AHL: 5 Project Management Questions Answered

Can skilled technicians truly excel as project managers without formal training? Unpack the complexities of project management in the ICT industry as we debunk myths, share essential tips, and highlight the importance of certifications like RTPM and PMP. From managing multiple projects and schedules to navigating budgets and risks, we clarify the crucial role of project managers and the pitfalls of unprepared transitions. To keep things fun, we also explore our drinks of choice and challenge each other with a lively acronym game, while gathering your input on the best time for show releases.

Whether you're selecting subcontractors or ensuring effective project budgeting, we've got you covered. Learn how to verify subcontractor credentials, ensure financial stability, and align management styles for a smooth collaboration. Discover the power of a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) in controlling labor costs and meticulous planning. We then tackle risk assessment and handling scope changes, stressing the need for early identification and a formal change order process. Finally, we underscore the critical role of quality assurance throughout the project lifecycle. Join us for insightful discussions that can elevate your project management skills in the ICT industry.

Chapters

• 0:00 Project Management in the ICT Industry
• 16:54 Subcontractor Management and Project Budgeting
• 25:44 Risk Assessment and Project Management

Transcript

Chuck: 0:00

Wednesday night, 6 pm, eastern Standard Time. That can only mean one thing Live after hours with your favorite RCDD, chuck Bowser. You know it's me. Come on, be honest. You know I'm your favorite RCDD. Tonight we're talking project management. You know, when I created the show for tonight I want to create the not when I say create, I mean did it in restream and got it all set up After I'd already submitted I was like man, I should have put in there that tonight's show was about project management, because there's a lot of interest in project management in this industry and the funny thing is Wirefractions is already answering what are you drinking the thing about project managers?

Chuck: 1:04

In our industry we really suck at project management. Now, I don't necessarily mean you suck at project management, but when you look at the industry as a whole, we're notorious for promoting a good technician to be a project manager. A good technician who has great hands-on skills and knows the codes and standards to a position of. You know now they need to be good with Excel and Word and project management programs and computer skills and communications. They're not so good at that sometimes. And to add another layer of complexity on top of that, I know what the definition of project manager is. But in our industry, a lot of times, especially with your smaller companies, we have a tendency to give lead techs foremen the title of project manager the title of project manager, and then not really have them do anything project management because they need to bump them up to get into the next salary range. But they're not managing schedules, they're not managing material budgets, they're not managing labor budgets, they're not managing risk, which is what project managers do. Project managers really should not be pulling and terminating cable. I said it. I said it. If you disagree with me, put it in the chat box. If you disagree with me, project managers should not be pulling cable. Their job hey, josh, how you doing their whole gig is to manage not just one project but multiple projects. A good project manager is going to be managing anywhere from I don't know one to six or seven projects at a time, and each of those will be at different stages of the game. That's why they don't need to be out in the field working. I digress, I digress. I forgot to start the show.

Chuck: 3:05

Show with what are you drinking? So I got my hey wire for excellence. I got my Milwaukee cup with my let's talk cabling stickers on there. Right Tonight I am drinking water with lemon and lime essential oil drops and I'll tell you why. About a year ago I got kidney stones. I wouldn't wish kidney stones on my worst enemy. Kidney stones are horrible, man, horrible. They're extremely painful. So Wire for Action says he's drinking Yahoo. Let me see what are people drinking here, right? Never miss.

Chuck: 3:48

Can I say hope you learn before I get my RCD. Oh, very good, zd. I appreciate that. Let's put that up on the screen. I love when I get comments like these. He said hey, chuck, I found your site. I'd hope to learn a lot before you get your RCDD.

Chuck: 4:00

Let me ask you this ZD, when do you plan on getting your RCDD? Let me ask you that question. So again, that's the first question what do you drink? Because we always start it every once in a while. We do that, but we also do the acronym challenge. So let's do the acronym challenge for tonight's show.

