Where either you are going to deliver a presentation or you want to deliver something to your executives.
(36:26):
And I think in today's world, we all know, right? In social media and internet and everything, the communication skills, and, uh, speaking to a large audience, it's very, very important.
So there is no way around it, right? If you really want to grow your career, if you really want to be a, a, known professional in your, in your area.
So, some of the advice, uh, I would say, like, personally, I'm still very scared and I, I, I still like, uh, you know, sometimes I avoid talking to public, but I have given like one or two very large, presentations in the public.
(36:59):
It gave me a little bit confidence.
Before starting, I was very, very, uh, you know, not very comfortable.
But what, what I learned is that if you're going to deliver something, I think if you have a right mindset, you have to train your mind a lot.
You have a right mindset, and I think whatever you're gonna deliver, always try to be delivering in a positive manner.
(37:20):
So, you know, I mean, say the things as it is, but be in a positive environment and, uh, what from a lot of public speakers.
So I watch a couple of public speakers videos, like TED Talks and all, and, um, it all talks about, it's not about what you are going to deliver, it's about how you're going to make people feel about it, right? So that is very important in terms of the public speaking, is that you're not going to deliver what you know on, you're not gonna dump what you know on other people.
(37:49):
You're going to make sure that it helps them, right? So it helps them, it makes feel, uh, I mean, it feels good about what you're gonna deliver.
So it's all about getting people feeling about what, what you're going to deliver, right? So that is a very important thing.
And when I'm a state, sometimes I forget and I digress, and I just, you know, want to dump all my technical knowledge, whatever I have Yeah.
(38:11):
Uh, to the people.
And then at the end of the day, people are just looking here and there, and they have no clue what, what I just said.
Some public speaker has a very good advice, and I would give everybody same advice, is, uh, what you're going to deliver.
Divide them into like, you know, five or six different pieces, key messages, like what you really want to say to the, to the larger public.
Let's say five or six key messages.
(38:33):
And behind each message, build a story.
Because when you tell the story, your message goes very well.
So I think.
Uh, and I learned this recently, even like in my first lecture.
I didn't learn this, you know, but now I'm getting more and more realization when I'm getting more and more opportunity to speak publicly.
Is that you, people will remember the story.
(38:54):
So tell the story.
Make a point, tell the story.
Make a point, tell the story, make a point.
I think if you follow this format I think it'll go very, very smooth.
Even though like very short story from your real life fictitious story doesn't matter.
Mm-hmm.
People get engaged very, you know, very thoroughly when you tell them a story.
So yeah, I mean, some of those advice and, and don't worry if you're afraid, I mean, it's practically everything is normal when you're afraid.
(39:19):
Everybody has the same feeling.
Like I have, I have the same feeling when I go in front of the large audience, you know? But as the time passes and the more you practice, I think at, at some point of time you're going to realize that, oh, now you're very confident.
And again, make mistakes.
Don't worry about making mistakes.
If you're scared, just go there and just stand there.
(39:41):
It doesn't matter.
But then it'll improve your confidence when you go next time because you know what happened to you in first time.
Right.
Great advice.
I have one last sort of question or two, two final questions for you here.
The first is to kind of wrap up.
I feel like our conversation was almost a sales pitch for project controls teams, and by that I mean I think someone, listen, an executive listening to this right now might have a better sense of the scope that could have been.
(40:16):
Had they had a bigger project controls investment, potentially.
You can't really do audits when you're running a skeleton crew.
You can't really create 30 page contracts and have meetings with 120 different vendors and create alignment if you're running a team of three project controllers for a $5 billion project.
So I'm, I'm curious on your thoughts on that.
(40:37):
I feel like of the projects I've been involved with, the ones that have maybe strong and it's always hard to advocate for funding for project controls.
It's an overhead function and it's an easy one to wanna cut.
But I feel like the stuff we talk through here could add so much value to some of the projects I've talked about that maybe it's just a good reminder that perhaps running a skeleton crew project controls team is.
(41:02):
Can hurt the project in ways you might not even think of.
I'd be curious about your thoughts on that.
No, it's a, it's a great question and I think very valid question.
So like, not all the projects can afford a large team, because we had a very large project, we had like 24 members in the project controls, right? So it's a, it's very impossible on a, on a small scale project, every projects has their own unique challenges, right? And, uh, like smaller projects, you are only talking about 1, 2, 2 people, you know, working on a, on a project.
(41:30):
And I think in those kind of projects, when the timeline is one year or one and a half year, right? You, you really cannot afford to do an audit and things like that, right? You really have to rely on a lot of intuitions.
But I think the more experience you get with this and the more those kind of skills will come to you where you become an auditor, even though you, when you're sitting in your seat, you don't need to go and watch the contractor, the information comes to you, you will immediately catch that there is something wrong here, right? There is a true delay.
(41:56):
So I think the more you learn, the more you practice day on day.
You become more experienced project controls professionals, and then you can spend very least amount of effort.
You don't need to go and sit in the contractor and, you know, have three different resources to do an audit.
Mm-hmm.
You can really learn this and it'll improve your, uh, your skills in terms of doing things very fast.
(42:18):
Right.
And with the, with the current AI environment, right? You can, knowledge is there like vast lake, so you can pull the knowledge and do this.
And, uh, small resources doesn't mean you cut a corner, right? Obviously you have to do everything what you define.
But I think the important thing is if you have smaller team, you make sure that the requirements are very defined accordingly.
(42:43):
That this is, these are the base minimum things you are going to do on a project when you have a smaller team, right? So on a large team, on a large projects, you can define whatever you want, right? You're going to have.
Weekly reporting you're gonna have, you know, because everything at the end of the day comes at a cost.
You're gonna have cost and schedule risk analysis.
If you have a smaller team in your project controls requirements, put that you, you will not have any CRA or SRA done cost schedule risk analysis done.
(43:07):
Right? You'll only have barely identified the risks, and then you'll monitor them as in when.
So lower your expectations in the beginning, but make sure that the critical expectations are there so that there is no impact to the, so what is absolute critical to the project is there, like you have to have monthly at least reporting, right? You don't want to cut a corner on that.
Yeah.
(43:27):
You have to have, you know, level three schedule obviously in a proper format, right? You have to have a proper cost report done at, in a monthly basis or some sort of on value.
Because on value is also time and cost intensive.
And every project, the given amount of resources, you build the requirements accordingly.
So you, you fit to the project's need.
(43:48):
I have a lot of projects.
We don't spend a lot of time on that.
I have like projects between five to $15 million.
Mm-hmm.
We, uh, like we only have one person, 25% allocated to those projects, but we, we focus on the right things, what we need.
That makes a lot of sense.
And you mentioned ai.
I'm curious, are you seeing impacts with AI in the space? Do you have any Uh, yeah, it impacts on that everything.
(44:11):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's impacting everything.
And I think it is going to impact the project controls in a big way.
There is a lot of, uh, things are being built into the pipeline.
Why different players? What I can say that it, it will still not take the core skills of project control away, right? But it'll really help to boost productivity, uh, being a project controls, you know, so for example, analyzing the report right before us to do manually.
(44:37):
Now you can just dump the large amount of data sets and ask the AI.
You know, and it'll give you analytical summary or things like that.
But you still, I don't think it is going to take away anybody's job in terms of project control, because you still need to have, you know, planning done properly, right? You still need to have people communicating with the contractors, doing a lot of, uh, lot of th things, which, uh, really needs interpersonal skills.
