002 – Greening Riyadh: Inside Saudi Arabia’s $10 Billion Urban Oasis with Jovita Stander

[00:00:00] Host: Welcome to the Major Project podcast, your inside. Look at the high stakes world of billion dollar projects.

[00:00:11] Orion Matthews: Welcome to the Major Project podcast. I’m Orion Matthews, your host, and today we have Jovita Stander here to talk about the $8 billion Green Riyad Project in Saudi Arabia. Jovita, welcome to the podcast.

[00:00:25] Jovita Stander: Thank you so much Orion, for having me, and it’s really a pleasure to be speaking with you today.

[00:00:30] Orion Matthews: Today I think our goal here was to talk a little bit about the Green Riyad Project, which is also part of the Vision 2030 Initiative.

Maybe you can unpack that a little bit for us and just tell us about this sort of mega, mega initiative and then mega project inside of that initiative.

[00:00:48] Jovita Stander: So I think it is important maybe to explain Vision 2030 before we talk about Green Riyad because that is formed spot with a lot of other projects from spot of the Vision 2030 that was launched in 2016 by Israel Highness the Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.

And the goal of vision 2030 was really to di diversify the economy and get also the economy away from the oil based economy. And so Vision 2030 encompasses a number of projects and one of them is Green Riyad. How Green Riyad fits into Vision 2030 is because as goals vision 2030 has one of the goals is really.

Healthy lifestyle. Also to increase the life expectancy from the population from 74 to 80 years and increase, interestingly the population’s rate of weekly exercise from 13% to 40%. So that’s quite a sort of a big jump. Yeah. And also to have three of Saudi Arabia cities amongst the top hundred globally.

Together with that which is obviously close to my heart, is a part of Vision 2030 is really to increase the representation of Saudi women in the workforce. So that is also one of their goals. And yeah, so green riyad, when we start talking about it, will then fit. Nicely into vision 2030.

And then

[00:02:22] Orion Matthews: before we talk a little bit about Green Riyad, which I believe is the largest reforestation or tree planting project ever completed. Maybe could I get a little bit about your background kind of how you sort of got into project controls and maybe understand a little bit about your career path?

Thank you.

[00:02:43] Jovita Stander: Yes. I currently fulfill the role of project control director with Knight Frank, which is a global real estate consultancy firm. And before that I was a project control director on green Riyad, like you said, the biggest forestation project or urban forestation product project in the world with the aim of planting 7.5 million trees in the city of Riyadh.

And so that’s quite exciting exciting to be talking about green Riyad in a few moments. Just also a little bit about me because that will into the discussion about project. I work in a number of industries amongst them amongst the urban landscape of forestation mixed use, high rise buildings transportation and rail infrastructure power oil and gas export terminals, and then the mining sector.

And it also led me to work in a number of countries across the world. So South Africa, where I’m originally from. So please don’t, my accent with like Australia, because Australia, yeah. Yes. Normally people say you from Australia? No, South Africa. How can you confuse our accents? But anyway so besides South Africa, also Angola and Mozambique in the African continent, I’ve worked in Brazil Saudi Arabia, and also in a lot of states in the US because I was in the US for five years before coming to Saudi Arabia.

So that is part of, you know, the life of projects and also working in project control. And I think that gives me the ability, all this diverse industries and countries the ability to adapt to new environments you know, teams multicultural, different languages, cultures, and so on.

And also just a little bit about me. I’m really a, problem solver. I bring order to chaos and I think project control does a lot of that. It brings order to chaos. And I enjoy working on projects just because it’s got like a start and a finish date, whether that’s one year, five years, but I know that, you know, at one point this will come to an end and then I can move on to a new adventure because really I’m a gypsy at heart, so I can’t sort of stay in the same place doing the same thing for you know, for a long time.

That really helps me in terms of my personality and, you know, sort of my form of fear of missing out. I think I’ve chosen the right career or chose me. I dunno. But that’s a little bit about me and just a little bit about project control, but we can go into a little bit more detail during our session.

[00:05:23] Orion Matthews: Awesome. Thanks for that background. That sounds like quite a trip and a travel. I’m super curious to, to maybe have you on again and talk about some of the other places that you’ve been and some of these other projects too, someday. So let’s turn our attention to, yeah. To Green Riyad which is an incredible project and one of the reasons I’m so excited to talk about it is that I think most people, when they think about a billion dollar plus project, they think of a construction project.

And I think that this is a really inter, this is a construction engineering problem, but planting trees is a non-traditional multi-billion dollar project. So I’m really curious to tease out some of the differences and hear the story. So maybe, yeah, just introduce us a little bit to the project and maybe take us to the intersection point of when you.

Perhaps got the call that you were gonna take this on.

[00:06:12] Jovita Stander: I think before I start talking about green Project per se, maybe I can just you know, bring project control numbers percentages and things like that. So just talking a little about Green Riyad because some of the information that I’ll share.

Sorry about Riyadh City. Some of the information that I’ll share about Riyadh will then make it better easier to then understand the project and some of the the goals of the project. Riyadh City in 2022 the population was round about 7 million people, and they forecast that by 2030 the population of Riyadh will be 9.6 million people.

And what’s interesting also about this 9.6 figure is that 4.1 million of Saudis and then the rest, the 5.5 million are actually expats from all over the world that work in Riyadh. And there’s, I think there’s probably no country. That’s not represented here. That is just for me, it’s just interesting.

And then there is really between 2022 and 2030 was the forecast around about 38% increase. To bring it into perspective between 1974 and 1992, the population increase was 8.2%, and now we’re looking at an increase of 39 38, 30 9%, and which also then has an effect on the real estate market in terms of housing and the housing demand.

Between 2024 and 2034. So 10 years is 305,000 new housing units. So that’s sort of, you know, gives you an idea in terms of the size of the city and the population and you know, what those housing units are also gonna, do in terms of infrastructure and why we also need that for Green Riyad and green Riyad Riyad City.

You know, in terms of economy there’s a lot of infrastructure projects and then services in terms of financial services, digital economy, and biotech. So that is one of sort of what drives the Riyad economy. So Green Riyad, like we mentioned, is one of the most ambitious urban deforestation projects in the world.

