Mr. Ken Gwinner is President of Advent PDS (www.adventpds.com), a subsidiary of Hardin Construction, based in Atlanta, Georgia. Prior to Advent PDS, Ken was the Senior Vice President of Turner Properties in Atlanta, and prior to that, was Manager of Design, Construction and Long Range Planning for The Coca-Cola Company. He is a senior design and construction executive and registered architect with twenty-eight years of experience, primarily in the design and construction of corporate and broadcasting facilities.

Mr. Gwinner is a long-time client of PSI and a major proponent of the Project Success Method^SM. Over the last nine years, he has managed 1300 projects worth 1.5 billion dollars, and has delivered virtually all of these projects on time and on budget. He attributes much of his project success to PSI's methodology and continues to use it today in his work on complex, critical projects.

We recently caught up with Ken to see what he has been up to and to learn his views on successfully managing complex, critical projects.

PSI: You've worked on so many notable projects during your career. Can you tell me about one of your more recent successes?

KG: One very big and very successful project was one that I led right before leaving Turner Properties. It involved developing an international broadcast center for the Spanish-speaking television market. We were tasked with relocating the broadcast facility from Atlanta to a new, beautiful building in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Of course, given the complex, critical nature of this project, we decided to use PSI consultants to facilitate and we followed the Project Success Method. We had a team in Buenos Aires, a team in Atlanta, and the PSI facilitator was in a third city. We would do our project scheduling on an ongoing basis via internet meeting software that allowed all of us to look at the same computer image even though we were in three different cities. We had over 40 people involved in these meetings, and there was a bilingual challenge as well since there were a significant number of Spanish speaking folks who were not fluent in English. However, throughout the duration of the project, it was a very collegial, collaborative effort.

At first, everyone focused on the building design—that was the center of attention for our team and the customer. However using the Project Success Method, we discovered early in the process that other parts of the project were equally as important. We were opening up a brand new business in Buenos Aires, and hiring, training of staff and certain software functions became the critical path. Our new focus on the critical path of the Buenos Aires business startup took some of the pressure off of building design and construction. Additionally, we could do it at a more normal pace instead of rushing to get the building done without considering these other important aspects of opening a new business.

I am proud to say that this project was delivered on time and on budget— with much thanks to PSI and their Project Success Method.

PSI: You attribute much of your success to the Project Success Method and are obviously a firm believer in the process. Why do you believe that it works so well?

KG: There are several key benefits to using this methodology when leading a complex, business critical project.

First, the Project Success Method gives you a clear picture of the project from beginning to end. You are always looking at the entire picture so you know what to expect, what issues may come up, what the milestones will be, what the dependencies are, etc. There are no surprises.

Another thing about the Project Success Method is the collaborative nature in how we do the work. We use the method in a collaborative forum. It is a real team effort and everyone is invested in the project because they are highly involved. The team gets together and uses the schedule as a tool. It gets projected on the wall so everyone can see it, and the team is engaged in making decisions and immediately determining the corrective actions necessary to keep the project on track. The technology available to us today has given us the ability to do this even better.

Finally, time is money. Costs in construction can inflate dramatically as you reach the end of a project. This method helps you mitigate that because it enables us to see so far into the future. The team can acknowledge that they see a problem coming up and come up with a way to solve it ahead of time so that there is no need to pay for overtime at the conclusion of the project.

PSI: Do you train your project teams in the Project Success Method?

KG: One of the things I'm most proud of is that I brought the Project Success Method to Turner when I came there from The Coca-Cola Company. I trained everyone... attorneys, vendors, everyone that could be involved in one of the projects. I wanted everyone to understand how they integrated into the process and how their role could become a critical path item. I wanted them to appreciate why it was important. I probably trained as many as a hundred people in Turner Properties, and then, because we were always working and integrating with other groups in the company, such as IT and engineering, they ended up using our tools as well. They liked the process so much, they adopted it themselves, many of them eventually going through the formal training. The process was so appreciated that the CNN engineering folks adopted it and used the Project Success Method in their year long project to convert CNN to high definition.

PSI: In the many projects you've been involved with, have you found it advantageous to bring in outside trainers and consultants when needed?

KG: Yes, I have found that it is often advantageous to have an outside consultant facilitator involved in the projects I am working on. At Turner, we frequently had over 200 projects going on simultaneously at any given time, and we used the Project Success Method approach on all of them because we knew it worked.

We would bring in a PSI consultant on our most highly complex or highly valued projects (very critical to the customer's business). These are the ones that we wanted to ensure would be on time and on budget. In these cases it was completely cost beneficial to hire a consultant—the cost of going over budget or not finishing a project on time would have far exceeded the cost of hiring the PSI consultant.

PSI: What advice would you give a project customer, project sponsor or project manager who is facing a complex project such as the projects you've been involved with?

KG: My first comment would be to engage this methodology. Train your own folks internally or bring in a consultant/facilitator who can do this for you. You have to get over the hurdle of whether it is worth it to hire someone to help you do it. For highly complex, high value projects it is worth it and makes good business sense. If a $20 million project goes over by 10%, it is $2 million in costs. This can happen easily and is, in fact, extremely common. By managing effectively and avoiding those costs, you could see savings of potentially $2 million. While there are no guarantees with this method, you have a much better shot of this happening using the Project Success Method approach.

One other piece of advice is that while critical path scheduling can be very daunting, it is important enough that you need to take the time and energy to do it. People are aware of critical path scheduling, but don't use it as they should because it looks overwhelming. However, I am convinced that it is the best way to effectively manage the multitude of tasks that have to be done in a reasonable way so that you can have comfort that the results will be good. Take the time to do these schedule meetings and I promise that you will sleep easier at night throughout the duration of your project.

PSI: Is there anything else you'd like to add?

KG: I really believe in the Project Success Method. My personal business philosophy is based on it. I believe it is the way projects should be done. I am an enthusiastic and passionate supporter of PSI and their Project Success Method. It has changed my life, and I hope it will change the lives of others who have a chance to use it.