Chris Carson has over 40 years of experience in Program/Construction Management, specializing in Program/Project Controls disciplines of Planning & Scheduling, Cost Estimating & Management, Risk Management, Document Control, and Forensic Analysis. He is a recognized thought leader in industry associations including CMAA, AACE International, RICS, PMI, and the Guild of Project Controls. He is the co-author of CPM Scheduling for Construction: Best Practices and Guidelines. To learn more about this book and order a copy, please click here.

I encourage you to watch my video interview with Chris and learn from the great stories and insights that he shared.

Early on in his career, Chris understood the importance of planning and scheduling in his own projects: “One day, I realized that I had moved into this crisis management role where I wasn’t planning properly. I was doing some level of planning, but I realized that I wasn’t doing the things I should have been doing. So, I sat down and put all my projects on schedules and brought them up to date, got them detailed, planned them out, got all the answers, and really within three four months my life went into a much more manageable role.”

Chris also realized the importance of communication and leadership in projects. According to Chris, “When you’re running a project at a foreman level, you’re working with all the workers and it’s really easy to motivate people, get them excited, and set a pace.  Then you move into being a project manager or even a superintendent and now you’re not actually doing the work. So, you’ve got to motivate people a little bit more remotely. Then you move into an office role where you’re not even on the job and you’ve got to motivate people even more remotely. I really started looking into why those things are so much more difficult the further you got away from the workers.”

Here is what Chris mentioned about his first paper and how he started teaching scheduling: “The first paper I wrote was about the fact that a project manager just doesn’t really have time to do all the scheduling because as a PM you have all the communications and letters and emails and shop drawings and submittals and problems and time and job costs. You have so many responsibilities that you can’t really do the scheduling as well. I found that nobody was scheduling right. Contractors always have an estimating department, but they almost never have a scheduling department. So, I started teaching the foreman and superintendents and PMs how to schedule and that’s how I started my training career, if you will.”

When I asked Chris about the top 3 lessons that he’d teach someone who is new in project controls, he shared the following three lessons:

Crosstrain Yourself

As a young person, there’s a certain interest for you in a particular discipline say scheduling or estimating. But recognize that if you focus on just that one field and you become very senior and you go up that discipline, it’s very hard for you or your company to let you drop back and take on another discipline. The most successful project controls people that I’ve seen have been those that have all the disciplines under their belt. A lot of people will say they’re project controls experts and then you say so what’s your background and it turns out that it’s almost always planning & scheduling and you say what about cost estimating and management and they really haven’t done that. As a scheduler you can grow up to be the scheduling manager but as a project control specialist you can grow up the career path to become a project controls manager and then direct your project controls and you know then you can subdivide yourself and you can do forensic. You have a lot more flexibility in your career if you try to cross train yourself and learn all the disciplines.

Be the best you can be

As a technical person, absolutely learn your trade. If, for example, scheduling is your discipline, learn everything you can in scheduling. Be the best that you possibly can. If you’re being the best you can be, you have a lot more fun doing it and your career will go better.

Build relationships

Don’t underestimate the value of building relationships and the soft skills because communication is everything right now. In scheduling the schedule is the main communication tool. The failures I see with people are often related to a stereotypical engineer. Too many people focus on just the technical and don’t embrace the rest. But remember that everything we do is support for the team and so the soft skills become very important.

When I asked Chris about one of the most important lessons that he has learned in his career, he said: “The most important lesson I’ve learned is to be a gentleman and stay objective. Don’t let your emotions enter into the argument. Stay transparent, be honest, and make sure that you’re being polite. You can get your point across. Keep it gentle, keep it nice. I’ve done a lot of mediations and you would be amazed at how often the mediation resolution does not come down to right or wrong or even fair or unfair. It comes down to one party stepped on another party’s principles and the emotion got into it and that emotion blew everything up and you can never resolve those issues from the analysis side. We resolve things so much better if they’re not so emotional.”

Chris had also some great advice for senior professionals in project controls. Here is what he shared:

“If you’re a senior person you should be going to conferences and you absolutely should be presenting. So, you shouldn’t be going to a conference without demonstrating some industry thought leadership. You need to mentor people. The more you mentor the better you get whatever you’re teaching.

You need to really focus on supporting the teams. People think about their resume only when they need another job. But your company is using your resume to get work. So, improve your resume through certifications and publications. You want to be the person that when your company is looking around for the right team to propose on a project you want to be their first choice in your discipline.

You have to keep up with the industry because if you haven’t read anything in 10 years you are woefully out of date. So, you need to stay on top of it. Stay innovative with the industry and start a community of practice inside your company and start giving training to everybody in your company.”

Resources

• The Audio version of the interview with Chris Carson, FRICS, FAACE, FGPC, PSP, DRMP, CEP, CCM, PMP on Project Controls Mastery Podcast

• CPM Scheduling for Construction: Best Practices and Guidelines by Chris Carson, Peter Oakander, and Craig Relyea
• Forensic Delay Analysis Course Instructed by Chris Carson
• Project Controls Training Programs
• Project Controls Video Tutorials

About Chris Carson

About the Interviewer, Dr. Kamran Akbarzadeh

Dr. Kamran Akbarzadeh is co-director of Project Control Academy and founder of Dream Achievers Academy.  With his Amazon best-selling and international award-winning book, Leadership Soup, Kamran is an internationally recognized leadership and success expert. 

With years of experience as a project manager and subject matter expert in big oil and gas companies, and as a successful entrepreneur, Kamran believes that everyone has the potential to achieve what he or she truly wants in life. His desire for adding value to people and helping them grow and achieve their dreams and visions motivated him to establish Dream Achievers Academy and write his second book Get What You Want, which also became an award winner.

Kamran’s vision is to passionately add value to people around the world and inspire them to realize their potential and fulfill their dreams. And his mission is simply to serve.

As an inspiring and motivational speaker, seminar leader, and coach, Kamran equips his audience with profound tools, techniques, and solutions to hone their skills, increase their influence, get what they want, and achieve long-lasting success in their personal and professional lives as a result.

Kamran holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering, PMP with Project Management Institute, and Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM) with Toastmasters International.