How the Construction Industry is Laying the Groundwork for the Future of AI PM

Galen Low: Project management in the construction industry is often labeled as old school, but when it comes to data and AI, it might already be ahead. If you just said, "That's preposterous," then keep listening because right now there's massive demand for digitally savvy project managers in the construction industry, and my guest thinks you'd be great, with a few upgrades.

But even if you never plan to don a hard hat to deliver your project, stay and give this a listen. We're going to use the construction industry as a lens for talking about how to win over people with deep-seated mindsets around AI and around career pivots, whether they're 30-year industry veterans or new grads entering the workforce.

Hope you enjoy the episode.

Welcome to the Digital Project Manager Podcast—the show that helps delivery leaders work smarter, deliver smoother, and lead their teams with confidence in the age of AI. I'm Galen, and every week we dive into real-world strategies, emerging trends, proven frameworks, and the occasional war story from the project front lines. Whether you're steering massive transformation projects, wrangling AI workflows, or just trying to keep the chaos under control, you're in the right place. Let's get into it.

Okay, today we are going to take a step away from what is conventionally considered to be digital and explore how AI and data are reshaping one of the world's oldest and arguably most complex industries, the construction industry. We're gonna be talking about what's going right and what's going wrong when it comes to digital innovation in the construction industry, and we're going to be using that as a lens to talk about how project leaders can shift deep-rooted mindsets, where there's been job displacement and job growth in the project management field, and whether digital project professionals have the skills needed to pivot from tech into construction.

With me today is James Garner, Head of AI and Data at Gleeds and founder of Project Flux, a newsletter, podcast, and online community about demystifying how AI is transforming projects. James is a chartered quantity surveyor with deep expertise in commercial management, data strategy, and AI transformation within the built environment sector.

He has been with socially conscious construction consultancy Gleeds for over 25 years, starting out as a surveyor and building from there to today, where he is responsible for driving global market research and thought leadership around driving Gleeds' data-driven transformation. He is passionate about data in the construction industry and is using his community, Project Flux, to lead conversations around how construction organizations can use AI and data not just to improve efficiency, but to fundamentally rethink how projects are delivered, forecasted, governed, and managed.

James, thanks for joining me today.

James Garner: Thank you so much. Wow, what an intro. Thank you so much, Galen. Great to meet you.

Galen Low: Nice to meet you as well. I loved prepping for this. I loved nerding out. I'm really excited for this c- conversation because, honestly, this is a really fascinating topic for me. I think a lot of my listeners, they might not even realize how digital the construction industry has become and how much project leaders in software and construction are starting to have in common as they face down some of the challenges around data, automation, and, of course, AI adoption.

Construction has been typically viewed by us digital folks as slow-moving and linear and kinda behind the curve technologically. But given the investment and growth we're seeing in the construction industry, including some of the jobs that are being created within it in areas like project management, data, and AI, is construction actually on track to become more technologically advanced than some digital sectors?

James Garner: Good question. I mean, it's jagged, right? In some areas, construction is moving a lot faster than people realize. In other areas, it's still painfully slow. Now, going back to what you said before, Galen, whether you're a digital project manager or a construction project manager, we're all trying to solve, you know, we're trying to solve issues or we're trying to actually fulfill a project of some kind.

So the skills are very, very similar in a lot of ways. The only difference is in construction you're getting dirty with mud and excavators and all those kind of things at the end. But the planning part of it, all the bit that goes before you get into a construction site, those skills are really, really similar.

So I think the problem with construction has been, as it's such a historical industry, it's taken quite a while for it to really kind of see the light that digital and AI and all these technologies have a way of significantly changing the way that we deliver projects. And it's not, I suppose, in comparison to digital project management, it's a bit more difficult because it's so fragmented.

So if you take a construction project, the amount of parties that are involved in that project is, is sometimes quite overwhelming because you think, oh, you've just got a contractor on site delivering it. Well, underneath that contractor, you've got multiple subcontractors. Under each of those subcontractors, you've got multiple suppliers and sub-subcontractors.

And then upfield you've got all the consultants, the architects, the engineers, the surveyors before you get to the client. So on a relatively typical project, you could have Well in excess of 100 different parties sort of feeding into it. Yeah, it's crazy. People don't realize that just how many people are involved in these projects.

Now, of course, all those people have got different processes, different systems, different data storage techniques, which makes it very, very difficult to standardize everything, which has been part of the problem why no one's really sort of solved the digitization problem up until now. But what we've seen happen over the last, I'd say probably last sort of half a decade, and it started very much with all the BI stuff that started coming.

People started using the Power BI and Power Apps. People started realizing there's a lot more value to this data than we thought there was before. So we've started seeing this shift from very reactive data. And what I mean by that is, let's say, if you had a meeting on the construction projects, you'd probably do the report for that a week before the meeting, which would've been based on data which was at least a week before that.

