AHL: Project Management Reality Checks For ICT Teams

We answer a rapid run of ICT project management questions, from BIM and digital twins to workforce risk, documentation overload, and coordination challenges on fast-moving builds. We push for practical balance: model what matters, plan for labor like a real constraint, and treat communication as a core construction tool. 
• BIM detail levels that prevent clashes without creating busywork 
• deciding whether BIM is for construction, operations, or both 
• labor shortages and clearance hurdles as growing schedule risks 
• building labor mitigation into estimating and risk planning 
• submittals, as-builts, and closeout documentation as critical path drivers 
• starting closeout during construction to avoid end-of-job delays 
• capacity planning and future proofing without overbuilding costs 
• coordinating shared pathways across telecom, AV, security, BAS, and electrical 
• showing up to GC meetings to stay proactive and reduce change orders 
Google ICT Terminology Handbook and download it.

Transcript

Welcome And Travel Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Wednesday night 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. That can only mean one thing live after hours with your favorite R C D. You know, that's making your favorite R C D D. Alrighty. Wednesday night, 6 p.m. Lots of questions today. Lots of questions on project management. You may notice I'm using a virtual background. Not on TikTok, but on all my other streaming platforms. You may notice I'm using a bat a virtual background. I am uh I'm traveling this week and I am actually in Nashville, Tennessee. Nashville, Tennessee, and I will be home tomorrow. Tomorrow. So there you go. So I got a virtual background because I'm pretty sure you don't want to see my hotel bed, right? You shouldn't want to see my hotel bed. We'll leave it at that. We'll leave it at

What Are You Drinking Tonight

SPEAKER_00 1:24

that. So let's go ahead and flip right over into the notes for the show. You know, I always start every week with, what are you drinking? What are you drinking? I'm drinking a hot cup of tea. In case you were wondering, I'm doing roasted dandelion. Roasted dandelion. One of my favorites. Love roasted dandelion. I also have Earl Grey with me. I also have some other stuff too. So, but I I chose to go with roasted dandelion because it does have some caffeine and that kind of helps me. So tell me in a chat box. What are you drinking tonight? What are you drinking? We see one new message in there. How did I get to that message? Open chat. There we go. Let me see. He is drinking. Let me see. This way, there we go. Show on the stream. There we go. Diet Mountain Dew. Shotzi's in the house. Shotzi, how are you doing, my friend? Diet Dr. Pepper, as always. Yep, so there you go. I'm drinking tea because I've been teaching for the last two days. Got a tiny bit of a sore throat from projecting my voice all day long. So I always drink tea. I usually have another throat losses put in here, but I kind of forgot to bring some for this trip. So there you go. What are you drinking? I'm drinking roasted dandelion tea. There we go. Alrighty. You know, the next thing I always start off with after you do, what are you

Acronym Challenge BBMD Explained

SPEAKER_00 2:48

drinking? The acronym challenge. The acronym challenge. Our industry loves its acronyms, doesn't it? Loves its acronyms. So this one's kind of an unusual one. I haven't ever used this one before. And hopefully you can get it. So tell me in the chat box, what does BBMD stand for? Again, a low voltage, limited energy, information communication technologies acronym, an IT acronym. BBMD, what does that stand for? I'll give you a few seconds to answer that while you're answering it. I will go ahead and take a sip of my tea. I will also tell you what's coming up. So did you catch this week's episode? It was part one of uh OPGW with TJ Pate. Next week, we're going to have uh part two to that series, and we'll finish talking about how you can get in OPGW, why you want to get into OPGW, the benefits, all that kind of stuff. And then uh then let's come then the next one after that coming up as well, relevant in today's environment relative to some of the questions I got asked tonight, finding and keeping and growing people to help build your network. Okay? So BBMD, what does that stand for? I don't think anybody answers. Did I stump everybody tonight? I stumped everybody tonight. That's pretty cool. Oh, by the way, if you ever struggle with acronyms in our industry, Google ICT Terminology Handbook and download it. It's a free PDF that will give you all of the acronyms. So go ahead and download that. But anyway, BBMD stands for BACNET Broadcast Management Device. BACNET Broadcast Management Device. Alrighty. And that's one of the BACNET IT broadcast management methods that was outlined in the ISO 164. ISO is the International Organization of Standardization. So it is for BACNET. BACNET. So let's go ahead and dive straight into the questions. Again, if you have questions, put them in the chat box, okay? Put them in the chat box. Get my voice ready up. Here

