Today, we discussed Romans Road and how Christ can lead us down the narrow road leading to the Lord's Heavenly gates we are traveling on as God's soldiers. It's always awesome to huddle up with the Old Dawg Pack and talk about "the why" behind this movement we are fighting so hard to have our industry learn. Appreciate y'all and appreciate your dedication to making our world a better place to live and work. God bless!

What if the best thing you've ever done on a jobsite can't be taught? That's a question I've been wrestling with. I've spent more than 40 years in construction, and like a lot of us, I've been fortunate enough to turn around difficult jobs, mentor younger superintendents, and solve problems that didn't seem to have a solution. For a long time, I thought experience was the answer. Now I think experience is only part of it. The real question is: Can you explain why you made the decision you made? Or does it just live in your instincts? Too much of our industry depends on personality. "He's just a natural leader." "She's got great instincts." "He just knows how to run work." But what happens when they retire? If we can't explain what we're doing in a way someone else can learn, practice, and repeat, then we've passed on stories instead of standards. The next generation doesn't just need our experience. They need a framework they can stand on while they're building their own. That's what I've been trying to put into words over the last few years. Not a better personality. A better standard. I'm curious... What's one thing you've done for years that came naturally to you—but only later realized you had to learn how to teach? I'd enjoy hearing from some folks who've spent a lifetime building this industry.

I’m glad to be here. For those who don’t know me, I’m Jody Fitzgerald. I’ve spent 40+ years in construction as a superintendent, general superintendent, and project fixer on everything from residential to commercial, healthcare, multifamily, and military work. At this stage, I’m most interested in helping pass on what took a lifetime to learn the hard way. I believe construction does not have a knowledge problem. It has a knowledge transfer problem. There are a lot of us who learned through pressure, mistakes, long days, hard lessons, and people who took the time to show us the way. Now it’s our turn to do the same. Some of you may have seen my posts around Built, Not Forced.™ — The Field Leadership Standard for Construction. That work is really built around one idea: We need to develop field leaders on purpose, not just hope they survive long enough to figure it out. I’m here to listen, learn, share what I can, and be a resource wherever it helps. Looking forward to being part of the conversation.

Big shout out to fellow Old Dawg @Heather Ormonde for teaching a webinar today for CMAA South Carolina Chapter. Heather did an outstanding job sharing practical insight on emotional intelligence, communication, trust, and leadership in construction management. I really appreciate her helping out my CMAA SC chapter and representing the Old Dawgs so well. Thank you, Heather. You crushed it.

Dawgs! Over the past few jobs we have run the Pull Plan both analog (Sticky Notes and Boards on the wall) and online (we used Touch Plan). Analog is great because of the natural conversations that happen when the foremen are up at the boards, updating their commitments and bumping shoulders with each other - the "hum" of conversation in a room during our sessions was organic and the lifeblood of the job. Then we needed 2 assistant level guys spending 3-4 hours on a Friday collecting data, entering it on a spreadsheet, chasing foremen down for variance reasons or "Hey you haven't updated your plan yet". Ultimately it was a chaotic way to get the "Learning" part of our LPS done. When we utilized Touch Plan, all of that worry went away because the program tracks all that for you, forces people to put variance reasons on any commitment that changes its finish date, tracks PPC in any way you could want and pumps out pretty reports. The problem is that "hum" in the room during foreman's meetings was gone. We tried to replicate it throughout the job and while we still had an effective pull plan, it wasn't nearly as effective as analog. I am wondering if others have had this same experience and if anyone would be interested in a program that can pump out statistics based on a picture of your analog boards? Would like to discuss this a bit further with you all tomorrow but please give me some feedback!