So by the time you had the meeting, you're dealing with data that's at least two weeks old. I've seen situations where it's been maybe four, six weeks old. So we've seen this slight shift from that to at least dealing with more real-time data as we've been getting to sort of the use of BI tools like Power BI and Tableau and things like that.

And that's kind of woken people up to the fact that actually we're not immune to this technology. We can utilize it, and that can ultimately impact the bottom line. So what we're starting to see now, particularly with AI technology, is people have made a conscious effort now to kind of standardize in some way their data and start taking it a bit more seriously.

So they're getting a lot more... Well, there's two things. Culturally, they're starting to understand that there's a real advantage here, and then also because of some of the prep work they've done maybe over the last half a decade, they've got some kind of data to lean into to get some insights. So I think the mentality has changed.

There's still a lot of barriers. There's still a long way to go, but it's moving in the right direction. So I'd say honestly, in some pockets, yes, not across the board. It's still a bit of a laggard, but we're getting better and peoples are, are waking up, and I think as new people are coming into the industry, you know, the next intake of graduates is starting to get better.

Galen Low: You know what? I love that as a thread with the data piece because it's a sliver where everyone can see the benefit, right? You were working with data that could have been out of date to moving closer towards real time, which I can imagine with that complexity is actually quite important to be able to make decisions that are actually really going to inform the investment.

You know, and then everyone's "Oh, okay, okay. We should probably, you know, standardize this. We should make it available. It's making everything move smoother." And I think that's the right way for any industry, right? To prove the value of some of the innovation in a small sliver, and then sort of let that widen the shift.

I was gonna say driving the wedge, but it's almost like then you have to do that with the next thing and the next thing and the next thing, and I think we'll get there. But you're right. It's like it's such it's such a beast to move. A, it's big money. B, it's big complexity. There's a lot of people. And, you know, for us in the digital world, like we're often like, "Oh, well, we could just undo that," you know?

"We can just control Z it. We can change it and do another release. We'll patch it." Yeah. We don't really have that luxury in construction, so it does really matter. But it's really cool seeing, you know, that transformation take place. And you had mentioned to me in the green room you were just giving a talk to some grad students as well.

The folks you're talking to who are entering the workforce, are they sort of open to this technology? Is there still some of the, you know, deep-rooted doubt about it? Are they being taught it? Are they going to enter the market into something where, you know, actually they're gonna be up against a lot of resistance?

James Garner: Yeah. I mean, it's, it's interesting. I, I just spoke to De Montfort University here in the UK. I do some work with various universities also in the States because it's my big bugbear, to be honest, is I don't think the institutions anywhere are preparing the, the, the next wave. They're still teaching people project management, and I'm sure it's the same in digital project management, in a very traditional way.

And I think the students are quite frustrated because they pay a lot of money for this course. And as with everything, you know, governance, education, all those things always lag behind the tech. But because the tech's moving so fast, that lag, they really feel it. So I've had a lot of people come up to me today saying, "Look, you know, what skills do I need to learn?"

And I'm saying to people, "Well, I'm afraid the courses might not be teaching you the... They, they'll be teaching the relevant domain skills, but they probably aren't teaching you the right AI skills. But don't let that be an excuse. Take responsibility for your own AI literacy because by just saying, 'Well, I'm not gonna do it because they're not teaching me it,' the only person you're harming is yourself."

Because to be honest, nobody knows exactly where this is going, and you've just got to have a curious mind, and you've just got to do it for yourself, number one, because it's incredibly cool, and number two, because it will separate you. I mean, what I see with these students is, i- it's not panic. They're just confused.

I don't think they're being told what this means in a coherent manner because, you know, the, the professors and the lecturers, they don't know. You know, that's not their background, and they just want someone to kind of tell them, "It'll be okay," you know, "Carry on learning your domain, and this is what you need to do."

And they need to be kind of assured that when they graduate, they're not gonna enter a workplace where there won't be a job. Now, what I do is I don't lie to them. I say, "Look, there's gonna be a very disruptive period for the next half a decade to maybe a decade, like it always is with these revolutions, but there's things you can do.

You're in control. It's like riding a wave, you know. For the next probably five years, it'll be like riding a wave. And whatever you go into now, your job will probably look very different in five years' time." Now, that's unfortunate 'cause me and you probably entered the market and we kinda knew what our career would look like.

These grads entering the market now probably don't know what their career's gonna look like in five years' time. But you can look at that as a negative thing, or you can look at that as a positive thing and go, "Wow, okay. Well, I'm gonna enter this industry at an incredibly time when there's gonna be loads of change and I'm gonna ride that wave."

Galen Low: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's a different ballgame, but it requires that mindset to be open to not knowing what's going to happen, which, yeah, I mean, I agree with you. Even though I fell into project management, there was, like, a couple of paths, you know, that you could kind of fall into, and they were all pretty clear.

There wasn't that much ambiguity around it. But I wanted to come back to something you said. You said, "Because it's incredibly cool." And I really like that because it is cool, and I think sometimes we forget that. There's a lot of conversation about, you know, "Oh, my gosh we don't know what's gonna happen.

