The Promise and Imperfections of Canada’s Infrastructure Industry with Damian Joy

[MUSIC] You're listening to Navigate Image of Programs, the podcast that aims to elevate in conversations in the infrastructure industry. We'll press the industry's experts on the complexity of mega project management, emerging artificial intelligence, and the critical leadership required to approach these multi-billion dollar projects. I'm your host, Ricardo Cossentino. I bring over two decades of major program management experience. Most recently, I acquired my masters in major program management from Oxford University's Business School, which shook my beliefs about major programs. Now it's time to shake yours. Hello everyone and welcome to a new episode of Navigate Image of Programs. I'm here today with an old colleague and friend, out there to say, "They've been joy, are you doing them in?" I'm really well, thanks Ricardo, thanks for inviting me. Thank you for joining me. I think this started with a post on LinkedIn, where you announce to the world that you're ready for your next step in your career. I don't want to save a time in, because it's just a next step. I felt because you and I worked together, now feels like a lifetime ago on a Humber River hospital, and we have a common background with the United Kingdom. I felt why not having you on and have a conversation and see what your career has been like. You moved across the pond and you came to Canada, so you brought some experience, you saw different things. I'm sure this is going to be a riveting conversation. Great, I'm looking forward to it. I got your LinkedIn profile right in front of me, because I had to scroll quite a bit to get to the bottom of it. It says here that you started your career without from a car parade. Yeah, I did, I did. So look, the way I tell people about my career, and I've been working now for just over 40 years, is I've had three careers, and they are somewhat interrelated, but they are three fairly distinct careers. So firstly, I worked for a couple of contractors in the UK, and very quickly that took me overseas. So I worked in, I think, something like at least 10 countries, if not more, working for two contractors. First of all, in the UK, but then into the Middle East, and Africa, and the Far East. So, travelled the world and had an absolutely fantastic time working for contractors. So that was kind of career number one. And I realized after doing that for about 15 years, that it's a hard way to make a living. Working for contractors is really, really tough. It's brutal, and in those days, it was very adversarial. Every project you worked on was a battle, every step of the way. So anyway, I was kind of tiring of that a little bit, and this is around the same time that PFI was really in its ascendancy in the UK. This is the original UK version of P3s. And I kind of rode that wave, and my second career was working with Balfa BT Capital, who were one of the leading developer investors in the UK market. And so did that for a while. That got me into the P3 space, and then just by chance, the company sent me over to Vancouver to work on a bid for the Canada line. Which is now the Canada line. At the time, it was the Richmond Airport Vancouver-like rail project. So I came over to bid on that and realized that there were great opportunities in Canada. So I joined a Bill Fingert project investments and moved over to Canada in early 2006, and had a great time pursuing my P3 career in Canada and the USA with Bill Fingert. And then got to the end of career number two. And I would say probably the P3 market was already turning down by that point. But Bill Fingert sold out of their investments in 2013 into 2014, and having sort of participated in divesting the assets and breaking up the team. I then turned to my third career, which is consulting. And consulting and infrastructure is, in my case, telling me telling everyone about what I've done in the previous 30 years as a contractor and an investor. So the consulting role I have or just recently retired from with EY was fascinating as another part of a career. I do find that consulting has the great advantage of giving you a wide perspective in many areas of the business. But I also miss parts of my early career where you could be completely immersed in an opportunity or a project and focus solely on that. I think as a consultant, you spread yourself across many things. You touch many different projects and many different opportunities at all at the same time. So that brought a sort of a new perspective. And I've just got to the end of that third career. There's sort of an age limit on partnership in the firm. And so I've reached that age and I have retired from the partnership. I was off 30th of June. And I'm doing a little bit of private consulting now. And waiting, like you say, for my next big opportunity, there's still time for a fourth career in there as well. Well, you're my inspiration, I have to say. And by the way, I knew we had a common path. I didn't know we had such a common path because I had the same, I started my career. Are you a civil engineer by any chance? Yes. Yeah. Same civil engineer, starting working for contractors in rainy England. For me, it was rainy England. And I was on the railway working nights and weekends possessions. And yeah, it was like there must be a better way to make a living. And I also had a second, I stopped the contracting career and I got into I/O and then into capital. And yeah, so very similar. And I believe some of the bits that I think you and I were talking about, I think you bid, was it you that we were talking there, you bid the Birmingham PFI