 In this episode of the engineering career coach podcast we talk with program and project management extraordinaire Chris Knutson. Chris is going to describe the key project management skills and how they can help you to be a great engineering leader. Let's jump right in. All right, so now I'm excited to welcome kind of welcome back my friend as well as project management extraordinaire Chris Knutson. Chris, welcome back to the podcast. Hey, thanks, Anthony. It's great to be back. It's been a while. Excited to be back with you. Yeah, it has been a while and I gave a little bit of an intro of course of your bio for some of the maybe the newer listeners that haven't heard some of your past episodes because Chris previously served as a co-host with me on really on both of our podcasts and from time to time has done his own episodes. And Chris, for those that haven't heard from you before, talk a little bit about your career journey. I know it's been a very interesting journey, but maybe you can give them kind of the overview. Yeah, sure, Anthony. So it's actually, as you mentioned that, it's hard to believe it's 2020. My professional career now is I was pulling together some notes for this. I started looking at it and I was like holy smokes. It's almost been 30 years. I've been in a professional capacity. So yeah, I started straight out of college in the U.S. Air Force, did 22 years there, full career in the Air Force civil engineering arena, so project and program management, and kind of learned also facilities management and maintenance as well. So all different aspects of projects or whatever and delivery. And then in about 2015 left the Air Force and had an opportunity to come and work for the U.S. government for a bit over in Germany and then ended up having another opportunity to get myself back to the U.K., which is a place where myself and my family actually had started early on. So back in the late 90s we had a posting in the U.K. And I always wanted to come back, had a chance really through my wife to be able to get back over here and we moved back. So once that happened I left government service and went into private industry, into the architectural engineering arena, and have had really a great opportunity, especially over the last three years, to really dive into all facets of program and project management and the infrastructure delivery arena. I think probably for those listeners who've heard from me before know that I've had an opportunity to spend a good portion of that career outside of the United States. And that was mostly through my military career. But a lot of time spent in Europe several trips to the Middle East doing different deployments while I was on active duty. And so I've had that opportunity to really see project and program management upfront delivered in a number of different arenas. So back in the United States, over in Europe, down in the Middle East, and think that that's provided me with a pretty unique understanding of how projects and early programs in the infrastructure arena are delivered, planned, and developed. So Chris, just before we go forward, just for the listeners to kind of, you know, we've talked about, I've heard you hear it say project management and program management. Maybe you could just kind of give the difference between those two for the listeners that aren't familiar with that. Yeah, no, absolutely. And, you know, straight up, that was the concepts around differences between projects and programs is something that didn't really resonate even with me until maybe about three years, well, really three or four years ago. And that was when I started moving from the education in the self-study I had around the project management professional and developing those project management skills and then moving into program management and ultimately getting my program management certification. So I think the fundamental differences are when I think of project management in a project, I'm thinking about this discrete activity. So in the infrastructure, the AEC industry, that's a project that has a defined beginning and defined end because we've got a schedule that's got a schedule start date and a schedule end date. And that project then is really controlled around what a lot of people will know as the project triangle. So cost, scope, schedule, sometimes quality is brought into that as well. But by and large, the project manager is really focused on the delivery of a discrete activity. When I start thinking about program management now, I'm not thinking about specific project, I'm thinking about the delivery of a number of projects that are best managed to get benefit and I'll come back to benefit in a minute, but to get benefits for the client, the funder, usually the financier, and the end users that wouldn't come from managing each of those projects individually. So the program looks at it as a whole. And whereas projects are talking about, again, talking about these discrete activities that are delivered really at the end of the day, we're talking about projects, we want projects that are delivered to cost and schedule. I think a lot of people go, yeah, they're shaking their head, go, yeah, I'm working on a project right now and cost and schedule are the two big things that always come up. Programs start looking at the benefits. What are the outcomes? What are we trying to achieve by the delivery of this project or these projects and other project associated activities? So if you look at, if I kind of use my military terminology for a moment, you know, projects are tactical level, programs begin to look at the operational and sometimes even strategic levels or strategic aspects associated with a number of projects that are being delivered to achieve some kind of an outcome or some kind of benefits. So hopefully that helps. And I would direct again, if people are like, okay, yeah, I'd like that, maybe even in simpler terms, I think maybe even a more elegant way to go do, you know, Google search for project management, PMI program management definition, you'll get a really good definition of what that looks like. Sure. But I mean, you know, based on what you just said, I mean, I think it's pretty clear that when you're talking project management, you're focused on one specific project and the tasks associated with it. Whereas when you're talking pro program management, you're overseeing multiple projects and how they fit together and, you know, are driving. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, you know, so again, when you get into the program management level, you know, you'll have project managers that are looking specifically at the tasks associated with that project. But at the program level, you're looking across the across the suite of projects, you know, could you could it could be three projects, it could be 10 projects, could even be just two projects called that, I guess, a program. But, you know, my experience has been, it's usually more than five projects, you know, so, you know, the program that I've been most recently touching has 20 major capital investment projects. And, you know, we're talking projects that are, you know, $6 million or more, 20 of those, you know, with a with a suite of about 15 smaller projects at range in value from $50,000 to, you know, to $500,000. And so, you know, that right there, we're talking 40 separate projects that are all part of a major program that are trying to deliver a benefit, an outcome, providing an end-us in client with a capability or achieving some kind of a, of an organizational strategic aim that wouldn't be achievable unless all of those projects were, were, were designed and then executed and delivered to, to, again, now back to scope schedule and in the, in cost. Right. So, you know, the puzzle can't be complete unless all the pieces are kind of in place and in that program, there's quite a lot of pieces. Yeah, absolutely. That's great. So, you know, really the topic we're going to talk a little bit about today with Chris is, you know, how your project management skills can contribute to overall to you being kind of an effective leader as an engineer. And Chris, I guess to kind of start on that, I mean, ever since, you know, you and I have known each other whenever we talk about career or any kind of professional topics, you know, project management always comes up for you. It's always been something that's, you know, being at the forefront of your mind, obviously, which is why, you know, we called you to talk about this today. What got you interested in project management? Yeah. So, yeah, great question. So, you know, I think, I think my interest in project management was really an offshoot of, of my interest and really the focus of my, of my, you know, my career for the first couple of decades of my, of my professional experience. So, so again, in the, in that, in that Air Force engineering environment, civil engineering environment, it wasn't design focused. It was more delivery focused. And what do I mean by that? And so, you know, I wasn't sitting, you know, I wasn't sitting in front of a, in front of a computer monitor, doing CAD design work on, you know, airfield payments works or vertical or horizontal construction. I was, I was more involved, well, not more involved, I was exclusively involved in the management delivery of that project. So, you know, all the different aspects that we really generally think about project management of, of, you know, making sure that the, that the contractor can get mobilized to the site, that security issues are sorted, that, you know, there's the sites being maintained clean, health and safety is being fulfilled, you know, certainly monitoring and controlling costs and schedule, you know, if there's going to be a schedule bust on a milestone that you, you know, kind of rolling up your sleeves and trying to figure out how to solve those issues, that was the, those are the types of things that I dealt with from early on in my, in my engineering career. And, and so it was just for me kind of a natural progression through both that and the leadership aspects that were expected me as an Air Force officer to be able to step right into, into the realm of project management. So for me, it was almost a, you know, kind of a hand and glove type of a situation. I guess maybe even to add more to that instead of going to get a technical degree, master's degree, I ended up getting an MBA. So that led me more into that non-technical aspect. And I don't mean that as a negative slight towards project management, because again, again, as you kind of highlighted, you know, project management for me is something that I'm somewhat passionate about, maybe even more so now about program management, now that I understand that. But, but the, you know, that project management stroke program management, whatever you want to call it, interest there really again is around the different things that come into play when you're talking about leadership as well. So it plugged right into that. And so for me, it was a natural progression based off of my early experiences coming up against infrastructure projects, civil works projects, and then integrating in the leadership skills that I was developing, communications, all