Listen In For Our Latest Avenue

Contributed by Cherise Lakeside and Eric D. Lussier

LetsFixConstruction.com was born on a whim a little over a year ago.  A glimmer of an idea based in a passion to help our industry improve.  A thought that we could bring all members of our industry, from all disciplines, to the table to collaborate and share knowledge rather than to continue to complain or point fingers.

We launched this effort with no real solid plan for what it would look like or how we wanted to make it happen.  We just knew that we wanted a place where we could all come together with positive, forward thinking solutions and a place to share knowledge for better understanding, resulting in an improved project delivery process and built environment.  We’re presently calling it ‘visionary logic’ but we are still looking for a better phrase than ‘thinking outside the box’.

With a ‘Go Big or Go Home’ attitude, we decided to just run with it and see where it would go.  We can honestly say that neither of us were quite prepared for the response.  It was clear to us, from very early on, that people needed this place.  People in our industry were hungry for a place to stop complaining and get better.

We started with blogs.  We wrote some of them and invited friends, peers and guest bloggers to write others with a simple premise: Pose a problem you face and your perspective on how to make it better.  Share your knowledge.  It’s that simple.  A little over a year in, our stable of guest bloggers is over 24 knowledgeable industry professionals and growing.

Somewhere midway through our first year, after seeing such an overwhelmingly positive response to the blogs, we brainstormed ways to take it even further.  With two brains that are constantly in high gear and a passion to go bigger, we thought ‘What if we could take these problems that people face and get them talking about them? Face to face, at the same table.’  In the blink of an eye, our Let’s Fix Construction Workshop was born.  A problem solving, interactive and dynamic event geared at getting people to openly discuss issues in our industry with people they often don’t appropriately communicate with.

We now have eight workshops under our belt with a ninth and tenth in Atlanta on November 13th.  In addition, we have at least eight workshops tentatively planned for 2018 and have added a slate of other programs to our growing list outside of our namesake session. Again, the response was overwhelming.  Again, we found that our industry NEEDS this environment of sharing in a positive manner, more now than ever.  We hope to do these workshops and presentations all over the country.  Maybe even the world!
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So why did it feel like something was still missing?  

What were we not seeing? Communication, of course! Our whole effort is built on the foundation that we can’t appropriately deliver a quality, risk free project unless we understand each other and bring all the individual parties together to truly understand the differences of each player and role on the team and how they could work to be successful.

Communication is no different.  People communicate effectively in varied ways.  If we want to reach as many players in our industry as we possibly could, we need to communicate in different ways for the varied ages, personalities and styles.  We already had a blog for the readers, we were communicating and sharing by social media, and we added live workshops to get up close and personal and really dig into the weeds.  What we were missing were the talkers and the listeners!  Not everybody can make one of our workshops and not everyone is a reader or writer, yet everybody listens!

Please welcome the Let’s Fix Construction Podcast!  

At times it has been a challenge to get guest bloggers every week. Writing is personal, and many feel self-conscious about their writing skills.  We recognize that not everyone will share their knowledge by writing a guest blog.  BUT, we never seem to have problems getting people to talk to us. 

So, what if we had a podcast addressing the same types of concerns that we address in our workshops and blogs?  A podcast that people can listen to whenever it’s convenient.  Yet another avenue to deliver our message and share the passion of Let’s Fix Construction?

So, you should consider this our official announcement. 

The Let’s Fix Construction Podcast will be launching very soon and will be available for your listening pleasure and professional growth.  As with all our other endeavors, we won’t know exactly what this will look like as we grow and experiment.  We can promise that it will be an entertaining and valuable open avenue to offer creative solutions, separate myths from facts and erase misconceptions about the architecture, engineering and construction industry.

Please stay tuned to this blog and our social channels for the announcement of our first episodes.

(Editor's Note: You can listen to Eric Lussier on the Young Architect podcast talk about the founding of Let's Fix Construction and the upcoming podcast and his involvement with CSI by visiting the Young Architect website.)