About Me
Nobody calls themselves an EngiNerd on purpose.
It started as a dig. The kind of nickname that gets thrown at you on a jobsite when you show up with a laptop and an opinion about process improvement. I got called it early in my career and it stuck, the way the best nicknames do, because it was true.
I was the guy who wanted to know why. Why we were still chasing spreadsheets while building billion-dollar projects. Why every technology rollout seemed to peak in excitement right before it collapsed in frustration. Why the people closest to the work were always the last ones asked for input.
So I kept volunteering for the problems nobody else wanted.
Complete technology overhauls at Kiewit. Platform selections at Google. Solution Engineering at InEight. Each one taught me the same lesson in a different way. The technology was never the hard part. The people were always the hard part. And until you got the people right, you could buy every software license in the industry and nothing would fundamentally change.
That realization didn't come from the office. It came from standing on jobsites watching good people fight bad systems. From sitting in boardrooms where the software got selected before anyone asked the field what they actually needed. From leading rollouts that looked great on paper and fell apart in practice.
Twenty years of that will either break you or teach you lessons worth sharing.
I'd like to think it did the latter.
That's why TheEngiNerdLife exists. Not to sell you a framework or tell you the next tool that will fix everything. But to have the honest conversation about what's actually getting in the way. The culture. The fear. The gap between the vision in the C-suite and the reality on the ground.
Because I've lived on both sides of that gap.
And I'm still an engineer that nerds out about it.
What I Believe
People come before process. Process comes before technology. In that order. Always.
Digital transformation is not a software problem. It's a change management problem with a software component.
The construction industry isn't resistant to innovation. It's resistant to being told it's broken by people who've never had dirt on their boots. There's a difference between disrupting an industry and understanding one.
The most powerful thing you can do on a jobsite is admit to the thing nobody else will say out loud. Honest conversation isn't soft. It's the hardest tool to pick up and the one that changes everything.
Where I’ve done the work:
Want to bring this conversation to your stage?
I speak at industry conferences, company offsites, leadership events and podcasts on digital transformation, people-first culture and what it actually takes to change the way construction builds.