#113 Careers and Quotes
By the way, I’m still not very happy with the way the website is looking, but it does seem to be slowly improving as we move forward. I apologize if we don’t have the ability to do likes or comments yet, but I am working on it.
I’m in a bit of pain as I write this, which is why most of this post has been generated by dictation. As most of you know my right wrist is recovering from surgery. I finally found a physiotherapist a couple of weeks ago and she has really made a difference. So, because I didn’t want to be making too much progress, I went and injured my left hand a couple of days ago. Not sure exactly what it is, I think it is something like a simple pull or strain, but for somebody who does a lot of typing and other things and was getting used to using my left hand to do a lot of things… I’m kind of laughing at myself now. 😊
I was having a discussion with a close friend of mine the other day and realized that I’ve actually had three careers in my life already. The military, information technology, and, seemingly out of nowhere, I have spent about 10 to 15 years working in the construction and hotel business.
I mention this because the studying I have done (mentioned below) has made me wonder whether I have time for a 4th career, or whether I will just do a few more years in the construction business with a focus on trying to improve existing processes. Not sure whether this would really be considered a separate career, but who cares? It’s all good anyway.
I mention this because of the recent research I have been pursuing into the mass timber construction paradigm. I don’t want to say I went down the rabbit hole, because that implies something negative. But, I ended up taking a number of online courses (some of which I am still pursuing) on construction cost estimation, wood science, and corrosion engineering. In addition, I have been listening to a whole series of podcasts from an organization in Australia called the Wood Solutions group. And I am just amazed about the potential for timber as a building material.
Why isn’t this style of building more popular?
Global construction business is about $17 Trillion (yes with a T), annually.
The global construction industry produces about 23% of worldwide carbon emissions (China is the largest producer). Moving to sustainable materials such as timber could certainly help reduce that. Admittedly it will take decades, but still, a good amount of momentum seems to have developed already in North America, Australia, and Europe. Asia is where this really needs to be pushed, with, of course, an emphasis on sourcing wood from certified sustainable forests.
Another thing that I discovered, which really, I had no idea about, was the extent to which the construction industry can be made more efficient through the use of technology. It came to my attention through the research I’m doing into the mass timber construction market, but it seems to apply very well to traditional construction techniques as well.
To put it very briefly, the idea, especially with an all timber building, is that you do a lot of the work up front in software using 3D CAD and modeling software, and you feed that information into a factory with CAM machines that manufactures (from mass timber type products), the building. The floor panels, the wall panels etc., and all to a greater or lesser extent having things like the door holes, window holes, and provisions for plumbing and electrical already in the panel. The panels are then trucked to the site and the building is assembled, rather than constructed.
Katerra Mass Timber Fabrication Plant - Katerra is at the forefront of automating contruction
That is a one paragraph summary of a fairly complex process, and I have barely scratched the surface for looking into this. Now, I don’t really expect that I will ever build a timber building in Asia, but this is still really cool stuff to know about. Timber is such an awesome building material. It is sustainable, it sequesters carbon, it is 15% the weight of a equivalent concrete and steel building, it is cleaner, less noisy, and quicker to construct. And generally the site is safer to work in. For those who might be thinking about this, the noise and/or fire specifications are just as good as concrete.
I heard a statistic, (not exactly sure how best to verify something like this), that the North American forests grow enough timber in five minutes to replace that which would be used to construct a 15-story timber building. Well, it sounds really cool, I’m kind of wondering how they came up with the number though.
So anyway, what I’m really researching quite heavily now, with the hopes of presenting it to people in Asia, is how feasible it would be to use lean construction methodologies (A way to make construction more efficient), combined with more intensive software modeling, in order to be able to make the type of construction that we are involved in, less wasteful, faster to completion, and have a lower TCO. I have absolutely no idea how that will be taken. But I plan to give it a shot.
I thought I would finish up with a few quotes that I’ve highlighted from some of the books that I have been reading recently and a stoic thought.
Best quote that I have heard from a Stoic (Epictetus) in the last few days: “The best way to achieve personal freedom is not to satisfy desire, but to eliminate it.”
I do find that stoicism is something that I have to work on. And the way I work on it is by listening to various Stoic podcasts every day. I find it quite enjoyable and very calming. Some of the podcasts I listen to currently our Good Fortune, Stoic Coffee Break, the Daily Stoic, and The Practical Stoic. I think the Daily Stoic and The Practical Stoic are the only ones that are actually still in operation, but the first two still have a large number of relatively short and easy to listen to podcasts still available online.
Lord Byron; He said that his religious upbringing never prevented him from sinning but always prevented him from enjoying it as much as he wanted.
Lord Byron was a 19th century poet who, incidentally, was the father of Ada Lovelace, considered one of the first computer programmers. The programming language ADA is named after her.
The quotes below came from various books in the Martha’s Vineyard mystery series, by Philip R. Craig. Kind of a Robert B Parker/Spencer flavor and maybe a little simplistic, but I still enjoy this type of murder mystery. Worth checking out if you enjoy that kind of book.
“I thought of the radical animal rights people and Earth First! people and anti-abortion people, and others of that ilk who were so full of righteousness that they considered it their moral duty to kill you if you acted against them. Passionate moralists have caused more grief in the world than all of its Darth Vaders combined.”
“People who think that security is more important than freedom. People like that are scarier to me than are most professional criminals.”
“The truth was elusive because the world is full of liars.”
“ I’ve been convinced for some time that most classified information serves to protect the asses of the people making the decisions rather than the nations or stockholders involved.”