Chuck: 4:21

The acronym for tonight's show is RTPM, rtpm, rtpm. What does that mean? What does that mean rtpm? Uh, I'll give you a couple seconds. It has to do with tonight's show. Rtpm.

Chuck: 4:39

Joe, joe lunes is drinking diet coke. Um, so houston har says, while he agrees. They shouldn't be in the field, they should at least have the knowledge of how the trade works. I agree with that 100%. Wire for Exxon says you sure the Milwaukee Caps aren't stopping those kidney stones? There you go.

Chuck: 5:03

Daryl the RCDDcdd got it. He says registered telecommunications project manager. Right, all right. So that's a certification that you can get for project management in the low voltage industry. That's offered by bixi. That's not the only one. There are other project management certifications you can get, and probably the most well-known one is from PMI Project Management Institute. They have this certification called the PMP certification, project Management Professional. It is like, from what I hear, because I've never taken the test, but I know people who have from what I understand, it's as hard as getting your rcdd, so, but it has the same recognition as an rcdd, and that's what I was talking about earlier. Our industry is horrible, horrible about project managers and and giving them the title, but yet they don't actually do the stuff right. So, acronym jazz oh, motivational minute, motivational minute, motivational minute.

Chuck: 6:10

I'm skipping that this week because I'll tell you I messed it up. Yes, so did you catch the show this week? I did on Monday night. Hey, let me know. I want your opinion. So I got 20 people in TikTok. I've got about 10 or 15 people right now in the other platforms. Research question Do you because right now I currently publish the show on Monday nights Do you think I should change it to publish it out Monday morning instead of Monday nights?

Chuck: 6:38

Let me know yes or no. Do you think I should do Monday mornings or Monday night? You get a chance to help shape the podcast right now by putting your answer in the chat box. Yes, so Monday's show, the one that just passed I did about a 25-minute show on non-mechanical firestop systems and I talked in depth about the benefits and disadvantages to putty, caulk, cementious material and all that other stuff, and I think on the tail end I think I tagged in on mechanical systems a little bit as well.

Chuck: 7:13

So somebody says it depends on where you want people to listen to it. So here's the thing when I publish it out to the podcast on Mondays, it automatically downloads to their phone. So I don't know when they listen to it. I just know that how many people download it. So let me see what are we saying over here in the chat box. Anybody have any suggestions over here? Look, we had another person who got the whoops, brandon, got the registered technology project manager. That's close. That's close. It's telecommunications. I'll give you 10,000 points for being close. And some of the ZDs were pointing back. You started reading those massive manuals. That's one of them.

Chuck: 7:51

Right there this week, maybe around April 2025, zeb is my name, sorry for this. Oh, no problem, zeb, not a problem. So, yeah, it's good. So here's my tip to you, zeb Go ahead and apply to sit for the exam, pay for the exam. So now you're locked in and that's going to force you to read through that book and do what I did. You know my RCE study program. It's based on reading 70 pages a week. 70 pages a week, that's only 10 pages a day. You can read 10 pages a day and easily comprehend that. So do that. 70 pages a week, that's only 10 pages a day. You can read 10 pages a day and easily comprehend that. So do that 70 pages a week, you'll get through it. And if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me. Okay, please feel free to reach out to me.

Chuck: 8:36

Let's get on to our project management questions. Do I have any advice for anybody who wants to lather up with mayo and sit in a water heater closet. Don't use Miracle Whip, don't use mayonnaise. That's my advice. So the first question is how can I effectively manage stakeholder expectations in an ICT project? I'm sorry, I apologize, because I did not write down who sent these to me. So what is a stakeholder? Let's talk about that first. A stakeholder is anybody who has skin in the game on that project. It could be the techs out there pulling the cable, the project manager, the owner of the company. It might be the salespeople at the Graybar, or the, or the or the or Anixter Dobbs is going to be the customer. If it's a new construction site, it could be the GC, the, the electricians, all that. That's what a stakeholder is.

