Welcome to the Everyday PM Podcast, the podcast where we
discuss project management principles for your everyday
life. My name is Anne Campia and I am
a veteran project manager, having worked in all kinds of
industries from tech and now working as the VP of Operations
for marketing agency called Truesense.
I am so excited to welcome our guest.
And for those of you who have been following the podcast, you
may be familiar with him. And for those of you who have
not, we will take a moment to briefly introduce Greg.
But I am excited to welcome back to the podcast, Greg
Christensen, who is now, I think I was just telling him before we
started this episode, the CMMS radio guru.
He is the podcast host. He is all things CMMS and he has
come on our podcast a few times to talk about project
management. He has built incredible things
in his previous professional journey as it relates to project
management and he has a genuine interest and love for our
profession as well. So with all that being said,
Greg, I don't want to do your introduction a disservice.
So, Greg, welcome to the podcast and if you can, take a brief
moment to introduce yourself to our audience.
Well, first of all, and thanks for having me back on.
And it's always fun connecting with you.
And I think for me the intro is great.
And my interest in like podcasting kind of connects to
part of your journey because I remember when you dropped your
first, your one year announcement and I thought, wow,
this is cool. And then we started talking
about project management. So for me, background, CMMS
Radio is a podcast about computerized maintenance
management software. I tend to focus on the two Ms.
in the middle, which is maintenance management, the
maintenance mindset. So it's about software, but it's
really more about people and process 1st and then the
technology on top of it. I'll bring in random things
every now and then. You'll see some content coming
pretty soon that doesn't necessarily relate to the space,
but it actually does. And I'm always trying to do that
kind of cool stuff and I just enjoy connecting with people.
That's part of the reason I do it.
And I was in the maintenance management and computerized
maintenance management software space for many years.
And, you know, I had a try with some project management
technology that we still have. It's just sitting on a shelf,
taking a nap, waiting for it to come back.
So I'm just happy to be here with you.
You always make me smile and happy, and we can just talk
about whatever. So I'm here, ready to jump into
it. Here we go.
I think our topic is pretty fluid today, but before we get
into CMMS, how it relates to project management, I think I
want to take a second to, and I didn't prompt you about this,
Greg, but I want to give you your flowers where they're due
because Greg joined the podcast. Gosh, it's got to have been over
a year ago, maybe even longer than that.
As a fan of the podcast, he's come on and we've done coffee PM
coffee chats together. I think that's even one of my
more popular episodes was having you on just asking basic project
management questions. But in time, not only have Greg
and I established a relationship, but I have now
kind of taken the backseat to watch Greg's journey into the
podcasting space in particular. He has really cemented himself
as a leader in the CMMS space since he has been on the
podcast. He has his own podcast, which I
encourage everybody to check out.
He is a fantastic host and I remember the first time we met
and spoke, I told him you have a voice or radio, which he totally
does. He would argue that he doesn't
have the face for TV, but I also think he also has the face for
video and he's been at multiple conferences.
He spoke as a key speaker on panels.
He has now what, over 2000 followers on LinkedIn just in
the CMMS group itself. Not to mention, if you connect
with Greg, which I all encourage you to, I encourage all of you
to connect with him on LinkedIn. He is so supportive and active
in that space. And I guarantee you that as soon
as you make that connection with Greg, he's going to be there
seeing your posts, championing your posts, responding to your
posts. And I, I just, I couldn't have
been as fortunate and lucky to have had somebody find my
podcast, create the connection, and now watch how amazing of a
journey Greg has made on his own to, to establish himself in his
own community. And I for all of that, I just
give you all the flowers, Greg, because it's, it's just been a
fun ride to, to kind of take the backseat and watch all that
happen for you. Well, that's, that's a lot to
take. And people that really know me
and, and whether they see me on the podcast or meet me in
person, I always have kind of a visceral reaction to those kinds
of things because I want to stay really grounded and it's
touching and I really appreciate that.
And, you know, I, I, I tell people, hey, I'm an ogre.
And they're like, why, why would you say that?
I'm like, no, what I mean is I'm banging around doing my thing.
And then when we get into stuff like this, I'm, I'm, I'm just
like a marshmallow inside. And I, I, I dig that stuff.
And it's cool having real human connection that most of us might
have thought is just not even possible through this medium,
let alone, you know, other ways we meet people.