BIM Detail Vs Real Value

SPEAKER_00 5:11

we go. Question number one. This comes from Nathan on LinkedIn. So Nathan wants to know with the growing use of BIM and digital twins in healthcare and data centers, how detailed should the ICT models really be before we start creating more coordination work than actual value. So here's the BIM detailed dilemma. A lot of owners are asking high detailed questions about BIM model. Okay. But there's a point to where adding more information creates more work without actually improving the final installation. That's the true challenge, right? And the challenge is figuring out where does the modeling stop and where does the coordination begin? That's the question. Because when you start having it, it becomes a burden for the design team. You see, for those of you not know, building, building information management allows telecommunications elements to be modeled as intelligent objects, which contain the quantities, the properties, the relationships within a facility model. And a lot of large healthcares and data center projects will often require this use of coordination between us, mechanical, electrical, architectural, to avoid conflicts. Because, see, it's a lot easier to move a rack or a ladder rack or a relay rack or cable tray if it's still a drawing on a guys, what's happening? When it's still a drawing. After it's out in the field, that moving it is not so easy. So designers and contractors and maybe even owners, they've got to find a balance between the modeling effort against the schedule, against the budget, against the project deliverables. One of the BIM's biggest advantages is again identifying those conflicts before the installation instead of actually discovering them in the field. I just kind of talked about it a little bit. When everybody can see the same model in real time, this again, you get all of the trades putting in their stuff into BIM objects, coordination conversations become a lot easier and they help you avoid those costly surprises. In fact, those surprises even become less common. Now, the problem is many owners are beginning to view BIM as more of a construction deliverable. They see it as a living database for facility operations. So the real question becomes whether the project team is building a model for construction or a model for operations or for both. That is the true question.

Labor Shortage As Project Risk

SPEAKER_00 7:48

All right. Question number two: this comes from Ashley from YouTube. As AI infrastructures drive explosive demand for data centers, are we really reaching a point where labor shortages are becoming bigger project risk than the material available? You see, every project has risks, right? Is the material going to be there? Is it available? Is it going to be back ordered? Is there going to be a problem with the delay because of weather or shortages of copper or glass, right? Those are project risks. So now the skilled bottleneck of fewer and fewer people coming into this industry is becoming another risk. You get a project where you need 22 guys, but you only have 10 in your company, you gotta somehow come up with 12 more technicians. And that is not as easy as it sounds. Okay, and a lot of organizations, Bixie and the FOA and a bunch of them, have been addressing this labor shortage for a while. And they have been making some headway. They have been making some headway, but not enough headway, in my opinion, right? You know, we spent several years talking about you know supply chain issues, especially you know, right after COVID. But now projects are struggling to find more qualified labor than it spends for materials. So you got to factor that in to the risk models and your project management stuff. Even when the if even if the equipment arrives on time, projects can still slip if there's not enough experienced, limited energy technicians to install the cable, to terminate the cable, to test the cable. It is a huge risk. And the problem is construction costs and schedules, they are heavily influenced by the labor availability and also the regional workforce conditions. And what I mean by regional workforce conditions, you know, if you try to gear up for a large project in a town like Nashville, pretty big city, it's not as hard to find people in Nashville. If you try to gear up for a large project in Middle East, bum, you know what, uh Alabama, nothing wrong with Alabama, by the way, where the population is less, that's a regional workforce consideration because you're not going to have enough people in that small little town, so you're gonna have to start reaching for people outside of that regional area, and now you got to pay for them to come in to work with you, and that's going to cause the problems. Daryl's in the house, Daryl says, as the need for tech that can get cleared, oh my gosh, and it's total, and it's a total disaster finding people. You're absolutely right, Daryl. And I often forget that because I've been out of that world for a while where where you know it's not just finding people, it's also finding people who can pass, you know, the background checks. And those who know me know that I used to work for a large cable contractor, and we have to, when we hired somebody to go work at a certain building, they'd have to go to the trailer out in the parking lot, they'd have to fill out the application, they had to come back two weeks later to get their badges. More than one time when they would go back to get their badges, they were greeted by the police department because they had outstanding warrants. So it's hard, you know. So in the in the in the clear to government area, it's even harder because you've got to find cleared people who can do it as well, too. And that adds another layer. You know, the large-scale AI cloud projects, they're often competing for the same pool of experienced technicians, experienced project managers, experienced supervisors. And that is creating a uh an employee, a positive environment for getting hired. You know, that that drives up that drives up wages. And there's nothing wrong with driving up wages because you get to make more money. But on the backside of that, that's also going to drive up the cost that everybody's paying for stuff. So that also is out there as well, too. Now, you when you start talking about workforce risk, you know, labor availability should probably be discussed during the project risk portions of the estimation process when we schedule material risk and everything else. Risk management begins with identifying those risks, analyzing the impacts of those risks, and developing mitigation strategies. So if you can't find people, you might have to look for other things, like maybe subcontracting with another contractor who might have enough clear people. But if you're going to start subcontracting, hey, K-Man's in the house. If you start subcontracting, you better make sure you understand if the customer allows you to subcontract. It might be in the contract documentation that you can't subcontract. But if you go and talk to the customer and you explain to them, look, I don't have enough cleared people for this event, but if I team with this company and we do this as a team, we can get this done. They may allow that, they may not allow that, just kind of really, really all depends. So, you know, what happens is when you're short on people, right, that affects the quality. That affects the schedule, that affects the project execution. And if not, if you don't address these ahead of time, better it's better to be proactive in the risk management cycle than reactive in the project management risk cycle, right? Project teams' outcomes, right, are you know that what they can improve by incorporating labor risks into the planning as opposed to afterwards. Again, it's it's if you think about the problem, you identify the problem, you it you've already half solved that