It's disrupting everything. We don't know, you know, what's gonna happen to our lives and our future." Can you give me a few examples of what's super cool about AI and data in the construction industry? We talked about real-time reporting, but like I think the breadth is actually quite wide. We could be...

You know, we're talking data and project management, but we're also talking about like robots. We're talking about, you know, a lot of things in the construction industry.

James Garner: Yeah. I mean, you know, at the end of the day, the construction industry sounds, to a lot of people, it conjures up images of dirty excavators and people getting getting injured on sites.

But don't forget, the construction industry touches all of us. You know, all the buildings that we live in, where we educate ourselves, the shops we go to, the power stations that power our homes, the roads that we, you know, drive on, they're all part of that wider construction industry. And in terms of global GDP, when you take into account infrastructure and energy, power stations, things like that, it's about 15% of global GDP, so it's a significant, significant part of all of our lives.

And all those things are things, y- you know, they're tangible things that we all Can't do without. We literally can't do without. So when you see a technology come along that improves the way that's gonna help people to live, it's incredibly exciting. And there's so many different parts. When you look at AI, the ability to release some of these bottlenecks that have either made projects unaffordable, unfeasible because of schedules, means that we're gonna be able to realize a lot of the things that we should be doing as a society.

And then when you move into things like humanoid robots, like one of the contractors here in the UK released their first humanoid robot going around a site. And the problem with sites, you know, you've usually got project managers. One of the project manager in construction jobs is to go and monitor that site, right?

And they're really good at that. That's one of the things they're trained at, at being able to see what's going on on a site and where things are going wrong, where things are dangerous, where things are off schedule, where things are on schedule. But there's a massive problem with it Galen, which is we're humans, we only look one way and we've only got two eyes, right?

Right. Now you've got these humanoid robots which can effectively walk around site with these 360 cameras that have got computer vision, so it's a bit like your Teslas or your autonomous cars can kind of recognize what's going on. So now these project managers, it's like they've got a swarm of humanoid project managers, this is what's gonna happen, being able to monitor all of their sites in real time.

So they're not having to be worried about the thing that they missed because they just haven't got the capability to look everywhere at all times. So that's incredibly cool to me, and that's happening right now. You know, that's the kind of world we're moving into. For me, the, the other cool thing is one of the negative things about construction industry, it's quite dangerous, right?

And we send humans into really dangerous situations quite often because, you know, that's the way we've always done it. And if you go back further than that, you know, we, before excavators and machinery like that, we were putting the humans into really dangerous situations, and we stopped that by putting excavators in the way.

The next step is we're now th- having the ability because they're getting so dexterous, these humanoid robots, we're gonna be able to put humanoid robots down in these ditches doing the very dangerous tasks. That doesn't mean there's still not humans on site monitoring those humanoid robots and verifying the outcomes, et cetera.

But that is really cool for me because that's one of the negative perceptions about the construction industry is that it's dangerous. So if we can put a humanoid robot in harm's way rather than a human, that's a really good thing. But it goes further than that, all the way to how we're planning for construction projects, the feasibility.

You know, most projects go wrong in construction at that feasibility stage where no one's really thought about the implications, the cost, the schedule, the risks, et cetera, and people are doing it on kind of gut feel. The way that we're becoming more and more data-driven and using AI means that more projects will be set up correctly in the first place.

And on the other end of it, when projects are delivered, more and more projects are becoming smart projects with sensors all over it, so you can monitor everything that's happening, which then leads to a better sustainability outcome. So the whole way across the life cycle, it is incredibly cool. I think the world of, say, 2040 or 2035 in terms of the way that we manage and build buildings is gonna be very different to the way we do it now.

Galen Low: That is really exciting, and I love the focus on safety. I've loved it. I spent a bit of time in consulting and, you know, we were dealing with, you know, autonomous vehicles to avoid collisions on a construction site. We were working with some VR training so you don't have to send someone, you know, 75 feet up a pole somewhere in telecom, you know, to train them on, you know, some of these things.

And I think it's such a good driver for safety and people's wellbeing I mean, I imagine as well people might be resistant. And as I say that, I'm like, your example was a good one. You're like, "We've got excavators now," and I don't think a lot of people would fight you on that, to be like, "That excavator took my job."

Obviously, there's an operator. Obviously, it's safer. Obviously, more work is getting done. There's probably more construction projects. There's more jobs to be done. It wasn't really a threat necessarily to, you know, someone's employment and livelihood. But do you come up against resistance for even some of the things that are gonna make the job safer, you know, folks who are just kind of, you know, deeply rooted in an older way of doing things-

and maybe feel threatened by that?

James Garner: Oh my God. Yeah, I mean, this is an age-old situation, and I, I know we're gonna cover one of the articles that I wrote a bit later on. But ju- absolutely, that's the biggest challenge, to be honest, Galen, is the mindsets, and I always refer back to the four AI mindsets from Reid Hoffman.