(45:01):
Yeah.
I don't think, you know, I agree with you there.
I don't think they're gonna take our jobs.
I think when, but I think you could see some acceleration there.
Uh, similar to sports, you know, you can watch a simulated football season all day long and people wanna see real people do it.
But when you look at what the athletes do in terms of the, they actually, I ran into a data scientist once who was a data scientist for a pro athlete team.
(45:27):
They hire their own data science people, and they use AI now and things to like make better athletic performance.
So I think what we'll see is maybe people getting better at their craft faster.
Still it's people that pillar, the people pillar you talked about in the beginning is always gonna be there.
And I guess my last question for you is kind of an advice question.
(45:48):
If we shift gears, we think about maybe I'm a student, maybe I'm a pipe fitter and I'm thinking, boy, I would really love to have the experiences that Tru just talked about.
I'd love a career in project controls.
What would be your advice to someone that's maybe a student or early career about how they could get into this space or what things they might wanna study? That's a good question.
(46:16):
One of the most important thing comes to my mind is the curiosity, right? You're curious about learning.
Anything, right? It's not just about project control.
So currently I'm in project controls, you know, I'm learning about accounting, I'm learning about ai, so I think the most important thing is be curious, right? Be curious.
And, uh, whenever I want to learn something, I always ask my question.
(46:36):
Like, for example, I, I'm learning accounting, right? So I always ask what accountant knows that I don't know, right? So those are the kind of questions I ask myself.
So I think being curious is very, very important early on in your student career, right? I think your only job is to learn, right? You, you want to learn as much as you can.
If you want, start a career in the project, controls started very small, right? Just, uh, learn, you know, like, uh, for example, what is the schedule, right? How does it really work, right? And nowadays the information is there.
(47:07):
If you want to learn anything, you can quickly Google or put in chat GPD or you know, any other AI agent, and you will get, uh, the information very bad.
So I think if you have a curiosity.
You will find the information, whatever you need in terms of the learning.
Obviously when you are transitioning from any other function to the project control, it's gonna be slightly difficult because everybody, whenever you apply for a new position, they always want, do you have an experience or No, but there are a lot of companies they will offer you because, you know, project control professionals are in a short supply.
(47:37):
Mm-hmm.
They're very, very highly demanded project control professionals.
So there are always opportunities.
There are always companies.
And when you really show your work to those companies, either online or through some sort of video content, things like that, I think you will be, you'll be getting, you know, junior level positions immediately to start working.
I never applied for any position.
(47:57):
I just got curious about it.
And when I was doing my piping design work, I got curious and I started supporting one of the planning engineer at the site myself.
So I was doing like my work and then in the evening I used to sit with him and say, what can I do for you? Then he said, you know, these are the activities.
Can you help me to just type them in the Primera? You know? And that's how like he used to just sit near me one, two hours and I used to type them.
(48:21):
And that's how I learned exploring what is the Primera, you know? And then I started reading something about Primera, how the Primera does, why, why they're using Primera.
So also doing things will really help you.
And, uh, being, having curious mind, obviously that's a good advice.
I, I feel like maybe Leonardo Da Vinci would've been in project controls if he had been around.
(48:43):
There's this profile of people maybe that are generalists and willing to say that they don't know what they don't know.
'Cause you kind of have to work.
Project controls, touches so many things.
I feel like you have to be okay a little bit with you sort of managing these areas that you might not have a full understanding of, but you're willing to learn and go a little bit deep on every.
(49:05):
Piece that you need to, and, uh, that's great advice.
I, I hope you encourage some folks to go into our space.
And do you also, do you have any books or you mentioned earlier Good to Great.
Do you have any other books or professional associations that you would recommend people take a look at? Uh, yeah, there are, there, there are a couple of books, actually, it's on my desk.
I was just trying to read.
(49:26):
So I was just, uh, like couple of, one or two books, which I'm, which I'm currently reading and I think everybody might want to just check out.
It's called Right.
It's a, it's a spiritual, um, spirituality for Leadership and Success.
So it's based on, I know it's a, when I went to last time to India, I got one copy and I was very interested because it connects the spirituality with the leadership.
(49:50):
So it talks a lot about and I think one of my favorite books so far is that it talks a lot about understanding yourself right.
Before even doing anything.
So it also have a, some sort of balance between inner peace and outer success.
So it's a, it's not just like a leadership, leadership is all about, you know, outer success, but this really connects your spirituality with the leadership, so this is one of the, the favorite one, I think.
(50:14):
One other one which I like is the, the soul of the leadership.
Right.
Oh, cool.
Which is the Deepak Chopra's book.
Yeah.
It's a pretty fascinating, it's a very like, iconic book.
And uh, obviously if you want to read something about scientific stuff in terms of you know, nature and in terms of the, the human behaviors and all, I think thinking fast and slow, it's very, very popular.
Right.
Yeah.
The annual comment.
(50:35):
So that's a great book.
One of the noble.
Uh, and apart from this, I read a lot of other books on the money, uh, in terms of like, you know, rich Dad, poor Dad, things like that.
Because somehow being a project controller is also you're managing money right.
At some point of time.
Yeah.
So, so unless you don't know how to manage your own money, how you can expect to manage somebody's money, right.
(50:56):
So I think you have to really be well-versed with managing money.
So I I, I, I read a lot of finance, uh, books in, in those areas.
Yeah.
A really great tip.
And then, uh, do you, are you part of PMI? Are there other associations you like? So there are a lot of great associations of PMI is one of them, right.
In the US you have PMI and EACI.
(51:18):
Right? Those are the two great one, uh, in the uk I'm a, I'm a chartered Quantity Surveyors, so I'm a member of RICS, Royal Institute of Charter Surveyors Royal Institution of Charter Surveyors, the CIOB, the Chartered Institute of Buildings.
Also I'm a, because I did my law degree in a construction law, I'm also a member of, uh, chartered Arbitrator Institution, C-I-A-R-B, chartered Institute of Arbitrators.
(51:44):
So those are the three prominent ones when you talk about quantity, surveying, construction management and construction law in the uk.
Awesome.
Those are really great tips and really inspiring to get this information.
We'll definitely include links to these things down below in the comments section for anyone that's interested.
(52:04):
And I just wanna say, Torun, thank you so much.
It's been a really great discussion.
Appreciate you taking us through one of the largest projects in the world, learning about leadership, learning about risk.
Thank you.
Thank you for coming on today.
It is true honor, and thank you so much, Orion, for inviting me, and, uh, it's a pleasure talking to you.
And, and again, great meeting you.
(52:25):
I mean, like-minded people and thank you.
Thank you so much.
If anyone wants to get in touch with you, what is a great way for them to connect? Would it be following you on LinkedIn? I think the best, the best way is to find me on the LinkedIn.
You can just type my name, T-E-R-U-N-G-O-H-E-L and you can find me there.
Um, you know, and I think all my contact details are there on the LinkedIn.
(52:46):
Awesome.
Well, thanks again and look forward to catching up with you perhaps on another episode.
Thank you so much.
It's a pleasure.
Thank you.
Thanks for listening to the Major Project podcast.
Be sure to follow us wherever you get your podcasts and learn more at the major project podcast.com.
Until next time, keep building big.
Welcome to the Major Project podcast, your inside.
Look at the high stakes world of billion dollar projects.
Welcome to the Major Project podcast.
I'm your host Orion Matthews, and today we're talking about one of the largest oil and gas greenfield developments in the world.