Closeout Starts During Construction

SPEAKER_00 13:25

problem. Question number three, this comes from Carlos, and he wants to know question, owners uh seem to be demanding faster project delivery. There's nothing new there, uh, while expecting more documentation than ever before. That's something new in our industry. How are you balancing the submittals, the asbills, the BIM deliverables, and the closeout requirements without overwhelming the project teams? Carlos gave me this from Facebook. He has 22 years of experience. So the amount of documentation that's expected now because of project closeout is totally dramatically more so than it was when I was a project manager 15 years ago, 16 years ago. Um the owners are expecting digital records, detailed as builds, um, equipment data, photographs, digital photographs, operational documentations as part of their standard deliverables. So this is stuff that you know we've kind of done, but now they're wanting even more of it. You know, you know, for example, you know, shop drawings, submittals, product data sheets, manuals, project documentations, they're all being required throughout that project execution, which is another layer of stuff that that project manager has to manage. You know, the approved submittals, they often become part of the project's final documentation as the outbuilt as the as built package. But you're still doing this along with doing all the other documentation stuff. You know, the thing is, the reason you're seeing more and more and more of this is contractors and owners benefit from these improved records. But managing the process requires some additional administrative stuff. So you might have to have a project manager or a project assistant project manager helping you with this stuff. And then that also adds to the cost of the project. Okay. So submittals are going to be the ones. Submittals have become, you know, before they were just a document request. Now they're they're really becoming critical path items, right? So, you know, when you get a delayed submittal, you know, that can create an impact of the schedule almost at the same level as a material delay because the submittals weren't approved. Because sometimes you can't you can't um order the stuff until the submittals get approved. So teams, teams that can manage the submittals aggressively usually avoid a lot of those issues downstream, right? And again, it's again being proactive, not reactive. Because if you think about the problem, you've pretty much already figured out half the answer to that problem. So, you know, when you start talking about the submittals and you know, and why they hang up, because if they don't get approved, then you gotta find out material substitutions. And that takes time to research stuff. You need to find alternate products, and that could affect the schedule because now it's got to go through additional review cycles and that pushes everything downhill. You know, a schedule is like a snowball rolling downhill. If anything part of it gets delayed, the rest of it gets delayed along with it. And as project managers and and as contractors, we have to monitor those submittal statuses to make sure that we don't let them impact our schedules. Or if they impact our schedules, we readily identify that to the customer so that way they can um make changes if need be. The best closeout process starts during construction instead of waiting until your project is finished. See if you start trying to collect months and months of documentation during the final turnover, usually what happens is it creates unnecessary delays. I'm telling you right now, you know, techs out in the field, they're notorious. Notorious with losing paperwork and not giving you the information that you need. Project closeouts things would include like punch lists, right? Were they all checked off, were they all signed off on, right? Um the inspections, the owner turnovers, right? So what try saying, I didn't hear me what it said. Something popped up there on TikTok. So ongoing documentation during the construction process, it's going to improve the quality, it's gonna over, it's going to improve the completeness of the project so nothing is left out, and it's also gonna help with the deliverables.