I'm not sure if you're familiar with, which is the doomers, the zoomers, the gloomers, and the bloomers, right? So the doomers being the people who think, see AI as the existential threat. The gloomers are the one who are just worried that it's gonna take their job. Then you've got the bloomers wh- who've got that kind of balanced optimism about it.

They're excited, but they wanna do it safely. And then you've got the zoomers who are the people full steam ahead. And I think that those personas fit really well, I always use that when I talk to people, into any company. Doesn't matter whether it's... Any company over 10 people, I reckon you'll find people in those personas.

I think the important thing, though, is not to dismiss anyone's opinions, and it, it'll be the same for you, I'm sure, in the digital project management world. This is all human reactions to change, and that has always, always happened. You know, it depends where you are and depends where you are in your life.

It depends your appetite to risk. It depends on, you know, how it's being presented to you as well about where you fit. And so there are things you can do. The interesting thing is a lot of people just automatically assume that the younger people are gonna be all for this, and then the older people are gonna be the ones who are the gloomers and the doomers.

I've actually found that not to be the case at all. I have actually found that a lot of the best things I've seen people doing, particularly with AI in the industry, are people in their 60s or even 70s 'cause they've got a freedom, right? They're not necessarily worried, they probably don't need to work, and they found a new tool that's really cool and they wanna experiment.

And then conversely, and I'm sure you've heard about the commencement speeches where the mention of the word AI got booed, and I'm seeing that with my own children. So I've got a 19-year-old son who's at university here in the UK, and a 17-year-old son currently doing his A levels. And I'll be honest, they're not massively thrilled about AI because they see it as a threat to...

You know, they're scared, as I was talking about with the MSC students before, because it- what you want at that age is a bit more certainty. So there is no kind of age-related correlation that I can see. I don't know if there's been studies done on it, but definitely these different mindsets, that means that's, there are always gonna be a certain pocket of people within any organization who are gonna be anti-AI.

Now, the important thing, like I said, is not to rubbish them. You've gotta listen to them, make sure they've got a voice, because I always say the reality is no one's got the answer. If you've got a doomer in your midst, someone who thinks this is an existential threat to humanity, right, you should listen to them because even though we said that it's really cool, you've got the likes of Elon Musk and Dario Amodei and people like that saying that, "Oh, I think there's at least an 80% chance that AI is gonna be good for humanity."

And that still worries me that there's a 20% chance that there won't be, right? Which is like Russian roulette 'Cause Russian roulette is 16%. So th- th- I think it's still a valid concern and we've gotta take it seriously. So the way I deal with it is having conversations. Let people be heard because once people are heard, then you can give your view, and then they're more likely to listen to your view, and then you're more likely to meet somewhere in the middle.

Galen Low: You know, I see a lot of people actually getting that wrong, and it's funny because the people I see getting it right are people like yourself who are people-people.

I see a lot of folks, say, who are heads of AI who have a background in marketing. But in other words, understanding their audience and what their needs are and convincing them in some way, shape, or form, or at least getting them comfortable with an idea versus the folks who are just trying to smash it over people's head, you know, because we have to, we don't have a choice.

You know, your POV is rubbish. We need to move forward, and it's y- it's right. It's, it's just poor change management, I guess. I mean, in your role, I guess just in the conversations you have, part of it is to convince people that AI and data will be beneficial to the industry. Is that fair to say?

Or like you said, we don't know the answer.

James Garner: Yeah. Well, I see it as my mission actually, because I am passionate about this and I care deeply about the industry. And for me, particularly in the construction industry, it's about maintaining control because we've seen it happen to other industries where once you give up control and you give it over to the, the big tech firms, there's no bringing it back.

So let's take Netflix as a good example. So the movie industry, it was really compelling, wasn't it? We're gonna give you Netflix and it's gonna be 3.99 a month. Right. And everyone was like, "Well, why wouldn't I take that?" And then you kill off Blockbuster Video, and then they start hiking their prices up, and then it's "Oh, actually, can we have Blockbuster Video back?"

No, it's gone. You know? It's too late. And I feel the same way about our industry. It's like clients value what we bring, and the independence and the ability to have consultants make sure you got the client's best interests at heart. Now, it's gonna be really compelling over the next few years for clients who are gonna be faced with all kinds of digital solutions to the things that consultants deliver, and you know, it may be very, very enticing to say, "Well, we don't need that service anymore.

We're just going to buy the subscription to whatever the digital solution is." Now, the problem with that is at some point they'll start hiking their prices up, and then the client will say, "Oh yeah, but I need someone to give me a judgment on this," or, you know, their professional opinion on it, and it'll be too late by then because, you know, same thing as Netflix, same thing as with Spotify and all those other platforms.

Once it's gone, it's gone, and there's no getting it back. So that's why I care deeply about what we do, particularly as construction consultants, because it's an incredibly complex thing we do in construction. Like I said, so many different parties. And whilst AI is gonna be a massive, massive help to it, a client's still gonna need his hand held through the process.