and then I ended up bidding the rebate of the ONM contract after the operator was put in default and kicked out the project. So there you go, that's another touch point that you and I have. Yeah, yeah. But you know at the start of these P3 projects, when you're bidding on these projects, you know this Ricardo, we always say, look, it's a 30 year term. We're never going to see the end of it. But now, I guess it may be just a symptom of being as old as I am, is that well, we are seeing the end of them. And recently I was advising New Brunswick on a highway project which is reaching the end of its term. So even in Canada, which was not one of the very early adopters of P3s, but it dived in whole heartedly in the 90s and into the 2000s, you know, we're now getting to the end of the term, which is an exciting evolution because there are big decisions that owners have to make about, well, what do we do now? Because going into the transaction stage, the initial transactions, no one's thinking, what do I do at the end? Or they don't give it enough thought anyway. So I think there's a whole turn of the cycle there. What do we do next? It's interesting, I believe in, I can't remember the exact number, but there are several hundred projects in the UK that are coming to to hand back. You know, not a few, like in Canada we have a few, but like there are several hundreds in the next few years. So that's a really interesting, and some of the contracts, you probably remember, like you bid them, and some of the contracts are now very clear, turn one of the PFI, they're not very clear on the end back. No, there's a lot of interpretation that's going to be needed to finish those off. Yeah, but look, I mean, I'm thinking like a consultant again, there's a great opportunity for someone, right? I'm sure there's plenty of law firms and, you know, sole practitioners who've realized there's a business there, but it is. There's a lot of really big decisions where owners are going to need support, because it's, you know, it's a big call. What do you do next after you've relied on a service provider for 25 or 30 years? And I guess it starts with the decision of do we retain it or do we bring it back in house? I guess that must be the first decision, and then also managing the handback process, because I think it starts seven years before the actual handback, right? So there's a lot of work that needs to happen before you end the asset back. Yeah. So you came to Canada in 2006, and as I said, you and I, I think, was the Humber River Hospital, and one of those beds that we worked really, really hard and didn't win, but, you know, you can win them all. But a great, great experience. It was one of the first very, very large hospitals in the province. And it was exciting time. It was exciting time, as you said, in, you know, in the 2010 and 2010 and '18 is when everything was booming, and then I think, as you said, in 2014, '15, we already started seeing a bit of the client. So how did you reinvent yourself? Oh, that's it. That's a great question. Yeah. So, I mean, I guess there was a number of things happened during my sort of Canadian P3 life, and some of them are probably just worth commenting on. One, which amazingly we don't talk about as much as we do as we should, was the global financial crisis. So, you know, in 2008, when the wheels fell off, it was such a dramatic impact. In terms of the building of business, we had to scramble. We had, we had three projects which got into a bit of distress, not through any failing of the project, but through basically sort of default of, of lenders. So, you know, we had a, we had projects which, which had monoline wraps. We had projects which were financed by European project finance banks. And it was, it was turmoil. It was a really severe impact. And we really scrambled for a couple of years to recover a position on, on those projects. And meanwhile, although there was this sort of blip where, you know, spreads were in 500 basis points or something, you know, there was this, there was this sort of stupid period of time just after that where nothing was getting financed. But then amazingly stabilized very quickly. And, you know, by sort of 2010, 2011, we're doing business like nothing had happened. And here we are in 2025 and no one even remembers it. But like it was cataclysmic, it was, it was massive. And, you know, we did all survive it. But we all had to kind of rethink ourselves around that time. And then we got back to businesses, P3s. And then, as you say, it kind of started to wind down a bit. But from, from my own perspective, at the time, I was the CEO of Billfinger Project Investments in North America. And the company had kind of implemented a strategy in, first of all, I think 2011, we set up a London listed firm into which we would divest the mature assets. And so that was kind of already in play for a while. And then 2013, the company decided to sort of get out of the investment business and take advantage of some, some pretty good asset pricing. And we sold down the remainder of the portfolio into that London listed fund. And that I was looking after the American portfolio. And we also had a European and an Australian portfolio as well. We kind of brought all of those together and sold them into this London listed firm, BBGI, which more recently has been sold to ECI, ECM investments. So, you know, all of that is part of a cycle. But from my own perspective, you know, we had sort of sold the business during the course of 2013 and early 2014. And so we'd kind of, we'd implemented our exit strategy before the market had really started to turn down. And so it probably impacted