those different aspects that naturally just come together in a discipline called project management. Interesting. And kind of a build on that a little bit, you know, most engineering professionals today, you know, in many disciplines, I mean, Chris and I did a lot of work in the civil field, of course, but in a lot of disciplines, engineering organizations, Chris will send their engineering professionals to project management training. And, you know, oftentimes, you know, PM training is kind of like an information overload experience for a lot of people. But just if we're talking about some of the keys or like the fundamentals to project management that stick out for you among kind of everything, what, what might some of those be at least in your mind? Yeah, so you're absolutely right. Because if you, if you go and grab, again, my education and project management was exclusively through the project management institutes suite of products. So, you know, for project management, you know, people are familiar with the PMP certification. You know, that's the magic project management book of knowledge. Right. 6th edition or whatever it might be now. You know, and that, that, that Pimbok document or book, which is on 300 pages or something that's got, you know, it's got 10 different, you know, 10 different subsections. And each of those subsections has, you know, kind of flows through a process. There's like, I should know this number 48 or 49 sub activities. You know, it's a lot of information to try to take on board. So you're right. So how do you distill that down to the absolute basics? Knowing that some of the, some of the listeners today aren't going to go through the process of getting PMP certified. But just truly wanted to have at least some basic skills to be able to do project management. So I think that, you know, so what are the, what are the keys? I think that kind of come out of that. I would say, you know, you don't need to be a cost estimator to be able to understand the basics of cost. You know, if you're a project management stepping into a, in the project, so you're a young project engineer, they've said, okay, you're going to manage this project now. You know, some of the basic fundamentals that I'd, you know, I'd want to see right up front are going to be work breakdown structure. So what's the WBS look like? And then spend some time unpacking associated cost breakdown structures are going to come from that, that are going to be provided either by your, you know, by your engineering counterparts in your own firm or from the contractor. It kind of depends on what role you're playing. So are you playing a project manager on from the perspective of the contractor? So the company that's actually building it. And maybe you're in a design build type of a relationship. So you're in an engineering AE company that's married up with a, with a constructor or contractor who's building stuff. Are you that PM working for them? Or are you a PM working for the, for the owner as an owner's representative? So either one of those two, you want to, you know, you're going to want to see what the work breakdown structure looks like, what those discrete tasks are. Because those are also going to be not only married to costs, like the CBS cost breakdown structures would come from that, but also your schedule, your, you know, the schedule is going to be based off of that. And those, those two elements cost and schedule from my perspective are the real baselines for project management. It's like PM one on one. You need to understand what that looks like as a PM, because that then can allow you to be able to make, to be able to come up with recommendations and make smart decisions around things like, like scope management. All right. So projects should have a scope, a well-defined requirement. I mean, if they, and then that's another one of those elements, again, as a project manager, you need to make sure has been unpacked correctly. So are you being handed the project that has a, that has been already well defined and the requirements are well known, that has allowed you to be able to build that work breakdown structure? Or are you, are you working with a project that, that hasn't, you know, that doesn't have very clearly defined scope as a, as a PM, if you've got a project without a defined scope, you're probably being handed a, a disaster just waiting to happen. Because, you know, because you're going to, you're going to very quickly go, you know, you're going to have cost growth, schedule growth. It's going to be just a complete dumpster fire. So you, you got to make sure that that, that, that scope is really locked down as well and good requirements. So, you know, so again, back to the project triangle scope cost schedule. The next bits I think that are important is, is your, is your personal time management and communications management skills. So how good are you at running meetings? All right. PM spent a lot of time in meetings. If you go, if I think, I think something that sticks in my head from PM training is like a PM spends 90% of their time communicating, whether you're in meetings or verbal communications or email or, or whatever it may be, you're going to be communicating a lot. So, you know, you need to, you need to spend some time developing a methodology and a means templates, you know, just really mundane things that you've got that so you can very quickly move through the issues that you've got to deal with. So communications to me is extremely important. Want to make sure that you've got your own personal disciplines for how you approach that. And I think you've, go ahead. Oh, Chris, no, I was just going to say going back to the work breakdown structure for those, not fairly with it. That's basically the idea of breaking the project down into components. Is that accurate? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So you have a, you know, if you've got a well-defined, you know, a project that's got a well-defined scope, that project then can be broken down into discrete elements. So if you know, let's say if you're doing, you know, let's say you're doing a section of roadway or, you know, a section of airfield, you know, like a parking apron out at an airport, you know, the basics are going to be if it's already existing, you've got to go in and, you know, say you're doing restoration to existing, you know, in general, you're going in and you're breaking out existing concrete, you're going to come back in, you've got to reprep the foundation and then you got to come in and, you know, you're going to be laying in some, probably some reinforcement and then the concrete is going to come in. I mean, you're dissecting the work into discrete elements because in the more discrete you make it in those elements, the greater cost assurance that you can get. So if you're, again, your cost engineers that are associated with this thing, you're going to become very, very adept at being able to dissect and break a project down into its aggregate components. As a project manager, you know, you don't necessarily need to be the, you know, the 5,000-pound brain about each of the different, you know, millions of different activities are going to take place on that project, but you at least need to have a general understanding of what the, of what the general, you know, what the, what the macro categories are going to be and where costs are going against those, okay? Because in a project, you know, you're going to have costs going against mobilization, there's going to be costs against actual materials, there's going to be costs that are going to be broken down. If you're, let's say you're doing a building, you're going to have mechanical, electrical, you know, MEP type work, you're going to have civil structural work, where are those costs being broken down so you as a PM can have a better understanding of where money's going and then flag it. I mean, that's the whole reason you're doing the PM piece of it is to identify where something just doesn't seem right or costs are maybe going, starting to look like they're starting to go off the rails, like they're escalating or increasing. You're being paid as a PM to be able to identify where that's at and to be able to be able to take action before it becomes a crisis. Yeah, for sure. And so, so Chris kind of really hit on those, those key three fundamentals of project management, the triangle that he referenced, you know, project scope, project schedule and project budget or cost. And, you know, to me, I like that triangle because if you are a new project manager and you're feeling overwhelmed, you can always go back to those three and say, well, let me make sure my project has a clear scope. Let me make sure that, you know, we have a clear schedule and how are we doing on that schedule. And, you know, lastly, you know, we can look at the cost and are we on budget or, you know, over in some areas or under others or whatever the case may be. But what I do see a lot, and this just happened with a client we were doing some coaching and training for is see a lot of issues today with like scope creep where, you know, people are just doing extra work. They don't know they're doing extra work. And then it comes time to go and do your billing and you're like, holy crap, why do we spend 30 more hours than we were supposed to on this task. And oh, by the way, it's because you weren't supposed to do that task. And so, you know, the client that I was working with now had to kind of go back to their client and say, you know, you kind of owe us like a half a million dollars for stuff we did, but we didn't tell you what we were going to do. We didn't tell you that it was an addition to what happened. So I think that like, you know, we're not in this episode, we're not drilling into the real details of project management. That's probably like a whole other series we could do with Chris. But the point is, is that, you know, you can always come back to those, that triangle of the scope schedule cost and, you know, reevaluate all those things. If you're feeling overwhelmed in project management, you're starting in project management, which kind of Chris can take us into the next section of what we want to talk about, which is, you know, how do your project management skills translate into you being an effective manager and leader overall as an engineer. And, you know, to kick this one off, just my take on it is, you know, how are you communicating some of these key project fundamentals with your team? Yeah, that's a great question. Because I'm going to maybe use a couple different segues here because I, you know, I was using a lot of examples around being a PM, dealing on it, let's say, an actual construction project. You know, so something's being built, you're either an owner's representative PM on one of these projects being built or you're working for the contractor. You know, you can be a PM as well. And I think maybe, you know, the reference that you made with your, with the client you were working with was a PM within an architectural engineering firm. And that firm is actually working as the design engineer on a project. You know, so there's still, there's project management activities associated