The $20 billion West Corner two project in Iraq.
(00:24):
My guest is Tarun Goel, a project controls leader whose career spans from piping design in the field to senior leadership roles on mega projects across the globe.
Tarun, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you so much Orion, and it's pleasure to be on the show.
Thank you.
Just to help the audience understand this project a little bit, and not to get any insider ball, but what were you guys doing? Like why was it so expensive? Um, like could you talk a little bit about like just the major scope of that project and what you guys were setting out to do? Yeah, absolutely.
(00:58):
So it, it is a public project and I think you can find, obviously a lot of information nowadays on online, right? It was, uh, it was one of the largest mega projects in the world in oil and gas industry.
Um, it, it had some proven reserves in billions of barrels, and, um, basically the entire project, uh, scope included, you know, building the upstream processing facilities which included, you know.
(01:24):
Your upstream, uh, you know, refining facilities, your, you know, accommodation camp drilling the wells, bringing, uh, bringing the oil from the wells to the upstream processing facilities, you know, processing the rock root, you know, getting the, the right products out of it.
And then finally shipping the rock roots out of the country.
(01:48):
And obviously whatever the gas associated gas was, that also included a processing of those gas in terms of making sure that those gas are gas is used.
Uh, in, um, generational electricities.
It also had it its own power plant because when you execute such a large projects Oh wow.
Mega scale, right? You have to have your own.
Uh, so if I'm not mistaken, I think 200 to 300 megawatt power plant, um, you know, combined cell power plant was part of that.
(02:15):
There was a large accommodation camp, like about 3000 people accommodation camp, was being built.
So it, it is a, it is a massive footprint connecting maybe over a hundred or 150 wells.
I think, uh, you know, bringing those small gathering lines to the central processing facilities, building these mega, mega mega center processing facilities and then, storing them and then finally shipping them.
(02:39):
So it's, it's an entire program, you know.
Yeah.
It's a huge goal.
And so then it was also a global program, right? So you were in the UAE, the facility was in Iraq.
Were there other major areas that were involved in the project as well? Yeah, uh, we, so we had, uh, offices, like you said, in, in, in Dubai.
(03:00):
Uh, I think the company where I was working, they also had, uh, offices in, uh, Moscow, in Russia.
So they were also controlling a lot from there.
We had, uh.
Oh Mo most of our major contractors, they were from different, different countries, so they were not local contractors.
So we had a contractor from South Korea, you know, Turkey.
(03:20):
We have contractor from Pakistan.
Uh, we had, you know, many different, uh, countries.
Like we had contractor from France basically.
So it, it was a, there were many, many different hubs where the project was being executed, but I think in terms of the core administrative function was being performed in, in Dubai.
So it is a global effort actually.
(03:43):
It's a, bits and pieces are happening all around the world.
So design is being done.
Design is being conducted in Italy, for example.
Right? We have contractors from different part of the world.
So it's a, it's a very, like a diverse, multicultural, efforts going on in different hubs.
And you had fabrication happening in other areas as well? Fabrication? Some in South Korea.
(04:06):
Yeah, some outside of the UAE.
Wow.
And you're, you were part of the project control team at that point in Dubai.
Yeah.
So how did you manage, uh, what would be your advice to someone, say they're setting up another mega project? I I guess from your lessons learned, knowing that you're gonna do fabrication somewhere and maybe design in another spot.
(04:30):
Like what's the advice for folks that are executing these major mega projects to kind of keep all those global pieces moving together? If you're sitting in a project controls team? 'cause sometimes it feels like, you're like, oh, that, that module's getting built over there.
You're just sort of like, I'll hear from them and they better have it done and maybe, I don't know, is that good enough or do you have some tips there for that you would advise? Yeah, absolutely.
(04:55):
So the, the key point I would highlight in terms of the project controls efforts, right, is to, as I mentioned, you know, you, you need to have a sufficient planning activities done upfront before even you start executing.
So I think this is where the core things happens, where you really, really define the project control requirements, right? Which, uh, because you want everybody to work on the same template, same format, same, you know, information needs to be exchanged.
(05:22):
So you don't want any, like, you don't want the information coming from, you know, a fabrication yard in South Korea and different work breakdown structure.
Then what you are reporting, right? Mm-hmm.
So it's like a absolute core is like define your project controls requirements define your work breakdown structure, cost breakdown structures very early on, and make sure that you impose and everybody follows that, right? All the contractors are aligned with that.
(05:46):
So we used to have this very.
Very great document.
We used to call project controls requirements.
It's like a 200, 300 page document.
Every contract we signed, it was embedded into that, the document.
Nice.
So it, it ensured that, you know, so we, we, first of all, we embed the document into the contract.
It means we make sure the contract signs on them that you are going to follow what, what we are telling you, right? And also, another important thing is that before you kickstart your project, during the kickoff, you go through that document with them and explain them, right? So it's not like just dumping document, it's like meeting them on the document.
(06:20):
Because we all need to understand that document itself is not gonna do the work, right? People are going to do the work, right? Document cannot walk, document, cannot do the concrete cubic meter or something.
Right now in the field.
Yeah.
People are going to do the work.
So document is as good as, you know, people are aware of that.
Right.
Otherwise there's no point.
(06:40):
So I think we, we also like learned these lessons that we do a lot of documentations work.
We make sure the contractor signs on the document, but then no one is trained on them.
Right.
Yeah, it's like it's a wild west, you know, you, there is document, then you get the report, which is not what you wanted.
And then when you ask and say, oh, planning engineer was hired three months ago, he wasn't there when the contract was signed.
(07:03):
So he has no idea what Yeah.
What the document says or why Yeah.
Or why it matters at all.
Yeah.
That's interesting.
I almost think of it like, uh, I've never thought about it this way and I wanna circle back and talk about work breakdown structures a little bit.
'cause I think that doesn't get a lot of attention.
It might be something that, but did you, you include the work breakdown structures in the contracts.
(07:25):
Then as part of that 200 pages, you were like, this is major scopes.
And a breakdown of those things.
And we'll report based on that.
Being a client on such a mega project, I think you can only break down your work work to a certain level only.
Right? So you have to give a contractor of active flexibility.
So we normally break down the work breakdown to a level two or three, right? This is where mm-hmm.
(07:48):
This is where we decide, this is our control point where we as a client want to control, right? Yeah.
And then we let the below level breakdown, so le like breakdown below three and four level or five level, we let the flexibility built into that so that contractor can build whatever they want, break it down.
But because for us defining everything from the day one, it's gonna be challenging, right? Because you're talking about billions of dollars of contracts where things will change very rapidly.
(08:14):
Yeah.
So we, we have a high level control where we want to control, we define those critical points and then we let the contractor manage below those critical points, but we make sure that they, those below level rolls up to the higher level.
Right.
Which is very, very important.
Well, and I guess like, I'm sort of thinking through this here, but it almost seems like there's three levels that I heard.
(08:35):
One level is you're contracting with someone and you don't put anything in there about expectations, really, particularly around reporting.
And then you kind of have to deal with it off outside of the contract.
You sort of have no leverage to get what you need outta the contractors.
And then maybe there's like this level two where you've included, uh, your requirements, but you actually haven't gone over it with them.
(08:56):
And so you have a stick, but you sort of have an untrained recipient.
And so they will eventually maybe comply, but it's gonna be a lot more work and painful to get them there.
And then you have this third level, uh, that you talked about that is really cool, which is you.