Future Proofing Without Overbuilding

SPEAKER_00 17:57

Question number four: this comes from Ethan on LinkedIn, and Ethan's a data center consultant. With AI-driven data center growth accelerating across North America, how should I CT designers balance today's capacity requirements against future expansion needs without significantly increasing project cost? Whew, that's a big question. So, you know, you need to design for growth, but you need to do it without overproof. This is that again, I talked about this last week when we talked about future proofing, right? Future proofing. You gotta future proof, but you can over future proof, if that makes sense. Every owner wants room for expansion, but there's a cost associated with that expansion, with building that capacity that that may not necessarily be needed for years. And you look at, when you look at businesses, they typically go through cycles. There's up cycles, there's down cycles, there's upcycles, there's down cycles. There's times when they're really profitable. There's other times when they're trying to struggle, make ends meet. So why not, if you're in an upcycle, why not design for the future? Yeah, you may not need it for three years or five years. You know, in the US, you know, the sad thing is, is wire for excellence is in the house. The sad thing about our industry is we tend to only think one or two or three years out. You know, when you look at the very successful Japanese companies, they schedule eight years out, ten years out. They think about this stuff long span. So, you know, future proofing is not necessarily a bad thing, but you've got to balance it with how much is that going to cost. Right? And and you also got to wonder two, when you start when you start challenging or and identifying where the future proofing creates that value, also where's how much capital is that gonna tie up? Because if you have it tied up with future proofing and something else arises, that could cause you problems. See, cost estimates, they they're gonna account for the material, they're gonna account for the labor, they're gonna account for the project management and equipment and all this stuff. But data centers typically they often request pathways, you know, later racks, cable trays, and space for the capacity beyond what they need today. Because data centers, you know, it's they're not like regular structured cable customers, like a law office or something, right? You know, a law office, they may grow, but look at data centers. Look how fast they're growing. I mean, leaps and bounds, and they're just they they're growing so fast that they're they're gobbling up all the fiber that we have, and it's causing a lot of stuff. So if you have the availability to get the stuff now, why not do that? Designers and the owners, they have to balance that long-term flexibility against their budgets and against their return on their investment. Now, what this does is when a customer is struggling with these concepts, that means the estimator is gonna be struggling with this. The cable guy's in the house. That means the estimator is gonna be struggling with these concepts as well. Okay? So the earlier you can identify the future expansion requirements to the contract you're gonna be using, the estimator you're going to be using, the more accurate that estimate is going to become. You know, customers, and you know, they're they're kind of funny sometimes, you know, and I always tell them when I was an estimator, they would give me the information to bid a document, and the the information is always incomplete. It's always missing things. And sometimes it's not an issue, I can work my way through it, but sometimes there's large gaping holes, right? And so I always told customers look, the more information you can give me today, the more accurate my bid's going to be. You give me less information, I'll bid on what I have. But the problem is what's gonna happen is you're going to start running into change orders. Customers hate change orders, they absolutely hate them. So again, identify it early. So that would The estimator can actually take care of it. You know, we start looking at those requests. If they come in at the later stages of the of the of the project, again, they're going to drive the largest change orders. And change, the thing is, when you give a customer a price to do a project, they they typically go out and get a loan to build that building, and it's based on the the bid. But if the bid is incomplete or if it's poor and you have to start doing change orders, the customer's got to come up with that money for the change orders. That's why it's critical that you explain this stuff early, early in advance, right? Early in advance. You know, expansion, it's coming. There's a lot more of it's happening. And the estimators and the project managers, they need to reduce those financial surprises to the customer. But you gotta, again, going back to what I was saying earlier, you got to balance the capacity planning and the risk management, right? You gotta you gotta balance those. And what you're really trying to predict is what the organization is gonna need years before the facility actually reaches. And that is a challenge. I was teaching a class today, and I was telling the the students today, you know, there's stuff coming down the pike, like holocore fiber, multi-core fiber. We don't truly know yet how that's going to impact. So if you're if you're building the the cable infrastructure based on today's requirements for fiber needed in data centers, because we're going into multi-core fiber at some point in the future, does that make the need for cable support and racks more or less? Heck, if you know the answer to that one, let me know because I'm gonna go invest some money in some some companies. I'm gonna maybe retire early, right? Retire early. Next question.

