Why Learning Oracle Primavera Cloud helps Prepare students for a Career in Construction

Oracle Academy Tech Chat

In this episode host Tyra Peirce speaks with Professor Matthew Wheelwright from Brigham Young University and his former students Cade Bleazard and Nolan Stirling on how learning Primavera Cloud has helped prepare them for careers in construction management. --------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00;00;00;00 - 00;00;34;19 Welcome to the Oracle Academy Tech Chat. This podcast provides educators and students in-depth discussions with thought leaders around computer science, cloud technologies and software design to help students on their journey to becoming industry ready technology leaders. Of the Future. Let's get started. Welcome to Oracle Academy Tech Chat, where we discuss how Oracle Academy helps prepare our next generation's workforce. 00;00;34;22 - 00;01;02;22 I'm your host, Tyra Peirce. In this episode, I speak with Matthew Wheelwright from Brigham Young University and his former students, Nolan Sterling and Cade Bleazard, about their experience with Primavera Cloud in the classroom. Primavera Cloud is available through Oracle Academy for Teaching and learning to select faculty who meet certain criteria and are selected through an extensive application process. 00;01;02;24 - 00;01;28;23 We're going to talk about how Primavera Cloud has helped prepare them for careers in construction management. Thank you, Matt, Cade and Nolan for joining me today. First question, can you give me a bit about your background and the class at BYU? Yeah, I'm Matt Wheelwright. I'm a professor at Brigham Young University in Civil and Construction Engineering, specializing in construction management. 00;01;28;26 - 00;02;07;19 My background is in residential homebuilding, mostly in California and Utah, and I teach CFM for 12, which is our scheduling class, and also a few other classes Construction safety, real estate development and anywhere else that kind of need me. And in the class, we tend to focus on critical path methods, CPM and balancing and leveling resources. We've recently introduced tact planning or flow and pull planning and OBC. 00;02;07;22 - 00;02;25;01 Oracle Primavera Cloud is a great opportunity for our students to get hands on experience with software and it makes a big difference. So that's a little bit about me. I'm Nolan Sterling. I'm from Cave Creek, Arizona. 00;02;25;03 - 00;03;06;05 I am. I just recently graduated from Brigham Young University in 2023 and now currently just working full time for BHP. I graduated from the construction management program and absolutely loved it and I really kind of got into construction. The at least the program construction management just kind of by chance. But I have loved it. I love the opportunity as it gives you to not only work on the office side, but also be out in the field with the guys and work with your hands and truly just solving puzzles all day. 00;03;06;07 - 00;03;28;05 So my name is Cade Bleazard, similar to Noah, and I'm also from Arizona. I'm from kind of a Chandler Gilbert area and kind of from a young age. I always knew I wanted to be in construction. I've always known I wanted to build homes, but how to get there was never really clear in my mind. My dad is a civil engineer. 00;03;28;07 - 00;03;45;03 We grew up with a lot of woodworking tools and saw stuff at our house, and so I kind of grew up around it. And then when I was 18 years old, my dad actually brought it up that BYU had a construction management program and thought it'd be a good idea to take the intro class. And from there I was. 00;03;45;03 - 00;04;07;15 I was sold on it and have loved every second of it. I just graduated in April of this year and I currently work for Hawthorne Homes, a local custom home builder here. It's been a great time and I am super grateful for my time at BYU and especially in this program. 00;04;07;18 - 00;04;46;27 So how has using OPC in the classroom improved the student experience? Yeah, I think it's great preparation for their future. In fact, one of the and it's not necessarily because they all go out and use OPC from day one because realistically that's not quite possible yet and maybe someday. But I read this quote from our textbook every semester when we get to the point of using the software and it's “ Once a manager has mastered one project management software program, it is easier to learn another”. 00;04;46;29 - 00;05;23;16 So I really emphasize that, hey, once you've really gotten into OPC, which is, you know, maybe the big leader of the bunch, you can really go off and do almost anything. But to be able to put it on your resumé. To get that real hands-on experience. And it's so much better than past approaches in terms of being able to use it on the cloud and use it on their own laptops at home and in the classroom just makes a huge difference in the ease of class and the ease of I mean, it's hard enough to learn a new software. 