The Essential Infrastructure People - How It Works Edition
As we’re all at home, baking with our homemade sourdough starters and trying to do our part to flatten the curve, there are people still putting on their gloves and heading into work. They’ve added extra hand washing throughout the day and temperature logging every morning. There is a sheet posted to the wall somewhere with my temperatures charted, all haphazardly over the place because I couldn’t decide on one body location to monitor. (I’ve since realized that is a HIPAA violation and now record as PASS/FAIL. We’re all learning throughout this process).
Driller photobombing my selfies. Don’t worry - he put his gloves back on before going back to work. This was taken pre-face coverings.
Right now, the “essential infrastructure work” is not the emergency work, not like in healthcare; but it’s the normal work that keeps those ovens on and toilets flushing and crops growing. It’s building the facilities that will produce a vaccine that hasn’t even finished lab testing yet. We chart across many demographics, social and political structures, ethnic boundaries and diverse personalities. We are just like you.
And more importantly, we work for you. That is why we have to be transparent about how these things are set up in our cities and why, though the status quo might seem progressive on the surface, is actually doing you a disservice. During my last post I talked about why inclusivity and diversity in the industry is important to you. This week I want to focus on how it could look for you as the infrastructure end user. But to do that I need to explain how it works first.
How it Works - infrastructure projects
This was once a water storage tank out in a very complex pressure system (as mountainous areas are) that has been re-envisioned as a community space. It’s pretty cool to see this in Medellin if you ever get a chance to go there.
Each project, plant, or public works starts with an idea. In the water market, sometimes it’s the operator saying, “I think you need to add another water tank to this pressure zone so you don’t have low pressure over there when everyone takes their morning showers”. The operators intuitively get it. They know, through trial and error, how each little change in the system effects their system. The independent variable experiment. They watch the dip in water pressure at 5AM every morning when a battalion of sprinklers turns on in everyone’s yards ready to fight off the drought. My favorite fun fact is that when Eastenders turns to commercials in the UK, they have to roll on turbines from France in order to meet the 1.75M tea kettle surge of electricity. You can see how the operators have lots of ideas on how to make the system better.
The engineers and planners and scientists also know this too and are instrumental in predicting how the system will react before a single dollar is spent on construction. They can design controls to help alleviate some of the burdens of unpredictability through calculations and fancy digital twins to make sure the system isn’t overwhelmed. They know the pump curves and automation to design a new pump station in the project; they are able to use their tools to reiterate scenarios and test the system. The more complex the system, the more complex the tools & workforce necessary.
The complex complexities
It’s this idea of interlocking people & strengths. If the engineers designed in a bubble, they may recommend a bigger water treatment plant when really all they needed was a community-based effort to curb water use at 5AM by campaigning people to reset the “default” time setting on their sprinklers. Or placing a restriction to conserve outdoor water on certain days of the week for certain households which would encourage people to actually take a look at the default sprinkler settings. Or the politicians can place different rate structures for different higher-use consumers that are more of a burden on the system.
Generally the higher-use consumers are manufacturers or “industrial users”. So maybe instead of upgrading the city’s system it’s better to build a relationship with a user and offer them a rebate to clean their own used water for “reuse”. This way it might be more efficient for everyone if the non-commercial clients have a small filtration system to filter out metals and things not found in domestic water. That way the engineers don’t have to overbuild a system that treats all wastewater for metals if it only exists in some of the streams coming into the plant. There is no right or wrong answer. Just lots of options.
Lots of challenges. Lots of what-ifs and issues that pop up even with the most thought-out design. [That’s why we enjoy this job.]
The Owners
Remember that diversity is more than just skin color - it’s a lot more social, economic, personal, and political factors.
The owners take these ideas and with their political agency they begin to capital plan for upgrades and projects. They allocate contingencies for emergency planning. They decide when to analyze some more or just get started and manage the risk. They are governments that get taxes put on ballots and grants funded for cities. They’re private companies that work with consumers. The idea then blossoms into essential funding, support and actions.
