All eyes on the finish line
Out in the field, hands-on, living and breathing the deliverables. For Jim, an engineering graduate fascinated by structures - and a NCAA D1 athlete with a taste for the outdoors - this was the route that would ultimately lead him to managing the delivery of a multi-billion dollar new and “wonderfully green” portfolio of US Federal buildings, amongst many other major programs. According to Jim, seeing these programs through to completion is about determination, but also about collaboration. “You can’t take your eyes off the finish line for years,” he says, “but you have to help everyone anticipate the future so they cross the finish with you.”
Overcome obstacles to make a difference
The road to program success is rarely a smooth one, Jim states, but delivering social good is a powerful incentive to innovate. “For the Federal building program,” he says, “we created entirely new services in-house to supplement the sustainability projects and jump-start the flow of cash into the economy.”
Likewise, when building the new US Mission to the United Nations in New York City, Jim’s program team was unable to demolish the old embassy using conventional methods, so it employed robots to bring the building down safely instead. This cleared the way for the new Mission, an iconic tower neighboring the UN.
Chase opportunities to learn and do better
Jim firmly believes that successful programs are built on a constant desire to learn and improve. “I chased the biggest projects I could to learn as much as I could, and then I chased the biggest programs I could to combine those learnings and improve their outcomes,” he explains.
And he is determined to bring his stakeholders up with him. “My GSA (General Services Administration) customer team for the Federal building program had minimal program management experience,” he reveals. “But over a matter of weeks, they were at the point where they were regularly reporting up to the White House on progress that was being measured publicly. And they met every obligation and every outlay of that program over all five years of its duration.”