Russ Walling, president of a commercial contracting firm, discusses how engineering education conditions graduates to avoid risk.
Insight
Russ Walling: Learning to Work Hard Later in Life Is Very Difficult
“It's very, very hard to take somebody who doesn't have the experience of working hard and have them finally figure that out later in life.”
Insight
Russ Walling: Focus on Standard Rules Rather Than Solving Every Exception
“There's rules and there's exceptions, right? And most of the time, if you follow the rules, you're in good shape. Stop focusing on the exceptions.”
Insight
Russ Walling: Fix workplace mistakes before analyzing how they happened
“So let's fix it first, and then once we get past it, create that space, it's fixed, everybody's feeling better. Okay, now let's talk about how we got here. Like, what did we do wrong here to make this happen?”
Insight
Russ Walling: Pre-construction KPIs based only on won bids drive unprofitable contracts
“The way most construction companies work is, you know, the pre-com people, they are, their KPI is, how much work did you win? And it's like, well, You know, it's, you can win a lot of work that's not very profitable, and I'm not saying their only KPIs should b…”
Disclosure
Russ Walling: Firm avoids public works to focus on relationship-driven clients
“I always tell, tell everyone we want to work with people who want to work with us, not who have to work with us. So like one of the things we don't do a lot of public works because in public works, you throw out a number, whoever's lowest and has the scope, th…”
Disclosure
Russ Walling: Capped downside justifies open collaboration with new partners
“I tell my people all the time, you know, yeah, we're exposing ourself here. Someone could screw us over with this. If they do, the damage will be X, and then we just won't work with them again, right?”