And I always say at the end of the day, someone needs to make a judgment on something at the end of the day. So I do feel that my role is to convince people to become a better project manager by using AI because the alternative is you'll be up against software companies and SaaS platforms that will not have your best interests at heart.

Galen Low: I really like that POV of just keeping the power within industry versus having it go to, you know, I guess techopoly- Yeah.

Yeah ... might be the word, but in other words, it sort of leaves the hands of the people doing the work and becomes something that you literally need to subscribe to and, you know, receive the sort of product. And I like that word judgment as well, right? You know, they, we still need to retain our ability to make good judgments for our projects, for our industry, for the technology that's disrupting it, and still yeah, retain that control.

As I say control, I'm like, is that the right word? It sounds like the wrong word, like we're trying to, like-

James Garner: Yeah, 'cause it sounds negative ... you know, force it Doesn't it?

Galen Low: Yeah, right?

James Garner: Yeah. I don't mean it.

Galen Low: In our tool belt.

James Garner: No, the, well, the, the thing is, is that-

Galen Low: Is that too on the nose?

James Garner: I, I do a lot of work for the institution.

I know in the States and Canada, you're governed by PMI, and in the UK we've got an association called the APM, which is the Association of Project Management. And then I'm actually... My background as a surveyor, I do a lot of work with the institution, which is called RICS, which stands for the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

Now, that's been around since the 1800s, right? And what I always say, and I do a lot of work with them because I, I'm on what's called the Construction Professional Group Panel. And you gotta remember that these institutions, particularly RICS, they were formed as a reaction or a kind of answer to the Industrial Revolution.

It was a way of finding an institution for a way to govern, be gatekeepers to the knowledge around these different professions, whether it was accountancy, whether it was law, whether it was sur- in, in my case, surveyors. Well, now we're moving out of the Industrial Age to the Intelligence Age. Those institutions have still got a role to play, I think, which is n- now they're no longer the gatekeepers to knowledge, because that's gonna be democratized, everyone can get it, everyone's got it on their phone, but they're gonna be the gatekeepers to people who provide judgment and provide explainability.

So it's just shifting what people are actually buying. They're not buying the knowledge anymore, 'cause everyone can get knowledge for free. What they're actually buying, what... You think about it, you're buying that judgment, and that judgment is the word.

Galen Low: It's really interesting. I like the perspective that some of these institutions that, you know, they get painted with a brush sometimes as being, you know, a bit behind, they're lagging, they're, you know, old school, but fundamentally their purpose is to sort of help their industries and their crafts react to change.

James Garner: Absolutely.

Galen Low: You know, someone might argue that they're not all doing that.

James Garner: Well, some are doing it better than others.

Galen Low: No, I think it's very interesting.

James Garner: That's part of my... You asked, you know, do I think part of my role is convincing, and and that's where I see my role, why I wanted to do this role with RICS, because that's the way of reaching all the surveyor members.

And I know there's equally amazing people doing stuff at PMI and doing stuff at APM, because there's... The good thing is there are a lot of people who do really care.

Galen Low: No, I like that. I wonder if I can put you on the spot a bit. You mentioned about, you know, the sort of four types, right? These archetypal mindsets around change, especially technology and AI.

We were talking about, yeah, sometimes it's not this older generation that's the doomers and gloomers, sometimes it's actually the younger generation. I'm wondering if you have any stories about- Maybe a sort of younger doomer or gloomer that you had a conversation with, you listened to, but ultimately managed to convince them or at least be heard about the benefits of AI and data in their industry.

Not to put you too much on the spot there, but have there been, like, a case, can you walk us through that conversation?

James Garner: Yeah, I mean, I, that, that's happened quite a few times at, at, at different age groups. The one that, that, that springs to mind the most was actually a more senior person who could only be described as a proper gloomer didn't even wanna hear the mention of AI.

But credit to that person, you know, I won't mention it, and it, it was, it wasn't for my company, it was work that I was doing with Rix. When the penny dropped, he had the grace to contact me and basically say, "James, you were right. Now can you help me?" And now the, the interesting thing about that particular case is he turned from the biggest kind of barrier to adoption.

When his team saw that he changed They realized this is serious, and he became the biggest proponent, and now he was one of the biggest champions for it within that particular company. So I always see those people, don't look at it as a negative. Say, "Well, look, this is a person that I could turn to be one of the biggest champions," because when...

It'll be so authentic when it happens and pe- it'll be so noticeable when it happens that it will have the biggest impact. Now, on the younger side of things, it's a bit more difficult. And now probably the best example is my sons. I've got two boys and, you know, they're not massively enamored with AI, I would say, simply because I think part of it is the education system, like I said earlier, is basically painting AI to be the bad guy, as a bit of a dirty word.

So that's what they're being taught. You know, "Don't tell anyone when you're using AI." But one of them was doing their homework on a particular thing and was worried about using AI to do the assignment. And I, I said... You had a good chat with him and basically said, "No, you don't use AI to do the assignment.

