Michael Arad Quotes

At the end of the day, though, there are a huge number of considerations that our management team go through before accepting any project - checking out the license is just one of them.

I was not a project manager who was managing and executing the day-to-day operational work of building HealthCare.gov. I didn't have the kind of comprehensive, detailed, deep knowledge of that project that a manager would have.

Even if bureaucratic sloth can be eliminated, it still takes time to build things.

Don't bring on the design engineers too soon. One of the worst things you can do in the early phases of a project is to bring on a bunch of detailed design engineers and then not give them clear direction and close supervision.

When you start a new project, you wonder whether it's the right choice.

With any project there's one or two things that you really want to do and that's going to crack it.

In this business, you don't have to be an architect or an engineer or a brick layer. But you have to understand how the money flows. That you can only understand if you're on the site.

I see myself as a technical person who chose a great project and a great way of doing that project.

We've always been the development project that lived in a time pressured setting and always where commercial entities were relying heavily on releases in a certain time frame.

I can see myself doing production work and handling projects behind the scenes.

Everybody in the real world will agree - the moment a project is behind deadline, quality assurance tends to go out the window.

Your goal is to achieve the best results by following their wishes. If they want you to build a house upside down standing on its chimney, it's up to you to do it.

The green-light decision process today consists of maybe of 30 or 40 people.

The biggest fragility in a project is often just the inability to be able to explain to people why you are doing it, and when you're going to do it, and what's going to happen.

I saw, though too late, the folly of beginning a work before we count the cost, and before we judge rightly of our own strength to go through with it.

When I did a high-profile project, I was not the developer of it.

Projects are usually undertaken to either solve a problem or take advantage of an opportunity. The probability that the project - even if precisely executed - will complete on time, on budget, and on performance is typically small. Project management is utilized to increase this probability. So in a sense, project management is risk management.

Sometimes you think that a reconstruction project can be done more quickly than you expected.

Spend 10% of the project budget making sure you understand problem, the key technologies involved, and have looked at all of the options before you dive into the detailed design.

With a lot of projects, you never know if it's going to be executed properly. And also, you never know if people are going to respond to it.

Engineers are often defined by their output.

I want to find the right projects. I'm not going to take just anything.

Engineers have shown to embody a tremendous amount of leadership skills through the collaborative educational environment.

It's not a 'sexy' position, being the producer. You have to be very bossy. You have to be very aggressive.

As a director, you realise the bigger picture.