So it's awesome. I appreciate those kind words
and it's a lot to take. It's, it's very humbling.
So thank you for that, Anne. Of course, of course, of course.
So let's get into CMMS. As Greg has included as part of
his introduction, he focuses more on the double M right in
the middle. But why don't you break down
CMSMS for us a little bit further, just for those that
aren't too familiar with it. And then we'll kind of get into
how the projects work in that space and try to make that
connection between your particular area of interest and
and the our our podcast audience as well.
Yeah. So just a general, real basic
kind of high level introduction to CMMS.
It's computerized maintenance management software.
You could also say computerized maintenance management system.
And think of it in terms of work order management plus asset
management. And what we mean is everybody
for the most part, with any kind of facilities of any kind,
almost any size, has work requests and things that come
in, whether they're complaints or issues that have to be taken
care of. And we start with writing all
that stuff down. Well, these are solutions that
allow you to digitize it and start your digital
transformation. So as you do more and more of
that, you need better tracking. You need to see who, what, why
and where, what's really been going on.
Now I mentioned asset management and managing equipment.
We're talking specifically about equipment.
So work orders tend to be connected to things that people
are going to go attend to. So those are the two main areas
of what a maintenance management solution of any kind is going to
manage for a facility. It could be a school, it could
be a hospital, it could be an entire campus of office
buildings, it could be oil and gas, it could be rigs out in the
ocean, all these different things.
So it starts to become a really, really big world.
And what really centralizes it is maintenance management.
Because at the end of the day, the reason we want this
digitization and we have to track all these things as it
relates to maintenance is maintenance really, in my
opinion, makes the world go around.
So think of this and I'll kind of relate it.
I don't know how soon the episode will come out, but right
now we have a heat wave. It's not just in Southern
California, it's across the US. Much of the US is experiencing
this. So when people say, well, how
about maintenance management and work orders and things that
people take care of, I would say, well, let's boil it down.
Let's forget about business for a second.
Let's just go home. We got air conditioning units,
right? We need those during the heat.
And if those things fail, then we've got serious problems.
So the systems that track that kind of work even at that level,
and then we go back into the business environment, right?
Your factories, your plants, your schools, like I said,
nonprofits, hospitals, all these things.
We got to track all this stuff, not only to get stuff done, but
to see where we're having problems.
And then that starts to take us on another part of the journey
where we're thinking of maintenance and reliability best
practices, how we can create more availability of the assets
that produce the things that we sell, and all that kind of
stuff. So it really starts to spin out.
That's why I like the subject, because it's specific yet broad.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, and I think in the in your
telling or your overview, you kind of get elements of both,
right. You can really hone in on a
particular part or you can kind of look at it and and the
application of it sounds like is pretty broad in terms of where
you've seen it implemented. And I think that is also as you
had mentioned, a great correlation to project
management in general as well as we've all learned all types of
industries require the role and as as things go with the
software we use, sometimes it is a little bit more niche.
Whereas in the way you've explained, CMMS sounds like
really any organization could pick this up if they needed to.
I think they could. I'm, I'm, I want people to be a
little bit cautious about that. And this is what's also nice
about me no longer being a part owner of a CMMS solution
provider. So now I can be agnostic and
really say, look, let's take that extra step back and say, do
you really need this or not? Because the idea that everybody
needs it, it's a, it's a great idea, but there are situations
where they might not. Now that can change over a
period of time, but the way it really relates to project
management, at least in my view, is if we agree just to place
hold it for the for our session today.
I don't know why I call it a session but.
It's therapy, Greg. Yeah, Yeah, it's, it's
maintenance therapy, right, And project therapy.
So everything is a project in one way or another.
And I think that's a bit of a stretch.
But if we look at maintenance and maintenance management,
these are like little projects, a work order.
We got to do this, Something pops up for preventive
maintenance, something pops up. We're going to rip and replace a
piece of equipment, whatever the case may be, right?
Well, in project management we have projects that are based on
deliverables and timelines and deadlines and those have
similarities. But what happens in project
management is it touches this area constantly, not just with
getting the software, setting up the deployment plan and then a
project manager. You and I did an episode on that
where you're walking down the hall one day and somebody says,
hey, good luck with that. CMMS roll out and you're like,
OK, what's that? And this is how it goes.