It was launched in March 19 2020 which for me is actually quite a nice date because my sister, my younger sister’s birthday is actually on the 19th of March. Nice. And like we mentioned the goal, one of the biggest KPIs of green Riyad is the 7.9. Seven, 5 million trees that needs to be planted across the city.

And that includes neighborhoods parks, mosque roads side streets. And so really it’s, you know, even public facilities like, and education facilities universities and so on. Also the valleys what we call wadis. And I’ve, the other day I’ve just driven through one of the Wadis Wafa and it’s beautiful because there’s a lot of roots for cyclists and pedestrians lots of trees and it’s really very pretty.

And that you can see people exercising now sort of at the end of the day. And it’s just beautiful. So it’s like a little green strip through you know, just beside the city. Just also outta curiosity the, green Riyad. Riyadh City actually lies in between two WA and one of them is Wafa.

Just for interest sake wanted to mention that. Now, the other thing that’s quite interesting, and that’s why we why I said, you know, the population and the housing units, why it needed for green riyad is because green riyad for the irrigation of what we call green assets. So it’s trees, not only the trees, although those are really sort of the, probably the most important KPI, but the other green assets are shrubs lawns and so on.

This the irrigation will be done by using treated sewage affluent water. So the water that we drink and then undr. And there is a whole network, of water for irrigation. And that is run about a 1,300 kilometers of irrigation network throughout the city. And so this treated sew affluent will be used a, you know, a hundred percent of the irrigation will be this type of water.

And what’s interesting is in the beginning, when.

You know, on for the project and what was needed. So part of the irrigation and the amount of water that would be needed wa was calculated on the amount of population. Because you know, how much gray water does x amount of people generate. And so the calculation was based on that. And so the population, if it decreases beyond a certain number, which I dunno what that number is it’ll have an influence in terms of the irrigation the water for irrigation.

But with the growth of the population the projection for 2030, I don’t think that would be a problem. I think there will be excess water so they can actually plant more trees, you know, if they wanted to do like a phase two or three of the project.

That, so that’s just that was

[00:11:36] Orion Matthews: gonna be one of my questions.

How did they choose 7.9 million and not just say eight? Was that a

[00:11:42] Jovita Stander: yeah. I just need to break stuff. No, I said seven point nine, but it’s actually 7.5. Okay, perfect. I think it was just the studies. Yeah. And also because they wanted to achieve, and we can talk about some of your objectives of or the outcomes of Green Project.

It was to achieve a certain amount of shade, which then or what wey cover. So that certain other things, because the KPIs of a green is not only planting the trees, but there are other KPIs. So for instance dropping the temperature of the city by one to two degrees. That is one of yeah, of the KPIs.

The other KPI would be to increase the the quality of the air. So for instance, you know, anybody that has been to Riyadh will tell you that the traffic is just terrible. There’s lots of cars on the road. And that’s the traffic is a big source of frustration for anybody using the roads.

And one of the things is to reduce the carbon dioxide between three and 6%. So there’s better quality of air in the sitting. Something else that, the project wants to achieve is the capacity of the city to absorb rainwater and people might be like rain in the desert. Yes.

There is a season which is in winter over sort of November to January when it actually rains. The rest of the time it’s really dry and you know, when it rains people are so happy they actually go out, you know, out of the offices and so on, and they actually film or take pictures of the rain.

And I just find that be beautiful because you know there for me. So when it rains, does it just

[00:13:28] Orion Matthews: mostly run off or is there like a groundwater source? Okay,

[00:13:32] Jovita Stander: so it runs off. But, so now the city to be able to capture that resource there’s a lot of emphasis also on stormwater drainage and stormwater management so that they can actually capture that water as well.

And then use it for irrigation. And of course, then also preventing floods and things like that. Then the other thing about the project is also to enhance the aesthetic view of the city. You know, sometimes when you drive through the city and you’re still driving through some areas that, have very little trees or no trees at all. And in the moment, you know, you move into an area where there’s already some greenery and so on, you know, you it’s actually so nice just to see that a little bit of green because the area y in Riyadh because of course the natural let’s say landscape, it’s ve tones of browns and light measure.

So you always you always seeing that tone of color. And so the moment you see something green, it, you know, it’s it’s nice on, on the senses. And yeah I think it’s, it probably lifts your mood if at least it lifts mine. You know, coming from South Africa, lots of greenery.

So it was just my mind. The other thing that I just wanted to mention is that with Green Riyad also because of Vision 2030 in terms of healthy lifestyle there’s a lot of parks, even small parks being either developed or being planted more greenery so that people in the neighborhood are basically at the maximum of 300 meters away from a green space to encourage people to go out and to have that healthy lifestyle.

Those are one of a few things that I just wanted to mention about green Riyad.

[00:15:22] Orion Matthews: So can you break this down? I think I heard three major components. There’s probably more, but it’s sort of planting canopy. And then there was a major sort of storm water. Sort of industrial project. And then a third, which was sort of creating spaces, parks, recreational space in the city. Is that kind of, those were your three major scopes. Was there anything else? Yeah.

[00:15:47] Jovita Stander: Okay. Yes. The so these are sort of, the main things. Of course based on that, let’s say just if we take the canopy cover that has got then other benefits like reducing the temperature for instance, and their aesthetic vision of the city, right?

And then with the storm waters really to harness the rainwater. And that then has got, not only that you are using that resource, but then you are also preventing other issues that might have occurred in the past, like flooding. And so there’s always there’s a lot of off upfront benefits, let’s say, from the project itself.

[00:16:23] Orion Matthews: Okay. And so then, alright, so I think I understand the scope and then you got the call to join this project as the project controls. Project manager, director, what was the title? Director specifically? Because you were director pro?

[00:16:38] Jovita Stander: Yeah. A cross control director. Yes.

[00:16:41] Orion Matthews: And so when did you intersect? I were you, had you just sort of f ied into execute?

Like where within the project did you then intersect and kind of, can you take us back to that moment? Because that’s a big order to get all of that built. Yeah, it was what, $8 billion budget? Something like that?

[00:17:01] Jovita Stander: I think it’s at the time that I joined putting Saudi rial back into dollar in 20 when was that?

1. I think that was around between 10 and 11 billion us. Yeah. Okay, so going back in time I was actually sitting in my house in KT or Houston, Texas when I got a call and out of the blue to say, look we’re looking you know, this is sort of, the project we’re looking for.

Project control director, would you be interested? And, I did a little bit of research and then I ended up here. Now the project they talk about Green Rio Project, but in actual fact, the project is a program just because of the different types of typology projects that they have.

So you’ve got rows, which is linear. You’ve got neighborhoods you’ve got parks that they need to start from scratch. And the park is not just a park, it’s almost a smart park. So there’s there will be retail, there will be, roots for people to work, walk there’s some entertainment spaces.

And then Saudi is a very digital sort of, country and so there will be other things as well that people can connect and so on. So it’s not just a park in, in, you know, like when I was growing up as a kid. And the parks are very big. Some of the parks actually have a stadium.

Wow. Okay. All from spot of the park and, you know, there’s a lot of connectivity with Metro with other things going around in that area. Parks, the parks that green looks at some of them are very big. And then within the neighborhoods there are sort of smaller park.

So that is why I’m saying it’s more than a, it’s rather a program because of the different types of projects. And within let’s say if we take the WBS that says neighborhoods, there’s a number of neighborhoods and not all of them can start at the same time. So the projects, when I started working on the project, the different projects in different, phases. So some were okay. Were almost being completed because there was like a pilot a portion or a pilot project that encompasses encompassed a few roads. So the, that was starting towards completion of the project and the handover phase. Some projects were still in design and some projects were just started.

Some projects are just in the planning phase and they might be going out to tender now, for instance. And I must say it was great that it was like this because I think it everything. Was in execution or was you know, all at the same the same phase. We as approach control would probably have a hard time being able to monitor and control all the projects.

So it was actually good that it was staggered. And also because it’s such a big program and it it touches the whole city. I think this was the correct approach because you can’t let’s say for the network, the water network, you can’t dig up the whole city for the network. I mean, it’ll just be one big chaos, right?

When they install the network, you know, there’s planning in terms, okay, now we’re doing this, or maybe we’re doing two or three portions of the city. So I think this was the right approach in doing it. We don’t talk about phases, but we’re talking about, you know, let’s say priorities in terms of the various projects

[00:20:29] Orion Matthews: and then, you know, just to back up for those that are more one-on-one can you explain what the role that you had was doing and what your team might have looked like for the project?

[00:20:43] Jovita Stander: So that was quite interesting. So control, you’ve got your.

Irrespective of the type of project or industry, normally it’ll be planning and scheduling cost you know, more monitoring of the cost so that you can get your CPI for the project, your cost, performance index for the project, and so on. Then normally document control will be part of form, part of approach control.

And then depending on the the organization, I should say then risk also forms part of approach control. Then I’ve worked on projects or with companies where the contracting and the commercial portion of the project also fell under project control. Here in Greenard when I worked on the project I had the scheduling.

I had, document control cost risk fell within sort of my domain. Also project control that I didn’t mention previously, but project control in terms of the reporting that’s also, normally part of that is part of control. But then I also had the GIS. Team. And we can, because GIS was was used for planning.

And we can, that was actually quite interesting and we can talk about that just now. And then what I loved is that I had the graphic design team also project control. So for me, you know, dealing with schedule and numbers and stuff that was nice because I could use a little bit of my creative side with the graphic designers because we, they produce beautiful presentations and sometimes brochures for, you know, the parks for instance.

Because a lot of times the leadership of Glen Riyad needed to do presentations to other stakeholders. And you know, that was quite nice. It was yeah, I think every project control team should have the graphic design under them. I’m just gonna say that.

[00:22:43] Orion Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of times I kind of think of that.

There was like a really good book written by Cole I think ne Nebar. Anyway, it said Storytelling with Data is the book title. And it’s really eyeopening because it’s sort of like a story of form over function. It’s like you can have all the data you want, but if you don’t have the storytelling ability with that data, it just sort of falls apart.

So having a graphic design team at your fingertips can really I think can be the difference between being able to sort of get what you want done and not even if you have all the right KPIs and all the right metrics. Exactly to, yeah.

[00:23:19] Jovita Stander: Yeah, because I think you know, when you’re talking the whole time about figures and percentages and this, that, and the other if you can represent that visually, like through an infographic, through a nice graph, we use, of course a lot of graphs, s-curves and so on.

But maybe just presenting it with slightly different, I dunno, colors or something like that, just refreshing it. I think it makes it so much easier for people first to understand the data and then it makes it easier for you to deliver, to tell the story around the, around that. And the graphic designers were really fantastic in what they did.

I really have a lot more respect for, you know, for graphic designers in terms of how they can take. This data and in one page just represented and everybody, you know, understands. It’s you know, the one picture is more valuable than a thousand words, I suppose. Yeah.

[00:24:16] Orion Matthews: Did you also have permitting as part of your sort of domain?

Yeah. Or was Permitt permit handled separately? Permit,

[00:24:24] Jovita Stander: yeah. Permitting was dealt with with through the stakeholder managers. There is of course I don’t, I’m not going to say that I understand all the permitting aspects here in Saudi Arabia and what is needed and so on.

So the the stakeholder dementia looked at that, but permitting.

On the schedule and yeah. So the permitting didn’t necessarily fall under us as project control. But we were certainly aware of it and made sure that everything was in place. Also because, I mean, it’s quite strict in Saudi Arabia can’t start excavation if you don’t have an excavation permit or building permit and so forth.

All of that needed to be in place before anything started.

[00:25:09] Orion Matthews: And so then let’s just talk tools then, because I really wanna talk about the GIS part. You kind of hinted that there’s some really interesting stuff there. It sounded were you doing your progress, sort of, of the project in GIS?

Were you doing it in P six? Kind of what was your main set of tools? That you were working with to execute the project?

[00:25:28] Jovita Stander: For scheduling prima therapy, six for sure. And then the GIS sorry, GIS arc. A country member now you need to help me. You probably know more than me.

Arc, GIS. Yeah. Yeah. The two databases spoke to each other now with GIS and why GIS was so important is because at the end the trees and the green assets would be will be mapped back to gs. And we can talk about that just now. But in terms of the schedule and gs, so GS had a code for each, let’s say a mosque a segment of a street anything that we needed to know, where there was gonna be either a tree, a shrub, or a ground cover. Each of those little assets had a code, and those codes would then tie back into P six. So if I had a neighborhood, a and in the neighborhood I had 10 masks that needed greening, and I had, let’s say a main road and the segments of the road, all those codes from GIS would be shown in P six for that particular project.

And so it was then and of course each of you know, the mosque or the segment of the street and so on had then costs also associated with it. So there was a lot of, yeah, the two databases needed to speak to each other. And if anything changed, let’s say for argument’s sake, that there were 10 mosques, but they decided only that they were gonna do only the one mosque, which they call a Friday mosque.

So the mosque is only used on a Friday, which is the holiday for Islam here in in the Middle East. And not the. Other nine mos say, which is sort of your weekly moss. Then that would change. And then that needed to be reflected back in P six. And any updates that we did in P six that, you know, this has been completed and so on, then would also reflect back into js.

So there was a lot of making sure that things, the code correct and then, between the two databases and what I was just going to say in terms of the co, the codes, if then there were like 10 codes or 20 codes used for each of these little assets within the neighborhood, all of those codes would show on P six. So that we could always, doesn’t matter which database you were using.

And also GIS was used also as a planning tool. In the sense of, let’s say that they needed to green a wadi was a portion of the wa GIS helped us to make sure that the borders were properly delineated so that we knew exactly which portion of that terrain. Was our responsibility for greening, and maybe because there might have been a little portion that was like in private a private ownership that we couldn’t go into.

So a lot of that was used and if there was any uncertainty then either the GIS staff or the stakeholder manager would then go and speak with the municipality, let’s say, and to make sure that that portion that we identified was it in private ownership or not, or who was the owner. So that you know, there was no issues around about that.

So JS really helped quite a lot and and it’ll help even more when we talk about the green assets and what they, what the plan is with gis.

[00:29:01] Orion Matthews: And about those green assets, like how do you decide if you’re planting like 7.5 million trees? Which tree? What trees are you planning? Who’s in charge of your trees and like what is that?

Everything from a shrub to a giant. Yeah. Look, I’m imagining these giant conifers tell me a bit, how did you manage, was there a university involved that was like picking trees? Like how did you sort all of that out?

[00:29:27] Jovita Stander: So with the green assets the project one of the departments is the tree management office.

So on the organogram of the the project, we’ve got facility management office, we’ve got the construction management office project management office where where I sort of fitted in. And then amongst other things, also the tree management office. And there was a whole study done in terms of native trees.

So everything needs to be native to, to the region. Also looking at green acids that are you know, heat can heat resistant and requires very little water. And you can just imagine with the heat that we have here, the moment you irrigate the evaporation also happens very quickly.

So it needs to be plants that would adapt or are then from the region. And a whole study was done. I’m not sure that universities were involved, but I can also not think that they won’t there wouldn’t be universities involved. But the tree management office had the, a company that was really had done already a lot of work you know, for many years in, in the area.

And, resource. So the human resources that they had were landscape engineers but also then GIS staff and the technical staff. So within that they were looking at, which is quite interesting to say, we need to plant 7.5 million trees. They identified, if I remember correctly, 72 species that are native to the area.

A lot of acacias, which are like thorn trees we also get them a lot in South Africa. So for me it was actually quite nice because it was something that I recognized of course palm trees that are native here to the area. And and so they were looking at that. And I mentioned earlier about the canopy cover, we can interchange some of the species still native. We can still achieve the same canopy cover but with less trees. And so that might be something that the project will look to in future. So it could be that instead of 7.5 million trees, it’s only seven because by using other species still native to the area, the canopy cover can still be achieved the same.

KPI can still be met and so that. Maybe doesn’t answer your question like directly, but that is how the green assets are looked at. And then of course the shrubs if need be, sometimes some of them don’t quite adapt for some reason. So there’s always study to see, you know, if anything needs to be changed or enhanced in terms of the species of shrubs and ground covers.

And then of course the trees. Wow.

[00:32:10] Orion Matthews: Okay, so I’m thinking here, you’ve got you picked up the phone, you said, I’m gonna do this. You took the job as project director, and then when you got there, what were you, how did you establish sort of the culture you wanted for the project and sort of set go about sort of setting things up for success. And then perhaps that could lead into another question, which I have, which is what were some of the big challenges on this project as well?

[00:32:40] Jovita Stander: So I when I when I arrived I think this was the first time in my life that I had the all male team. And I was the only senior female in terms, you know, on the project.

As project control director I had to do all the monthly meetings, the weekly meetings and then his excellency the chairman for Green Riyad. We had to do a presentation to him once a month. And again I also had the honor to do that. And, you know, standing in the boardroom you know, it was like a sea of men in front of me.

And wow, it, you know, it was fine. I’m just mentioning it because this really was the first time in my life ever that there was no other female in the boardroom. So sometimes it could be a bit intimidated. I dunno if they were intimidated by me, but, you know, maybe it was both sides.

But it was just interesting you know, to be in a position like that. One of the challenges that I did find in terms of the team is some some of the team members were very open and I had no issues. Others were very reluctant and really did not accept you know, my authority my position.

And they would really sometimes either circumvent or, you know, just blatantly ignore any request or, you know, things that I asked them to do or in a way that I wanted them to do it. So I think there was a bit of a challenge in their mind that I was challenged in terms of, do I know what I’m talking about and do, I do have the experience. So I had a little bit to prove myself to them. Because, you know, sometimes in pro control there are different, you can do the same thing in different ways. And because I come from let’s say the western world there might be a different way that we do things.

You know, and here maybe people are more set in their ways just because they don’t have the experience like I did in working different countries with different cultures and so on. So those were some of the challenges that I faced with the team. And how ica overcame that. I think the first thing is with kindness.

So I assert my authority in terms. This is me. You are going to do what I want you to do the way I want you to do it. Or I could try in do it in a more subtle way. Because, and I do think that if you sometimes try and. Try and do it in a more, let’s say, pleasant way. You gain more in the long run.

It might take you a little bit longer. It did take me a little bit longer, but I thought that was the right course for the environment where I was in. And also because I realized that for them it might have also been the first time that they were reporting into a female. So I had to take that into consideration as well.

And maybe they didn’t know quite how to handle that. I think kindness, trying to understand. As well, a lot of times I had to really. Bite my tongue and just maybe just take a walk and, you know, just cool down. But I also had to have a balance in terms of firmness still with respect because you, I cannot always try to accommodate and, you know, go the long way and, you know, bring people in and so on.

So sometimes I really had also to. Put my foot down always with respect, but say, look, we’ve now debated this, but this is what I would want you to do and go in this direction. I worked a lot with the team in terms of, we, a lot of times we were a lot of a lot under pressure. And so if the team was working late and sometimes we actually work through the night to finish a presentation for the next day I would work with the team.

So I would always be the last one going home. I would never leave before. They, and the work was finished also making sure that, you know, if they were working late, that there was small things let’s order dinner. And what would you like to eat? You know, everybody ordered whatever.

The one guy said, oh, I want sushi. I said, order it. No, no problem. And that was a bit of a challenge because of, here sushi is expensive. And he was actually quite so surprised and he said, okay, you’ll order it. They did it once and they never ordered sushi again. You know, things like small things like that.

Yeah. But also I try to understand the human element and I think that for us as leaders, as people managers, we must never lose sight of that. And I’ll explain to you why most of the people the men here the families are back home. Whether that’s India or Pakistan or Bangladesh, the Philippine Philippines and so on.

Yes, there are some of them that do have their families here, but a lot of them don’t have their families here. They see sometimes their family once a year depending on you know, also the level within the company because obviously the airfares are expensive, so depending on their salary bracket some see them more frequently, but you know, the wife and the kids are at home.

You know, if there’s sickness or there’s issues at home, you know, they can’t be there and they need to have the head in the work when they’re at work. So you also need to take that human element into consideration and a lot of things that, might be happening that, you know, it’s not apparent.

So if there was low productivity or if you know there was an issue, I would always try to speak to them, understand if there was a personal thing going on, and how we could then you know, work around that. And the one thing, and that’s just something that I always do with my teams, is really recognizing good work and giving credit where it’s due.

And it was also something that a lot of them were not used to. And the first couple of times that I did it, people were very surprised. And, but I think that buys you as a leader a lot of miles in terms of just recognizing the good work that people do and then also giving the credit and not taking the credit for yourself.

So those were just a few a few of the challenges and, you know. How I worked around those.

[00:38:51] Orion Matthews: I’m trying to think too, about maybe what are your tips for people that might have to go into a presentation, like the ones you had to give? It sounds like there, there were, I mean, not only as a female, it’s very like how did you prepare for those first few?

And then also just in general, if you’re the project director, those are really high stakes. Meetings with really high level people. And do you have any tips for, like, how did you pull those off? What would you say is some advice there?

[00:39:21] Jovita Stander: So first of all, fake it till you make it. No I’m just joking.

Okay. So the one tip that I can say is you can never be prepared enough. Prepare. So what I would do is we would have the presentation. Of course, I was involved in the presentation, so I had the data in my head, we would discuss the data, make sure it’s accurate and so forth. So it’s not that when I went into the presentation, it was like the first time that I was seeing the PowerPoint presentation.

But for me I would print out a presentation for myself and I would make notes on the presentation, things that I had to remember, things that I wanted to emphasize. If there was a problem, for instance, design was late, why was the designed late? ’cause, you know, as control you need to give an overview.

Project from, you know, where they’re doing maybe design competition through design to where they’re handing over. And I mean, I’m not necessarily an expert in any of those fields, if you understand. I’m not the designer, I’m not the people building this or planting the tree. So tree for me I made notes so that I couldn’t I wouldn’t forget things that I could refer back to.

And that is how I went into the meeting. And I had posted notes all over my pages with things that I wanted you know, for me as reminders different colors, and I knew what the colors meant. And that was it. And if I was asked the question. In the presentation and I didn’t immediately have the answer.

I could refer back to my notes and if it was a complete sort of out of the blue question that I really didn’t have the answer on the presentation in my notes. I think we just need to we don’t need to know everything and I just had to have the courage of my conviction to say, I don’t have the answer for you now.

Your Excellency, but I will get it to you as soon as we finish the meeting, and I will make sure that you get it. And I think there’s nothing wrong in, in doing it. It doesn’t diminish you as you know, the presenter in any way. And I think instead of, you know, trying to fudge it and, you know, trying to.

Make things up or trying to remember and maybe not giving an accurate giving accurate information, I think you lose more credibility than just saying, look, I don’t have it right now. I know we do it. Or maybe I can just text my colleague that’s sitting outside and they can start working in getting that information to you.

And there were a couple of times that we actually did it and the person said, look if you can get it for me now while we’re in the meeting, that would be great. And so I always had my cross control manager extremely capable gentleman. He was al always like on standby. And so I could send him a WhatsApp and say, we need to have this and he would start working on it.

So I think those are things that you can. To help. And the other thing that I also did that I think is very important is I would take the presentation and I would practice out loud at home because you need to feel confident with the words, you need to feel confident with the data that you are speaking.

And so that, those are things that work for me. Maybe people have got other tips, but that, that is what I would do. So practice and have additional information with you and have no, no issue in referring back to you to notes. I can’t remember everything. The project is, any project is normally

[00:42:42] Orion Matthews: the word lie is too strong because I don’t think people really overtly do that sometimes in project reporting, but oftentimes they’ll sort of weave and dodge questions or obfuscate, and that yes, is so frustrating. I think for leadership, it, and it really erodes credibility so quickly, but it takes a lot of courage to not weave in Bob when you don’t know the answer or you’re trying to sort of, that there’s a natural instinct I think that humans have to to please people.

And you wanna tell people what they wanna hear and it seems like maybe maybe being able to tell people what they don’t wanna hear, whether it’s, I don’t know this or your project’s going badly is a real skill that you have to develop in that role.

[00:43:27] Jovita Stander: Yeah. No, you are absolutely right. Or Ryan, and you know, for me for me it’s very difficult.

I, when I’m under pressure, like I’m presenting, i’m now, I’m already under pressure and I’m an introvert. By nature I’ve learned to mechanisms to cope with that and to work with that. In the spotlight. I’m not in my natural element, so I’m already under pressure and I can’t think like on my feet immediately.

And because I, the nature of project control is to deal in facts. You know, if you say it’s 54%, it’s mean, it’s 52%, it’s 54%, right? You can round it up a little bit, you know, if it’s like 53.9, right? So for me to give any information, whether it’s cost or schedule performance or anything like that, I need to make sure I need to be sure of the facts that I’m saying.