me a little bit less because I'd had some time to think about what to do already. And I decided that I did want to go into consulting. And so, you know, from my perspective, I kind of made that move. But I'd also realized that I couldn't be a consultant offering P3 advice or not exclusively. You know, I was going to have to offer advice on a whole wide range of matters relating to infrastructure. And, you know, fortunately, my background is pretty diverse within infrastructure. And so, you know, I was happy to talk about whether it was, you know, sort of transaction advice and project finance or asset management or project delivery or, you know, project planning or commercial terms or contracts or whatever it is. So, fortunately, I was fairly, fairly well equipped to sort of step into that broader consulting role. But recognizing my limitations are, yeah, I'm an infrastructure guy and I'm only ever going to do infrastructure. In a firm like EY that does everything for everybody, you know, I'm seen as a real niche practitioner even though I consider infrastructure to be my entire world. And there is, there is so much in infrastructure. But with any wise thinking, you know, being an infrastructure guy means you're a tiny little slice of the pie, you know. And how did you find that transition? I think you hinted that, you know, you went from like being completely absorbed in a couple of projects to now having a multitude of clients, projects and stakeholders. How was that transition? And I'm asking for a friend. Yeah, of course, of course. Yeah, look, it was great. And, you know, I was very fortunate. I was joining a team where, you know, there's there's colleagues of mine who I've known for many years. So, you know, I particularly Tim Philpots who leads the infrastructure group. I've known him for a long time. We've worked together and we have a very good relationship. So, you know, I guess that was, you know, one reason I got into the firm. And everyone has been great, really welcoming. It's been, it's been, you know, nine years with UI. I've had a fantastic time. I've learned a huge amount and hopefully dispensed a bit of advice along the way. But it's the big four environment is complex. It's like I'd never come across an organization like, you know, a partnership of 400,000 people spread across nearly 200 countries. It is, it is an immense and complicated organization. And the way things get done within a partnership where, you know, the clarity of a sort of a corporate hierarchy doesn't exist or if it does exist, it's a little bit translucent. It's a complex organization to navigate. I guess like any other sort of big four firm. But I did find that difficult, you know, coming from a corporate environment, just figuring out how does it work? How does governance work in that kind of enterprise was, was, yeah, it takes, it takes a few months to find your feet. 400,000. I mean, I think of my employees 35,000 and I can't navigate 35,000. And we are a corporate. We're not even a partnership, right? So I can only imagine the challenges. Well, okay, you came across to Canada. I mean, what was your first impression when you, when you landed in Vancouver, like when, when you saw the infrastructure space in the United Kingdom, which was the boom of the PFI, PPP, I think it was the time when, I think by then, maybe Metronet and the, the Metronet already failed. But like those, those were the peak years, right? Where everything was a PPP, there were massive deals in the UK. And then you come to Canada. And Canada is just starting to embrace the model for the Vancouver Olympics. Yeah. Well, to be honest, it was quite refreshing in a number of ways. Like one thing I'd found in the UK is that because of the SOPC, you know, the standardization of PFI contracts, treasury had put a really firm grip on what contracts look like and what procurements would look like. So it was quite standardized in the UK. And to be honest, the thought of like, you know, turning the handle and doing another group of schools or another hospital or whatever in the UK, it was actually quite refreshing to get to Canada where, okay, well, we haven't got too much standardization yet. There's opportunities to to shape things in different ways. There are different approaches between the different provinces. You know, there's far less sort of centralized control as you would have in the UK, where a magistrate's treasury or his magistrate's treasury now, they kind of control all the rules. That's not the case in Canada where it's much more, you know, it's a federation of provinces. So I thought it was, it was area of opportunity to be honest. So, so I only saw positives in that, you know, it was going to be more interesting projects. It was going to be some sort of more diverse types of contracts to work with and different procurement processes to work with. And also the time I came, I think, I think I'd probably first worked in Canada in about 2002 or 2003. And at that time there weren't that many key three practitioners. So, you know, all of a sudden I was actually considered to be a fairly knowledgeable person, which is amazing to me. So it was great. I saw it as a huge opportunity. And so, you know, the first project I came over to bid on was Canada line and then I went back to the UK and it was probably only six months later, I decided, yeah, I look, I have to move permanently to Canada. And so, you know, we came over on the expectation that, you know, the P3 movement was kind of, it was certainly rising pretty quickly in first all in, I would say in British Columbia and then Alberta and then Ontario. And obviously when infrastructure Ontario