Latest / Wired to Build / Field Notes 02 | What It Takes To Be Ready

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Field Notes 02 | What It Takes To Be Ready · Wired to Build

• 0:00
  I just got back from Biz Now Data Center investment
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  conference and Expo room full of people building data centers at
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  a pace the grid can barely keep up with.
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  Every conversation in that room was about barriers, community
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  opposition, workforce gaps, power constraints, access,
• 0:20
  different topics, same subtext. Hey, what's going on everyone?
• 0:25
  Welcome to Wire to Build, the podcast exploring how the people
• 0:29
  shaping our built world use technology, data, and the real
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  world insight to design, deliver and operate the infrastructure
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  our society depends on. This is field Notes, no guest,
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  just what the work is teaching us.
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  We treat readiness like a milestone.
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  The schedule says October 15th, so on October 15th, we call it
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  done. We move the tracker from yellow
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  to green. We hand over the keys, and when
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  something fails six months later, we point to the schedule.
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  We hit our date, but the schedule didn't fail you.
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  You weren't ready and the date gives you somewhere to hide.
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  The building doesn't care about the date.
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  The system doesn't care about the date.
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  The electrons running through that electrical infrastructure.
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  They don't care what the schedule said.
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  They only care if the work was done right.
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  Readiness isn't a date, it's a condition.
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  And until we stop using the schedule as a substitute for
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  that condition, we're going to keep handing over buildings that
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  aren't finished. We just ran out of time to
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  pretend otherwise. At DICE, the number came up
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  again. Half a million workers.
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  That's what the industry says. We're short.
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  And every time I hear it, I say the same thing.
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  People don't fall from the sky. You cannot close a workforce gap
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  just by naming it. You cannot train your way out of
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  a shortage by writing about the shortage.
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  What you can do is look to the people already doing the work,
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  the one showing up every day building things that have never
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  been built at this speed, at this scale, under this pressure,
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  and ask a different question. Not how do we get more people?
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  How do we make the conditions worthy of the people we have?
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  Because readiness isn't just a project condition, it's a
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  workforce condition. If the person doing the work
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  doesn't have what they need, the training, the tools, the
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  clarity, the support, the project isn't ready no matter
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  what the schedule says. We talked a lot about community
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  at this conference, the people living next to these projects,
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  and I want to say this clearly, they are not a permitting
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  problem. They are not APR problem.
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  They are not an obstacle between you and your certificate of
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  occupancy. They are a condition of
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  completion. If you haven't brought them
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  along, if you managed them instead of engage them, you
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  haven't finished the job, you just ran out of schedule.
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  Readiness means the community is with you, not behind you, not
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  against you, with you. The industry is speeding up.
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  That's not changing. The demand is real, the capital
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  is real, the urgency is real, and the speed under pressure
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  reveals everything. It reveals whether your quality
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  program was real or performative, whether your
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  workforce was ready or just present, whether your community
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  relationship was built or assumed something will break.
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  It always does when systems push past their design tolerance.
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  The question, the only question, is whether you did the work
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  before the pressure came. Before your next project kicks
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  off, ask yourself one question. When this is done, and I mean
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  actually done, will the building be ready?
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  This is field notes. No guess just what the work is
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  teaching us.