You use the contract as a meeting of the minds, and really try to explain and get them to understand why it's so, why those requirements are in there.
(09:25):
So you have this like, alignment using the contract as an alignment tool since you're gonna use it as an enforcement tool.
And then that's a really great approach, I would say.
Absolutely.
And also, also I wanted to add one more point, actually very important just came to my mind is that normally the contracts are, in general, in, I'm not, I'm not saying in, in a, in a particular case, but in general, the contracts are viewed as a, you know, panel mechanism, right? You, the contracts are drafted in such a way to penalize the contractor, right? Mm-hmm.
(09:59):
So this is a general kind of consensus among the construction industry on a large project, so what we learned over the years that I think in order for you to execute the project successfully, you have to change that mindset.
I always give example to my, you know, to my colleagues that if you, for example, um, if you punish a small child, right? You always see the opposite reaction, right? Yeah.
(10:23):
Because small child is not gonna listen to, but if you incentivize and if you say, for example, if I saw, if I give my son a candy and if I ask him to do something, he will do it, right? So I think the contract mechanisms we have been dealing for a long, long time is a penalizing, so contracts as a liquidated images clauses, right? And then punishment clauses.
And if you don't do this on this time, you're going to pay such number of penalty, you know, we'll withhold your bonds we'll.
(10:47):
So mm-hmm.
What we learned that if you want to impose the project controls requirements on them, and if you want them to follow them, because every requirements you put them comes at a cost, you have to incentivize them.
So first of all, make sure that they price for it.
So yeah, whatever the requirements you're going to give, uh, you're going to ask for them.
You asked in the contract document itself, make sure you price for them.
(11:07):
What are your efforts for your project controls activities? Right.
Because it doesn't come, nothing is free, right? It comes at a cost.
Uh, second thing is when you have, uh, when you have those, those clauses and e even though you, after putting all those contractual terms, after all those things, even the contractor doesn't fulfill those requirements.
(11:29):
Then instead of penalizing, you incentivize them.
So like safety culture, right? Nowadays around the world, safety is more incentive culture instead of penalizing culture.
So yeah, so you don't have any clauses to penalize, but if you achieve certain manners safely, we will incentive advise you, we'll give you 1% of the contract value as a bonus or something.
(11:49):
So I think tho those kind of mindsets really, uh, encourages contract to deliver things.
You, you really want them, I think that's great advice.
And it seems like I know that.
Animal training went through that there's a number of fields that your first instinct is to use punitive approaches and you get these negative results.
(12:12):
You might get some out of people, but generally you have these sort of incorrect behaviors that manifest in different ways.
And so the, I think the, the game theory is sort of teaching us that the better, that the carrot approach has a little bit more finesse to it.
It's definitely not as easy to pull off, but the results are quite a bit better.
(12:36):
And I, it's pretty if game theory for these major project contracts, 'cause you obviously have different people with different incentives and the, and you're, you still wanna line everybody up and I think the contract's a great sort of pivot point vehicle to try.
Set all of those pieces in motion and make it a fun game rather than a dangerous game that you can only get hurt playing, but you have to play.
(13:02):
So that's really great insight and maybe talking, shifting a little bit along these lines.
Be interested to talk about risk with you.
So we kind of touched a bit on contracts.
So that's, you know, getting, getting the right data outta your vendors, having the right contracts, a little bit of planning is important now that you're in the project, like how do you make sure that you've identified risk and particularly in this Corona project O obviously it's, it's risky to execute the largest project in the world.
(13:34):
It might not have been the most stable area.
There's just a lot of potential.
Risks just in those two things alone, not, not withstanding all the other stuff that goes with a, a project.
What would be your advice and what kind of learnings did you have from that project? On risk? Yeah.
These kind of projects are very risk risky projects, right? I mean, we all know.
(13:55):
So, whatever you think could go wrong would, would go wrong, right? So it's that kind of, uh, that kind of analogy we have.
So, um, there are many different, uh, ways you can tackle this.
So when it comes to a risk, right? So one of the thing what we have learned and I particularly learned is when, when it comes to risk def defining the risk, what risk is, I think everybody just jumps on, starts defining, you know, di like defining the risk, quantifying them.
(14:23):
But I think the first and foremost, you need to ensure that whatever you are going to define your risk area, right? It has to be very realistic because.
Like, for example, there is a, there is going to be rain in, in South Africa, right? And you put that on a risk register, but how is it really impacting your project? It is not gonna impact your project, right? So very project specific.
(14:44):
And you also have to be very realistic because risks are everywhere.
And if you try and quantify the risk, your project will value will be double, right? So there is, there has to be some sort of reasonable approach, uh, where you know, what are the critical risks which are really going to impact your project, right? So this, this framework of risk defining is very, very important.
(15:05):
The second thing is the methodologies, right? Everybody has a different understanding of risk and, um, we, we sometimes, like some people think risks are positive, some people think risks are negative.
Some are very neutral in terms of the risk.
So, um.
That is also one important thing is that early on you, you have your risk management plan, which really brings everybody on board in terms of the, the language, in terms of the terminology you're going to use.
(15:32):
What do you mean by negative risk? Right? What is, what the risk means to you, right? When, when your project is impacted by $2 million, is it risky on, on a $20 billion CapEx or is it like a, so yeah, there has to be very, very threshold, right? If something is going to hit you, but the $10,000, is it that risky on a $1.5
billion contract, right? So those are the real, real thing, which you need to make sure that everybody's aligned before even you start defining, and then you have normal process, right? Where you conduct your risk workshop, right? Define, collect your, identify the risks very early on, uh, by collecting, uh, different party's input.
(16:09):
Then you do qualitative risk analysis, quantitative risk analysis, right? Build, build the mitigation plan and, you know, there are a lot of risks which we were faced with in terms of geopolitical risks, right? Having material issues, right? Supply suppliers, not delivering products on time or, material on time, contractor delays, which is one of the biggest risks, right? So one of our approach was that we, early on before even execution, we, we list out all the critical risks to the project during the basic design and concept design.
(16:42):
The earlier you define, uh, the more control you have, you can do a lot of things about it, right? And then obviously you define you, you quantify them, and then you put together some sort of risk mitigations plan.
What also we learned is that, you know, there are a lot of times where, uh, uh, risks are defined, but then no action is taken later on.
(17:05):
And I think it's not that people don't want to take an action.
I think the one critical thing was missing was the trigger, right? Okay.
There, there is a risk that, you know, contractor is gonna delay, but at what point of time you should take an action, right? You're going to incentivize contractors.
The action, when are you going to incentivize, how long it'll be delayed before you take an action.
(17:26):
So I think every risk must have a trigger, right? When you got to have an action in place.
Because if you don't have the trigger, you don't know when, when to take an action to mitigate it, right? So that was one of the, the critical things we, we learn.
And, and obviously we, we use a lot of different kind of tools on our projects like Monte Carlo simulations, uh, pri risk analysis.
(17:49):
We quantify.
Everything comes down to a realistic picture of a risk.
So you don't want to have like, um, because if you, if you quantify every single risk, which is going to impact you with the highest maximum impact.
Your project will never get executed, right? So, so there are a risk.
You have to accept you, you can't do business without a risk, right? So you need to really clear pathway for what you're gonna accept as a business risk, right? And then will be more realistic, because at the end of the day, when you perform your risk analysis, you're going to come up with a contingency for the project, which is, uh, which you are going to factor into your estimates, right? So those are the the approaches.