was formed, that gave it a huge momentum. And, you know, the original leaders in infrastructure Ontario did a good job of bringing some standardization, informing the market about the upcoming pipeline. And it built a lot of momentum really quickly. But certainly, when I first arrived in Canada, it was definitely a fledgling industry with a limited number of practitioners who understood the model and understood how to get the best out of it. So it was a time of opportunity for sure. Yeah, I mean, I can relate. I mean, 2007 is when I graduated and I joined the infrastructure Ontario. I think I was actually doing the math and next year is the 20 years anniversary of the infrastructure Ontario Act. So infrastructure Ontario has been around for 20 years. I joined in 19 years ago for three and a half years. And yeah, I was the same. I think I always 120 people when I joined. Very exciting. P3, I think it was called AFP. We could even call it P3 at the time because some political sensitivity. Yeah, I mean, I got my life in Canada because of P3s, right? I joined I/O after my MBA and worked out very well. And here I am. 20 years later, still in Canada because of that P3 movement. Yeah, and same with me, same with me. But look, one thing I did find as well is back in those days, I would say the construction industry was far less sort of mature and evolved compared to how it has changed in the following 20 years. I think at that time, you know, a lot of the social infrastructure stuff was done through construction management. The sort of the heavy industry and oil and gas and stuff was very often cost plus. Sort of public civil infrastructure was typically fixed price. But everything had it set of rules. There was a limited number of players in each. There had been sort of a fairly long reliance on CCDC contracts. And I would say it was a not quite a sleepy industry, but it was not performing to the same level as it performs today. So I attribute that partly to exposure to P3s. It's taught contractors a lot. They've strengthened their commercial management and their commercial awareness a lot. I think they probably wouldn't have recognized it at the time, but I think the contractors in Canada have benefited from exposure to European competition. You know, there was this, you'll remember this Ricardo, there was this great fear of, you know, oh, the Spanish contractors are coming and they'll low bid everything and the world is going to end and we've got to have contracts that don't permit foreign competition. There was all this sort of talk, but honestly, I think all of that process has been really positive for the big general contractors in Canada. They've learned a lot. In many cases, they've coached some of their staff and benefited from that as well. So I think, you know, the industry has matured a huge amount. And certainly, yeah, it surprised me when I first came in sort of 2003, 4, 5, 6, you know, the contractors had definitely had a fairly sheltered existence. And I think exposure to competition and having to think more deeply about a different risk allocation has actually been very positive. Yeah, for sure. You know, when we also think about historically, the amount of maybe especially in Ontario, like the amount of we underbuild the infrastructure that we need. That's why we had a huge infrastructure deficit, which meant we haven't really, the contractor didn't really have the same expertise, the international contractor, why I've had because they had more opportunity to build large infrastructure. I don't think it's, I don't think it's a criticism to the local supply chain is more like we just haven't done a scale or so bring bringing, I think it was visionary. And I think I owe and the B.C. and partnership B.C. at the time and how to do this may of the local contractor, you know, they were going to Europe, inviting international contractor to come and deliver a pipeline of really, really challenging infrastructure projects. And yeah, I tend to agree. I mean, those partnerships, those JVs have mutually beneficial. I mean, you know, a team is always better than an individual. It's harder because now you've got different culture, different processes. But the overall outcome is certainly a positive one where there's knowledge transfer both ways. And whenever there's knowledge transfer, there are definitely improvements and benefits that can be realized in the long run. Yeah, well, I completely agree. I completely agree. And it's great to see, you know, domestic contractors are now increasingly able to compete south of the border and even further afield. So, you know, that's great to see. Okay, so the contractors benefited. Do you think the public side also benefited? I mean, obviously, you know, I think, I think repetition, you get better with repetition. So obviously, if you're going to build the amount of infrastructure that we built in Canada over the 15 years, over the last 15, 20 years, definitely, there's going to be benefits. But did you see any changes on the public side? You mentioned the contractor side, but, you know, the client got more sophisticated over the years. That's a really tough one, Ricardo, because obviously I work for a lot of public sector clients. I don't want to say bad things about them. But it's, I think it's fair to say that partly because the public sector sometimes finds it hard to retain its best talent, sometimes I think they're kind of reinventing the wheel. So yeah, I think they may have been a sort of an improvement in awareness and capabilities in the public sector, but I still don't think there's enough. You know, I think the public sector is still underserved and very