Inefficiency in Construction is running out of excuses says this Director
Paul Mullet is the Engineering and Technology Director of Robert Bird Group. He used to spend hours looking at the Usborne book of the future when he was a kid. Today, some thirty years later, patience and obsessive focus were skills that he honed masterfully in his pursuit to create the world he used to read about as a child.
During our latest podcast, he shared the mindset that served him best during his fascinating career as he changed roles, managed teams, and built departments from scratch.
There are those who experience change and those who define it
As the son of an electrical engineer and grandson of a carpenter, Paul was inspired by their demeanor and craftsmanship and soon realized that making stuff has been part of his family DNA. The only difference is that Paul has used far more advanced tools to create the world around him — from Revit to Rhino to Dynamo to coding and scripting. With a tiny morsel of sarcasm and a bit of cynicism, Paul asserts that what most people regard as digital innovation has been around for the last 15 years. Admittedly, there’s no question that change is happening, the only question is: are you open to it?
Find a team you love working with, and stick with it
At a time when people change companies more frequently than they change shirts “loyalty goes a long way” says Paul and he assertively advises you to find a team that you love working with, and stick with it. “People leave companies because of short-term frustrations or because they think the grass is greener on the other side” but that mindset eventually backfires. Paul himself only ever worked for 2 companies, starting with Gifford right after graduating from college and switching to Robert Bird Group 15 eventful years later.
What you like to do is not always what is best to do
Paul’s thinking process when making career decisions is clear cut — consciously choose what is most uncomfortable. Even though he left design to do something he was more interested in (engineering analysis) early on in his career, he admirably decides to go back to design just so that he gets a better, more thorough understanding of the industry. Paul’s journey is proof that what might seem counter-intuitive and difficult at first, ends up being an accelerated path to career success.
Once under pressure, always under pressure
Astonishingly, Paul moved to Dubai in 2006 and was hired to lead a post-tensioning design team without having previous experience in the subject matter. He came in a high-performing team and a fast-paced, demanding environment as a newbie but the experience made him tougher and wiser. From that point onwards, working under pressure became his bread and butter and something he would actively look for in his future endeavors.
Don’t count your dreams, count your words
Paul decided to switch to Robert Bird Group as an associate in 2013 where he eventually became the General Manager, successfully growing the company from 10 to 50 employees. Despite his extensive industry knowledge, he is calculated and evidently grounded as he pauses patiently before delivering his answers. Admirably, he remains true to the general, unspoken rule of construction technologists, that the more passionate one is about digital transformation, the more practical one has to sound to win over even the most skeptical of audiences.
Inefficiency has no excuse
Something did change in the last 10 years, Paul says, and that is accessibility to technologies. If you wanted to do 3D modeling back in the early 2000s you had to be an expert in a complicated 3D modeling software package. If you wanted to automate a workflow you would have to go and learn to program in Fortran language, he says. Now digital solutions are cheaper, easier to understand, and faster to learn.
“When you aspire to be an engineer, you aspire to create the world around you and help shape it,” and now more than ever there are no excuses for doing it inefficiently.
Listen to Paul’s full story here:
