CEA Podcast - The Art of Managing Engineering Projects with Aaron Shavel
Transcript Highlights from my conversation with Isaac Oakeson, PE from Civil Engineering Academy.
I joined the CEA podcast for a great conversation on my experience as a PM on large scale infrastructure projects. We discussed my journey to becoming a PM, the challenges and rewards of these complex projects and the promising innovations coming to the construction industry. Watch, listen or read below:
YouTube - The Art of Managing Engineering Projects with Aaron Shavel | CEA 268
Spotify - The Art of Managing Engineering Projects with Aaron Shavel | CEA 268
This is an edited and shortened transcipt.
Isaac Oakeson, PE: Aaron, thank you for joining me today on the Civil Engineering Academy podcast. I appreciate you doing this with me.
Aaron Shavel, PE: Absolutely! Happy to be here.
IO: Well, I’m excited. You know, we kind of found you—I know you did a podcast with the ASCE, talking about how your mom influenced your career choice and such. I always start these out by having you explain your own background and how you got yourself into civil engineering in the first place.
AS: Sure! Yeah, I feel pretty fortunate. I always kind of knew what I wanted to do. I always knew I wanted to work in construction. I grew up in a construction family. My mom spent 15 years working as a project manager for a large civil company in New Jersey and New York. Eventually, she started her own reinforcing steel subcontractor business. So, I grew up around it—on job sites, crawling in and out of machines. I kind of always knew that’s what I wanted to do.
I went to RPI—Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute—an engineering school in Upstate New York. It’s the oldest engineering school in America, with the first civil engineering degree in America. I studied civil engineering there and then moved to New York City. I joined a general contractor focused on MTA construction and have been building and rehabilitating train stations and train systems for about a decade now. So, I always knew it was going to be construction. I didn’t know exactly how that would work out, but I was steadfast in that.
IO: I like it! Where was Dad in this picture? Was he involved?
AS: He is not in construction. He’s in manufacturing textiles—import and export. He’s also a very busy businessman. I got to see a lot of different perspectives from him as well. So, two totally different industries, but definitely good insight from both of them.
IO: Wow! An interesting house to grow up in for sure. Yeah, that sounds awesome
AS: Yeah, I have a younger brother who also, you know, followed in our mother’s footsteps into construction. He’s an electrical and computer systems engineer, so he actually came into the industry from a completely different angle.
IO: Oh, so he works at TCE too?
AS: Yeah, we both work at the same company. He’s actually our Innovation Manager. He runs a team of dedicated engineers and basically handles all of our innovation implementation—everything from OpenSpace to Procore to some in-house technology. It’s pretty cool! We get to see it from two different angles and work together. But yeah, definitely a construction family for sure.
IO: That's awesome. So, you graduated in civil engineering. How did you end up being a project manager? How did you get into that route? Why was that the path you chose to follow?
AS: I think, as a project manager, you kind of get to see the full lay of the land, right? You're involved in all the technical stuff to some extent. You have to remove yourself a little bit, but financially, with costs, you're basically driving the ship. That's kind of where my career took me. I started as a field engineer, then project engineer, then assistant project manager. You know, there are basically two routes if you're working for a contractor: Do you want to be a senior-level specialist engineer, a superintendent, or a project manager who brings all those components together? I consider myself a jack of all trades, and I feel like I'm very good at bringing all those things together. You get to work on all the different components to some extent. That's what drew me to project management, especially in a general contractor role.
IO: I'm just curious because there are probably a lot of engineers out there wondering which career path to take. Do you have any qualities you think are important to build or have if you're going into project management?
AS: Yeah, the first one—and I've kind of already said it—is being a jack of all trades, and that comes from curiosity. One of the pitfalls we see with young engineers coming out of school is that they say, "I'm an electrical engineer," or "I'm a mechanical engineer, that's what I do," or "I'm a civil engineer, I'm looking at structural steel." Being a specialist is fantastic, but you need to understand everything else around you. One thing I hate is when a civil-minded field engineer says, "I don't need to know that; that's electrical stuff." That's absolutely the wrong mindset. You might not understand exactly what's going in the conduit or why it has to go to a specific panel, but you need to understand how everything ties together.