(18:28):
Um, but yeah, in summary, there, there is a lot you can do.
We faced with almost all the major risks, okay? Mm-hmm.
And it's not that we prevented all the risks.
There were risks where we, we couldn't do anything about it, right? And I think where we couldn't do anything about it, one of the root cause was nobody knew what the trigger was.
(18:52):
When They take an action, And I guess like, dive into that trigger a little bit.
'cause I'm sure people are thinking now about their risk logs going, Hmm, I wonder if we have triggers.
That was it.
Like you had the risk defined, there was a trigger, but it was, confusing.
Who pulls it? What are it's almost like smart goals, right? Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely.
It's like, what's your, is there like a phrase for that, for triggers where it's like specific quantifiable I mean, how do you, 'cause I could see, because people don't wanna trigger risks or at least certain people are gonna be opposed to a risk triggering.
(19:28):
How do you write those triggers to kind of self trigger without the politics that might go into 'em? Absolutely.
It's art and science.
So there is no single way, single, you know, perfect way.
There, there are two type of, uh, triggers, right? The one trigger is, uh.
Where you know that now risk is happening, risk is occurring now, so that is one trigger and then risk is now ongoing.
(19:54):
At what point of time you take an action to mitigate it.
So that's a mitigation trigger, right? And every mitigation trigger must have mitigation owner assigned, right? Who is going to take an action on that when the action will be taken? So let's say something needs to be done in the month of October, for example.
Mm-hmm.
So did it happen or no? Right? And then you review them quarterly or monthly, whenever your, whatever your frequency, you have decided in the beginning of project, those actions are really taken or no.
(20:23):
The trigger really occurred or so, um, it's a, it's a very challenging, it's a lot of subjectivity involves that, but I think it all comes down to expert judgment, right? Where you, you say, for example, uh, a contractor is going to be delayed.
We have very big risk that contractor will delay this project by three months, okay? And the mitigation actions you have decided is that you are going to incentivize contractor to bring some equipment earlier by paying some more money, right? This is the mitigation action, right? Yeah.
(20:55):
So when do you take an action? So when the contractor is actually forecasting delay for one month, you take an action when the contractor is already forecasting two months delay, you take an action, right? Or when it, when it's forecasting three months, you take an action, right? And if you take an action, what kind of actions do you take, right? Okay, let's negotiate with the, with your suppliers and crash the schedule, right? By paying more for the resources, right? Is it feasible or no? So there, there are A, B, and C, right? If, if it doesn't work, then what else can we do? Can we do something in parallel? Can we bring the equipment and at the same time do the foundation work and then maybe just wait for a equipment to be delivered, uh, you know, and then, uh, put it onto the foundation or something like that.
(21:38):
So those are the, there's a lot of subjectivity involved, a lot of judgment involved.
You just have to be careful that whatever the terminology you phrase in terms of the trigger is understood easily by everybody right Then, then only the action can be taken.
Otherwise it's, it's really difficult.
And getting along those lines, the risk and triggers can face this hidden variable problem, which I think shows up in.
(22:08):
Sort of progress.
And when you go to contractors and you're asking them about that delay, like, Hey, how's schedule doing? And sometimes it'll go, everything's on time, everything's good.
I'm six months behind.
Um, and, and you've been tracking, you've been asking them, you've been sending the notes, uh, everything seems okay, and then everything goes from green to red.
(22:30):
Do you have any advice on people setting up projects? Maybe if there's things in the pre-planning stage you could do, or how do you, how do you approach that? Or what advice do you give to folks? Yeah, so We have done a very good, actually actually me and my team, I mean, the entire team whom I, with whom I worked, has a great learning from this.
And what we did is we implemented a, like you, you hear the word auditing, right? In the finance and all.
(22:56):
We implemented a project controls audit, so project controls audit is like, like you say, right? The contract is showing everything on time.
But then you don't know the true delays because they are going to show you what you want to see, right? They're not gonna show you what, uh, what the true delay is.
So we had this tendency that every quarter we go to a major contractor's offices or facilities where the work is being executed.
(23:17):
We audit them and we as a owner, we build, we take their schedule, and then we build our own internal realistic schedule.
And we, by doing this, we discover that contractor has already two months delayed on the project, not what the contractor, because always contractor schedule comes with a constraint on the finished date.
Right? Which is the, in the premier, the constraint, the date won't move, right? Yeah.
(23:41):
But, but then you have to build a realistic picture from your own own end.
If you ask contractor, can you gimme your realistic scenario, like what is your P 10, P 50, P 90 dates, they will never give it to you because they don't want to show any delay.
So here, here, you as a owner, as a representative, you as a owner's, project control professional, right? You have a responsibility to go.
And find out the truth, right? What is the real delay? So it doesn't happen that one month there is zero delay and the next month, six months delay.
(24:08):
So we implemented this on a very, on almost all of our large projects, we used to go there.
We perform a thorough audit and we, we don't perform a thorough audit.
So we, we perform audit in terms of how the contractors project controls management structure is, are they really staffed very well? Do they really have a good culture in terms of showing delays and all? And then at the end of, after doing all those organizational stuff, we do our own internal forecasting and we bring those data back and we show to our management and we show the true delays and we ask them to have a meeting with the contractor and start taking action early on.
(24:48):
What contractor shows is not aligned with what, what we as a owner's representative feels like.
And there is always, like, when we go to these kind of meetings, there is always back and forth contractors say, oh no, no, your assumptions are very wrong.
And then we say, okay prove me with your data or whatever your backup you have, right? And this is where the dialogue starts and we go into more detail.
And the more detail you, the more detail you go into that, the more things gets revealed, right? And it's, it's a lot of learning for you.
(25:15):
And then at the end of the day, after two, three months of brainstorming here and there, the true delay comes and contractor says, okay, we are not delayed by three months, which you are saying, but we are only delayed by two months now.
So we are, we're happy to show two months delay in our report.
So it's pretty fascinating.
And were you on some of those, I guess like I'm imagining two people on an airplane flying to South Korea to do an audit and.
(25:43):
You're gonna show up.
Was it hostile? How, how did you set those up to make 'em productive and sort of get your hands dirty on the factory floor? Like what, maybe just take us a little bit of story time through one of those projects.
Yeah, absolutely.
And, and this is all goes back to my project controls requirements, right? So when I, when we set up a project controls requirement, we, we put open-ended statement that owner has all their rights to do an audit whenever we feel, or at least quarterly or whatever the frequency we decided there.
(26:14):
Yeah.
We have all our rights and, and obviously we as an owner will give you pre.
Notification.
So we just don't go and jump there, you know, and just charge.
So we, we tell them, okay, like month in advance that you know we have, these are the dates.
Please let us know if those dates are okay with you.
We are gonna come there, we are gonna sit with you.
(26:35):
You will show us your, uh, engineering deliverable register, right? You'll show us all the deliverables, status to date.
You'll show us every deliverable if it has been issued for review.
If it has been issued for construction.
What are the dates? Everything right? You will show us your technical document register.
You will show us your procurement register, which will have all the purchase order listed.
(26:57):
What is their status? Are you in the inquiry stage? Are you going through a commercial evolution? Are you going through a technical bid evolution? And when do you expect to place the po? Right? And then we have a construction detailed quantity list, right, which is, uh, every activity broken down by certain high level quantity, because very early on, you don't know, you don't get a lot of quantities.