And so if I really dunno, if I’m not sure I would rather go and verify it and then and then give the information and you are alright. You know, sometimes it’s a bit daunting to say, look, I dunno because. Maybe people are scared to, to, you know, to think, what are people gonna think about me if I dunno this?

But I think it’s better to do that. And of course immediately then as soon as you can provide the information to the person, I think that really works better. And it works for me. So for hopefully it’ll work for others

[00:44:51] Orion Matthews: as well. So how do you, this is an interesting question about you really do need to know your facts and project controls, I feel like I’ve talked, I’ve been in situations or talked to people that have, you know, you’re like, I’m getting this data from a vendor and I know it’s wrong. I just know this is probably not true. Or like, how do you, I guess, how do you do that to see on the data that you are getting on this project information to make sure that you do have the right facts?

Is that like a culture that you have to establish? Is it having the right data systems? What do you find is the right way to get information?

[00:45:28] Jovita Stander: Yeah. So of course we get, as project control, we get information from different departments within the project construction project design sorry, construction department design guides the finance financial guides and so on.

Now I think what is important in terms of control is that you need process in process. I’m not necessarily referring to everything that, you know, the bells and whistles and all the technology. And so you need to start with the basics. And the basics is cutoff dates so that everybody reports to the same cutoff date.

So in green Riyad, that was something that I needed to implement because everybody’s cutoff date was different end of the month, last day of the month two weeks before you know, the 25th of the month and so forth. So we had to establish that so that everybody reports to the same date. If there was an exception, because at one point we needed, we had to make an exception for the construction guys because they received information from different pmcs project management consultants on different projects and they didn’t have enough time.

So their cutoff date was, let’s say a week before. The rest, but we knew that so we could take that into account. So in order to do that, you then publish a project calendar with the cutoff dates so that everybody knows what’s going on. Also just as a sidebar for me to implement that in green Riyad first it took a lot of explaining and convincing getting buy-in from the different teams so that we could then do that.

And that probably last about two months until we actually implemented project calendar and everybody then storage reporting to the same date. We had some sort of, delinquent departments and that just, you know, with reinforcement eventually everybody got on board.

That, that would be one of the things. The other thing is to ensure that, when you look at the data from one week to the other, the progress, does it make sense? So if you’re jumping X amount of percentage in a week, does it make sense? The same with the cost. We didn’t always get it right, of course.

But I think you start getting a sense this doesn’t look. This doesn’t look good. And if that is the case, then you need to go back to the source and you need to ask them, look, are you sure about this data? Can you just explain to me how did you come to this? Because I just have a feeling that this doesn’t, you know, it doesn’t make sense to me.

So just explain to me. And sometimes just by talking to somebody that provided you the information that might just trigger something and they might say, oh. Maybe we, I dunno, it was, you know, we’ve got one extra digit there, or yeah, maybe something went wrong. So I think if something is nagging and you’ve got that gut feeling this, and even if you can’t put your finger on it, rather go back and check.

So I always used to say to my team, please think about things, you know, if you’re looking, don’t just assume that it’s correct, because we also make mistakes so other people are also gonna make mistakes, right? Just ask and then even if everything looks good, just do some checks and balances and go back or balance it with somebody else in the team.

Do you think this is this is correct. So those were. Some of the things that, that we did. And then the other thing was we had we needed to report weekly, monthly, quarterly, and then yearly. And this is also just something I think for the audience is to say, is there a golden thread through your three weekly report weekly reports that will then feed into your first month report?

And you know, so if you take the month report and you deconstruct it, will it talk to the third week, to the second, and to the first week? And so I think having that kind of, of data and making sure that golden thread walks through your data it’ll be it’s one of the things that, that you can put in place to make sure about data accuracy.

[00:49:37] Orion Matthews: So you mentioned that it’s. Really the basics. And I think that’s something that I would just like to sort of underscore or hear your thoughts on that, because I think a lot of people think about project controls and the position you’re in and are thinking that you have some advanced tooling or some magic kind of stuff.

And when you talk about make sure you have regular meetings, establish a date that everyone can align to. Like these are really simple activities. Kind of like when you go to someone and learn to do a sport like running, it’s it’s not about the shoe or the type of it outfit you’re wearing.

It’s like you need to like work on really basic things and get your steps right. And and just the basics are hard. So I’m curious where you sit with that. You were, you sort of mentioned that it’s the basics. Do you, I think getting the basics right is really hard in project controls. Curious what you think.

[00:50:33] Jovita Stander: So I think today with AI technology, a lot of software that we can use, I mean, all of those things are wonderful, but when you implement that and your basics are not right, you know it. It comes back to the old thing, you know, garbage in, garbage out. And then if if that the input and the whole process of the monitoring, controlling is not right then doesn’t matter everything, these wonderful tools that you have, because then the data that is going to put out will not help the decision makers of making good decisions for the project.

And I think so for me, when I go into a new project I always make sure that all the basics correct and then I can look at PMIS systems, at ai, at dashboards and all of that. I already mentioned in terms of project calendar, cutoff date.

People, I think know it, but maybe they don’t say it. But PR control is all about routine. It’s routine every month in those 30 days, you know, something has got to happen at certain points in that month, and then next month you repeat it. So PR control is about routine and the have. That you’re open for error because you know that you know, at the end of this week, I need to get input from various departments and that will then go into my reporting next week to the client.

And if you are on top of your data you can immediately get an idea if something is off in terms of other under or over performance, for instance. And you then have a chance to go and check that. So the accuracy of your information is really important and I think that is the sort of the main thing that you need to know that you need to be on top of in project control.

Yes, the schedule needs to be a realistic schedule. You need to have good planning. All of that needs to happen. But in terms of project control, in terms of reporting you need to make sure that your data is accurate. I think also. Project control. You know, when I say a project is chaotic, I don’t mean it in the sense that nobody knows what they’re doing and, you know, this is this whole chaos and medicine.

It’s not what I’m trying to say. But if you look at the big project there are so many moving parts. There are many departments that need to provide input. Everybody’s doing something at any point in time on that project. The project controls is the hub in getting all this information together.

And if you don’t have good controls in place, good processes in place, it can actually become chaotic. Then you’ve got like huge amount of data, but you cannot necessarily do something meaningful with the data. And I think that is a big challenge for project control is having those processes in place so that when you get the data and assuming it’s accurate, you can do something with it.