Once you have the ideas and funding model, the next step is buffing out the idea. Maybe it’s a full design project, or maybe it’s a small feasibility project to see if an ASR system would even work. Or maybe you’re trying to hire transportation planning engineers (those guys on the side of I-35 monitoring the traffic back when we used to drive to work) to study, learn, and revamp them.
The consultants
Generally a city has their own staff engineers but a lot of projects either take very specialized work (there aren’t many biosolids plants so therefore not many people who can call themselves a biosolids expert) or the projects take so much work for just a short time that a utility brings a different organization on board to supplement the workload. Consultants tend to know what is being done across the industry at all the different utilities and they have access to the engineering tools and specialists that it takes to do a very specialized project more efficiently. Depending on the complexity of the design there might be many different types of consultants — the program manager, the actual design firm, company that coordinates with land owners, you name it.
The next complexity
I was on a project once where we (the engineering consultant program manager) had a subconsultant contracted to us that helped us meet our diversity and inclusivity requirements known as economic inclusion. The reason this is necessary, and ultimately that you are paying for it as a consumer, is because the system is over-complex, over-encumbered, and politically looks good on paper but is logistically it can be a nightmare that requires a specialized individual to navigate.
In the industry, there are many policies and procedures that aren’t working for us. There’s a hodge-podge of different diversity efforts at different scales. Governments around the world recognize diverse company owners and staff diversity percentages. It is an easily quantified metric that is a distraction from initiating something that actually has positive impact. There’s not a whole lot changing: it’s limiting and costly, and ultimately the requirements are obscuring how we could do anything differently. As I mentioned last time there’s financial and social reasons we need to get better at this as an industry.
Get your tea kettles and sourdough baguettes ready because this is complicated and I’m going to attempt to explain it.
How it works - Teaming
Company Owners
When one works in my city, (which, full transparency, I don’t generally work for them so this is just an example) they have to follow what they call "procurement" rules which describe the minority-owned or woman-owned businesses. These businesses get certified as part of a city-run program that gives them the thumbs up on being a disadvantaged, local enterprise. There is a debate to be had here about how calling someone “disadvantaged” makes them even more of an outsider. Generalizations, even calling someone “white”, erases the experience of them as human beings. One white person is not all white people, and so on so forth.
Not all cities use the same terminology because of this. But in essence the current procurement dialogue boils down to who are the owners, not the workforce, of the organizations. As you read this, keep in mind that though attempting to be progressive, it’s still a capitalist-created system by things that capitalists value most: money and ownership.
The guidelines for Austin are:
Have at least 51% ownership by a socially or economically disadvantaged individual (generally by race)
Has to be small enough to be defined that way by Small Business Administration
Must have a personal net worth less than $1.5M
Must apply and be certified
Must be for-profit (hmm limiting, no?)
When the city or utility releases a Request for Qualifications or Proposal (RFP, RFQ) for construction work or professional services, the applicants have to meet a specific mix of these type of “disadvantaged” firms (MWBE/DBE) for each team that applies to the request. For professional services it is:
1.9% African-American
9.0% Hispanic
4.9% Asian/Native American
15.8% Minority-owned
15.8% Women-owned
Meaning that if you want to do an architectural project for the city, you have to subcontract enough work out to 5 different firms or face penalties that will limit your future ability to win work with the city. No matter how small the project, you have to meet these guidelines if the city doesn’t have a scaleable program. That means for a $8k modeling project completed (this is a teeeeeny tiny project when others are in the billions) then they have to lump it together with other stuff so that the one qualified firm who can do it for that budget wins the project. The city project managers are smart individuals - they know who has the experience and resources to do it cheapest around town because only certain people have the model created (and it is not open source data - that would be a security concern). We’ve got a system that is working against the best judgement of our PMs on how to most cost efficiently deliver their communities an inclusive project.