IO: So curiosity is key, understanding how everything connects.
AS: Exactly. And the second is communication skills. In the field, you're talking to craft labor, designers, and owner representatives. You could be explaining the same thing to all three but in very different ways. Verbal communication is one thing, but what really separates good engineers from great engineers is written communication. Being able to convey your point, make difficult technical decisions in clear, bite-sized components—technical writing or even general communication writing—is one of the biggest hurdles for young engineers. It's also one of the biggest differentiating factors.
IO: I noticed on your LinkedIn profile that you have a Design-Build certification. Can you talk about what that is and the value it brings?
AS: Sure. The Design-Build Institute of America (DBIA) is a great organization. I like to say I drank the Kool-Aid! I was actually at their national conference last week. Depending on where you are in the country, design-build could be relatively new. In the Pacific Northwest, it's been common for 20–30 years—it's ingrained in agencies, contractors, designers, and practitioners. But on the East Coast, it's only been meaningful in the last decade, even at the legislative level. Now, design-build is becoming the project delivery method of choice for large owners. The idea is that the owner provides a general idea of what they want, and then designers and contractors develop the full project. This shrinks the bid process and pre-engineering time. Plus, how many times have you been in the field and thought, 'Who designed this? We can't build this!' That excuse disappears because you're involved in the design process from the start. I first learned about DBIA five years ago on one of the first Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) projects I worked on.
One of the first MTA projects I worked on was with the Metropolitan Transit Authority. I got involved with DB about two or three months into being between jobs, when you're kind of on the bench waiting to be placed somewhere. I took the course, went through the certification process, and it was great. One of the main benefits was the community; there are a bunch of people around the country who’ve gone through the same challenges, and you're able to bounce ideas off them. It's a great community and a valuable resource. I strongly recommend that people either get involved or at least research it.
IO: That makes sense. Let’s dive into the work you're doing. Can you describe one of the most complex infrastructure projects you've worked on and what are some of the challenges you face with that.
AS: I spent the 10 years of my career doing all MTA construction, right? So, New York City Transit and Long Island Railroad, you know, the big subway system and commuter rails inside of New York City. All of our jobs are, regardless of the complexity of the actual job or how difficult you're working inside of, existing train stations. In some cases, 120 years old, working off hand-drawn as-builts. And then also, New York City subway is the only 24/7 subway in the world. There are no days off; there's no work window. You have to request months out, you know, 8-hour, 53-hour, you know, general order outages. So that, right off the bat, is incredibly complex. The access is a nightmare, but it's part of what makes it really fun.
So I’ve done, you know, signal upgrades, five miles of complete track replacement, signal upgrades. That's when I started as a field engineer. That was a cool job. I worked as a project engineer doing station rehabilitation, so inside of Penn Station, basically gutting and renovating those subway entrances while active. So, 200,000 people a day were walking through our station. We replaced 8,000 feet of flooring and 8,000 feet of ceiling and basically had people walking through little mazes every single day, trying to move them from one spot to another. So that was really challenging.
I think the most exciting project I worked on recently is Long Island Railroad Elmont station. So it's a brand-new Long Island Railroad train station, their first new train station in 50 years, and it was built for the new New York Islanders NHL stadium. That's my favorite team. It was incredibly exciting to be there while they built the stadium and we built the train station. But that was a station along the existing right-of-way, the busiest single line of track, commuter track in North America, right? Long Island Railroad is the biggest commuter rail. So, trains going by 80 miles an hour all day. And then we had to build basically the platform extended over an active highway adjacent to a rail bridge. Just incredibly complex, structural issues, access issues. Got to use a million different kinds of lulls, cranes, crazy different boom configurations. So, yeah, that was really fun. That was a really cool project.