The output will help, will be beneficial to the project because of decisions that are made based on the data that project control puts out. So once all of that is in place and you know that, the information that you’re getting the process that you’ve put in place, then you can start looking, then go for the dashboards, go for all these wonderful tools that are out there and new ones that are being developed now in terms of AI and so on.

And then and use it because I mean, the goal is really to be more efficient and being able to provide data, accurate data in, you know, a very short amount of time. So I think that’s fantastic to have that on a project, especially the big projects that we work on. But the basics of those maybe boring things that, you know, the processes, all of that needs to be in place before you can then take the next step.

That’s super

[00:54:38] Orion Matthews: helpful. And just to switch gears on you a little bit, thinking about we’re giving a lot of tips to experts in the space. There might be a few people listening here that are maybe in college that are looking at what you’ve done or they wanna break into this industry and they’re like, I wanna be you.

I wanna have your career wanna run big projects someday. I feel like our industry is very niche. And so I’m curious if you have some advice for people that would wanna do that. Like, how would they get started? How could they make that happen for themselves?

[00:55:08] Jovita Stander: So Orion, I’m glad that you asked me that.

My short answer is go for it. I think in terms of maybe a little bit, a longer answer is I think approach control. You’ve got various career streams within project control and I’ll share with you sort of a little diagram in terms of the various let’s say streams and that form spot of project control and then how you can if a person wishes they can actually move you know, horizontally and then go up again.

For instance I’m just gonna give an example. Let’s say a scheduler. He might love scheduling P six. That’s all he wants to do. You know, become a subject matter expert in terms of P six planning and scheduling. And that’s fantastic because we do need people like that, subject matter experts, they know the program very well.

You know, the depths of the knowledge in terms of the software. And then. The practical experience as well. And so that would be sort of a vertical stream and you become you know, the person sort of the, within the industry. And you are the sub subject matter expert. Now, I’m just saying for my personality I like to do a lot of different things.

So I would never become a subject matter expert because I don’t want only to focus on one thing. But I’m gonna take this planner again as an example. He’s non planning. He’s he is reached a certain level let’s say a senior scheduler. But now he wants to know a little bit more about risk or maybe cost maybe even sort of in the commercial portion, let’s say contract administration and so on.

So he can then move horizontally. And then go into one of the other streams, or then actually move completely into projects control, which is your reporting portion. But you need to know, you know, scheduling you need to understand that you need to understand costs, and you need to understand, you know, a number of things.

So when you go into that you move and then you can go up, let’s say in the project control stream and then become you know, senior project controller, project control director, and so on. So I think it, it gives you a lot of opportunity whether you want to become expert in your field or whether you want to become sort of a more, a all rounder like I am and that you can you’ve got a good understanding of everything within project control, but you’re not necessarily an expert, but you can give direction.

You understand what needs to happen, you know what to answer. Sorry, what to ask to get the correct answers. But if you’ve asking me am I P six expert, I’m not I know P six, I know what to look for. I can work on the program, but I can never be and I don’t want to be an expert in P six.

Some people on my team that are just fantastic and I’m very grateful to them. I think project controls does afford you a lot of opportunity whether you want to work on different projects and travel different industries or whether you just want to stay in in one type of industry.

But I think a lot of the skills that we learn in project control, you can use over a number of industries. Of course, if you go into a new industry, let’s say you moving from mining to urban deforestation there might be you know, you’ll need to learn the lingo of that industry or of that, type of project. When I move let’s say from types of projects to, you know, of industries, I actually do a lot of research. So just an example, when I landed in Texas in sort of, midstream oil and gas I, I did a lot of research. I didn’t know what a pumping jack was, I mean, I knew you know, the picture, but I didn’t know it was called that.

So I just went and I learned a lot of things about the industry and yeah. And for me, I’m an eternal learner and I think in project control you need to be that. You must always be learning something and you, you need to to know things about the industry that you are currently working in.

And I think that’s just a wonderful thing. It’s, I think you’ll any person choosing project control, I think it’s gonna be a very blessed career and very adventurous, I think. And it’ll definitely broaden horizons.

[00:59:30] Orion Matthews: Okay, I just wanna go deeper on one little piece. So if you’re, say you’re a scheduler scheduling is a very, focus, rigid, specific, mathematical based concept. And you explained earlier that, you know, you need to establish a day to date, which is more of like a convening almost like if you’re gonna do be the conductor of an orchestra, and there’s this moment where all the instruments aren’t playing right.

They’re like, you know, at the start, and then they’ll kind of raise their hands and everyone stops and then they like even it out. And I feel like that’s a really specific skill. And sometimes when people move from I was a risk manager, I was doing cost, I was doing schedule, and they step into that project director role, they can’t get the band to like, cool because they miss that day-to-day thing.

And then things kind of start to spiral and then maybe they’re just managing chaos at that point. How do you learn that skill?

[01:00:28] Jovita Stander: I think, that part of it, it’s about the person’s personality. And like I was saying I don’t want to be, an expert in anything because it doesn’t fit with my personality.

So I, I get bored very quickly. And so I like to do a lot of things and be involved in a lot of things sort of at the same time. And so I think that is one thing that a person would need to consider if they wanna become, let’s say, a project control manager or director. Because you need to be able to talk to the scheduler and understand what’s going on.

You need to be able to talk to the risk manager and, you know, somebody that’s looking at cost as well. And I, by no means say that I know, you know, all the calculations that they do in the cost and what, but I need to know. What was the budget? What is my actual cost right now and what is the forecast?

What is the cashflow? Those are the basic things that I would need to know and be able to understand in order for me to to. To work with the cost of a project. And I’m simplifying it a little bit. Of course there’s a little bit more. But those sort of are the basic things. It depends on the personality and I think some people you know, I’m just thinking about the risk manager that I worked with, excellent, excellent risk manager. Very knowledgeable, extremely passionate about risk management, and you could ask him anything about risk and risk management and methodologies and that kind of thing. He was absolutely passionate about it. Be a good pro control manager or a pro control DI director?

In my opinion, probably not because he he was so passionate about risk and that was his whole focus. And that, so I think it comes back to what you were saying. So when you get into a project control manager, director role, you need to step away from let’s say that focused approach and only looking at one thing.