00;05;23;20 - 00;06;03;11 They don't need all of the kind of technical difficulties that go along with the computer if they can avoid it. So it's really been great to get them into it and give them the chance to kind of go by trial and error a little bit at times and work their way through for their future. Looking at it from both angles of when I took the class as a student and then the couple of semesters that I had the privilege of being a T.A. scheduling as a whole and construction can be a hard topic and skill to master for sure, and especially so many of us in in the Construction management program, this is the first time that we're being exposed to it and really understanding how it operates. I found that OPC really made difficult content more digestible. I found myself as a student. I was able to see these skills of planning ahead of allocating costs and seeing who's on what job, at what times that OPC was able to make that easier to understand. 00;06;26;10 - 00;06;53;18 But it also gave each of the students the opportunity just to kind of tinker to mess around with it, to see how these changes can affect the project further down the line. Yeah, I think it was a great opportunity, really just kind of buttoning up what we'll write and what kids said. OPC allowed you to not only coordinate with other students, but work on your own projects better than any other software that I had used. 00;06;53;20 - 00;07;23;27 I had the opportunity to also use P6 in my college career and in Microsoft Project. Asked a little bit and OPC really made it easiest for me to work with my professors and work with other students and it was kind of hard at the time seeing how applicable it would be out in the real world, but it was very streamlined and it made it easy to work to stay with Nolan and Cade. 00;07;23;27 - 00;07;55;19 What are some of the skills that you learned using OPC? OPC You know, going back to kind of the main reason of scheduling is kind of just putting order in, you know, aspects of your life. And when it comes to a job, you know, putting order to the different parts of a project, the preconstruction, the construction and the closeout phases of projects are all easily done in OPC. 00;07;55;21 - 00;08;35;19 But I also found that getting more familiar with OPC made it easier to kind of coordinate and schedule my life. And that does sound pretty cliche, but, you know, dedicating time and resources to one thing opposed to another really helps teach me how to do it the same thing in my personal life. Funny you should mention that I'm actually using OPC for some projects that I manage at work, and I'm finding that I am seeing that as well, that I'm breaking more tasks down, I'm getting it into a particular place and then being able to collaborate more effectively with my team as well. 00;08;35;21 - 00;09;05;22 So I totally get and I totally understand. And and Cade, what about you? What would you like to add? I think one of the biggest skills and just kind of life lessons that I learned while learning OPC and teaching OPC is that the more time you spend on the front end of a project, whether it be a construction project or any big event in life, really understanding your scope, understanding your project, and then planning it out and plugging those details in the smoother it's going to run. 00;09;05;25 - 00;09;29;08 And that's something that in class we would emphasize is that the more time we spend in the early stages of OPC or in pre-construction understand the details, plugging it in and in in an organized manner, it's going to help everything else be easier to understand. It's going to run smoother. And I think similar to Nolan and what he explained is that it really does carry into life. 00;09;29;11 - 00;09;49;10 You just kind of learn that flying by the seat of your pants doesn't really work. But if you can spend time on the front end, planning things out, ironing it out, everything is just going to run a lot smoother. I really love that and I feel I feel the same way like it is. If you learn how to plan, you learn how to schedule, you get more done, you accomplish more things. 00;09;49;12 - 00;10;16;10 And that's kind of segueing into my next question and math. This one is going to be to start off with you. So why is knowing OPC important for students preparing for a career in construction management? I think it's very clear that modern construction practice, facilities management, real estate, you know, you go down the list of the components of our industry and scheduling is the big emphasis. 00;10;16;10 - 00;11;00;08 It's a part of the contract, it's part of the legal documents. If we're not spending the time I just mentioned in the pre-construction getting the schedule right, well, we're never going to earn bids. We're never going to complete projects on time under budget with the quality that we want. And scheduling is just a key part of that. And I would add further that one of the aspects that I really harp on with my students is I think about financing and the time value of money that is directly linked to being as successful schedule manager, that if you're capable of creating the schedule and managing the schedule well, then the finances will follow. 