Samantha: Do some of those industries have their own quirks when it comes to project managing and managing those sorts of projects? I imagine mining would be quite different to residential construction? Or are there some principles that apply throughout?
Richard: Well, a lot of principles overlap. But I suppose the bureaucracy changes a lot. So [inaudible 00:05:12] is probably a good example. If you’re working in the mining sector, they’ve got a standard. Whereas if you’re working on somebody’s house, it’s a lot different. So you’ve got to deal with things differently. It might be much more paper-based, depending on if you’re working on an industrial installation.
As you can imagine, a large commercial project’s got a lot more people and a lot more trades working on it. Whereas an industrial complex might be even larger in scale, but have less amount of trades on site and less materials on site. So slightly easier to manage, even though it’s larger scale.
So the industry does change quite dramatically from industry to industry, but the actual construction processes are very similar. You’re still working with concrete, you’re still working with bricks, you’re still working with steel. So the skills required are quite similar. It’s just the management does change quite dramatically from industry to industry.
Samantha: Wow, it’s fascinating. Do you find that in the current climate, particularly in Australia…you mentioned that the mining industry has sort of gone into a bit of decline. Are there projects that tend to be more contemporary and higher-demand currently?
Richard: Well, at the moment, the local market in Sydney and Newcastle is actually booming in the housing sector in definitely the higher-end market, which is quite unusual. Who can judge what happens? I mean, we had a recession in the late ’80s that was quite large, and we had the GFC, so things have been up and down. But currently, there’s quite a boom in the investment market, which is mostly unit development. So yeah, at the moment, mining’s down and that investment market’s up, so you have to be very quick to change and apply yourself to where the need is at the time.
Samantha: Yeah, that sounds like it makes sense. I’m curious about what actually led you to this field. It’s quite a complex environment. How did you come to be an expert in this environment?
Richard: Well, I started an apprenticeship in bridge building and I worked for a civil engineering company and we built bridges out West and also in the city where we had to travel fairly long distances. That was very interesting work, but then a family friend approached me and asked me whether I’d be interested in working on high-rise buildings in Sydney based on my skill background building bridges. We did a lot of things in concrete. They don’t build bridges out of timber anymore.
So yeah, I ended up on a large construction project in Sydney. I mean, particular, I was working on the lift cores, which are generally, roughly two floors above the main structure. So you rise at the highest end of the building at any one time, and as a young lad, that was quite exciting and quite a hazardous job, which made it a bit more exciting. Yeah, it was a great introduction to the industry and how complex it was and I was extremely interested in how the process was managed and how you could pool so many people together to put these amazing structures up. I never looked back.
Samantha: Just talking about all those people and bringing them together, I can imagine it would be quite challenging when you’ve got so many components. Even talking about the structure of bridges and buildings, and that sort of thing. We’ve all seen the YouTube videos and the photos of bridges and buildings that don’t quite meet in the middle. How do you even go about coordinating all of that…not just labor, but technical skill and physical construction materials and so on? That must be an enormous challenge.
Richard: Well, it’s a great question because it’s a good example you just brought up, how bridges don’t meet together and whatever. And good builders always say, “You’re not a good builder by the mistakes you don’t make, it’s how well you fix your mistakes.” The process is actually solving problems on your feet, obviously, and that’s the excitement of the industry. Especially for a construction manager, in general, because they’re on the cold face and what happens is they are the ones that have to have the answers instantly at any one time. Because if you can’t answer an important question straight away, then it holds the project up.
So a good construction manager’s got enough skills either personally or access to the right people where they’re able to draw on that expertise and solve a problem instantly for any individual onsite, so the project is constantly moving forward. In a lot of cases, the project finds its own life. You’ve obviously got a set of drawings to follow, and the engineering is extremely important because that’s structural. But a lot of the time, it does find its own life. And at the end of the project, yeah, sometimes, it’s not exactly what the original drawings showed.