Remember that for a project to actually be useful to you, it has to take into account your perspectives, experiences, and wants as the consumer. It has to improve your social value, be cost-effective, and be so seamless that you don’t even think about the engineering behind it. You need a diverse team to increase social value of the project. With our current model focused on owners it highlights talented businesses and helps to connect them to larger firms called primes. But it does not focus on the workforce and getting resources to disadvantaged people.
Inertia allows the institutions of injustice to continue unquestioned. -Ursula Le Guin
Pitfalls of the program for Small outfits
Then some of the consultants do some weird stuff to try to help…or to game the system. I can name a couple of firms in my city that spin off parts of the company to keep their minority ownership above 51%. And you know what? Who am I to judge. Not everyone that went to school for engineering wants to own a business and deal with all these hoops. Talented engineers do not make talented business owners. If we were to graduate some of the “small” firms out of the program, it hurts the quality of the projects in the short term and makes it difficult for everybody to be able to meet the procurement rules. And as the industry is set up right now, we need them to do this otherwise no one meets these insane requirements.
The other issue in that train of thought is that a smaller company that is doing well in the program is limited in their growth. To do that means they would literally lose market share and become disenfranchised yet again because of the existence of the program. That’s part of the reason why a study at Zweig Group found that these firms are single-generation firms. The program is an obstacle to creating a firm that is sustainable for future generations. So now we have firms limited in their global knowledge as they are single-city based AND designing things that they will not personally be around to experience - how does that incentivize community-based designs, inclusivity, and doing the right thing?
And then there’s the case of these small firms getting a bad rep just by being seen as not being qualified or talented enough on their own. Regardless of the realities of the steep challenges minorities face in succeeding in our social institutions, by labeling them as disadvantage we actually shackle them with additional discrimination. It kills me to hear that people think they pay MWBE to not do any work but just to meet their goals. We expect them to be skilled business owners, have enough support to not be overburdened and burnt out, and be talented engineers. More hoops, higher expectations, less resources, and a stigma that they weren’t qualified in the first place. No wonder they have a bad reputation by some. And no wonder if they do underperform in quality or project budget and schedule. We set them up for failure.
Most importantly, This system incentivizes people to own their own firms but not to hire diverse people, be inclusive, be good bosses and worldly citizens concerned about their communities. I mean maybe they do. But maybe they don’t. And that was the whole point of this system anyway. The system we built isn’t doing what we built it to do.
Staff Percentages
So some cities try to enforce staff diversity percentages by requiring a list of how many “diverse” people are employed. And believe me, these are not comprehensive lists that catch the nuance of the human experience needed to inclusively deliver a great project. These additional rules require more overhead and more analysis during procurement to count up each person working at the firm, their background, know who will be working on the project (called resourcing) in advance, and renegotiating as the resourcing availability changes throughout the lifetime of a project (some go on for 20 years or more). Again, waste of time not actually helping but hindering.
Didn’t mean for Greg to be standing in the foreground. This was a candid shot and he was just being antisocial with everyone else that day. lol
I imagine this gets really complicated with global work because tracking this is limited by law in some European countries. The law is to protect against discrimination, specifically wartime persecution, which is painful trauma and an unfortunate reality. There is still discrimination out there.
By penalizing firms as not diverse enough, we’ve tipped our hand in a problematic cycle of call-out culture.
Some of these firms would like to hire more diverse because they do see the benefits to their projects and their stakeholders. Instead of recognition of firms trying hard to be part of a diverse world, we are alienating the very people who we need to be our allies to help us achieve our goals. While we set this up to support different minorities, we forget that diversity is not black & white. Neither are diversity efforts.
I don’t know y’all. Social justice is a complicated topic and I’m certainly underqualified to comment. So instead I’d rather ditch this whole system and focus on the end users and their benefit. That’s you.
A cultural shift
I’m not naive enough to think we can just tear down these rules but leave behind the dominant social construct. We make change by talking to people in their language, not by pointing out their biased conclusions with facts. So instead I want to put forth an idea that if diverse and inclusive teams are the literal gold standard, we encourage change through the primary capitalist agenda: money and personal values.
