S10E219: Why 88% of Schedules Fail, and What AI Still Can't Fix with Michael Pink

Yeah, that's amazing, Mike.

With regards to scheduling and planning, I mean, scheduling and planning is kind of the core of what Dale and I also learned.

Well, probably myself more.

He was more in finance, but it was an eye-opener in project management and kind of shaped my career as well.

What do you love so much about scheduling and planning or that space at that time? What was it that really got you going? Why did you stay on with it?

Well, when I got involved in the work at KPMG, you know, at first I realized that we were getting brought into a lot of projects that were late and over budget.

And...

In a lot of those cases, we had to do an analysis of delay and inefficiency.

So naturally the place to go is understanding the scheduling side of things.

Like what did we plan and how did we execute against that plan and what changed in that plan each update? And at what point did it become, you know, a problem and why on earth are the people who have lived this job, built that plan, updated that plan, communicated that plan, all arguing over the fact that they think the delay was this, and the other person thinks the delay was that, and the subcontractor thinks this was the delay, and the owner doesn't agree with that delay, and it turns into $5 million, $10 million, $20 million, and they're all pointing fingers.

So that got me interested in how are we, if we have a scheduling tool, and we have people living the job using this tool, and we're talking about delays and inefficiencies that should be understood through that tool, why are we consistently seeing projects that end up somewhat laden over budget and nobody can agree to the why? Something's wrong here.

There's a problem that seems to be across the board in the industry.

And also the other thing that was interesting to me was, If we have a scheduling program and we're using this scheduling program to communicate to other people, contractors, subs, owners, architects, all the things that need to happen in a specific order, How are we continuously getting done? How are 80% of projects continuously being done late? And why is there a problem here? That really piqued my interest going back to my industrial engineering background.

So using mathematics, using data, understanding process, understanding problems in a process, having lived through a lot of different situations where I've had to forensically reconstruct what happened here to a point where people could agree was why and how, and no longer pointing fingers.

All of that coming together was what really you know, attracted me was that there is clearly a problem here and it's a big problem in a big industry.

And the data tells me everything.

And it's usually accurate if you can analyze this stuff, but there's not enough people who can do that.

And the system of record is the scheduling system, which there's not enough people who can do that well.

Like understanding and coming up with a solution for that issue was very appealing to me.

Yeah, some common themes there, Mike, if I jump in.