You're thinking about it incorrectly. What you wanna do is do the assignment yourself, use the AI to act as... You know, once you've done a bit, you can use it to kind of review it. It can become your critical friend and review your output." And that flipped it for him, and he realized, "Okay, this is the way we can use it."

Another good example is someone was saying, "Oh I used AI to help me do my CV. I'm going for this job, and I used AI to help me write my CV." And I said, "No, you're thinking about it wrong. If you use AI to create a CV, it's gonna be really run-of-the-mill. Everyone will notice it straightaway, and it won't really help you."

I said, "What you should do, though, is once you've written your CV, make it authentic, write it yourself, make sure you're getting your voice across, but then use AI to review it," like I just gave you the example with my son. "But then more than that, work out who's gonna interview you, find out those personas on LinkedIn or wherever, you can get this information anywhere, and then you can feed your CV and those personas into AI and get the AI to do a mock interview for you."

And they got the job, and they called me up afterwards, said it was the best thing they did. Because we're all human, we're quite predictable. Every single thing that the AI came up with in terms of questions was exactly what came up. And that's really important because you're then not using AI in a negative context to pass off work as yourself.

You're using it truly as a thought partner as someone to help you develop yourself. And, you know, you can just string that out in loads of different contexts. So yeah, those are just a few examples, but I've probably got more, to be honest.

Galen Low: Well, what I like about those two is that, you know, it comes back to what you said earlier, the judgment, right?

And ultimately, the thing we wanna retain is that judgment, and to be able to use the technology and the data in a way that retains our judgment, in a way our humanity, right? To make good decisions, to challenge the ideas that we have, but to still be creative, I think is something that a lot of people can get on side with because it still retains our sense of self.

And I think that is what some of the folks who are a little bit resistant to AI, or maybe very resistant to AI, are ultimately afraid of, is kind of having their purpose erased. Not so much, you know, it's not "Okay, well, this should be great. I don't have to do much work anymore. I can sit there and let the robot lift the girder."

But that's not the most convincing thing about it. The most convincing thing about it is you get to still do you, the things that you're, you know, passionate, the things that you learned And also, you know, do more, do it well. And I like your vision for it because it's well, the better we do this, especially in the construction industry, like potentially the better life is for everybody, right?

Exactly. Everyone's using buildings. We're constructing, you know, metropolises. It's advancing things, you know. And of course, we all need shelter and places to learn, and I think it's noble to have people in that industry that care in the way that you care about it, you know? It's building our world literally.

James Garner: It's important, yeah. Absolutely.

Galen Low: I wanted to talk about jobs really and selfishly because in our community we're starting to see a bit of job displacement, like digital project managers are being laid off or some are being asked to take on more responsibilities maybe because their colleagues were laid off.

But meanwhile, some of our members have cited some of these reports that are showing that the job forecast for construction project managers is actually looking quite positive. You know, coming back to what I said at the top, what would it take for someone who's currently working in the digital space, who is accustomed to working with teams and solutions that never really leave a digital context, like what would it take for them to pivot into the construction industry?

James Garner: Well, the first thing is you're right, there is still a massive skill shortage in the construction industry. There has been for my whole career, where just 'cause of the image of it, it, it's always been hard, and this is on both sides of the pond. There's a major, major issue. So there, there is a skill shortage there.

And I think what's interesting is, like I said at the beginning, there is a lot of overlap with the skills that you learn in terms of general project management, digital project management, or construction project management. It's all about planning. It's all around human skills. It's being able to negotiate.

It's being able to story tell. You know, all those things are transferable. So if you think about it as a Venn diagram and you've got digital project management and then construction project management, there'll be like 80% I reckon probably will overlap, and then you will have the 20% of things that you would probably need to train yourself up in, which is all the domain experience to do with the construction.

But it's all very doable. If you had somebody who was thinking about it, they were excited about it, they think they got the skills, there may be a kind of some kind of top-up course you've gotta do to understand the domain, understand construction, but eminently doable. And I think what people look for in the industry is less about those skills, 'cause those skills are very acquirable.

It's more about those foundational skills that most people in digital project management will have, which is can you show up to a certain place consistently at the same time? Can you plan? Have you got empathy? Are you a good person? You know, the things that really make a project tick, I reckon that's probably 80% of the overlap.

So if people are interested, they should definitely look into it. It's a very rewarding industry. People are hiring all over the place. And you know, one thing is for certain, people are always gonna need buildings.

Galen Low: I like that. I'm thinking about what you said about the job interview. And yes, I can see how, you know, the Venn diagram would have a lot of overlap, but I could also see, you know, if I was the hiring manager, before I sort of, you know, take a, someone from a different industry completely, digital or otherwise, and, you know, put them in charge of a project where they've gotta be on site, you know, and I'm not even sure if they've worn a hard hat before what is a good entry point?