often is not able to put in place really top teams to manage procurements and manage projects that perhaps haven't haven't addressed that as well as the private sector has. So I think that's an area that still needs work. And again, maybe put the positive spin on this. And because it's a topic, it's a topic of discussion. And I think I don't go more than two podcasts without mentioning talking about this, you know, collaborative versus PPPs. Do you think that the fact that the clients historically have reliant on a PPP or sort of a turnkey type solution has also hindered them a little bit because they didn't have to develop the in-house skills because the risk were transferred, they were paying a premium for transferring the risk and they were relying on supply chain to deliver. Yeah, so from, you know, if you're in a P3 environment and you're whatever you're working on projects in the health sector, you knew the infrastructure Ontario was going to take care of the procurement and the transaction phases for you and they were going to do a good job doing that. And so, yeah, you're right. You probably didn't need to develop those skills in the same way. And you knew that if you had a sort of a turnkey contract, taking care of the construction, you didn't have to be too closely involved, you just to some extent relied on the contract. So it did instill different skills in public sector clients. And you're right, as we transition now into progressive and alliance models, they are much more demanding on the public sector to have the right skills to make the right decisions at the right time, to provide governance for projects, to be aware of risks and make sure they're being managed in the right way. Yeah, it's a whole, it's a very demanding model for the public sector, which I agree. I think it's really challenging to bring that expertise in a hurry when there's all of this momentum going towards these newer models. I don't think the public sector is ready for them. That's a whole podcast right there, but I think today we're here to talk about your career. We can talk about this as well. I'm really happy to talk about it. And look, while we've talked a lot about P3s, I'm equally happy to talk about Alliance. They both have a role to play. I think there's benefits of both. And the problem is not the model. It's when the model is used in the wrong place at the wrong time. And that's kind of if there's kind of one component of my advisory career, which I end up saying more than any other, it is make the right decision about that. But consider it really fully. Don't be swayed by a trend. Don't be persuaded by noise you're hearing in the market. Really think about your own situation. If you don't have the skills to do something, you shouldn't do it. And equally, if you don't believe that the risk allocation that you're being fed in a particular model is viable, then don't go that way. But making an informed decision, really being thoughtful about that decision is hugely important. So yeah, there's a great time and a place for alliances and for progressive design builds and all of the other variants. But you know, use the right thing in the right time. Have you experienced in the Alliance your first two careers, or were mostly PPPs in turn, Lamp some turnkeys? Yeah, no, not until recent years. So obviously, you read a lot about the, particularly the Australian experience, but no, I'd not seen one first hand until my advisory career. But it's definitely, I think, an observation. There are some really good examples in the Canadian market. And there's other examples where I'm scratching my head and I'm thinking, how does that make sense? Yeah, I think we're experimenting, I think, as a nation we're experimenting, right? We had some failures. And so we are now questioning if there's a better way. And I mean, the intentions are very good. Hopefully, as you said, because when you actually look at the theory and the first, you go back to first principle and you realize that as an organization, you might not have this, the people to carry out that project. So then you go and do an alliance, when in reality, I mean, that's the perfect situation where you want to do a Lamp some turnkey, right? If you actually don't have the knowledge and the expertise, like get somebody to do it for you on a fixed price, right? But, you know, that we had some failures. So we are now reconsidering. So I, I, I choked down all to just trying a few things and hopefully get different outcomes. But I don't think people are preparing some of these are experiments. They might not work out. However, they, I don't think people are approaching it that way. And so the expectations are being set very, very high. And I hope there's not going to be this appointed people in five, 10 years. Yeah. And I think it's, you know, having, having kind of worked with construction projects for 40 years, I'm surprised that people say, now we're doing collaborative contracting. Okay. Well, you can, you can brand it what you like, but we've been collaborating on projects for all of my career. Okay. Now, sometimes the contractual model didn't always help that. But the way projects succeed and they get done is by different entities who have to work on the project collaborating properly. So I think the concept of, you know, collaboration, good project governance, good project leadership, capable of making decisions at the right time, all of those things are good components of a successful project. And it's not necessarily the model that makes the collaboration. It's sometimes other factors that, you know, you've just got the right people who know what to do. I mean, yeah, I