Chuck: 9:37

So what I talk about when I talk about how to manage stakeholder expectations, you got to follow what I call the four C's. Right, the four C's. Write this down Clear, concise and continuous communications. I'll say that again Clear, concise and continuous communications, and start from day one right. Anytime you send communications to the customer, whether it's a letter or email, make sure that it's straight to the point, easily understandable, and you're always staying in contact with that customer. And again, you start there from day one the first step is make sure that you have the right contact information for this clear, concise, concise and continuous communication. 10 000 points at the beard of knowledge, yes, yes, um. So yeah, make sure you have the right contact information for the stakeholders. You know, usually there's some type of a kickoff meeting. You sit down, get their business card. You know, I love the dot things because you can scan them and it puts them in your phone automatically. Less chance of of um, of misspelling somebody's name or something like that. Now here's some tools to help you with that clear, concise and continuous communications.

Chuck: 10:58

Number one have a project plan, right, a project plan from day one, and in the project plan you want to include the timeline. Okay, on this day we will mobilize and get on the job site. This day we will start pulling cable. This day we'll start terminating. This day we'll start testing. This day is final cutover. Also, make sure in that project plan that you tell them what the deliverable is.

Chuck: 11:24

Now, a lot of times, projects will have a formal request for proposal, request for quote, and what will happen is it will have those deliverables in there. But a lot of projects really are generated from a customer calling you and saying hey, I need you to come out and do some work. Where you do the walk-in, there is no formal RFP. So in that project plan, put in the deliverables. We will install 110 duplex work area outlets. The voice will be category 5E, the data will be cat 6. They will be certified with a fluke tester or an AEM or softening certifier and we will provide those test results. We will provide as-builts and red lines on the completion of projects. So that way you clearly identify what those deliverables are. That way you help meet those customers' expectations.

Chuck: 12:16

And then another tool A lot of project managers miss this one Regular updates. Yes, you heard me. Regular updates Do weekly status reports, weekly status reports, and that status report should talk about what progress was made that week. You could say, oh, this week we pulled 35 work area outlets, dropped them down and received material blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then also in that weekly status report, share what are the next steps and actions that are going to happen. What's going to happen next week? Next week we anticipate that we'll pull another 35 stations and blah, blah, blah, blah and blah, blah, blah, blah. And the reason you want to talk about what you want to do next week is that it kind of ties in with the third thing that should be in that weekly status report Proactively identify anything that causes you to not work efficiently.

Chuck: 13:18

So, for example, let's say that you're working on a new construction site and this new construction site you have an elevator dedicated solely to just the construction workers and let's say the elevator breaks down. Well now, instead of using the elevator to take the 50,000 feet of cable up to the 10th story, you've got to literally walk them up the steps. That's time. That was not estimated in the bid. So if you put in your weekly status report that next week you anticipate doing 35,000, I'm 35,000, 35 drops, so in the next week you'd say look, this week we only got 15 drops done. But the reason for that was because the construction elevators broke it down. It took us a day and a half to get the cable to the floor. Because when you document that in a weekly status report, it's that sets the foundation for a change order. Okay, now you're not going to hit it. You may not hit change order for just one blockage. You might if it's big enough, but you know. But if you start documenting those blockages, when you get enough in there, you'll start to see a pattern where they get to come back and customers say, look, man, we have a lot of downtime on this project. That was not estimated in the bid.

Chuck: 14:30

Daryl says Microsoft Teams on 365 has been a game changer in customer communications. Absolutely Love Microsoft Teams. And then the last one is listen as part of communications listening to the stakeholder and the customer. Listen to what they say. Not only do you listen, you document it. And I suggest like if you're in a meeting with a customer, you send some type of communications back to that stakeholder and say, look, per, our walkthrough on a job site today. These are the things that we discussed. I just want to confirm I understand correctly. Send it off, boom Documentation. And yeah, I have a list of 147 pro tips on my website. Pro tip number one is document, document, document. Yeah, exactly.

Chuck: 15:22

Question number two, chuck. What are some key considerations when selecting vendors for an ICT project? Now, what happens is sometimes, when you get awarded a project, you might have to subcontract other people. You might not be able to do fiber, so you might subcontract somebody to do the fiber for you. Or you might not do outside plant. You might be subcontracting electricians to put in conduit, or maybe the bonding and grounding, or maybe putting in receptacles inside of the racks or the cabinets.

Chuck: 15:56

So what does that mean, right? So how do you select the right, the best contractor? Well, number one there's, there's, there's a couple of areas you really, really want to look at. Well, number one cost, quality of service, experience in the industry and scalability. Let's start off with cost. Now, don't let cost really kind of drive. You Don't necessarily pick the cheapest person. You want to choose the contractor that checks all the boxes and then, once you get them down to just two or three, then you can start comparing costs. This is a small industry. A small industry. You're going to know what other people's prices are. You also want to pick a contractor that has a good quality service. Now, this is a small industry. If you start hiring electricians from your local area or other contractors, you've probably already come across them on other projects. They've already got a reputation, so you know if they're good or not right.

Chuck: 16:54

Daryl, the RCDD, says I interview subcontractors to verify they are what they say they are. It's easy to oversell on paper. 100% agree with that, 100% agree, and I'll talk about how to solve that. Are they the right size to do the work? The right size to do the work? George Humphrey says trunk slammers. Yes, stay away from trunk slammers.

Chuck: 17:18

If you're just doing a project where you're only putting in, let's say you're hiring an outside plant contractor because you don't do outside plant work and you're only putting one outside plant cable between two buildings, that company doesn't have to be very big to do that. But if you're doing a campus where they're doing multiple fibers, multiple copper cables between multiple buildings, you may not want to use, like George Humphrey says, a trunk slammer. A trunk slammer. So make sure that they're of the right size to do that work. Do they have enough people to do that work? And do they have enough people that are qualified and certified to do that work? It's okay to ask Daryl probably knows this. It's okay to ask hey, what kind of certifications do your people have? Do you have Bixie? Installers or technicians or anybody in your company have OSP certifications? It is okay to ask that and it's okay. Who was it that said this? Let me tell you, in the chat box there's a famous quote Trust but verify, trust but verify. I think it's attributed to Colin Powell, but I'm not 100% positive on that.

Chuck: 18:26

And then also make sure, when you're choosing the subcontractor workforce, make sure that they will participate in your project management style. Okay Now, the reason for that is, you know, if you're going to be managing material and labor and schedule, there's a lot of companies out there that, just okay, their project management style is is it in yet? Are you done yet? That's their project management style. If the subcontractor is at their style and you are, you are rtpm or pmp that's going to cause you headaches. So make sure they participate. That is that company financially stable, stable again.

Chuck: 19:02

Void the trunk slammers, all right, because if they go out of business in the middle of a project now, as a project manager, that's going to impact your schedule. You're going to have to start the whole process over again and go find another subcontractor and start over from scratch one, and that's a lot of headaches that you, as a project manager, really don't need to do. And, daryl, here's the thing for yours Check the references, follow up on the references. When you solicit for prices from subcontractors, have them give you three references, five references, whatever the case may be, no-transcript. When you start working with some subcontractors, let's say you there's an outside plant contractor that you use, right, and if once they've done five or six or seven projects for you, you don't have to go through the check references anymore because you already know, because they've worked six or seven projects with you, right, there you go, then you know that they're going to be good. And here's another one. A lot of people think about this if you, if, if, if abc electrical wants to do the outside plant work for you, you've never heard of them before. Call your local gray bar, call your local annix, or reach out to your salesperson within those, within distribution, say hey, have you heard of this company? And if you don't, ask Heather and ask Greg, distribution knows a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff. Daryl, the RCD, says also are they bondable? Was a big one in this form of life. Oh yeah, that's a big one, gosh, because a lot of times you have to get a bond out for your work.