And also, you know, what is, I guess, maybe a convincing angle for someone coming from a completely different industry? Maybe they've done a top-up course, but they clearly don't, you know, maybe feel like they are the part. Yeah. What is the entry point in as a project professional in construction? And also, I guess, I don't know, what advice would you have for someone in an interview situation who's feeling pretty self-conscious about the fact that, you know, they've never really done the steel-toed boots, hard hat thing on site, you know, watching work getting done in real time?

James Garner: Yeah. So I, I would just be honest, you know? Be honest with what your strengths are, which will be, you know, the 75, 80%, and be honest about where your gaps are. I will tell you that a lot of people come into project management in construction actually don't come from project management degree background.

They are what we call non-cognates. So they might come in from a geography background or an economics background. So then what we, in the UK at least, what we tend to do is in the industry they do like a top-up master's in construction project management, which is usually a year part-time, and that just gives them what they need.

So I would just be honest to say, "Look, these are my skills. This is what I know I can do. This is the overlap. These are the things that I don't know, but I'm willing to learn." And you'll find that a lot of people will be very happy to bring someone on with those necessary skills. But, you know, don't lie about it or cover it up.

Just be absolutely transparent because there is a skill shortage, and if you've got those other qualities, that's gonna count for an awful lot already.

Galen Low: I really love that. On the topic of job displacement, I wanted to come back to that article you wrote.

James Garner: Oh, yes.

Galen Low: You recently wrote this article on Project Flux.

I believe the title is We've Been Here Before: 2,400 Years of Panicking About New Technology, a title I love, by the way, and in it you have some quotes that they read like LinkedIn posts, right? I was going through them like, oh, that's definitely a LinkedIn post, but actually they were in reference to historical innovations like the gramophone or the Industrial Revolution and even technological advancements from Ancient Greece.

Could you tell me about what inspired this article and what you think we can learn from historical reactions to new technology?

James Garner: Yeah. So it was inspired by someone I had on my podcast, Project Flux, who was actually a musician who told me this story about Socrates and Plato being worried about the invention of handwriting.

And I found this quote which was attributed to Socrates, which basically... I'll read it out to you in a minute. So, yeah, it got me curious and I, I was looking through other... I knew there were people in the Industrial Revolution who were saying same things about the invention of the machinery and the Luddites and all those kind of stories.

So I did a bit of research into it and I found all these quotes and I thought, wouldn't it be cool if I got AI to turn all of these quotes into a, a modern kind of LinkedIn thing? So it's the same quote, it's just been modernized, and that's basically the article. So I'll give you a few of them. The one I like the best is actually the Socrates one, which is, in modern lingo, it goes something like this.

"This invention will create forgetfulness. People will stop using their memory." And that was Socrates, 370 BC, worrying that handwriting was gonna be a bad thing for society because people will forget how to remember things, right? Another good example is, "The skilled worker is being pushed out to make room for faster, lifeless machines."

You know, that sounds like something that could be written today. That was Thomas Carlyle in 1829 worrying about industrial machinery and the mechanized loom. So it just proved to me that this is a very human concern. We're always doing it. We're always worried about the latest invention, and it kind of always turns out okay.

There's usually a bit of disruption, and I don't think AI will be much different except for it'll probably happen a lot quicker. And I just thought it was a good reminder, so I'm happy to share that link, and you can put it in the show notes so people want to have a look at it. But it kind of was quite comforting to me in a little way to write it because it made me realize that what we're going through now is nothing particularly unique at all.

Galen Low: I like that there's some comfort in it. I mean, you know, as I'm going through them, I'm like Some of them aren't wrong, right? But also, everything turned out okay-ish. I'm sure there were some people who were very disrupted along the way, and even in this conversation, we've talked about other industries, right?

We've talked about music industry, streaming services, and, you know, the Netflixes. Certainly, it is creating disruption where people are getting jostled out of their planned life, really, you know, on their career path or their passion even. But I think the thing that people often worry about is well, especially with AI, because it's so dramatic and fast and pervasive, they're worried that they won't be able to do what they wanna do anymore, that there won't be something new.

You know what I mean? That this will be it. They won't have any purpose anymore. But the historical side of it is that there's always something that kind of comes up for us to do. We just don't know what it is yet.

James Garner: Yeah. It won't be any different. And, you know, it's like I say, I think it's inevitable.

There's gonna be, you know, probably five to 10 years of some pretty widespread disruption, and then we'll reach a new equilibrium which will be the new normal. Now, I would say to your listeners is don't treat that necessarily as a bad thing. Disruption is a thing, but you can make disruption work for you, or you can make it work against you.

The way you make it work for you is by embracing it, learning the technology, looking at it as opportunity, and accepting the fact that there's probably gonna be some change. But there's always change, right? So it's just how you adapt to the change.

Galen Low: No, I like that. And like you said at the start of the conversation, too, having that openness, that mindset, knowing that there is uncertainty, but being curious enough and wanting to differentiate enough and wanting to be yourself enough to ride that wave and see where it takes you.