So we just go very high level in the beginning where we define like cubic meter of concrete total, you know, uh, running meters of the cable length for the electrical and piping inch meters or inch diameters, things like that.
(27:31):
We go there, we, we tell them that this is all we are going to take from you.
We are going to review them.
We are going to match every deliverable ID with your premier P six id.
And we are going to see that those dates are truly reflected in your P six, right? And if not, we need to see the realistic scenario.
What is it going to? And then you, you build those.
It's an effort intensive job.
(27:53):
It's not an easy, obviously, yeah, take their own schedule.
But the important thing is you make sure that they are aware that you have your, you have, you have your right, which you put into the contract itself, and give them sufficient notice that you're going to go there, sit with their project controls teams and owners project controls.
And we are gonna discuss everything one by one, right? In detail.
(28:14):
And, and sometimes you don't need to go into more much detail, but when you see the area of concerns, you start going into detail saying that, oh, like for example, you, if you're going buying a centrifuge pump from uh, Europe, the delivery is a 52 weeks.
And now, uh, we as a owner, we also deal with those vendors and we get a quote from them and they said that the delivery is going to be 80 weeks, for example.
(28:37):
And then we say, contractor, how can you tell that you have 52 weeks delivery when they gave us a proposal for 80, 80 weeks of delivery? So what is your basis? So show us the document, right? Do you have a confirmation? Do you have signed PO with the vendor? Are they going to deliver that? What are the potential, you know, risks there, whether they're gonna deliver on time or no.
So there's a lot of effort goes into that.
(28:58):
It's not, it's not an easy job, but I think if you do once in a quarter or maybe like twice in a year, it is still manageable.
And this will really give you better control.
This will.
As an owner, you, you sitting in your, your, uh, in your offices, you have no con control over what contractors are doing and you have no idea what is happening.
(29:19):
I think this is an opportunity for you to go and learn as well as gather the right information so you can give your management the right amount of information, which can allow them to take a lot of early actions, which can prevent the true delay happening to the project.
Well, and I imagine if you're talking with their project controls teams and meeting with them, you probably find both resistance but also allies.
(29:42):
Maybe you make some friends and then you have this connective tissue between you and a contractor to kind of marshal things forward.
'cause ultimately you are both shooting for the same goal.
So there might be maybe outta those audits that also is helpful in other sort of non-technical ways, but the culturally helpful, to connect with them and.
(30:03):
And they know that you're, what you're really aiming for example.
And just have cut through all those different layers of communication and just get straight into it.
That's really good advice.
I wanted to shift then, 'cause we just talked about getting data from the contractors, and then you mentioned that maybe you go to do audits.
I know that you do reporting cycles.
(30:23):
I'm curious to talk a little bit about how you present on, uh, one of the largest projects in the world.
What, what's tips do you have for anybody listening that's about to get into one.
How do you present to management? How do you present to ministers potentially that you might have had to talk to? Like what's, do you have any presentation tips and stories for project controls folks? Yeah, yeah.
(30:44):
Uh, yeah, it's a great question.
Um, so when you are dealing with such a large project the reporting, uh, you know.
Is a very, uh, strict and very, you know, structured requirement.
And it's a lot of effort.
Intense driven, right? Um, you have so many various stakeholders on a particular project like this.
We have government, right? We have, uh, we have a head office, we have uh, we have contractors.
(31:09):
We have a external parties who are depending on, you know, our reports.
The the program team who depends on, you know, what, what you're doing within the, the project, the management, for example, in the Moscow office or in, in your, in other part of the world.
Um, reporting is very challenging.
Uh, I think the important thing we can do is systemize everything, right? And, uh, it's all lot of data driven activities.
(31:36):
If you don't have the system set up in the beginning, I think you, you're gonna suffer a lot, right? Because you have to collect so much amount of data and then.
You have to analyze them and report the right matrixes.
Right.
So like earned value management systems, you have to report on a weekly or monthly basis.
Right? And then you have to report your cost, you know, actual cost, plan versus actual.
(31:58):
And then we also had a different type of contracts.
Like we had a lump sum contract, uh, time and material contract.
We had a unit trade contract.
So every, every contract has a different reporting mechanism.
And then you have to, at the end of the day, you also have to summarize everything at the, at the project and program level, right? So it's a, it's a great, uh, efforts driven.
Um, I was fortunate enough to, um, to, to deliver presentations to a very large audience, sometimes even to executive leadership team of our, our company and, uh, and a few times to the Minister of Oil, for example, in, in Iraq.
(32:34):
Wow.
You know, and, um, and a lot of, uh, government, uh, executive.
In Iraq.
So, um, it's a, it's a pretty fascinating, and, uh, some of the things which I learned is, uh, like I, I went to one of the presentation and I, I completely like, bombed it, you know? Yeah.
People didn't like it.
(32:54):
So, for example, I had to deliver something and I just straightaway delivered whatever things I had to deliver without, thinking what the, the context was, what the culture was.
So some of the things you have to learn is that whoever you're going to present to, either it is a minister or, you know, very high level executive in your company, I think you have to understand what is the context, right.
What, why the information is being asked.
(33:17):
What why you're presenting this information, right? And also, if possible, you have to do a little bit of research about who you're going to present to.
So always think about what the other, other person is, because when, when we go and present something, we always go with the mindset that, oh, everybody knows what I know.
Right.
But you have, you have to keep a mindset that you're going to present.
What, you know, to somebody walking on the street, right? Some guy walking on the street who has no clue about what the project is.
(33:43):
So it's like explaining to your mama Yeah.
What the project is.
So sometime you have to have that kind of, uh, attitude with you.
Where one of the cha most challenging role is to simplify information as much as possible.
And sometimes there is a kind of gray area where you too much simplify.
Then, you know, they ask for more detail and you have more detail in this.
(34:05):
And this is too complicated for me to understand, you know? So there is a kind of balance and very subjective balance.
You don't know what is the right amount of information you want to deliver.
So when you deliver to like, for example, ministers and you know, executives, uh, these kind of presentations, uh, it's very important you do a lot of research in advance, understand the context and simplify the information because.
(34:28):
You have to understand the opposite person has no involvement in your project, what you're going to tell about, right? They just want to know if the project is going well or not, right? Mm-hmm.
Or they just want to know what are the critical areas where that person needs to take an action.
So if you're presenting to a, a minister of oil and if you are your project is, you know, 2% behind the schedule, he wouldn't mind, you know, he, he wouldn't bother about it.
(34:52):
But when it comes to finance where we say, oh, this project has a variation order for $50 million, which you have to approve, then he's very interested into that.
He will go into detail and say, okay, $50 million, it is going to come to my desk for approval.
Then I want to know every detail what that $50 million is going to be.
Right? Yeah.
So those are the, the things which you can, focus on.
(35:15):
I mean it in terms of the presentation of knowing your audience.
I think that's really.
Excellent advice.
And then I guess I would just ask for a couple other tips.
'cause I know you're a speaker, you've done some really good presentations, uh, over the years.
And do you have any advice for people just kinda getting started maybe that have, are listening to this going, like, I have my first presentation with an oil minister.
(35:41):
I don't want it to bomb.
How do I, like, what, how do people get started with becoming good? I mean, do you, do you advise project controls people to like, take public speaking courses? Like what are some like simple tips for people to get better at presenting? Yeah, to be honest, I'm still scared to, to speak publicly.
So it's not, uh, yeah, I mean, um.
(36:04):
It takes a lot of, uh, time and effort to realize what what you can do.