In today’s multi-cultural world, we need to be globally connected to the right resources. We need to be able to reach out in our network and consult with that top Internet of Things transportation expert in Switzerland for a project in Austin. And we need to support that expert for mentoring and being inclusive of the native americans and asian americans that xe is mentoring. So what if instead of trying to force people into this box of 4.9% asian/native american owned and jumping through these “small business” hoops specifically associated with geopolitical locations, we did something different? Let’s focus on being inclusive of these ethnic groups and giving them resources to do the job they want to be doing.
We can insist on best practices across the industry that recognizes the impact of inclusivity, not a state-by-city way of calculating diversity.
changes to inclusivity practices
While so much is in turmoil this year, I am looking forward to the disruption of our non-inclusive practices. While regs are important and necessary, it decidedly isn't working for us and it isn't working for you.
Mentor Protegee programs
Early on in my career, I once had a structural engineering company subconsulted to me. They sent me their designs, I looked at it and went “ummm that can’t be right” and sent it to my structural guy to review. It wasn’t right. We offered them the changes, they agreed and revised it, and the package was submitted. Basically we were that group project where I knew the answer and redid the work of the others. That is the subconsulting model. I, as the prime (aka highest achieving kid in the group) concerned about a successful project for the client and end user, took away their agency and their full learning potential. It may have seemed like the best use of public funds at the time, but ultimately it was short-sighted as we left the privilege elephant in the corner. I mean, hopefully they learned a bit, but I got the sense they were just getting the project out the door.
A different way to do this is called a mentor protegee program to support development of staff at other companies and boost the reputation of the smaller firms. Coupled with subconsulting, it’s more like a tutor providing knowledge transfer of how to do the homework differently. We go from group work masquerading as equality, to specific measureable support. But more importantly, it builds relationships between people which ensures trust and mentorship in other non-technical areas as well as technical. That’s critical leadership to developing people as community-oriented engineers.
Politically it sort of feels like backwards progress - a better resourced group comes in as the savior - but in reality, this is basically just traditional mentoring. The leaders get more leadership experience too so it benefits both parties. It is something we do within companies and so makes sense to connect this way globally.
Non-profits and charity work
In the industry there are groups that do charity work, like Engineers Without Borders, or at my company we love to give financially to Water For People. Because engineers seal their designs, and because we are expected to perform anything we do to the most stringent standards for quality and safety purposes, it is more favorable for us to provide money or resources than actual engineering pro bono work. Lawyers expect each other to perform pro bono aid as a part of their professional culture but engineers do not. We can begin a cultural shift through this type of self elevation - creation of programs and incentives where we require engineering students & licensed engineers to give back to their communities where they work. That builds inclusivity by understanding.
Secondly, because these programs are all community-focused, there isn’t very many non-profits in our industry that provide social value insights to the industry. We need some grant structures that help to boost ourselves and our I&D efforts. This is a clear gap in our industry. We need an organization to drive filling the resource gaps and focusing on long-term change.
Sometimes be exclusive
This was a time where I realized that I was intruding on exclusivity. I wandered down the beach, realized it was a local scene for people to be with those they felt closest to. Outsiders were not unwelcome, but not invited either. I bought some pineapple and left.
Priya Parker, an expert in teams and meetings both social and professional, says in order to be inclusive you have to be exclusive.
“Over-inclusion is a symptom of deeper problems -- above all, a confusion about why you are gathering and a lack of commitment to your purpose.” Priya Parker
In our industry, this soundly resonates. Including everyone is a waste of their time, is not focusing on the strengths of the right people for the problem, and means you might have the more opinionated voices making the decisions instead of the right voices. Quality designs is relying on the unique strengths of each person, who is right for the job. If it were something that someone with any education or experience level could accomplish, then we’d probably already be on the path to automate it or program it with machine learning. Thus procurement rules should function more like guidelines instead of stop gates.