there with a scope, cost and schedule as well. So it's not necessarily always just building stuff, you know, something you can build a horizontal or vertical work project. Yeah, there's PMs there, but there's also PMs internal to that design company that's doing design work because you've got a scope. You need to design this and you've got a schedule and you've already bid the work and this is how much money we've got. And of course, if you consume all that, then that's your revenue gone. You know, so what kind of, you know, what kind of skills, you know, do I employ because, you know, my experience here, especially recently has been on both sides of that. So I've got teams that are dealing with owner's representative on the actual construction of projects. And I've got teams as well and PMs who are managing in-house or company resources that are actually doing design work. And by and large, the PM skills, you know, really are the same. You touched again on the triangle, right? So scope, cost and schedule. Those are always the three most important elements right out of the, right out of the gate. And they're the ones that I ask the PMs that are working with me to make sure that they have dived into the details on that, truly understand the performance work statement, which is the scope, what's the client looking for, and then understand how it was bid. And sometimes that means getting with the, whoever the proposal developer was, if you're, especially in the AE architectural engineering arena, you're doing design work, if you weren't involved with the actual development of that proposal to go in and bid for that project, you know, you're going to have not all the details and all the information of how that was, how they, you know, how your partners in your company, I guess, arrived at the costs associated with that. So you need to make sure that you understand those aspects of it. So again, it comes back to the magic triangle, you know, what's the scope, what's the cost, what's the schedule? Again, in the AE design industry, you've got a scope, that's the performance work statement, you know, what's, what needs to be designed. Somebody presumably, hopefully you were involved in putting together their proposal on that cost proposal, maybe you weren't. But there's a cost that was associated with that bid off of the number of hours it's going to take to be able to do that work. And then there's a schedule. What are the deliverables, what are the milestones for delivering, let's say a 35, 65, 95, 100% design, whatever it may be. Understand that and understand how that racks up against costs and what are the disciplines that are involved in it. A lot of the project, the PMs that are working for me, that are doing the design side are dealing with multi-discipline projects. So that, you know, I may have a PM, a PM that has a civil background, but he or she is managing a team of project of engineers that are across different disciplines, because we're doing both vertical and horizontal type work. So, you know, so I may have a civil engineer who now is managing work that's coming out of the electrical discipline, you know, some mechanical disciplines, et cetera like that. And there'll be technical leads in those areas, but again, if you haven't done work, if you're a civil engineer and you haven't done work in, you know, with electrical or mechanical, you know, it's early on in your career, it's going to be, it's going to be a bit of a steep learning curve, which means what in steep learning curves, you know, lots of, lots of reading, make sure you understand the scope. And it also means making sure that you're asking questions and not just assuming, making assumptions on things that you're asking questions. And if something doesn't seem right, that you flag it and you bring it up and you have an adult conversation around what that looks like. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, like Chris said, he's given some construction examples. He does a lot of work in program management infrastructure today. And however, that being said, you might be listening to the podcast, you might be a mechanical engineer, let's see, working on an airplane design for a company like Boeing, you're going to have the same triangle, you're going to have the scope of work, you're going to have the schedule, you're going to have the cost, right? So that's why this project management is very universal, especially some of the PMP materials that Chris mentioned, you know, there's all engineers and all walks get in the PMP. You know, I see it all the time, and I talk to them all the time, you could be doing an electrical design for components on something. And really in terms of like, you know, how these project management skills translate into you being effective as a leader or great engineering manager, and kind of in my opinion is it comes back to what Chris said before, the communication aspect of it. So you have to understand the key project management fundamentals, and then you have to communicate them. So, you know, if I'm a project manager, and Chris is, you know, working on my team, and he's not clear on what the scope is, and he's working on things that are outside of the scope, and we end up kind of getting screwed because of that, that's really my fault, because I haven't educated him on those things. So I would think, Chris, that, you know, project management skills are really critical to being a good leader, because you need to understand these, you know, the triangle and other things around it, and you need to be able to communicate it effectively. Yeah, again, absolutely. So as