Chuck: 20:49

Question number three says how do I ensure that my ICT project stays within budget? Stays within budget Remember, I told you that's one of the things that a project manager does, to make sure that they're within the material budget and the labor budget. Well, first is you got to know where that goal line is. You have to know where you. If you, if you're playing baseball, you know that you got to go first, second, third and then come back to home. If you can football, you know you got to go to the goal line. You know where that goal is.

Chuck: 21:21

Well, what's the goal for project? It's the price in the estimate right Now. Many project managers miss this. So what is the total amount of labor hours in the project? What's the total labor cost in the budget? Because sometimes hours and costs can kind of fluctuate depending on how that bid was estimated. If the estimator estimated it with higher-end people, the price will be higher but the hours will be lower. But come time to do the project, let's say that you don't have those type of people available. So you got mid-level or maybe even entry level. Well, their per hour costs will be cheaper, but it's going to take them more hours. So you have to be able to do those calculations right. And here's a core, here's a poor one. This is one of the things. This is why the RTPM was in my was in my acronym challenge for tonight Was the work broken down in a work breakdown structure, a WBS.

Chuck: 22:20

You know, maybe I should do a show on that. I'm going to write that down. Hold on one second. This might be a show I'm going to have to record, put out there. Wbs how to create what isn't and and how do you do what is a there we go, there we go. There's my note. It's a future show. Boom, right there. Now when that show comes out you can say, hey, I was there with chuck, thought of how to do that, right. So yeah, work breakdown structures. I'm not gonna dive into tonight's what is, because I'm already at 6 22 and I'm only on question three of like eight questions. Right, so there you go.

Chuck: 22:53

Also, use project management software to be able to track. Now, there's lots of them out there. There's some estimating packages have a project management package attached to it. You can also buy standalone software or subscribe to standalone software project management software like Monday, mondaycom or ClickUp. There's other ones too, like MS Project and some other ones, and there's also some companies that will build their own had a project management program that their own IT developed and they called it Hermes Hermes, not herpes, hermes, h-e-r-m-e-s. It's some kind of a Greek god or something.

Chuck: 23:48

Keep your project information updated and make sure that it's accurate, because garbage in, garbage out, garbage in, garbage out. And also, make sure you keep a constant eye on that. Look at your budgets, try to look at them at minimum at least weekly, weekly. Shotzi's in the house. Hello, shotzi, yeah, because if you're not watching that weekly then you're going to have some problems. Somebody says couldn't a Gantt chart do the breakdown and track? So Gantt charts most of the time are built off work breakdown structures. So that's a good point, right? John Bowser's in the house. He says document, document, document. Yes, K-Man, no more Thursday nights. No, I changed it from Thursday nights to Wednesday nights. I don't do Thursday nights anymore, just some internal home kind of stuff's going on that I got to really work out with. So I moved the live stream to Wednesday nights, now Wednesday nights 6 pm. But they're recorded and you can watch them at any time you want.

Chuck: 25:01

Next question Let me pull up on my list here, chuck. What are some of the most common risks in ICT projects and how can I mitigate them? So the most a risk is something that could potentially happen on a project that could cause you time and material that wasn't estimated in a project. So probably the four most common risk areas for a project scope creep, technology failures like equipment that's dead on arrival, resource shortages we went through that with COVID not too long ago and changes in regulatory requirements, like what your local authority having jurisdiction might want. So those are the four major areas that you really got to watch out for.

Chuck: 25:44

So for risk assessment, first thing you want to do is, at the very, very beginning of the project you want to conduct and identify all potential issues, all potential risks, and come up with a plan of how to mitigate that risk. I'll give you an example did a project one time. Uh, I was living in the dc area. Uh, I knew that I was going to get awarded a project within a week or two once I submitted for bid if they accepted my bid and I knew that one of the suppliers that I was going to be buying material from was from central Ohio and I knew that they just got hit with a huge storm like 14 inches. Well, guess what? At the very beginning of the project I identified that risk.