The project I'm working on now is an ADA upgrade for the MTA. Four stations in four separate boroughs, eight elevators and escalator rehabilitation, bringing it up to ADA standards. So, on top of the challenges of working in a 110-year-old system, we have a team of like 45 people, and one end to the other, our opposite sides of the city, about two and a half hours by subway. So, just like, on top of the technical complexities, the organizational and geographic obstacles are incredibly challenging. And again, we got to be super organized, and communication, right? All goes back to that.
IO: Yes, well, as you were talking about all this, and just talking about the age of infrastructure you’re working with, old hand-drawn drawings and such, I’m just kind of curious—what, in your position and what you're seeing out there, are some of the technological advancements that you’re using right now, and maybe what you’re excited for in the future?
AS: So, I’m going to come at that from, I guess, two different angles. I think, first off, anyone who's in this space is kind of, at this point, inundated with all of the new technology and innovation coming into our industry. And I think we’re about to get over the hump, where the first iteration of it in the last couple of years has been software, and a lot of it has been incredibly helpful. But, you know, there’s only so many ways we can reorganize our document control, right, and our workflow. And I think we’re coming on to the other side where we’re going to see either hardware or tangible technologies that will kind of advance it.
One thing I’m really excited about, and I’ve tried to implement as much as possible, is pre-fabrication. Anytime you can remove a variable, you can do something offsite, you know, you eliminate time in the field, labor, safety concerns, you’re able to ensure quality—it’s an immense opportunity. Long Island Railroad station I was talking about earlier, we did 2,400 linear feet of platform, all prefabricated. All of our back-of-house buildings for all mechanical and electrical components, all of those wall panels were all pre-cast with brick facades cast in. The elevator shaft was pre-cast. Our pedestrian bridge was built on the wayside. It came in pieces. We built it on the wayside and picked it in one piece.
So I took that experience to this project, and we, a couple of weeks ago, just installed our first pre-cast elevator shaft. So basically, 30 feet below grade, it came in about five different segments, locked together. All the waterproofing was pre-installed. You know, we installed that in the elevator, the actual above-ground structural head house in about 12 hours. That would’ve taken about three weeks traditionally. Concrete, yeah, between cure times and strip and waterproofing—three weeks is optimistic. We’ve already done three others, and one took three weeks, and one took five weeks, and we did it in 12 hours.
So I think that is an incredibly exciting opportunity. I think we’re going to see a lot more of that. I mean, that’s old news in bridge construction. I think we’re just going to find new and more creative ways to do that.
IO: That’s amazing. You know, I’ve heard you talk about the Civil Engineering Golden Age. What defines that era for you?
AS: I think we’re seeing—you know, it’s in the news every day, right? We’re seeing an unprecedented amount of public money being thrown everywhere. I mean, you haven’t seen this kind of expansion and public interest in infrastructure since the interstate system. And I think what’s becoming apparent is that, you know, the public is starting to learn these are not one-time investments. These are re-investments. These are things that need to continue to happen.
So, not only is there all this public and federal and state-level money, but there’s also incredible public appetite for it. You know, we’re always building in New York, but the last couple of years have been, you know, very different. All three New York airports are undergoing multi-billion dollar renovations. All of the bridges in the area, you know, they’ve either gone through deck replacements or cable replacements. The subway systems are seeing massive, massive upgrades. But it’s, again, it’s not just the money being spent, but it’s also just the public appetite and willingness. I think there’s a lot of really exciting things going on. It’s a great time to be in the industry.
IO: I totally agree, and I work in the utility world, and there is a massive amount of money being spent into upgrading infrastructure. Wildfire is kind of the big buzzword out here. But okay, you have systems that are old, and just money has not been spent to upgrade things, and life cycles—you know, the stuff is reaching its life cycle and needs to be replaced.