a, you know, as a project manager, it falls on your shoulders again, as kind of unpacked, to understand what that scope is, what's the, you know, it's kind of what's your mission, you know, you're the, you're the PM project manager, you've got a mission that has to be accomplished, that's based off of what that scope of work is. Here's the scope, you must accomplish this, it must be done by this date, you know, usually there's a schedule, there's going to be a target end date on that, and you have this much money that's been associated with it. Again, if we move out of the, if we move out of the arena of construction, so building stuff, but we move more into the arena of the AE, architectural engineering design aspect. And again, it could be in the, it could be in the, the civil's arena, but, but again, as you already highlighted, it could be, it could be in the aviation industry, it could be in the, in the, you know, the car industry, whatever it is, automotive industry, project manager, it's project management, projects that get assigned to you have, again, have a scope. And there's a cost associated with that scope and a schedule associated with it, because we never, we don't enter it, nobody, depending what discipline you're in, enters into a project that has just like an, you know, kind of an open ended time, you know, we don't, we don't care when it gets delivered, we could care less of how much it costs. I mean, those two things are always, always going to be binding. So as that project manager, dissect the scope, make sure you understand what that looks like, so that when you have your project team and you're bringing them in, you, you understand what it is that, that has to be accomplished, when it needs to be accomplished, you can articulate that appropriately, you know, to the, to the, let's say, the discipline leads and your project team, so that you have the ability then to be able to move towards achieving the different milestones that have been laid out in the schedule. And I think that's where the leadership piece of it comes in. So we hear project management, you know, management, you know, there's the old adage that, you know, management is about doing, you know, is about doing things, doing things right, you know, kind of measuring, right? That's kind of what goes through my mind when I hear the word management, you know, leadership is about doing, doing the right things. And so that's, you know, that's again, that kind of really plays back into the scope piece of it. So I know that it's got the term project management that can, that conjures up in my mind, all kinds of quite frankly passive, you know, lagging type indicators where we're looking at something after it's already happened. But it's really twofold. So if we take the project triangle again, and we unpack that, the management piece in my mind is the management of the cost and the schedule. The leadership part comes in with the scope. And that's about doing the right things. And I think you've already, you know, you've already kind of unpacked a couple times, Anthony, that you know, if you, you know, if you're doing work that's beyond what was asked for, you know, I guess you're doing that, you know, is kind of a, you know, kind of a pro bono, you know, kind of an extra little icing on the, on the cake, you know, you're doing it for, you're doing it because it just feels good. And maybe that's the reason you do it. I don't, no, I don't know. I guess you can do that. But since most of the, you know, a lot of the people that are likely listening to this episode are working in, in for profit, you know, private industry, private sector companies, you know, are, you know, the people that we work for are going to be very much fixated on utilization rates, they're going to be very much fixated on net revenue, gross revenue, those kinds of things like that. And in your utilization rate gets, gets diluted very quickly when you're, when you're doing a lot of extra work that, that is beyond what it was actually asked for. And there's certain, certainly we can get into discussion, totally separate, probably podcasts that there's, you know, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe cases where you're going to do that. But again, project management, manage the scope, and, and I'm sorry, manage the cost and the schedule, the leadership aspects that we've been talking about, that really comes in on the scope part. So, you know, exactly what is it that we're trying to do and the right things are being done so that then those things can be managed so that we know that we're doing things right. Awesome, awesome. So, you know, there you have it in terms of kind of project management, you know, we talked about the, the triangle, you know, being the, being the scope, schedule and budget. And, you know, as Chris really mentioned, then when you transfer those skills into how effective you can be as a leader, it's really about that scope and making sure that people are working on the right things and everyone's clear on that. So, what we're going to do now is we'll take a break for a moment. I'll come back with Chris and we'll wrap this one up here in our take action today segment, where I have one more question for Chris. All right, we're back with Chris Knudson, we're talking about project management and really how it relates to effective management and leadership overall in the engineering world. And Chris, just from, from knowing you for a long time, as I said earlier, always focused on developing your project management skills. It's always been something that you're passionate about. And just to kind of