Sometimes you need local input that knows the communities but sometimes you need global input that knows many communities.
Measure creativity & Innovation
We can use tangible proxies for intangibles like creativity and innovation. Diversity might be the current twitter-able part of the story but we’re really interested in performance and impact from the diversity.
Obviously the team performs better when they're more creative, show up with their all, and work to everyone's unique strengths. Based on the tangible data such as the study by Catalyst that how that companies that build workplaces that support women are 34% more profitable to shareholders tells the story of what happens when you have inclusivity.
To measure diversity alone just tells you how many non-white men from middle class backgrounds are in the company. Who, by the way, also have unique things to bring to the table. The important part is being able to get the returns by MANY unique people bringing their ideas to the table. Then these ideas are community-focused and have compounding returns to the end user. Measure this through social impact valuation, modeling, and performance criteria.
FLEXIBLE HIRING REQS
For AEC companies, with a gender balance average around 20:80 for technical positions, it is hard to woo women. So I challenge hiring managers to understand their why. Ask the question 5 times.
Here’s an example: You’re looking for a candidate who has a masters degree and experience with infrastructure modeling. Why is this a problem? Because this is a gap in your resources. Why is that a problem? Because there are no other people that can train someone already. Why is that a problem? Because we look for internal training opportunities only. Why? Because it is more cost efficient. Why? Because we don’t assess time and experience into our calculation of training expenses. So you see, maybe it comes down to hiring someone with potential and desire to learn the modeling and work with them to get external training. You may even find this is the cheaper scenario if you calculate long-term ROIs over quarterly needs.
When it comes to hiring, experience and education are not the only indicators of potential. Attracting top talent means you need to be open to growth instead of looking for a perfect candidate. In this job economy, you’ll be waiting a long time to fill your backlog if that’s how you’re hiring. Instead recognize that there is no talent war if you’re being inclusive enough. Inclusion is your growth strategy. In the words of Carnival CEO Arnold Donald,
“If you wait for the perfect candidate, you’re never going to have diversity because the diverse people haven't had a chance to do it yet.”
Inclusivity is also recognizing that people who come up with different results than you would have, or their predecessor would have, does not make them wrong results.
leadership Imperative
Change in the decision making process is at the leadership level. There are no surprises with these stats. Companies with at least one women on the board outperform peer groups by 26% over last six years by having "higher return on equity, lower leverage and higher valuations". This is because decision making effectiveness is 95% correlated with financial performance.
Leaders need to be diverse and visible. They are who propagates the company culture that ensures increased psychological safety and increased variety in individuals. Put another way, inclusion and diversity. They create the structure for difficult conversations, they are empathetic, and they make space for people to perform better.
An example of this KPI is putting a process in place for allowing people to move into different departments without being constrained to something that fulfills only the leader’s motives. Leaders, not directors or managers on an org chart, are the key to inclusivity. Not everyone wants to be a leader but those who do are imperative to increased performance.
THe future
Now is the right time to talk about it. We’re seeing unprecedented changes all around us. This is one change that must happen because the longer we go about it, the harder it will be to change later. Let’s do it.
"Momentum at the national scale precludes making changes; too much is invested in the status quo by too many people." Martin Doyle
Working: We did a little fire drill trying to get some data off equipment on site. A night crew sub had a case of COVID-19 and it paused us for a bit. But as it is essential infrastructure, it is now back open and operating. Think our hand washing and social distancing helped as no one else got it!
Reading: Recursion by Blake Crouch. It is a mind trip. I keep thinking about what memory I would go back into if I (morally and ethically) would. How would that cascade changes to my career? To my personal life? My brain is all sorts of twisted up thinking about this… and I think.. I’d just decide not to redo anything. I like where I am.
Listening: To the drybar comedy stuff on youtube. Sometimes after work I’m a bit brain dead and just want to watch comedy while I cook or sit on the couch.