In this issue:
Moving a whole airport terminal in one night
Coach, teammate, fan, mentor
Stress shrinks reasoning
3:25, Room 3
What the day added up to
Saturday, September 26. University of North Texas (UNT) Frisco. Check-in tables, badges, gift bags, smiling faces, and a breakfast spread with coffee, tea, and water for a building full of project managers (PMs) from all over North Texas. Some came in groups. McKesson had a cluster. Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) International Airport had a cluster.
You could feel it in the hallway. People had already mapped their agendas. Nobody came to burn a Saturday. They came to take something home.
My session was at 3:25, the last slot before closing ceremonies. That meant I spent most of the day in the audience, and the audience is where this story starts.
Moving a whole airport terminal in one night
Tammy Huddleston, Vice President of Design, Code & Construction at DFW International Airport, opened the day at 8:15 with her keynote, Transforming Travel through Strategic Project Management. A note for the software crowd: “Code” in her title means building codes and zoning. Not the kind you push to main.
It was one of the best-organized talks I’ve seen, and it showed the value from the business side and the technology side at the same time. Her team got to be first-time users of emerging technology in construction, and now other major airports are following their proven example.
One slide showed how DFW used drones over the construction site to overlay the design model on top of the real thing, so the team could confirm the pylons lined up with the plan. You watch the model and the concrete agree with each other in real time.
The drones were one of several early adoptions. The team installed a 3-D-printed building to house the HVAC and electrical systems and other equipment that would run the new terminal. They built the terminal itself off-site on a moving platform, then walked it into place in a single night. The move had to cross four lanes of runway, so it happened when airline traffic was at its lowest. And DFW used AI to model the pipes and electrical wiring, laying out a blueprint of everything that had to move to make way for the new lines.
The payoff was that work ran in parallel, reducing build time by months. The foundations and pylons went up on-site while the building came together off-site, with ductwork done and electrical already run. The building moves in, lines up, hooks into power, and gets finished out.
Every PM in that room has a project where step B sits waiting on step A. DFW redrew the plan so B didn’t have to wait.
The use of drones, AI mapping, and new construction technology was super impressive.
Tammy also put a set of questions on the screen that I’d tape above any PM’s desk:
Scope, schedule, budget: why?
How do we operate today, and where are we going?
When do you need it by?
Who is going to use it?
What will it cost to maintain?
Who supports the implementation?
Coach, teammate, fan, mentor
Heather Kennedy, owner of HJ Kennedy, LLC, followed with the second keynote, Two Pillars of Impact for Project Managers. Her two pillars were identity and teamwork, and she built the session around a practical framework of coaches, teammates, and fans, plus the supporters and critics who shape us along the way. Who plays which role for you? Which role are you playing for them? And how does that answer change when you’re with peers, with leadership, or with the people you’re training?
Two pairings ran through the whole framework: Power & Connection, Praise & Encouragement. How you use them shapes the kind of leader you are.
I’ve always seen myself as a mentor, and Heather described it well. She described someone who is direct, challenges people, empathizes, and holds people accountable while staying humble enough to step in as the coach.
Stress shrinks reasoning
At 10:05, I sat in on From Stress to Success: The Missing Execution Skill Project Managers Need with Rebecca Sanchez, founder and CEO of Nimble Up. It ran in Room 3, the same room where I’d speak that afternoon.
Her point: stress dims your ability to make choices. It dulls problem-solving right when you need it most. She shared that some high-stress positions test cortisol levels, and if yours runs too high, you don’t get to make decisions.
One of her tools is one we all seem to forget. Breathe. Breathe in for a count of four, breathe out for four.
Her second tool was knowing what sets you off. One slide asked two questions. What feeling is driving your reaction: defensive, frustrated, overwhelmed, exposed, uncertain, or pressured? And what do you typically do next: defend or over-explain, withdraw, overcommit, escalate, or rush to solve? Name the feeling, and you can catch the reaction before it runs the meeting.
I took a second note from her session, this one as a presenter. Watching her, I saw that the exact wording matters less than the feeling of the story. I wrote that down for 3:25.
@3:25, Room 3
I had a plan. The session before mine was a meet-and-greet with the PMI Dallas board of directors. Once it wrapped and the room cleared, I’d have 15 extra minutes to set up and breathe.
The crowd wasn’t in a hurry to clear the room. They were still taking group photos. Then the computer stopped responding. No keyboard, no mouse. Little by little, my 15 minutes drained away. Fresh batteries were all that saved us, a few minutes before I was due to start. Someone handed me a clicker and a timer. It was “Go time!”
I went to start, and the room wasn’t ready. People were still finding their seats, and more were coming in from the hall. That threw me. I started talking anyway, nervous, wishing I’d taken that breath.
A few minutes in, I took that deep breath. Rebecca’s tool worked great and carried me through the rest of the talk.
What the day added up to
Tammy showed how a multi-year, multimillion-dollar build plan can keep adopting the latest technology as it goes. Heather asked which role you’re actually playing in the room you’re in. Rebecca handed over a few tools for the moment pressure narrows your options. All three pointed past the person to how the work around them is set up.
This is part I. In part II, I’ll cover a few more sessions I sat in on that day.
After that, I’m opening the deck: one archetype at a time, all 24 of them. First up is the Decision Dodger, the card that got a stranger to stop me in a hallway.