Chuck: 26:24

What happens if my common carrier can't get there to pick up that stuff, that equipment, to bring it back to Virginia? That was an impact, a potential impact. So what you do is you assign a dollar value to that and you roll that in the and a percentage of the chance of it happening, and there's a math formula that goes through all this. Again, take a project management class. Bixie has some good ones and it'll help you figure that out. So that way, if it does happen, you have those costs in there and that's all going to be identified in that risk management plan. Right, that's going to tell you. Here's the strategy for doing it. If it snows, okay, here's a secondary supplier that I can use instead of the first one, even though the price might be a little bit more. But here's the workaround if that happens. Because if you think about what can happen, you're already a step ahead of any kind of problem because you've already thought about what can happen. And then also make sure you assign specific team members to monitor those high-risk areas. So if you have, like, an assistant project manager working for you, that they're the one ordering materials, have them constantly being checking on them and then letting you know what's going on. With the communication, like I said earlier, just because we work in the communications industry doesn't mean we communicate, and you've heard me say that many times, many, many times.

Chuck: 27:48

Next question, question number five, chuck, how do I handle scope changes without derailing a project? Every project I've ever worked on as a tech in the field or as a project manager there was change orders. One project in four decades that I execute that went off exactly the way that it was estimated. Because what happens is site conditions change, customers' minds change, there's delays, there's change orders. With everything, change orders aren't necessarily a bad thing. The fewer the change orders the better, because sometimes there is a tipping point where, if you have too many change orders now, the customer thinks, oh well, they're price gouging me now. So you've got to be careful with change orders. Make sure that you can document them and back them up to say look, this is a legitimate change order. So the first thing is realize it's going to happen. It's going to happen. And then how are you going to manage it once it happens? That's the key. That's the key and the best way to do that.

Chuck: 28:58

Second point is to have some type of a formal process that's required to use the process change orders, identify who's going to be the person who can authorize the change orders. How does that process look like? Who's it going to go through for approval who's it going to go through approval within your company? And then also sit down and conduct an analysis. If they're adding an additional you know, additional 15, 20, 30 drops. Okay, that's called scope creep. Does that mean that I'm going to get additional time to do this project? Because if you slide it, let's say I'm just going to pick a thing. Let's say that you originally estimated it to be 10 days and now, because of the extra work, it's going to be 14 days. Is the customer okay? Is it okay to have that date slide back? It may not be, because they may come back and say, no, we schedule movers to be out there on that 10th day. Okay, well, if the schedule can't slide, then what you're going to have to do is you're going to have to put more people on that project, or your people on that project are going to have to work overtime. Now their cost per hour increases Again.

Chuck: 30:08

Boom, think about this when you are processing that change order. It's all those impacts. And then, once you've thought about all those processes, communicate that with the stakeholders primarily, at least, the customer, but also maybe distribution, if they got to be involved in ordering material. Maybe the manufacturers, because maybe they might have to make some more product. I did a project once where we had ordered a hundred thousand feet of cable tray. A hundred thousand feet of cable tray, yeah. And when, before we did the project, part of my risk assessment was hey, do you have this in stock? I called them up and they said, yes, we have in a sock, it's on the project floor right now. Great. And then when it came time to order the, the material, somehow it just kind of like disappeared, disappeared, yeah.

Chuck: 31:01

Next question chuck, what role does quality play in project management? Huge, huge, huge role, huge role. Every company, big or small, should have some type of formal QA program. Now, it could be pretty simple or it could be pretty elaborate, but you should have some type of a formal process and that process is going to make sure that you look at the planning stages all the way to the final delivery. And the benefit of doing a QA program is it's going to find those issues early on in the project. See, a lot of people think, okay, I'll do QAs, I'll do quality inspections, but they do them at the end of the project. I'll do quality inspections, but they do them at the end of the project. Well, how about doing if you had a large project that's going to run six, eight weeks? Do a QA every week, every week, because it's better to find the problem at the beginning, when it's small, than at the end, when it's huge. Give me an example. Did a project one time, doing QA once a week on several projects.