00;11;00;08 - 00;11;25;05 And the value of the money and the flow of the costs and the revenues will keep up with what you need it to is as you planned it to. But if you're failing at scheduling, if you're falling down as a whether because of subcontractor trades or whatever, the reason that you're getting stuck, you don't have a plan, well then, the finances will come back and bite you pretty hard. 00;11;25;08 - 00;11;54;07 Yeah, I mean, just as it were. Wright said. His time really is money and the skill that you'll learn in OPC is how to better manage your time. This has become a lesson that's very it's been very important for me to learn in my career as I've as I'm in the early stages of it, but that when you're building for a client and you're being entrusted with managing their money and managing their project, that the time aspect becomes very, very important. 00;11;54;12 - 00;12;18;13 Nolan Yeah, I'll, I'll touch on more of the personal side of, of how this is applied to me and just how OPC has, has kind of prepared me. I recently started my, my full-time job and I believe it was, it was no later than the first or second day. And my supervisor came to me and said, You, wouldn't happen to know any rescheduling, would you? 00;12;18;13 - 00;12;47;29 And I said, Actually, I do. And at this time the company I started with was transitioning from Microsoft Project over to OPC. And so, my supervisor then asked me, do you happen to know any OPC? And I'm like, Actually, it's your lucky day. I know that. I know that even better. And so since then, I've kind of been the main instrument within this, you know, smaller company. 00;12;47;29 - 00;13;25;24 But in helping guys in the field and in the superintendents and then the project team, the operations team, and getting to know kind of the ins and outs of OPC and how to use and how to really save money. I honestly love that. I love how what you learned in your classroom as the course over whenever I've I'm forgetting when you took it when you took the class and then added to is actually helping you in your job now I love that direct outcome is they asked you can you schedule and then they asked you if you knew OPC and you do know OPC and you have that ability to learn that. 00;13;25;24 - 00;13;58;22 I think that is so amazing. So I guess that's going to kind of segue into that next question. How has knowing OPC helped you and then, Matt, for your students in your internship or job search and No. One, you have anything else to add or do you anything else you want to elaborate on with that? Scheduling is kind of been a big part of my college career especially, and I kind of got into it really by just finding the need of a position. 00;13;58;24 - 00;14;25;11 There was a competition team at our university and I wanted to be on the team, but I was still kind of on the outside and I just decided had to find a way to just to be that guy on the team. And there was, there was a need for a scheduler on the team. And so I, I started looking into, you know, what I can do and how I can be better at scheduling and especially in OPC. 00;14;25;11 - 00;14;55;20 And since then I was able to get on the team and really be an effective instrument and in great success with the team. And then, Cade, what about you? Yeah, as I got closer to graduating from college and needed to start figuring out what the plan was post-graduation, I spent time interviewing around and really looking for what was going to be the best fit and looking back on it. 00;14;55;20 - 00;15;23;28 And each and every one of my interviews, my experience with scheduling, especially with OPC, with the different certificates and experience being a teaching assistant, came up and it was a great opportunity to first of all explain kind of what I know how comfortable I am with it, but also explain why I chose it to to for it, why I enjoyed it and and I do believe that it was it played a very large role in getting me the position that I currently hold. 00;15;23;28 - 00;15;49;20 And it's one that I really enjoy and it's one that I was excited to have been extended and it's been a really fun transition. And looking back on it, it really does kind of stem from learning. OPC Diving into it, really getting those skills of project management and the scheduling side that anything to add? Well, scheduling got me my job to. 00;15;49;22 - 00;16;18;04 I mean, I spent a lot of years scheduling homes and sometimes I was Excel, sometimes I was Microsoft Project. But now to be able to use OPC with the students just as the smooth, easy way of getting them comfortable with software, applying the principles, we spend a lot of time talking about activity. I know diagrams and we call it scheduling Sudoku, where we're actually doing the math that OPC does seamlessly. 00;16;18;06 - 00;16;43;29 But the more they understand the principles, the better it is for them to actually be able to use the software effectively. And then someday, you know, be able to apply it in the field and hold people responsible and accountable for what's trying to get done on the project. I think that's really important to be able to go in and know that this can help you get a job or to be able to have that accountability that that OPC provides. 00;16;43;29 - 00;17;05;10 And then also the fact that it is in the cloud, I think it makes it so much easier for access purposes and equity and making it available to all students. So one final question that I ask all my podcast guests. So if you could give one piece of advice to faculty or students, what would it be? And Matt, I'm going to start with you. 00;17;05;13 - 00;17;36;06 Well, clearly, the first is to have TA’ss like Nolan and Cate. That's pretty awesome. They've been great for many semesters. So it was said, you know, bittersweet as a professor to see them graduate. But I'd also add that, you know, scheduling is such a fundamental skill and ability in kind of modern practice and it underpins so many of the other principles that we talk about across the board and construction management and all of our classes. 