¦PROJECT TALK
PROJECT TALK WITH SVEN SWENSON
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n the last edition of Project Talk, I spoke with Mick Papp of SusEnergy. He emphasized the need to have the right project manager as your trusted change agent, and he stressed how imperative it is to provide them with adequate support in the form of time, money and (the right) people. For this article, I visited with Ken Ciarletta, who has a long and auspicious career in wood and wood products, most recently as the CEO of Nova Energies. Ken also spent 20 years with Georgia Pacific and 10 years with Weyerhaeuser, mostly in timber, pulp and paper and engineered lumber. From his 39-year career, his greatest claim-to-fame to date is perhaps being the man behind the Georgia Biomass facility in Waycross, Georgia. It was the largest pellet production facility in the world when it was completed, and as such, was arguably the most positively impactful wood pellet project at that time. The facility has since changed hands, and Ciarletta has “semi-retired,” but both continue to be strong performers with a lot of value. I first spoke to Ciarletta in October. One of his initial comments to me was something we’ve all heard before: “You don’t know what you don’t know.” In the context of project management, it’s one cliché that will pay dividends if embraced, and will likely cost you money if you don’t. So, how do you embrace it? You must have participating team members who do know. The project manager must be cognizant of the mental map of the project, and know where the team members fit in. If there are places on the mental map that are unexplored, you need to find someone who has already explored those areas and get them on the team in some manner.
Swenson
Give them the time and infrastructure necessary to provide timely feedback. Pick their brains using tried and true techniques to bring things to the surface, which can be as simple as designating a certain time for risk identification and mitigation brainstorming. Then, you need to listen to the message. Most importantly, you must act. So, if nobody internal to the project has that experience, it is prudent to engage with a consultant who has the “been there, done that,” gold stars and scars to prove it. You can and should happily pay that person for their knowledge and avoid some of those scars—and perhaps gain some gold stars yourself. Projects incur massive delays and expense by not having access to that experienced person to answer questions or provide a suggested course of action. I was provided an example of such a project in my young-
er days, and it has stuck with me such that I’ll pass it along here, providing credit to the wise man who lived it and passed it on to me, Walt Query. Query offered that he was brought in as the “experienced consultant” after several failed attempts at erecting some steel-framed towers. When the crew originally assembled the towers, initially, everything was matching up wonderfully, but then became more misaligned as they moved up the structure. Some sections were too long and some too short, such that holes did not align and they could not finish the install. They were convinced the design was incorrect. Enter Query. He asked a few questions, and then simply pointed out that they needed to have all the connection points loose fit until the entire tower structure was in place, and then systematically perform the tightening such that the tower remained in alignment. It’s the same princi-
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30 BIOMASS MAGAZINE | ISSUE 1, 2022