I mean, yeah, project controls is, uh, is a very vast area, right? And you can go in any direction and some point of time you, your career will grow to a level where you have to, you have no other option but to address a large audience, right? Where either you are going to deliver a presentation or you want to deliver something to your executives.
(36:26):
And I think in today's world, we all know, right? In social media and internet and everything, the communication skills, and, uh, speaking to a large audience, it's very, very important.
So there is no way around it, right? If you really want to grow your career, if you really want to be a, a, known professional in your, in your area.
So, some of the advice, uh, I would say, like, personally, I'm still very scared and I, I, I still like, uh, you know, sometimes I avoid talking to public, but I have given like one or two very large, presentations in the public.
(36:59):
It gave me a little bit confidence.
Before starting, I was very, very, uh, you know, not very comfortable.
But what, what I learned is that if you're going to deliver something, I think if you have a right mindset, you have to train your mind a lot.
You have a right mindset, and I think whatever you're gonna deliver, always try to be delivering in a positive manner.
(37:20):
So, you know, I mean, say the things as it is, but be in a positive environment and, uh, what from a lot of public speakers.
So I watch a couple of public speakers videos, like TED Talks and all, and, um, it all talks about, it's not about what you are going to deliver, it's about how you're going to make people feel about it, right? So that is very important in terms of the public speaking, is that you're not going to deliver what you know on, you're not gonna dump what you know on other people.
(37:49):
You're going to make sure that it helps them, right? So it helps them, it makes feel, uh, I mean, it feels good about what you're gonna deliver.
So it's all about getting people feeling about what, what you're going to deliver, right? So that is a very important thing.
And when I'm a state, sometimes I forget and I digress, and I just, you know, want to dump all my technical knowledge, whatever I have Yeah.
(38:11):
Uh, to the people.
And then at the end of the day, people are just looking here and there, and they have no clue what, what I just said.
Some public speaker has a very good advice, and I would give everybody same advice, is, uh, what you're going to deliver.
Divide them into like, you know, five or six different pieces, key messages, like what you really want to say to the, to the larger public.
Let's say five or six key messages.
(38:33):
And behind each message, build a story.
Because when you tell the story, your message goes very well.
So I think.
Uh, and I learned this recently, even like in my first lecture.
I didn't learn this, you know, but now I'm getting more and more realization when I'm getting more and more opportunity to speak publicly.
Is that you, people will remember the story.
(38:54):
So tell the story.
Make a point, tell the story.
Make a point, tell the story, make a point.
I think if you follow this format I think it'll go very, very smooth.
Even though like very short story from your real life fictitious story doesn't matter.
Mm-hmm.
People get engaged very, you know, very thoroughly when you tell them a story.
So yeah, I mean, some of those advice and, and don't worry if you're afraid, I mean, it's practically everything is normal when you're afraid.
(39:19):
Everybody has the same feeling.
Like I have, I have the same feeling when I go in front of the large audience, you know? But as the time passes and the more you practice, I think at, at some point of time you're going to realize that, oh, now you're very confident.
And again, make mistakes.
Don't worry about making mistakes.
If you're scared, just go there and just stand there.
(39:41):
It doesn't matter.
But then it'll improve your confidence when you go next time because you know what happened to you in first time.
Right.
Great advice.
I have one last sort of question or two, two final questions for you here.
The first is to kind of wrap up.
I feel like our conversation was almost a sales pitch for project controls teams, and by that I mean I think someone, listen, an executive listening to this right now might have a better sense of the scope that could have been.
(40:16):
Had they had a bigger project controls investment, potentially.
You can't really do audits when you're running a skeleton crew.
You can't really create 30 page contracts and have meetings with 120 different vendors and create alignment if you're running a team of three project controllers for a $5 billion project.
So I'm, I'm curious on your thoughts on that.
(40:37):
I feel like of the projects I've been involved with, the ones that have maybe strong and it's always hard to advocate for funding for project controls.
It's an overhead function and it's an easy one to wanna cut.
But I feel like the stuff we talk through here could add so much value to some of the projects I've talked about that maybe it's just a good reminder that perhaps running a skeleton crew project controls team is.
(41:02):
Can hurt the project in ways you might not even think of.
I'd be curious about your thoughts on that.
No, it's a, it's a great question and I think very valid question.
So like, not all the projects can afford a large team, because we had a very large project, we had like 24 members in the project controls, right? So it's a, it's very impossible on a, on a small scale project, every projects has their own unique challenges, right? And, uh, like smaller projects, you are only talking about 1, 2, 2 people, you know, working on a, on a project.
(41:30):
And I think in those kind of projects, when the timeline is one year or one and a half year, right? You, you really cannot afford to do an audit and things like that, right? You really have to rely on a lot of intuitions.
But I think the more experience you get with this and the more those kind of skills will come to you where you become an auditor, even though you, when you're sitting in your seat, you don't need to go and watch the contractor, the information comes to you, you will immediately catch that there is something wrong here, right? There is a true delay.
(41:56):
So I think the more you learn, the more you practice day on day.
You become more experienced project controls professionals, and then you can spend very least amount of effort.
You don't need to go and sit in the contractor and, you know, have three different resources to do an audit.
Mm-hmm.
You can really learn this and it'll improve your, uh, your skills in terms of doing things very fast.
(42:18):
Right.
And with the, with the current AI environment, right? You can, knowledge is there like vast lake, so you can pull the knowledge and do this.
And, uh, small resources doesn't mean you cut a corner, right? Obviously you have to do everything what you define.
But I think the important thing is if you have smaller team, you make sure that the requirements are very defined accordingly.
(42:43):
That this is, these are the base minimum things you are going to do on a project when you have a smaller team, right? So on a large team, on a large projects, you can define whatever you want, right? You're going to have.
Weekly reporting you're gonna have, you know, because everything at the end of the day comes at a cost.
You're gonna have cost and schedule risk analysis.
If you have a smaller team in your project controls requirements, put that you, you will not have any CRA or SRA done cost schedule risk analysis done.
(43:07):
Right? You'll only have barely identified the risks, and then you'll monitor them as in when.
So lower your expectations in the beginning, but make sure that the critical expectations are there so that there is no impact to the, so what is absolute critical to the project is there, like you have to have monthly at least reporting, right? You don't want to cut a corner on that.
Yeah.
(43:27):
You have to have, you know, level three schedule obviously in a proper format, right? You have to have a proper cost report done at, in a monthly basis or some sort of on value.
Because on value is also time and cost intensive.
And every project, the given amount of resources, you build the requirements accordingly.
So you, you fit to the project's need.
(43:48):
I have a lot of projects.
We don't spend a lot of time on that.
I have like projects between five to $15 million.
Mm-hmm.
We, uh, like we only have one person, 25% allocated to those projects, but we, we focus on the right things, what we need.
That makes a lot of sense.
And you mentioned ai.
I'm curious, are you seeing impacts with AI in the space? Do you have any Uh, yeah, it impacts on that everything.
(44:11):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's impacting everything.
And I think it is going to impact the project controls in a big way.
There is a lot of, uh, things are being built into the pipeline.
Why different players? What I can say that it, it will still not take the core skills of project control away, right? But it'll really help to boost productivity, uh, being a project controls, you know, so for example, analyzing the report right before us to do manually.
(44:37):
Now you can just dump the large amount of data sets and ask the AI.
You know, and it'll give you analytical summary or things like that.