And you need actually to have a very wide view of. That is happening on the project and everything that, and how things fit in. I think people that wanna go into project control you know, the broader thing of project control I think just ask yourself, do I want to be doing a lot of things involved in a lot of things at the same time?

Or would I rather feel more comfortable in just focusing on one thing? And, you know, I know I’m a scheduler. I love scheduling and that’s what I’m gonna do. Or risk management. So that is a question that people would need to answer to answer for themselves. And maybe the answer that you get today as you also mature in your career, get more experience and you as a person become older that changes.

So it’s not some so if you have an answer today, doesn’t mean that over five or 10 years, it’ll still remain the same answer. It could be. But sometimes, you know, things change and you, you know, people get other interests. So I think it’s just something that somebody would need to ask them constantly or, you know, every five years, is this still what I want to do, just focusing on one thing and vice versa.

So I hope that answers your question.

[01:03:39] Orion Matthews: It does. Thank you. And I know we’re running out of time. I just have one last one I guess I would love to touch on. I feel like we’re really blessed to have you. Share your story of leadership as a female. And I think in this space, and maybe this isn’t true everywhere in the world, but at least the projects I’ve been involved with, I’d say engineering is somewhat of a still of a more heavily dominated by a male.

Folks, even here in America, it seems like a male dominated field to some degree. And I’m curious if you could share some tips for you know, women that are going into this space or possibly in this space. And then, you know, your story is so profound that you’ve, you know, you’ve navigated that space and then you’ve also navigated in an area that’s really you know, part of that Vision 2030 project.

And sort of, so maybe just if you could share a few more tips for any women that might be listening here.

[01:04:32] Jovita Stander: Thank you. Thank you for that. And I think it’s quite interesting to think about that and talk about it. So I think for most of the most of the world engineering construction is, like you say more male-dominant dominated space historically and today I think in the Nordic countries, it’s sort of, balanced you know, basically FI 50 50.

But I think there’s a lot of opportunities for females in for women in this industry. And I think the one thing that’s important I think to mention is that women have a different way of leadership. Of addressing problems. Also how, you know, to solve problems. It’s not that how the men do it is right or wrong, or how we do it is right or wrong.

It’s just different. And I think with that it also brings positive because like I said at one point there are different ways of doing things or solving problems you know, the same problem in different ways. I think also with that women are starting to get more into the stem.

Sort of fields and also in construction. And I think we sometimes bring a little bit maybe a softer approach. I dunno how to phrase it differently. And we still get the same results. That doesn’t mean that we can be assertive, that we cannot be firm when it needs to. And of course we do need to have that.

So I would think that and my advice would be to any, women that is thinking going into the field. I would support them and I would encourage them to do that because I also think that we as women also learn a lot. I have found that for most of the part I’ve always been respected.

You know, I didn’t really have issues you know, coming into the field as a female, there was some challenges of course with male colleagues and also, you know, just in general with the industry. But I think that is changing and I think you never need to apologize, you know, for sort of being a woman in this field.

But I think you need to learn how to cope with certain things in the industry. And also, you know, you cannot be easily offended. I think if you have how can I say, very fragile or you get offended easily or you get hurt easily, you know, I think then you know, you might want to reconsider this.

So yeah, I think you need to and need to know that sometimes you will need to be quite firm and assert yourself. Yeah I, there’s a couple of times that I’ve sort of lost it a little bit and that also sends sort of a message and then things were okay. So I think, I dunno I’m very happy, I’ve been very blessed in this career.

And I would, if I had a choice, I would do it all over again. So I hope that is an encouraging sort of message for the ladies out there that are considering. Coming into this career? That

[01:07:32] Orion Matthews: It, I hope so too. And I guess any final sort of thoughts about sort of tips for people, any books that you’ve ever read things that you think might be really good for people to know, and if they wanna get in touch with you how could they do that?

You have a LinkedIn things like that.

[01:07:51] Jovita Stander: Yeah, so to get in touch with me very easy. I think Jovita standard, I’m probably the only one on LinkedIn. Look me up. I’ll be happy to connect with you. Also I think my my contact details on my LinkedIn profile, but or I can also provide those if you want to share it.

And I’ll be happy to you know, somebody wants to talk to me about the career or any specific tips or issues or anything like that. I’ll be more than happy to do that. I think also just as a last tip, I think I wanted also to mention that if you are coming into the field, into project control, into scheduling and so on get yourself a mentor in the sense of go to somebody that is already experienced and ask them.

Can you, will you be my mentor? Can I come to you if I’ve got questions? Develop those relationships. Even today I mean, I’ve been working for many years. I will still go to somebody that I think or to various people that I think do more than me in a certain area, and I’ll bounce ideas off them.

I’ll ask them sometimes for advice. I would not, and that doesn’t mean that I’m weak, that I dunno what to do. But sometimes when you discuss the problem, when you get other inputs, it makes your final decision better. Then you know, before you did that, so you had a decision, you know, you thought you were gonna do it, but sometimes with the inputs, then it makes it better.

So if you’re coming in and also throughout your career, find yourself good mentors that you trust and that can advise you whether it’s technically whether it’s you know, I need to go and do this presentation. I’m struggling with this portion of the presentation. Can you just hear me out?

Do you have any tips? So things like that, and people are I’ve, when I ask for help, nobody has ever said to me, no, I’m not going to help you. So people are eager to help other colleagues succeed. And just find yourself those people in your career and you’ll be, that will be a blessing for you and for them.

[01:09:50] Orion Matthews: What a great way to end it. And Jovita, I cannot thank you enough for this conversation. Have learned so much about Green Riyad. I will include more details. You mentioned that you might even have a little career chart, so I’ll we’ll put everything below this video. A few links for people that, that wanna go a little bit deeper and learn even more about the project.

Thank you so much for coming on and really look forward to the next conversation. Hopefully we’ll have you on again to talk about another major project.

[01:10:20] Jovita Stander: Alright, thank you so much. It was an absolute pleasure talking about this and speaking to you about the project and, you know, my career and it’s been an absolute blessing and enjoy to be here today.

So thank you so much. And I hope really that there’s something you know, worth for the audience to take away.

[01:10:39] Host: Thanks for listening to the Major Project podcast. Be sure to follow us wherever you get your podcasts and learn more at the major project podcast.com. Until next time, keep building big.