00;17;36;06 - 00;17;58;24 And the students feel this. They appreciate it. I've had many students come up to me at the end of the class or even semesters after to say, Brother, we'll write a professor. We'll write that such that scheduling class was so great, it mattered. It made everything else clear. It helped me understand not only my own time management, but all the other things that I was talking about. 00;17;58;24 - 00;18;18;09 It just kind of connects and overlaps and all of these things. So I would guess, I guess my advice would be lean into it. Like I tend to ask my students many times leading up to when we actually go into the software say, Hey, are you nervous? What are you feeling or are you excited? Where's your head at? 00;18;18;11 - 00;18;41;17 And I'm trying to get them just lean in. It's going to be great. You need it. They know the principles. And now let's use the software and see it at work. And so that really helps. They've they've before they even touch the computer, they've learned a lot of the scheduling kind of administration. And then when they get in the software, you can just see these light bulbs kind of launching. 00;18;41;19 - 00;19;11;27 I go, that's what you I just constantly and that's really rewarding and it's super fun. And the students do appreciate it. So lean in hard, make it great and it'll pay off. I think that's really, really good advice. Kate, what about you? Yeah. As a recent graduate, I would say I have the unique perspective of being able to give maybe some advice to both students and faculty. 00;19;11;29 - 00;19;38;15 I think first on the student side, I'd say just dive in. I really do think that the best way to learn is, is to fully immerse yourself and being a student. You have a lot of privileges. And one of those is that on different assignments and different in class activities, you have the opportunity to make mistakes and it's not going to cost you a cent. 00;19;38;18 - 00;20;16;29 The penalty is a lot, a lot smaller. And so I would say dive in this, immerse yourself in the learning process in the program, make the mistakes and you'll find that you learn the program a lot quicker that way. And on that on the second half, just kind of the faculty is looking back on my college career, the scheduling class really was my favorite class that I took in my in my entire college career because I felt that it it finally tied everything in construction together where I was taking a framing class and concrete classes and different management classes. 00;20;17;01 - 00;20;38;25 And those were great. I was learning a lot, but scheduling was the first time where it finally clicked in my head of, this is how this is all related. This is this is how a whole project is run. And so I would just say, let your students get into the program quick. As Brother Wheelwright explained, obviously teach them what they need to know. 00;20;38;25 - 00;20;58;18 Teach them the basics of scheduling and set them up for success. But as soon as you can get students kind of tinkering with the program, using OPC again, as we're as I said, those lightbulbs will start to go off. And so I would just say, let them get into it. Let them start seeing how everything is all tied together. 00;20;58;21 - 00;21;29;08 I think that's really I think that's really sage advice to Tinker. I'm a tinkerer myself. Like I, I learned by playing with the PS software. And so the more you tinker, the more you explore it, the better it is. And then, Nolan, what about you? Too close this out? Yeah, I completely agree with Cade. OPEC has really helped me see beyond my college experience how I'm going to apply what I learned in my career. 00;21;29;11 - 00;22;00;11 I would say the one big piece of advice that I would give is, you know, it's frustrating learning new things and not only learning them, but mastering them. But, you know, sometimes you just got to put your head down and work. And I would also say that just find the need, you know, ask around, ask your professors, look for the need and where you could be used and you will you will find it. 00;22;00;13 - 00;22;29;13 I love that. I love I love that. Going ask where you can help, where you can serve, how you can be a problem solver. I think that's so important. Just finding that niche and finding out where you can break in assists because I think it benefits the people that you're helping and it benefits you as well. So a big thanks to Professor Will Wright and Caden Nolan for for giving me some information about the Oracle Academy usage of pro-Mubarak cloud at Brigham Young University. 00;22;29;16 - 00;22;51;01 To learn more about Oracle Academy and the resources we provide, please visit Academy dot, Oracle dot com and subscribe to our podcast. Thanks for listening. That wraps up this episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for the next Oracle Academy Tech Chat podcast.