But you still, I don't think it is going to take away anybody's job in terms of project control, because you still need to have, you know, planning done properly, right? You still need to have people communicating with the contractors, doing a lot of, uh, lot of th things, which, uh, really needs interpersonal skills.
(45:01):
Yeah.
I don't think, you know, I agree with you there.
I don't think they're gonna take our jobs.
I think when, but I think you could see some acceleration there.
Uh, similar to sports, you know, you can watch a simulated football season all day long and people wanna see real people do it.
But when you look at what the athletes do in terms of the, they actually, I ran into a data scientist once who was a data scientist for a pro athlete team.
(45:27):
They hire their own data science people, and they use AI now and things to like make better athletic performance.
So I think what we'll see is maybe people getting better at their craft faster.
Still it's people that pillar, the people pillar you talked about in the beginning is always gonna be there.
And I guess my last question for you is kind of an advice question.
(45:48):
If we shift gears, we think about maybe I'm a student, maybe I'm a pipe fitter and I'm thinking, boy, I would really love to have the experiences that Tru just talked about.
I'd love a career in project controls.
What would be your advice to someone that's maybe a student or early career about how they could get into this space or what things they might wanna study? That's a good question.
(46:16):
One of the most important thing comes to my mind is the curiosity, right? You're curious about learning.
Anything, right? It's not just about project control.
So currently I'm in project controls, you know, I'm learning about accounting, I'm learning about ai, so I think the most important thing is be curious, right? Be curious.
And, uh, whenever I want to learn something, I always ask my question.
(46:36):
Like, for example, I, I'm learning accounting, right? So I always ask what accountant knows that I don't know, right? So those are the kind of questions I ask myself.
So I think being curious is very, very important early on in your student career, right? I think your only job is to learn, right? You, you want to learn as much as you can.
If you want, start a career in the project, controls started very small, right? Just, uh, learn, you know, like, uh, for example, what is the schedule, right? How does it really work, right? And nowadays the information is there.
(47:07):
If you want to learn anything, you can quickly Google or put in chat GPD or you know, any other AI agent, and you will get, uh, the information very bad.
So I think if you have a curiosity.
You will find the information, whatever you need in terms of the learning.
Obviously when you are transitioning from any other function to the project control, it's gonna be slightly difficult because everybody, whenever you apply for a new position, they always want, do you have an experience or No, but there are a lot of companies they will offer you because, you know, project control professionals are in a short supply.
(47:37):
Mm-hmm.
They're very, very highly demanded project control professionals.
So there are always opportunities.
There are always companies.
And when you really show your work to those companies, either online or through some sort of video content, things like that, I think you will be, you'll be getting, you know, junior level positions immediately to start working.
I never applied for any position.
(47:57):
I just got curious about it.
And when I was doing my piping design work, I got curious and I started supporting one of the planning engineer at the site myself.
So I was doing like my work and then in the evening I used to sit with him and say, what can I do for you? Then he said, you know, these are the activities.
Can you help me to just type them in the Primera? You know? And that's how like he used to just sit near me one, two hours and I used to type them.
(48:21):
And that's how I learned exploring what is the Primera, you know? And then I started reading something about Primera, how the Primera does, why, why they're using Primera.
So also doing things will really help you.
And, uh, being, having curious mind, obviously that's a good advice.
I, I feel like maybe Leonardo Da Vinci would've been in project controls if he had been around.
(48:43):
There's this profile of people maybe that are generalists and willing to say that they don't know what they don't know.
'Cause you kind of have to work.
Project controls, touches so many things.
I feel like you have to be okay a little bit with you sort of managing these areas that you might not have a full understanding of, but you're willing to learn and go a little bit deep on every.
(49:05):
Piece that you need to, and, uh, that's great advice.
I, I hope you encourage some folks to go into our space.
And do you also, do you have any books or you mentioned earlier Good to Great.
Do you have any other books or professional associations that you would recommend people take a look at? Uh, yeah, there are, there, there are a couple of books, actually, it's on my desk.
I was just trying to read.
(49:26):
So I was just, uh, like couple of, one or two books, which I'm, which I'm currently reading and I think everybody might want to just check out.
It's called Right.
It's a, it's a spiritual, um, spirituality for Leadership and Success.
So it's based on, I know it's a, when I went to last time to India, I got one copy and I was very interested because it connects the spirituality with the leadership.
(49:50):
So it talks a lot about and I think one of my favorite books so far is that it talks a lot about understanding yourself right.
Before even doing anything.
So it also have a, some sort of balance between inner peace and outer success.
So it's a, it's not just like a leadership, leadership is all about, you know, outer success, but this really connects your spirituality with the leadership, so this is one of the, the favorite one, I think.
(50:14):
One other one which I like is the, the soul of the leadership.
Right.
Oh, cool.
Which is the Deepak Chopra's book.
Yeah.
It's a pretty fascinating, it's a very like, iconic book.
And uh, obviously if you want to read something about scientific stuff in terms of you know, nature and in terms of the, the human behaviors and all, I think thinking fast and slow, it's very, very popular.
Right.
Yeah.
The annual comment.
(50:35):
So that's a great book.
One of the noble.
Uh, and apart from this, I read a lot of other books on the money, uh, in terms of like, you know, rich Dad, poor Dad, things like that.
Because somehow being a project controller is also you're managing money right.
At some point of time.
Yeah.
So, so unless you don't know how to manage your own money, how you can expect to manage somebody's money, right.
(50:56):
So I think you have to really be well-versed with managing money.
So I I, I, I read a lot of finance, uh, books in, in those areas.
Yeah.
A really great tip.
And then, uh, do you, are you part of PMI? Are there other associations you like? So there are a lot of great associations of PMI is one of them, right.
In the US you have PMI and EACI.
(51:18):
Right? Those are the two great one, uh, in the uk I'm a, I'm a chartered Quantity Surveyors, so I'm a member of RICS, Royal Institute of Charter Surveyors Royal Institution of Charter Surveyors, the CIOB, the Chartered Institute of Buildings.
Also I'm a, because I did my law degree in a construction law, I'm also a member of, uh, chartered Arbitrator Institution, C-I-A-R-B, chartered Institute of Arbitrators.
(51:44):
So those are the three prominent ones when you talk about quantity, surveying, construction management and construction law in the uk.
Awesome.
Those are really great tips and really inspiring to get this information.
We'll definitely include links to these things down below in the comments section for anyone that's interested.
(52:04):
And I just wanna say, Torun, thank you so much.
It's been a really great discussion.
Appreciate you taking us through one of the largest projects in the world, learning about leadership, learning about risk.
Thank you.
Thank you for coming on today.
It is true honor, and thank you so much, Orion, for inviting me, and, uh, it's a pleasure talking to you.
And, and again, great meeting you.
(52:25):
I mean, like-minded people and thank you.
Thank you so much.
If anyone wants to get in touch with you, what is a great way for them to connect? Would it be following you on LinkedIn? I think the best, the best way is to find me on the LinkedIn.
You can just type my name, T-E-R-U-N-G-O-H-E-L and you can find me there.
Um, you know, and I think all my contact details are there on the LinkedIn.
(52:46):
Awesome.
Well, thanks again and look forward to catching up with you perhaps on another episode.
Thank you so much.
It's a pleasure.
Thank you.
Thanks for listening to the Major Project podcast.
Be sure to follow us wherever you get your podcasts and learn more at the major project podcast.com.
Until next time, keep building big.
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