Submittals Become Critical Path

SPEAKER_00 23:48

This comes from Melissa on Facebook. And Melissa wants to know are increasingly complex submittal requirements helping project quality, or are they becoming one of the biggest schedule risks on the ICT construction project? So again, years ago, submittals were just viewed as ancillary paperwork. You were required to do it, right? And and but they weren't as you didn't have as much as you do today. Now they are critical milestones, which means they gotta be done, but you know, a delayed submittal package can absolutely impact everything down the pike, you know, from the procurement to the scheduling to the installation activities, you know, it's gonna impact all that stuff. And most of the projects require extensive documentation covering those materials. So now what you're talking about is the approval cycle and the growing cycle. Some projects have multiple layers before the approval ever happens. And and that just happens sometimes. You know, it just it just does. The bigger the company, the deeper that approval process comes. So by the time the company has addressed the revision that you submitted to them, weeks might have passed, months might have passed, right? So, you know, the whole the whole explanation here is you know, the written review process ensures the compliance with the specs and the owner's requirements, but rejected submittals are often going to require substitutions and variances. So at some point we have to ask whether we're spending time, more time documenting the work than performing the work. Let that sink in. Are we and I hear this from technicians all the time, especially when you start talking about, you know, um paywall tracking, you know, work breakdown structure, you know, break breaking the time sheets down into I spent this many hours pulling cable. You will hear them say this. I'm spending more time documenting than I'm actually doing work. And it's not really true, but it certainly feels that way to a technician, and that drives frustrations with technicians. So the key is finding the right balance, right? And when you find that right balance, um, it's gonna become even increasingly important. Okay, again, the the extensive, the extensive documentation for compliance and quality is not going to change, and it's just gonna grow more and more and more. Owners often demand greater transparency and accountability throughout the construction process. And you know, it wasn't so much before they were just like, okay, you pull the cable, just let me know when you're done. Just let me know when you're done. And that was quite common in our industry. But yeah, teams now must balance that effort with that documentation effort with the actual effort to do the cabling.