But within facilities management, maintenance
management, all these things, there are constant projects.
And the most critical component of those projects is that they
get done on time, efficiently, on budget, all those things.
So that lands right in your wheelhouse regardless of what it
is. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And I know that we wanted to talk a little bit about what a
typical CMMS project looks like. And you're kind of already going
into that as as we're we're chatting here.
And I think I love that you have now positioned yourself in a
much more less biased space, so to speak, so that you can really
give your honest opinion around whether or not CMMS is
applicable for a particular community or organization or
people. Right.
I, I, I, I'd like to say the same thing goes for project
management. I have lived through experiences
where some organizations have said let's grab project
management, They can come in and fix everything.
I don't know if this is applicable in your space as
well, but you know, there's always this kind of
misconception around what a project management team can come
in and do. I believe obviously so much in
our profession that I believe we can do anything as it relates to
helping an organization be more efficient.
But to your earlier point, I also would say that even within
project management, sometimes some organizations may not need
it or they think they're looking for project management, whereas
they're looking for something else.
And so I'm glad that you have now found yourself in a place
where you can be very, very transparent about having those
types of conversations. Do you think that having now
removed yourself from feeling like you're selling a product,
constantly selling a product, has that helped you kind of in
terms of not just doing your podcast and having those
conversations, but just seeing the entire space of CMMSA little
bit differently? 100%, no two ways about it,
whether it be the space itself or what's really happening
within. So one of the reasons I always
tell people I'm I'm about the maintenance management or the
maintenance mindset in the middle is that's where it really
unfolds. Human beings and the kind of
conversations I can have are not that I didn't have great ones
previously, but now they're just, they're wide open and a
lot of people are starting to understand that I'm not here to
hurt anybody. It's the exact opposite.
I want to actually help users navigate their journey.
I want to help people avoid doing unnecessary rip and
replace from one piece of software to another if they
really don't need to. I want to help the right
consultants get working with the right people.
So I want to work with people that are super real.
And I can have those conversations now.
And I can't even tell you what we talked about off Mike.
It's it's awesome, it's brilliant.
And you know, those are those are kind of buzzy words that
everybody uses. But when you really connect with
an industry and they know that you, you don't necessarily have
an outcome goal, like you're not selling something, but you're
just trying to help, it makes all the difference.
So it's true that that change made a difference.
Doesn't mean later that I won't have something to sell.
But I also happen to be somehow, I don't know if it's hard wired,
but somehow wired to deliver on value rather than just selling
stuff. That I think helps with the now
authenticity and what you're doing in terms of having those
realistic conversations. I think sometimes people will
immediately jump to the solution.
And to your point, maybe this is not the solution for you.
And I think in terms of project types, right, CMMS projects,
what are some of those questions that you are asking people who
are interested in the the platform or the software?
What are some of those questions you're asking them to really
tease out if this is going to be a value add to their
organization? So what we typically want to do
if now, now there's some things that need to be set up first.
So for example, how did we get in touch with this person in the
1st place? So if someone goes and they
think they need a solution and they type something into some
form, they're just going to get bombed left and right.
But let's forget all that. And now I'm talking to someone,
I want to ask them questions about their operations, their
operational style. So for example, when it comes to
day-to-day management of your work orders and the labor
associated with the work that needs to get done, or the pieces
of equipment that you're trying to protect, track and manage or
flip those around any way you want, where are you currently
seeing gaps with the problem with that kind of a question?
Is it self diagnosing? So we want to be really careful
with self diagnosing questions because now if we're supposed to
influence someone's decision to make their situation better,
it's much more important that we find out not just where the pain
is. Everybody's selling to pain and
all that. Forget about that.
You got to find the value and connect it to the business.
So better questions when it comes to discovery and figuring
out whether somebody really needs a CMMS might be something
to the effect of have you missed work in the last, missed work
that needed to be done, critical work that caused any kind of
failure that hurt the bottom line, took operations down.
For example, if we want to go simplistic with facilities
management, have you had any air conditioning failures in the
last three months that could have been prevented by doing
better PMS and changing filters as opposed to a full day or two
of people having to go home because it's dangerously hot
outside? So what did that really cost
you? Now again, I'm generalizing,
right? But those are the kinds of
things we want to get into. So at a base level, if someone
does not have a maintenance management system or software,
and maybe they're just using Excel or spreadsheets, we want
to find out if that's actually causing a negative impact to the
business. Because if it's not, then they
might not need a system. They really might not.
And a lot of people out there might hate me saying that, but
if you don't need one, you don't need one, don't get one.
But you eventually might if you're going to continue to grow
and you're going to get busier and busier, and asset
criticality plays a role in what you do.
So as you can tell, each time we get one of these questions and
we try to carve it up, it's really hard to resolve it in
just like quick phraseology. Is there such a thing as
phraseology? There might be now I'm.
Coining it now, Yeah. So with regards to how we
describe and interpret things, when you get away from the
selling aspect and you look more from a helping perspective and
you stay extremely curious, I want to understand you and what
you're doing. So say the operation you're at
now and I wanted to understand how you guys move through the
world from a facilities perspective.
The more we talk about that, I start finding places to look and
see if you have a real problem that has a root cause that
impacts the business negatively. Gotcha.
None of that happens. You don't need anything to solve
it. If there's not a problem,
there's nothing to solve. You almost, it sounds like, you
know, when you go to a doctor's office and they ask you a few
initial questions in the intake of, of, of you seeing that the
physician is, and then sometimes they just pass you off to APA or
something, right? Because they're like, oh, this
person doesn't really need to see the main MD.
But as things go, it sounds like you do a lot of that inquiry
ahead of time. So that way you are prescribing
what feels right for that particular customer.
Because as I said, you know, I, I wear two hats now, project
management as well as operations.
And even then the line can be very great between the two of
them because you've got a awesome team of people who want
to execute well and deliver projects on time, within budget
to scope, whatever, whatever the parameters may be.
But then you've got on the operation side this need to make
sure that in our delivery we are able to track things from what
you're calling a work order, but what would be our initial
project request or initiation all the way to execution of what
that particular project can be. And within that you want to
understand what are those gaps opportunities to make things a
little bit more efficient. And when you talk about CMMS,
the correlations are exactly there in terms of.
What the project types look like, I know you said it doesn't
really apply to all industries or all people, but it can come
in as a value add solution. So I want to kind of get one
more level deeper than that to truly understand how you
facilitate the project through and what are some of the KPIs
you are then trying to quantify to tell your client or customer,
hey, you implementing this CMMS into your organization is
actually a value add. So I know that was a very long
winded way to say, Greg, break it down for me.
And then how are you? How are you then showing the
value add at the end of the project?
OK. So one of the things that is
often missing from a question like that is we need a little
bit more specificity on industry.
So we're going to generalize a little bit just so that I can
kind of describe it at a super high level, not meant to solve
everybody's. Problem of course.
Yes, all thinking. So we're going to have a
facility setting that is an office park.
It's three buildings, you decide how big they are.
It doesn't matter. I mean, it does, it actually
does. But I'm saying for our story
today and when we go to set up our CMMS and we're going to make
some assumptions. They've already done their own
say for example, root cause analysis, they've done a lot of
assessment and they know that they need a CMMS.
And we've, we've, we've got one, we've provided one, we've got
the decision, it's signed, it's time to deploy.
So when it comes to that deployment, the very first step
is to iron out and decide exactly how that solution is
going to match what physically is there at this site.
So most typically, in my view, this would be a site that has
three buildings, each building has floors, there's grounds,
parking lot, etcetera. We want to set all that up.
Then we want to start putting in things like where are the pieces
of equipment, the ones that we're really going to focus on
initially because if somebody goes into this going every piece
of equipment before we use the system, that's not going to
work. Start with your big rocks
criticality, right? For the milestones during this
project, what we want to do as the CMMS provider is we want to,
we want to gate, so to speak with steps or process update
intervals. What has been done so far?
So you signed up? We deployed what the site is,
the buildings, the areas by floor level or section.
We started putting in some pieces of equipment,
categorizing equipment, building out service types.
So that might be the first set of things that we set up.
And we've got some top level users that are getting trained
milestone #1 we've done our initial steps milestone #2
putting it in the hands of actual users, including the
technical or the the maintenance technicians and people on site,
chief building engineer, etcetera, that's going to
utilize the platform, make sure they've done that.
And both groups have been trained.
That's milestone #2 generalizing milestone #3 is going to tend to
be, can we look back and see that we've actually not just set
all this up, but we've gotten appropriate user adoption to
develop data. And this should all happen
depending on your organization size and the complexity of the
environment, the nature of their savviness using solutions,
mobile, all that kind of thing. That's probably anywhere from
I'd say six weeks to six months depending on organization size.
But you're not done yet. What happens most of the time
during this phase, this 1-2 and three kind of check in spots.
That's where it falls apart because too many organizations
select a solution and the other organizations that sell them the
solution. It it becomes about finding and
selecting the software and never deploying it.
Also, other things to watch out for during that period of time
is to turn over on either side. So if we lose champions, if I'm
a CMMS provider and I lose some champions and people that are
really all about this project and they move on, go to
different job, win the lottery, whatever, God forbid, what else
that's going to be disruptive and it could cause a failure in
the project success, the, the likelihood of project success.
So that's just generally speaking.
And I could, you can tell I'm, I'm trying to hold myself back
because I can, I can really, really go through and explain
all kinds of different projects and it might be overwhelming
because I'm, I'm starting to go really fast.
So basically that's that's the thing we want to look at is did
we select it now? Have we started to deploy it?
Have we started to use it? And then we want as soon as
possible to see what is our data looking like so we can reassess
in case we've missed something. And then we're going to do that
again. And again.
It's never going to stop. This is CMMS utilization
selection and utilization is an ongoing thing.
Once you've selected the utilization and the check in and
managing those KPIs is a constant.
Yeah, Yeah, I imagine so. And I, like many have gone
through these types of software implementations where there's
all these expectations around what's going to be the value
add, how soon can we see the ROI in this investment?
You had mentioned already that CMMS is not for every industry,
but for some, right. And so I think where I, I want
to go with this question is around, I've seen software
implementations where it just sounds like this is going to be
the one-size-fits-all, fixes everything solution.
Organizations really try to promote it only to find they're
only using about 30% of the actual features of the software.
And then they asked the question about, well, we made this
investment in CMMS, we thought we were going to get this, how
come we're only getting, you know, maybe 10% of what we
expected, the efficiencies that we were going to gain from this
platform. So what do you say to those
people who kind of find themselves in the space of they
made this investment, they had some expectations around it,
albeit maybe unrealistic expectations.
What? What are you doing now in this
part of the conversation? OK.
So if I'm the provider of the solution and that's what's being
brought to me, I want as quickly as possible for us to get some
people together and go back and take a look and find the clues
as to where this where this in a sense went off the rails.
So remember I mentioned if we lose our champion, if we lose
people that are bought in to the utilization of the platform,
that will change everything. It's almost like starting over,
very difficult for the customers and it's very difficult for the
CMMS providers to reconcile that because people don't believe
that it could be on them for not using and proceeding with their
deployment. So that's where I would look
1st. And once we assess that, then we
pick up the ball, so to speak and keep running it forward.
We want to retrain and plug those those gaps as it relates
to their utilization of the platform because it doesn't take
much in the way of disengagement to now see a solution like this
sit on a shelf, collect dust and cost immense amounts of money.
I've heard, I've heard things in the millions that are just
shocking. It's crazy.
And I I don't want to call out
any solutions because it's on both sides.
You know of course, like. Right now, I, I, I kind of want
to tell everybody users, if you have a CMMS platform, you need
to reach out to your vendor and say, hey, teach me how to use
this. Where are we going wrong?
What have we missed? Vendors?
If you don't know how to do that for your client, maybe you've
had your own turnover, just improve it.
It's totally possible. Get somebody that can help your
people be better for your clients.
Everybody's in this to win. So buyers of owners of people
that have solutions and they're not using them, take a step back
and figure it out. It's not just because it's
clunky and junky. That's often times not the case.
It's because people don't know why they're supposed to be using
this. So, and now you can see this.
This is where it all comes down to culture, the way our teams
are assembled and how we all buy in.
Just like when you run a project, if you have a project
that half the people are even ten, 1215% of the people are
just not into, that's very high risk because everybody else is
going to have to do the lifting and they're going to be the
bottleneck that you cannot even exploit.
So this happens in all areas of all organizations.
So that's why I say I can spin out and now we're talking about
all kinds of countries. Me too, because no, don't
apologize because you know, in the same way this conversation
has already kind of veered way different than the outline.
But it's because it's interesting in that you could
take everything you just said, remove CMMS.
And it's still highly applicable to people who have lived in this
operation space, who have lived in change management, who have
lived in project management, who have lived in software
implementation, who currently live in PM or CMMS worlds.
Just take some of the specificity out of what Greg
just said. And it's highly applicable and
even relatable to, I'm sure, the experiences that many of us have
had around having to deal with not just software, but the
elements of bringing in people who have to be involved in
championing the change. And how important and critical
that is to making sure that you end up getting the value that
you're supposed to get back from implementing a system like CMMS.
So I think for what it's worth, Greg, I know you went into the
details, but I needed to tease that out because I want to make
sure people understand what Greg is saying is very relatable.
I'm sure a lot of you are nodding your heads as you're
listening to what he's saying. And I appreciate you keeping it
very general for the fact that we can correlate it very easily
to other lived experiences outside of the CMMS world.
So I, I was curious in terms of now kind of just trying to tie
in PM with CMMS in a much more obvious way, how APM might
compliment CMMS, whether it's, you know, the implementation of
a CMMS or, or something else. And how do you think that the
role might clash in any way with CMMSI think?
I will preface that by saying I wanted to ask you a question
around the evolving technology as well as how maybe AI is
involved in this type of conversation.
But to your point, Greg, we will spin off and talk about
something very, very different if I ask that question.
So let's keep it here and ground it around PMCMMS.
How do they correlate? How do they not?
OK. So the the correlation primarily
revolves around the idea that we're trying to accomplish
something by a deadline. There's something at stake.
We have something that has to be done.
So in the world of CMMS and within the platform and within
maintenance management within any organization, it is quite
probable that a project manager will be involved in something
like, let's say a very large piece of equipment that's going
to go through a change out within, within overall
operations of the facility or of production or anything like
that. So a project manager knows
exactly what to do about how to set that up and they're going to
possibly leverage the CMMS, the maintenance management software
to see and track some of the things about that, whether they
have separate project management software or not.
But they're going to be involved because they have the skills,
the insights, the training, they might even be APMP and they know
how to set up and plan and execute a project.
So that's where there's a lot of similarities between what people
that use CMMS are doing and then people within the org that
probably need to interact with it and get something done
really, really well the way they.
Before you get to the way that they might clash, if I'm a
project manager and I work in a production facility, maintenance
facility and there's a piece of equipment or machinery that is
very, very critical to our business.
You know, it's this piece we've invested in, but we know it's
been about 10 years since we've updated that piece of machinery.
So as APM, is it that I'm flagging?
Hey everyone. I think we're almost at the 10
year marker. As I know from the knowledge of
being in the space, we might want to start having
conversations around replacement or updating of the machinery.
What's the downtime or potential impact, negative impacts to our
business. I'm looking at the schedule to
see if we decide to upgrade the machinery or replace it, what is
that going to impact from our production standpoint?
Are those some of the things that I'm thinking about and
trying to ask questions around as as it pertains to how we
would be working together in this space?
I would say yes, but I would flip it completely backwards.
Oh, OK. So, so this would be more your
operations hat saying potential problem here.
I was looking at this in let's say our CMMS platform in the
KPIs that you've already set it up to track for you, the ones
that tell you something to go and look further.
And now you've reached out to the project manager to say, I'm
seeing a problem over here. And I'm not sure when we're
going to do something about it. But I want to start to build my
plan as to what would make sense for us as an entire team.
Can you give me an idea of what the resource loading is on your
side from a project management perspective?
Maybe it's somebody in the PMO where they can tell you, hey,
this is this is where we're looking and great.
You know, I was just looking for a potential gap where we might
find some of those resources because I have a feeling in the
next 12 to 18 months we might replace this machine and then
you would add to it. Before we even do that, we're
going to do root cause analysis, assess the criticality, figure
out if that machine really in fact needs to be replaced versus
improved. Because sometimes there's
defects that can be eliminated on an existing machine as
opposed to replacing it. So I would say, I would say
backwards. The project manager doesn't look
for projects as opposed to in this scenario, they need a
project manager to run the project, even if the project
manager is only going to be an overseer and do that load
balancing on the resources, the timing, the parts, the supply
chain, the concept of full kidding.
You would be amazed. You would be amazed how similar
everything we're talking about in maintenance management,
maintenance and reliability best practices, and all those match
up almost identical to the project execution maturity
model. And that concept of full kidding
is everywhere. People that use it don't know
that it's happening right next door in the department next to
them. And it is one of the number one
things on something like that that would set you up for
success in a project like that. So that makes sense.
I know I spun. Out a little bit, but hey, you
know, I had mentioned there's this whole Gray area now that I
find myself in operations and project management.
So I always appreciate Greg for setting me straight in terms of
my thinking. But I, I got it.
I just had it in reverse, right? So now let's, let's, let's now
get to your point around how PM, how the role of PM may clash in
any way with CMMS. If you if you see any kind of
negative outcomes coming from that?
So if there if there's going to be any kind of a clash between
let's say ACMMS project and the people that are really truly
leveraging the CMMS, although it's for the benefit of the
organization with project managers, a project manager or
even the entire PMO, that is typically going to boil down to
a combination of things. One, it could be the culture and
misalignment between the culture.
So they don't understand and buy in on each other's why.
I'm always going to fall back on that because that's a guaranteed
area where you can fix almost anything, almost anything.
Because when people, when the why is there a lot of the other
stuff doesn't matter. They don't even care how hard it
is. They're just all about it
straight up. I'm just, I'm just calling it
like it is there. The other thing is when they're
not communicating, they may think that they're in opposition
when they're not. And and although that goes back
to the first thing I mentioned, but if, if it doesn't make
sense, say for example, fiscally for one department versus
another, that's very difficult to resolve.
And then when we also you remember I was talking about the
load balancing on resources available, labor, skill set,
etcetera, etcetera. Well, that's another thing that
can create a hidden kind of fire breathing dragon when it comes
to if our resources are completely clogged and we know
we've got priorities and something new just came in that
can cause a lot of stress, unnecessary stress, but real
stress, right? So maybe it's actually
necessary. So that's where some of the
conflict can come come in. I do think project management
and maintenance management as far as I look back over the last
20 plus years, they play pretty well together.
They really they they in my experience now my experience is
only my own with, you know, whatever number of companies and
I do hear other things out throughout the industry about
these kind of conflicts. So I don't think we're gonna
have like a a pure magic bullet take away.
You also mentioned something earlier about this
one-size-fits-all that kind of stuff.
Just it's not out there. I bet you a little like Earth
came in was I? I was saying that, but I think
it's definitely something that we both have to deal with in our
respective spaces quite a bit and make sure that we are having
those very open and transparent conversations with people who
are interested in it. I mean, the same thing goes when
I meet new people who are telling me, hey, I'm really
interested in project management.
You know, I can you tell me about how I can get into the
industry? And before I even start a
conversation with them outside of saying hello and
introductions, is let me ask you a few questions just to make
sure this is actually where you want to be.
You did that with me. There is.
A very. Big misconception around that,
right? You know, people have this idea,
which I'm sure they do with CMMS too, which the one-size-fits-all
comment came from. So we have to make that.
We have to. We're fighting the same battle,
I think, just on in different places.
Yeah, I. I, I tend to agree and look for,
for everybody's benefit when I say that there's not A1 size
fits all. There's no such thing as a magic
silver bullet that that's meant to help you because that's the
reality. And that's not supposed to be a
bad thing. It's just with a bit more
specificity. And you know, when people are
providing a CMMS to somebody, understand what those folks are
really trying to do where their pain is and don't try to
dictate. And then on the other side, if
you're looking for solutions, be mindful and careful when there
is something that's cookie cutter and it's not a perfect
fit. But at the same time, if you're
85% plus, I would say most of the time it's good to go.
So this is where this Gray area just keeps coming up constantly.
Yeah, so. Greg.
To end our conversation, I'm very curious about now having
kind of really put your position out in terms of being a leader
at the forefront of some of the innovations that are happening
in CMMS. What is that thing?
What's that next evolution of CMMS?
I'm not going to make any assumptions there, so I'll just
put the question mark at the end of that statement.
Sure, sure. No, that, that's, that's a good
one because there's a lot of ambiguity out there.
There's a lot of new shiny stuff out there.
And I talk about shiny stuff, but I tell people don't, don't
take the bait because we still got to wait and see.
So I just did a panel discussion at a conference, it's called the
Reliable Plant Conference. It took place out in Chicago a
couple weeks ago. And I don't, I don't think you
and I have talked about it after I told you ahead of time when I
was going. However, yes, we did a panel on
the evolution of CMMS. Oh, perfect.
Timing. For my.
Question then yes, yes and. What came out of that panel, and
we're going to release the footage on the panel in a couple
of weeks, but what really came out of that was we started
focusing in on the people and the the failure to evolve with
the technology. And that's not a failure on the
part of the people necessarily. So don't take that the wrong
way. What I think is really coming is
we're going to have more improvements there where people
start to embrace a little bit more of the technology.
And they're not necessarily going to be so advanced with the
next new shiny thing. But what's coming as far as next
is further understanding of AI, artificial intelligence, which
right now make no mistake, is very surface level and not
necessarily what you may think it is.
And I can, I can say that because I know that's true.
And I'm not beholden to anybody. I'm beholden to telling the
truth. So that's not to tear anybody
down. But AI is going to continue to
learn and improve. And some of the technology
companies out there are probably going to, you know, fold up and
become better and better. But that's.
So from an AI perspective, we also have related to that the
Internet of Things or industrial Internet of Things where we're
looking at sensor monitoring and those types of things.
I think that's going to improve. But what I, what I mean by
improving is over the next 12 to 24 months, I think people are
going to know more of what is really working.
And some of those other things are going to go away.
And it's like, I'm excited because I want to get closer to
the truth and find what's really working.
And I don't want to call out what's not in a hard way.
I just want to get people looking at what actually works.
And I've got some cool episodes coming up about that in the next
like two to three months. Oh, that's super exciting.
That's super exciting. I hope that was helpful.
I know. I'm dancing around it, but no.
And the same thing goes for. PM, right?
We're still trying to figure out this whole impact of AI in terms
of our profession. And what I would like to say,
innovations are going to be made in terms of how we, how we work
with systems like CMMS, how we even just execute projects, how
we do our job. So I, I'm glad that you touched
on AI without me having to just ask you about it because I had a
feeling there was going to be some influence that was
happening in the trends in the CMMS space.
So appreciate that too, Greg. And we look forward to seeing
the snippets or the clips or whatever it is you're going to
release of that panel as well. Yeah, that'll be that'll be
coming. Pretty soon.
So I'm I'm looking forward to it.
Two different panels, two different events.
Nice. Both really.
I mean, the guests on the panel, they they it's not me.
It's got nothing to do with me. It's people.
It's true, it's true. You'll see, you'll see.
Well, I am. Like I said, very appreciative
of all that you have done to support the everyday PM podcast.
We are, you know, this community is as supportive of you as you
have been a bus. And I'm excited to see what's
next for you and your space. And I'm always here to support
you and your journey. And I look forward to more
conversations like this, Greg, because again, I can just talk
to you for forever, but I know we've got time to get back to
what we do on a regular day-to-day.
So Greg, for those of you that want to continue the
conversation with you, where can they find you online, I would
say. First of all, on LinkedIn, find
the CMMS radio company page and connect there.
That's all smooshed together. Don't put a space between CMMS
and radio, smoosh it all together.
So company page there and then you can find me on LinkedIn as
well. Connect and you know, hit me up,
we'll have a conversation. No obligation.
I'm not selling nothing. And I'm just here to help the
maintenance management world, CMMS and all that.
Just be better. And I want to learn stuff too.
I don't know everything, I never will.
I just want to know more. Well, thank you.
For all that you do, Greg and I feel like I've learned a lot in
this short conversation we've had as so has the audience
that's listening in on this episode.
So best of luck and all that you do.
I will look forward to seeing more come out from any panels or
any other speaking engagements. You have everyone go support
Greg and everything that he's doing over there in the CMMS
world. You can also find me on LinkedIn
as well. There's a everyday PM group on
LinkedIn. Not as active as as Greg's, but
definitely exists there for you to create a little community
with other project managers. You can connect with me on
LinkedIn as well. So that will do it for Greg and
I in this installment of the Everyday PM podcast.
I appreciate all of you for tuning in.
Feel free to like subscribe, leave a great comment on any of
the episodes of the Everyday PM on any of the podcasting
platforms that you may be listening in on.
So for Greg and I, everyone take care and we'll see you at the
next episode. Thank you, Anne.