Chuck: 32:12

I was a project manager in DC, went out and did a QA and part of the QA they were just starting to terminate the jacks. It was a very large project. They had like 5,000 jacks Just started terminating the jacks. I did the QA and I always look at 10% of the number of jacks that they had terminated. So I pulled off 10% and I found that some were terminated T568A and some were terminated T568B. So I quickly identified what was wrong. I went to the foreman. We talked to the crew and we found out that one of the guys he just came off of a federal government job and he thought everything was done. A guys, he just came off of a federal government job and he thought everything was done A. So we fixed it and said no, no, no, no, no. This project's B. Can you imagine how big of a product, how big of a problem that would have been had. We waited to the end of the project to find all those jacks done A you can do a QA inspection on a project where they just start putting in JLUGs.

Chuck: 33:12

There's things you can look at. Are they staying away from potential sources of EMI? Are they choosing the most clear path? Are they at least six inches above the ceiling tiles? There's always something you can inspect during a QA, and then any good QA process is going to also have a way to review the QA with the people on the site and the customer. Okay, there's a really good QA training program out there, a QA training webinar out there. If you're interested in it it's not mine, it's somebody else's If you're interested in getting access to that or doing what that is, shoot me a message and I'll tell you how you can find that one hour webinar on how to do QA inspections, because it's pretty important, it's pretty detailed. It's a pretty detailed webinar. Holy cow, it's 634.

Chuck: 34:02

Man, I went past my time. I went past my time. We got one more question. We'll go through this. One last question.

Chuck: 34:07

Okay, this question is what are some best practices for closing a project? This is where a lot of project managers fail. They're good at kicking off the project, they're good at managing it. It's those last little details at the end that gets them hung up right. The you know. How do you, how do you resolve the punch list? How do you make sure that all the deliverables are done so you can get that retainage back?

Chuck: 34:35

Project managers in the low voltage industry are notorious for dropping the ball in project closing. So the first thing is you know, make sure that you thoroughly review the documents and make sure that you understand what are the the deliverables. Right, certified test results, red lines as built um. Do you have to supply equipment? Does equipment have to be burned in? Do you have to provide after um post support? You know, and all that stuff. Make sure you know what all those deliverables are. Yeah, and anything has to be done to get your final payment and make sure that at the beginning of the project, when you're having that kickoff meeting with the customer, talk about closing out the project and say what is it that you want from me? To make sure we get the end of this project so we can say, yes, it's 100% complete. Check, here's the bill. Pay me Outside of that process.

Chuck: 35:35

Make sure that your company has some type of lessons learned where, maybe once a quarter, once a year, all the project managers come together in a non-judgmental, non-punitive meeting where you pick your worst project and say, hey, I did this project and this went wrong, and that went wrong, and that went wrong, and here's how I addressed it. The reason you want to do that is because another project might be sitting at the table and that might be a problem. They may come across next year and they've already seen how you handled it. And then, oh, that's the best way to handle this. Follow up on those. Follow up on those. All right, so there you go.

Chuck: 36:17

Zeb says uh, I love PM talk. Yes, yes, make sure the jail is at least five feet apart, absolutely. And uh, so, zeb, do me a favor. Zeb, shoot me a message and I'll send you the link to that. Okay, all right, we went a little bit over today. I hope you're sorry for that. I usually try to stop at 630 on the news, but we're seven minutes late. I hope you didn't mind. Remember knowledge is power. Today's podcast. We hope you were able to learn something. Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss out on future content. Also, leave a rating so we can help even more people learn about telecommunications. Until next time, be safe.