Ceiling Space Coordination And Communication

SPEAKER_00 26:40

Question number six how are you handling coordination with telecommunications, security, A V, building automation, and electrical systems that all share the same pathways and the ceilings. That is a tail old as time. We have always been battling that. We've always been battling the same space. Now it is becoming more so because technology is converging and it's converging faster than the construction process is adapting. Again, then you that's why, you know, this kind of actually made me think of something. I remember a long, long time ago when I became a project manager, and I became a project manager, I didn't have any degree in anything, I was just a foreman, but I became a project manager. And then when I would go to the construction meetings and I would meet the project manager for the GC, and that guy had a four-year degree in project management, he had a P certification, I realized how outmatched I was. How outmatched I was. And, you know, that's that's absolutely scary as a project manager, just when I'm only talking about my stuff. But we start talking about coordinating with electrical, coordinating with HVAC, coordinating with, you know, AV, that even that just puts layers and layers and layers on that, on that, on that cake. That makes it even more. You know, everyone, everybody, every tech, every, every, I'm gonna say technician, every trade wants access to the same space. We all gotta run our stuff in the the space above the ceiling tiles. Sprinkler, HVAC, electrical, and us. Now you probably think, so what's the big deal? Our stuff is sensitive to electrical stuff. So we gotta be a certain distance away from them. Okay. Also, if you you know, if you if you're going up and down, up and down over over HVAC Duckworks under sprinkler pipes, that adds to the length of the cable. So you were all competing for that same space. And so, and and when you tie in smart building projects, now you got multiple vendors, you know, multiple design teams, all working for that same limited ceiling space that we've been fighting over. You know, good coordination drawings, um, good coordination drawings are going to be prevent you those costly film mistakes. And again, we work in the communications industry. What do we suck at? Communicating, right? We suck at communicating. So, but the but the company, the project manager that invests time in coordination. A lot of people say it's a waste of time, but that that'll pay for itself on the backside of the project. When you're able to get that access to those environments, you can do your work more efficiently, and and you can document those with your drawings. That's gonna help. You know, you you can especially if you tie in not just the stakeholders like the other vendor, the other, the other trades, but also the customer, the GC, the architect, right? Because there are certain labels, remember, those are the ones that are talking directly to the customer. So when you're talking to other trades, you're really kind of talking to each other, but when you start communicating to the stakeholders like the GC and the architect, they're talking to the customer, so they may know things coming down the pike. And that's gonna, you know, all this communication, I know it seems kind of, you know, gods, like we're talking about communication, communication, communication tonight, but all that communication is gonna help reduce change orders. It's gonna help make sure that you meet your project schedule. It's gonna help so you're not in the telecom room trying to dress out a closet while the painters are in there painting the walls. Uh so, you know, in the trades, relationship matters. Relationship absolutely matters in our industry. And the successful projects come down to the ones that communicate the best. I've said this on episodes before, you know, as a project manager, and I think David and I, uh Daryl and I talked about this once. When you go on a job site, you go meet, go to the electrical trailer, go to the HVAC trailer, go to the plumbers trailer, and meet the foreman. Talk to them. Right? You know, maybe even buy the uh buy them pizza or something. And I think Daryl said something about buying uh whiskey or something. But um, yeah, just get on their good side, start talking to them because once you start talking to them, it makes it easier when you start having those hard conversations in the weekly construction meetings with the GC. All right, so that's gonna cause you all kinds of problems. And you say the good the good projects, the GC will have weekly meetings. And I suggest you attend every weekly meeting. If you can't attend a weekly meeting, I suggest you have somebody there in place of you. And and um, and and I'm I'm not gonna say, but Chuck, you know, they they take meeting notes, and I can read the meeting notes afterwards. The problem with that is now you're being reactive. If something got said during that meeting and you're reading the meeting notes two days later, three days later, it's harder to steer that ship back to the way you want it. Instead of you being there in the meeting to steer that ship when that idea actually comes to fruition. So attend those GC meetings. If you can't attend them, have somebody there and attend for you. And make sure it's somebody who has the ability to see the impact. Don't don't have your apprentice sitting in that meeting, right? Um, maybe your boss or maybe another project manager. Have them sit in those meetings, and that's going to help a lot. Because now you're staring at doing the actual meetings. And because doing this, you can actually reduce the delays because you're attending the structured meetings and you're talking about the communications plans and how to get to the end goal. Yes, why are we so afraid of general contractors as as one of the one of the trades being on the site? I I know I know many times I've ghosted in those meetings and I've talked to them and stuff, and I remember just it just it was overwhelming because they got a lot on their plate, and sometimes I just really felt like I wasn't getting the full cooperation that I needed. But why are we as low voltage, limited energy, sorry, limited energy companies, why are we so afraid to communicate with the general contractor, to communicate with the architect, to communicate with the customer? Okay, they're all stakeholders, we all have the same goal in mind, and if we communicate better, the chances are the as builds will get done right, the you know, all the all that extra documentation that we're doing now will fly through, and that's gonna make for a better project, and that's gonna make for a smoother running project that's gonna meet the schedule, that's gonna meet the labor. Okay, so there you go. Uh and look low voltage is the least of the concern in those meetings. That's true. That is absolutely true. And that's again, that's why you really should still attend those meetings. Because even though we're low on the wrong, low on the wrong, if you still, if you if you still raise, not I'm not raising your voice, but if you still raise opposition to what they're saying, you get that documented in the meeting notes for the GC. And if you start doing that week after week, well now, if when you start submitting change orders because they weren't listening, you have documentation to show that they're those change orders are legitimate. So, yeah, we are quite often. I I just I tell people all the time, we are the red-headed stepchildren, even though I don't have red hair. We are the red-headed stepchildren of the industry, but we really need to make sure that we're represented, make sure we're there attending the meetings, and we're doing all of our documentation. There

Knowledge Is Power Sign Off

SPEAKER_00 34:39

you go. All right, I'm at 534 and four minutes past. Four minutes past my uh my thing there. I used to try to go for 30 minutes, but it didn't happen this time. So we're gonna go ahead and sign out. Remember, until next time, knowledge is power.