AS: So, that’s actually like one of my biggest professional pet peeves, right? Is like, maintenance isn’t sexy, right? We wait for the thing to deteriorate or to age out, and then we replace it like it’s an iPhone. We throw it away. These are multi-billion dollar investments, and we’re designing them for 70-year, with the idea of it'll last 70 years, it will deteriorate, and replace it, rather than, you know, designing and building to avoid obsolescence. Or even maintaining what you have. There are ways to maintain that, or you design it like a [replaceable] bridge deck. You [like] orthotropic deck segments, so you can remove them and replace them in 30 years, right? I think my biggest, the worst example of this are stadiums and arenas. I think place is super important, right? You go to a famous arena—I hate to admit it because I don't want to give Ranger fans any credence—but you walk into MSG, there’s magnitude to the place. Place is important.
IO: Oh, for sure.
AS: And I think like we’re building stadiums for 30 years and then knocking them down, rather than saying how do we give ourselves the opportunity to either refurbish this, like rebuild it for the possibility of refurbishment, or build it for the possibility of expansion in 20-30 years for whatever the new needs are.
IO: Well, all right. Well, this has been a fun conversation. I appreciate everything you’ve shared with us and your experience becoming a project manager. Is there any advice you’d give younger engineers that are aspiring to either work in infrastructure or even in New York? Because some engineers do want to bounce around and experience different things, many want to go to bigger cities and see what that’s like, but any advice for younger engineers?
AS: Absolutely, and I touched on it earlier. It’s to be a jack of all trades. You know, I think it’s important that you have a specialty, and you have your area of expertise, but if you’re able to, you know, be a structural engineer and sit in the room with the architects, I mean, [that’s] a huge deal, right? And then you’re empathetic to where they want to hang their ceiling grid, and you can incorporate that into your structural design. Or you understand why the electrical engineers and designers want to run their routing in a certain way and hang their lights. It’s just incredibly important to understand all the different components around you and to be involved with it.
Again, I’m a civil-minded PM, and I work for an electrical contractor. You know, we work as a GC, but I’m still surrounded by electrical engineers. And it’s one of our big mantras: we don’t really care what kind of engineer you are. It’s that you’re an engineer or at least have the engineering mindset and, you know to ask the questions, you know to go talk to people.
And then the second part of that, curiosity and all that, is talk to everybody on the whole chain of command and the whole integration. Right? So it’s one thing to talk to the electrical designer, go talk to the electrical PM, go talk to the electrical foreman, go talk to the electrician. Understand that if what the electrical designer is telling you is really what the foreman and the electrician are going to install in the field. Can they actually do it?
The classic example we always have at TCE is like a 4-inch conduit. You can draw it however you want on a piece of paper, right? 4-inch conduit doesn’t bend, it’s pretty static. So, like, there are different realities that you can’t experience unless you really go out and ask all those questions and start to put over, you know, layers of experience and just exposure. Don’t be afraid to ask questions.
IO: It’s amazing. Great, great advice. Well, thank you for doing this. As a project manager, I’m sure you’re keeping, you know, that lovely triangle—scope, schedule, and budget—all tied together. Different, my best. I know a lot of engineers, uh, they might not know this, but when you get into this, build scope is like a big deal, and I’m sure as a project manager, you have to dive into that quite heavily and understanding the project itself. Could you touch on that just a little bit as we close here?
AS: Yeah, absolutely. My team makes fun of me because I have like three giant binders on my desk all the time. So I have our full scope of work printed out, highlighted, and then I have all of our subcontracts highlighted and tabbed, too. You got to know what you’re managing, right? Because everyone’s first response is, "Hey, it’s not my responsibility." It’s always someone’s responsibility. Someone owns it somewhere down the line, you need to understand that.
So, I guess, and I’ll kind of come back to the other thing—one of my other pieces of advice, and this goes with the same thing in scope, we always tell our team, we have to be the best prepared. We have to know what the scope of work is better than the subcontractor does, better than the owner knows. So, you gotta—you just gotta know the scope of work, And if you don’t, you gotta have a clever excuse on how to pin it back on the owner.
IO: That’s right. Change order. Just kidding.
AS: Exactly. Yeah. You said it, not me!
IO: Well, Aaron, thank you for doing this. I appreciate all your advice.