wrap up here, you know, in this last segment, for those out there thinking like, all right, this kind of sounds like it's important, but like, what is it really going to do for me? What has, what has the development of your project management skills kind of meant to you overall in your career? Yeah, yeah, I think it's, well, you know, for me, for me, professionally, personally, professionally, it's allowed me to be able to, you know, to amass this body of knowledge that I can apply against my actual, you know, experiences that I've had in my professional work, to be able to combine the two of those and figure out what worked, what didn't work, why did things come out the way that they needed to once I understood this, you know, the body of knowledge of project management, and then use that to support clients that I'm working for, whether I was in government service or now in the private industry, to be able to make projects for my clients, you know, to come closer to what the scope was to be able to define good project requirements and deliver them the cost and schedule. From a, you know, from a, what is it, you know, what's in it for me type of a standpoint is, you know, a lot of listeners and even some of the, you know, some of the engineers that work for me who I am, you know, kind of have, have continuously through most of my career told, hey, go get, you know, go get certified, do study around project management is, you know, as engineers, we develop, you know, we develop basic skills and then we, with this, with this look to being able to, to move forward in our engineering career, whether that's through, you know, let's say in design, you know, you're not going to move right on to the most, the most complex design projects right out of, you know, right out of college or maybe even in the first 10 years, it takes years to develop a mass understandings of, of engineering design, experiences, knowledge, skills, abilities, before you can move into, into the, into the kind of the big leagues, if you will, making, making the call. Why would anybody think that project management or program management is any different than that? And that's one of the things that I've really begun, begun to understand as I've, as I've, you know, matured in my thinking around, around project and program management. It's, it's something that I've experienced and have actually witnessed in individuals who have been placed, clearly placed into roles of responsibility as project or program managers who lacked the experience, the knowledge, the skills and abilities. And I think a lot of that comes from the fact that if people aren't, if, you know, we as engineers, we as professionals, project professionals aren't taking the time to develop our project and program management skills. What, you know, how do you think, you know, what makes you think that you can just step into those roles in the more challenging projects and programs and just be able to somehow magically be able to, to do the work that needs to be done? So, you know, I've, you know, for myself, you know, as you and I have talked a lot, you know, I've moved into, into, you know, bigger infrastructure programs. And I can clearly say that 10 years ago, I would have not been able to do what I, I can do today. And that, again, is purely part of it's from experience, but a lot of it's just basic knowledge around, around the details and the basics of project and program management. So, so the value comes from it, what's the value statement out of it? Get educated in project management now. If you haven't done that, if you've already done it, shore those skills up, look for opportunities to be able to take on project management roles, amass the experience, because that experience will allow you then to be able to move into increasing roles of increasing responsibility, scope of control, span of control, and really refine your leadership abilities when it comes to taking a project from somebody's crazy idea, feasibility, through handout, handover and ultimate use. Awesome. And, you know, as much as a lot of the stuff that we talked about today may sound, you know, complex in some ways, I got to tell you, there are a lot of engineers or engineering companies that lack sound project management skills, they just don't even, they don't even look at the scope, and they don't even focus the scope. So my point in telling you that is, is that to Chris's point, just educating yourself on some of these skills can really differentiate you in the field as an engineer, just, you know, being aware of scope when other people on the project are not is going to easily make you stand out to your company and, you know, be able to do some of the things like Chris has been able to do, you know, being a program manager for hundreds of millions of dollars of projects. So, again, Chris Knudts and Chris, thanks for, you know, kind of checking back in with us on the podcast and talking about this topic, which I think is a really important one for engineers. Yeah, absolutely, Anthony. It's great to be back with you. Great to be talking to all the listeners out there. And yeah, just get after it. Go make your project and program management success. Take it, grab onto it, make the best out of it. Also, if you'd like to view the full show notes for this episode, visit engineeringmanagementinstitute.org or see the link in the video description. There you will find the key points discussed in today's episode, as well as links to any of the resources, websites or books mentioned during the episode. Until next time, I wish you the best in all your engineering career endeavors.