mean, sometimes I think you need more data to come to conclusion, but you sometimes you can have a very successful collaborative project with a lump sum turnkey. It's just all vice versa, right? It's really that these mega projects are so complex that it's never just one thing, right? It's never just the people, it never just the contract is never, it's a complex system. It's a very complex system. Yeah. And it's one of those characteristics of professional services, advisors is that they like to distill everything down to, you know, we've done all the analysis and we've whittled away those options and the answer is that you've got to do that. And life is never that simple. Life is always way, way more complicated, especially if you're talking about, you know, mega projects worth tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars, you know, just boiling it down to there's one solution and it just, you know, follow the recipe and it'll work. That's over simplistic. You know, sadly, there are practitioners who sell that. Well, you got to make a living, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. But we, yeah, we make a good living by, by kind of, I think, understanding complexity rather than trying to distill complexity down to, you know, the silver bullet. I mean, that don't get me wrong. I mean, reductionism, I only learned about reductionism a few years ago. And yeah, I mean, I was very upset is not the right word. But like, when I realized that we've been reducing all our, we always tend to reduce the complexity in order to understand it. But then that we never label it as that, which is an exercise to understand the complexity and the standard solution. But just because you reduce it to something that you can understand doesn't mean that that's how it's going to pan out. So you all of this better have all the other tools available for when it doesn't materialize the way that you expect for the materialize. Yeah. And I think I'm just going back to the sort of is the public sector sort of mature and well equipped to manage projects. Obviously, it's a it's a very nuanced picture. There are some fantastic leaders who I've worked with and, you know, they, they would hold their own anywhere around the world. But it is hard to find leaders for those mega projects, particularly in the public sector. I was thinking about what are the characteristics of people who can do that. And I think they need to some extent to see themselves as generalists. Even if they've had specialisms in their career, there are so many factors that influence outcomes on, on major projects. The leadership of that, demands a real generalist outlook, a real breadth of knowledge and understanding. And I, you know, I guess because these are usually civil engineering projects, it tends to be civil engineers who get put in the seat. But there's no reason for that. But we keep doing so. But I do think the more you understand of every aspect of the project, whether it's from, you know, stakeholder relations or communication or government policy or okay, the engineering is important as well. You know, all of those things, they all contribute to a successful project and many others, whether it's contracts or project finance or whatever aspect it is. The more that the leadership understands the breadth of different functions that have to work together and work properly, that I think you better chances of success. And finding those people in the public sector is quite hard. It's quite hard. And, you know, people with also an understanding of the sort of the commercial realities of life in the private sector. So, you know, I think, I think that's a key role. And it's one where, unfortunately, I think the public sector hasn't brought enough people forward to do that. I was asked one time by a government minister who I was working for on a sort of a project turnaround. And he said, you know, anybody else who can sort of do this kind of work because, you know, we've got great plans to build infrastructure in Ontario and blah, blah, blah. And I said, yeah, I know some people who can do that. And I listed out a few names and I told him roughly how much they earned. And that was the end of the conversation really because, you know, sometimes people with those capabilities are not readily going to fit into the Ontario Sunshine List. But that's, you know, I think I want to explore that for a second because there's part of me, yes, the, you know, we say the government in public sector, you kind of try to tell it. I think it's a governance issue as well. And it's a lack of understanding. Because it's not just the people, right? I think the people, if all you have to do, all you have to do is change the Sunshine List rules and allow people, you know, so it's a recognition that this is a major program. It's a, it's a special endeavor. So as a government organization, I need to create the governance, the structure, the, I need to design that the organization they're going to deliver this. And I need to understand that this is a unique endeavor or a fairly unique endeavor. And it needs special circumstances if you want to be successful. And sometimes that sure, you don't have the PM, the project directors, but you can hire them. But then you have to really set up the, the, your governance or your, or structured that allows you to do that. And some, and I think, I think some of the, the some lack of maybe some lack of leadership, but are the, no, at the bureaucratic level, but more at the political level because these, these are, these are political decisions. Agreed. Agreed. Absolutely. It's politically driven. I couldn't agree with you more. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel I almost feel bad for the public sector to a certain degree because they get, they get painted with this brush of like, oh, you're not capable of a, well, no, I mean, we would be capable if you allow me to do things in a certain way. Yeah. No, I mean, it's probably a bigger, a bigger problem than anything else is, is project governance or program governance. It's, it's really difficult. I mean, I would say, but the province is, it's a, it's a challenge of the federal government. It's even more of a challenge, but kind of evolving that decision-making authority on projects where you've got to make multi-million dollar decisions every day. That's quite difficult for government to take their hand off the reins and, you know, okay, well, we don't have time to take any of those micro decisions to a deputy minister or a, or a committee of deputy ministers or whatever it might be to get to a decision because, you know, the project is, is got to move on. We've got a schedule to work to. And I think even if projects are sort of, you know, well planned and governance has been thoroughly thought about, there's still a bit of a reticence to make those big ticket decisions. And it takes a, you know, a pretty strong leader to recognize that, you know, they need to, they need to take those actions and maybe they're a bit exposed when they make those decisions. They're going to be subject scrutiny by the media. They're going to be potentially subject to scrutiny by parliament. You know, it's, it takes a special kind of person to make those big decisions and hold those kind of project leadership roles when they're dealing with massive budgets. Yeah, it's a complex system. Okay, Damien, we're almost, almost the time. But before we go, I want to ask you a couple of those simple questions. Any favourite projects over your career, anything that stood out or other like children, you can't name, you can't call them out. You can't. You can't. Absolutely. Like people have often said to me, well, what was the best project you enjoyed? And would you go back and do it again? And no, I think you've always got to be looking forward. You've always got to be thinking, what's the next thing? That said, there's a couple of projects that kind of stand out in my memory. I'd say probably one I would pick out is Cassani International Airport, which was a new airport that we built in northern Botswana. And we, the contractor I worked for at the time, Macalpine, they'd won the contract and basically, you know, okay, start on the 1st of September or whatever the date was. And I went up, it was 1,000 kilometres north of the capital city, Haberone, where I'd previously been working. And I arrived there and the low loader with the V8 showed up a couple days later. And we got to work. And basically, it was just forest. And, you know, you have a dozer driver, a fuel truck driver, and two bits of equipment, and yourself. And you have to start from forest to build an access road, a labour camp, an airport, and we managed to, oh, we were up on a plateau, there was no water supply, so we had to connect up water, we had to get electricity. And you have to be incredibly resourceful to get those things off the ground and make them happen when you're, you know, you're outside a village of a couple of thousand people on the Chauvi River in northern Botswana. And it was fantastic. I just absolutely loved it. It was a huge challenge. It was a huge kind of, you know, it was very demanding on your ability to be resourceful and find solutions and make a plan. And we had the airport opened about two and a half years later. And that stands out in my memory, because a little bit unfettered from all of the constraints of working in big cities and working in developed countries. And you, you realize you've built an airport with a relatively small number of people in a very short period of time. That was great. That was just an experience where you have to just think on your feet and find solutions to problems, which is, which is what projects are all about. I loved it. Can I ask you, I will do where? When we started the project, let me have a think, I was probably about 26. I mean, that's the thing about construction. Yes, he's a challenging, but like those experiences, like to be working in Botswana building an airport in a virgin land. And that those are unique, those are unique experiences. And you know, that was, that was the reason I wanted to go overseas. Like on my first tour overseas, I was 22. I worked in in Haberani the first time. Oh, sorry, Dwineng, actually, I was working at Dime and Mining Town in the south of Botswana. At the age of 22. And the reason I wanted that is because you can get a lot more responsibility and you can see the world and all these great things. You know, my heart leaps when young folk I'm working with now say, you know, I want to go and work overseas. I want to go and see how how do things work in different countries. That's great. That's that for me, that's that's really positive because it's it signals that someone's got the curiosity and the interest to go and learn some things and take some responsibility, which is great. So that was that was the making of my career, I think, was deciding that Rainy England was was okay. But yeah, there was other places in the world where you could get a bit more of an uplifting professional experience. Yeah, and then when you're young, you you you got the adventure, right? Everything is on the adventure and there's definitely a big adventure. Any other project that stood out? I should probably think of a Canadian one. I should probably think