I wondered if we could just round out by talking optimistically about the future, 'cause you strike me as someone who is optimistic about the future, and I do think more people need to hear that. What's something that you see on the horizon, or maybe that's even being implemented today, that might seem scary and sci-fi, but actually could create positive opportunities for project professionals, for construction professionals, and also, you know, what might those opportunities look like?

James Garner: Yeah. I mean, there's so much, Galen. E- everything from the way that we're utilizing agents. I mean, for me, the big one is gonna be not just humanoid robots, but the physical AI, so the AI coming out of just chatbots as we're used to using them, to becoming part of our lives everywhere. And when you couple that together with compute, I think we're gonna solve the compute problem as well with quantum coming around the corner.

I think we're gonna enter some kind of world of abundance. I mean, as I said, there'll be disruption on the way there, but I think we could get to a point in the not too distant future where most Kind of grunt work is done for us by either robotics or agents. Now, that doesn't mean we all sit around on our backside doing nothing.

It goes back to what I said before. We're gonna have a lot more thinking time. We're all gonna become entrepreneurs. We're all going to be able to be a lot more creative. This is the great thing. And I think, you know, we're only at the beginning of novel discoveries with AI. So recently, just over the last couple of weeks, OpenAI solved a, an age-old maths problem that was thought to be impossible to solve.

So we're getting from regurgitating information to novel discovery. Now, what that means in the construction industry is, you know, probably totally reinventing the way that we do things. So not only are we going to have a world full of agents doing all the grunt work for us so we don't have to sit in front of a computer moving data from that spreadsheet to that spreadsheet, no longer are we gonna be putting humans in harm's way on construction sites 'cause humanoids will be doing that.

But we'll probably be finding new physics, new ways of constructing buildings, maybe with the stuff that, you know, Musk's doing with boring. We'll start going underground into space, you know? So I'm so optimistic about the future because I think we're only gonna be limited by our imaginations, and I think the project manager of the future, his greatest asset, as well as judgment, is gonna be creativity.

Galen Low: Boom. I love that.

James Garner: So yeah, I'm very excited.

Galen Low: That's great. Actually, you know what? I think that's actually a great place to leave it. I just wanted to say thanks so much for coming on the show. Just for fun, do you have a question you wanna ask me?

James Garner: Ooh. There's quite a few. I guess one of the things I'd like to know is we both do podcasts.

You're much more seasoned than mine. I think you've been going a lot longer than me. I'm onto number 110, and one of the reasons I think we both do it is because podcast is probably one of the places where it stays human, whatever happens. Where do you draw the line? What would you never automate when it comes to the podcast?

Galen Low: Oh, that's a really good question. Okay, so there's one thing that I won't automate that I, I... It goes against the grain, and it's the questions. Honestly, it's the angle, and I think it's not because I don't think AI can do a good job. Sometimes it does a really good job. But that's my creative outlet, is finding an angle- Yeah.

Yeah, I know what you mean ... with a guest. So I have to learn about them, right? We do this you know, we do a meet and greet. We kind of figure out, you know, where there's overlap and what we're passionate about and what our audiences are interested in, and then we have a great conversation. But in between, it's sort of like that planning of okay, well, what's going to be interesting?

And even if we didn't record it, even if it wasn't the published thing, you know? I like the opportunity to have a deep think about what would make an interesting conversation with this person. Almost like that question, right? It's well, you know, if you could go to dinner with any historical figure who would it be?

It's almost like that, but, you know, for present day for me. And, you know, I do use it as a thought partner sometimes, AI, right? Just kind of like, is there something I'm missing here? But I like finding the angle. It's creative, and I get to use my judgment. So all the things you said today, I'm like, yeah, that's what I love about the podcast process.

It's a really good question.

James Garner: Yeah, absolutely. No, I agree with you. That is the bit that I really enjoy as well, is, like, where are we gonna go with this guest? What we're gonna find out? So no, that's a great answer. Thank you.

Galen Low: Thank you, and thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for sharing your insights, and thank you for spending the time with me today.

I've had a lot of fun. I'll include the link to that article, but for folks who wanna learn more about you and Project Flux, where can they go?

James Garner: Yeah, so if you go to projectflux.ai, you can subscribe for free, as we do a weekly newsletter, a weekly podcast. Hopefully, we'll have you on the show at some point as well, Galen.

And yeah, feel free to subscribe. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm quite active on LinkedIn, so if you've got any questions, feel free to fire them off to me. I do try and respond.

Galen Low: I love that. I love what you do on LinkedIn. I'll include all those links in the show notes, and thanks again.

James Garner: Thank you so much for having me, Galen. Really enjoyed it.

Galen Low: All right, folks. That's it for today's episode of the Digital Project Manager Podcast. If you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to subscribe wherever you're listening. And if you want even more tactical insights, case studies, and playbooks, create a free account with us at thedigitalprojectmanager.com.

Until next time, thanks for listening.