Written by: Deborah Johnson, MBA MPH PMP

The December PMI-AEC meeting held at ConstructConnect was an introduction to the impact of Virtual Reality on Construction Bidding and other aspects of the Construction Engineering Industry.
 
Featured presenter was Macrae Cain, MBT, and CEO of the Digital Media House, a digital marketing company that specializes in VRchitecture and marketing. VRchitecture is a fully immersive virtual reality process for creating VR build models of architectural projects to be constructed. Mr. Cain took the attendees through an introduction process of how VR has evolved and the step by step impact it will have on all phases of the design and construction process as well as the legal impacts of archiving VR build models.
 
The DMH team then took the attendees through a visual 2D-VR build model to introduce to them the value that Build models bring to the industry. Most importantly the demonstration illustrated how to look through the walls and floor to see the framing and utilities of the design. Upon completion of the visual demonstration, each attendee was provided a VR headset to experience a real-time interactive immersion into the same VR model as demonstrated.

About PMI

Atlanta Chapter serves Project Management Community in Metro Atlanta, and we're an active resource to corporations, community and government agencies throughout north Georgia. With over 5,000 members, PMI Atlanta is among the top 5 chapters in the world. Our professional expertise span across industries; we’re the professionals building healthcare information technology systems, the engineers developing smarter public transportation, and the planners growing our communities more efficiently.

Written by Ty Lamar

Heather Casey presented the John Maxwell’s DISC method. This is a personality assessment tool that’s useful in improving team communication and collaboration.

The personality types identified by this method is as follows:

D – Dominant – 3% of the population – Seeks Control / Decisive / Direct

I – Influencing – 11% of the population – Persuasive / Spontaneous / Friendly

S – Safety – 69% of the population – Team-Oriented / Follow-Through / Loyalty

C – Compliant – 17% of the population – Analytical / Planner / Accuracy

Heather discussed the strengths and weaknesses of each personality type in detail and the communication strategies for each. She indicated that people are usually dominant in two of the personality traits. She created an engaging session with scenario based examples the promoted audience participation.

Heather’s presentation was followed with a video highlighting current medical advances provided by Professor Toks. This video introduced an affordable portable scanning device that connects to your smart phone and act as a portable scanner for different parts of the body. This device emits a fraction of the radiation compared to CT scans.  Doctors will be able to use this device to aid in quicker diagnosis at a much lower cost.

About PMI

Atlanta Chapter serves Project Management Community in Metro Atlanta, and we're an active resource to corporations, community and government agencies throughout north Georgia. With over 5,000 members, PMI Atlanta is among the top 5 chapters in the world. Our professional expertise span across industries; we’re the professionals building healthcare information technology systems, the engineers developing smarter public transportation, and the planners growing our communities more efficiently.

Written by Theresa McCoy

On August 13, 2019, Sarah Griswold, VP of Financial Planning & Analysis at Kindred at Home, was the featured speaker at the Architecture Engineering & Construction (AEC) Forum.

Sarah began her presentation by outlining the key elements of a Profit and Loss to ground the audience on terminology to understand financial basic concepts. She discussed the key drivers that impact a P&L and broke down each section to illustrate how they relate to a company’s financial health.

Do your eyes glaze over at the thought of reviewing a Profit & Loss (P&L) statement? Are you confused by all the jargon and terminology?  Not to fear, Sarah Griswold is here! 

Gross sales, pricing, revenue, discounts and allowances, net sales, cost and distribution, all of these and more were clearly explained as Sarah walked through the definitions, drivers and key takeaways for each element of a Profit and Loss Statement. She drew on her past experience to provide examples of each area of a P&L.  The example described how to interpret the information on a P&L statement and the identification opportunities to improve the bottom line of a project or business for long term success.  Using real life project and business examples, Sarah made the financial “in’s and out’s” of a P&L less intimidating and more understandable for those who are less versed in the day to day business financials!

Sarah helped the audience to demystify the P&L to leverage it as a valuable financial tool in a project manager’s “toolbox”.

About PMI

Atlanta Chapter serves Project Management Community in Metro Atlanta, and we're an active resource to corporations, community and government agencies throughout north Georgia. With over 5,000 members, PMI Atlanta is among the top 5 chapters in the world. Our professional expertise span across industries; we’re the professionals building healthcare information technology systems, the engineers developing smarter public transportation, and the planners growing our communities more efficiently.

Written by Theresa McCoy

On June 11, 2019, Clint Padgett, President and CEO of Project Success Inc., was the featured speaker at the Architecture Engineering & Construction (AEC) Forum.

Clint opened up the presentation by describing his company’s Project Success Method (PSM) as a set of generic principles, concepts and structured processes by which projects can be: clearly defined, thoroughly planned, and persistently controlled during execution to achieve project success. Clint discussed typical project challenges and the concept of the “worry curve” was introduced.

While all projects have challenges, exactly what they are is the great unknown when a new project is introduced. As a project begins, there is uninformed optimism, the “honeymoon” period, where project worry is postponed.  This eventually turns into “vague concern” as the project deadline begins to appear.  The final stage of worry, if left unchecked or unbalanced, as the deadline approaches is panic.  The panic phase is the most expensive financially and emotionally for the project team.

So, what is a project leader to do? Cliff discussed these key phases of the “worry curve” when planning and executing a project.  By first understanding some critical keys to success, such as team and customer agreement on the charter document. Early and ongoing project planning to gain individual team member commitment and buy-in throughout the project life-cycle.  A project manager can successfully shift the project worry earlier in the project to avoid the deadline “panic” phase. 

Thus, Clint emphasized the importance of planning to help mitigate the impact of unforeseen problems, by managing the project worry curve to yield higher quality projects. 

 About PMI

Atlanta Chapter serves Project Management Community in Metro Atlanta, and we're an active resource to corporations, community and government agencies throughout north Georgia. With over 5,000 members, PMI Atlanta is among the top 5 chapters in the world. Our professional expertise span across industries; we’re the professionals building healthcare information technology systems, the engineers developing smarter public transportation, and the planners growing our communities more efficiently.