of a Canadian. I tell you, tell you what what's got the makings of being the best project in Canada is also the high-speed rail line from Toronto to Quebec City. Still very, very early days, I know your firm is is deeply involved Ricardo and and we were involved advising government for six years and we're still still involved. That's just got so much potential to be the the best nation building project since the St Lawrence C-way. So I really I'm probably not going to be around to see much of it built, but I hope to see some of it built before I before I disappear completely. But yeah, look, I mean, that's that's just dependent. That's such a such a fantastic project and so that's that's one I think to watch for the next 10 years. Yeah, it would be we'll be really exciting. I mean, and certainly it's exciting even just setting it up right the opportunity and then I think the innovation that we've been brought not just financial innovation, technical innovations. I mean, it could be a catalyst for for many great things in Canada. So hopefully hopefully we'll will steer it in the right direction because these these make a project it's it's about these at these stages about steering them right? I mean, it's like the fragile that you know that the subject to political changes and so I really need the reading this stewardship and almost an incubation in order to make sure that you can actually develop enough to prove the benefit, prove the business case and and building the momentum because the sticker price it's it's sometimes a bit shocking right? So if you don't if you haven't done the work to explain that sticker price, it can be challenging. I think we've seen it we've seen it with the UK right? You know, it's just to run away, not by intended and so they had to rethink it because it wasn't steward properly. Yeah, you're right Ricardo, I was going to mention it as well. That was a project which lost its narrative, you know, forgot what it was there to do. It lost its it lost its sense of purpose. And so instead of being the railway that was going to open capacity for all of the other services across England, instead it just it was a very expensive railway and the critics could just say oh there's a cost over on there's a delay and it lost the narrative of saying this is sort of transformational for the whole of passenger rail in England. Yeah, kind of lost the story and unfortunately there was no way back. So I do hope that you know, Alto is able to keep the narrative focused on the benefits because you're right, it's going to have a big price tag and if that's the only thing on people's minds it's going to get criticized. I mean, this is a fantastic conversation. Is there something I haven't asked you that I should have asked you before we close? You know, I'm sure you're covering it in so many other podcasts, Ricardo, but technology. So, you know, I'm too late in my career to be part of that movement but I think if you are coming into the infrastructure business now, technology has got to be the salvation for, you know, the industry whether you're a contractor or an investor or an asset manager or an owner, whatever you are, technology is going to play such an important part and I think that's something that it's always been on the horizon. Like since the very early stages of my career, even in the 1980s, you know, people were talking about we've, you know, we've got a harness technology and improved the way the industry works and yeah, hasn't quite happened yet, but this time we've got a long way to go, but yes, yes, but it would be nice. It'd be good because I think the the McKinsey, you know, the McKinsey, the 2016 McKinsey report on productivity with the in construction being just above hunting. I think even agriculture does better than construction when it comes to productivity and that's associated with technology, right? It's exploiting technology to improve productivity and then get better outcomes. Yeah, look, I mean, I'm not quite all the way on the AI bandwagon, but I spent a lot of my career with contractors bidding on projects, yeah, doing estimating and scheduling and all the things that you need to do before you're actually going to execute the work. Now, just supposing you have predictive tools like everything that's now becoming available and you actually used them properly and you had the data to draw upon, wouldn't that make that so much better? Yeah, and I think it starts with data. It starts with it. I think historically as an industry, we've been really, really bad at managing our data. Just think of the estimating process, right? I mean, I think there are companies that without naming names, like we still don't have at the strategy for our cooperation and our projects, and not a cohesive one that you can then use the data to train AI because ultimately AI is just just a tool and you need to train it and you need the data to train it. Yeah, yeah. Well, look, I mean, I'm sure you'll cover that on future podcasts. There's people way better equipped to talk about that than me, but I think I'm smart enough to know that that's the future. That's something we've got to do. Perfect, and we'll just leave it with that. Maybe this was fantastic. Thank you very much for joining me. Good luck with you next, with your fourth career, and I'm sure I'll see you around. I'm sure I will look great to see you Ricardo and I'll keep safe and sound. Bye now. Bye. That's it for this episode of Navigate Image of Programs. If you enjoy this episode, please consider following and leaving a review. Up next, I invite you to continue elevating the conversation on my personal LinkedIn at Ricardo Cousentino.