Planning steel around how it gets built.

The work I’m most interested in is developing and improving the planning process that connects estimating with field execution. That means helping turn estimating assumptions into workable production plans, following how those plans perform across projects and carrying useful lessons into the next estimate.

I enjoy building the tools and staying involved as project teams use them, question the assumptions and adjust the plan. That ongoing involvement helps me understand what works in the field and where the process needs to improve.

My background

Field execution, preconstruction and erection planning

My background spans field execution, preconstruction and erection planning. I started as a union ironworker and later worked across different parts of major projects, from field engineering and project execution to preconstruction. That experience includes the Long Harbour Nickel Processing Plant in Newfoundland, U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, Texas Instruments’ Sherman 300 mm wafer fab, and other large industrial facilities and stadiums. My role was not the same on every project, but each gave me a different view of how plans become work in the field.

Missouri State profiled my early project work in a 2015 alumni spotlight.

Much of my job was taking a plan, helping execute it, documenting what actually happened and sending that information back to the people planning the work. That feedback loop was valuable, but it was almost always messy. Important lessons were captured inconsistently, separated from their original context or lost before they could improve the next project.

That experience pulled me toward preconstruction. I wanted to bring field knowledge into the planning process and use models, production data, schedules and other tools to help teams anticipate problems before the work reached the field.

Today, I work with an erection engineering group planning major picks for large steel projects. My role is upstream of daily field production, but it keeps me close to the same practical questions: how the steel will be sequenced, handled, picked and built, and how planning decisions affect execution in the field.

These notes reflect lessons from building and testing planning tools on real projects, then refining these lessons over time.

I’m grateful to have learned from some of the best in the business, especially the field leaders, superintendents and crews. This site builds on what they’ve shared as I keep working to understand it better.

The purpose

Turning field experience into a better planning loop

Steel Erection Field Notes is where I work through how estimating, work packaging, erection planning, crane logistics, production measurement and field execution can operate as one connected system.

The work connects preconstruction and project planning with field operations and project controls. It takes estimating assumptions and model information and turns them into an operating plan that teams can execute, measure and improve.

The basic idea is simple: organize the information around the work, define a measurable production unit, build the schedule from the operation and feed what actually happened back into the next estimate.

These are working ideas shaped by experience. The goal is to make them practical enough to use, clear enough to challenge and better through the feedback of people doing the work.

How Field Notes Is Built

Learning, building and sharing with AI

Field Notes brings together my experience in steel erection and planning with an ongoing curiosity about how construction works. Some of what I share comes from years in the field. Some starts with a question I want to understand better.

I use AI openly to help research those questions, work through concepts, edit writing, and build interactive examples. The process involves plenty of questioning, correcting, and reworking. I shape what gets published and take responsibility for it.

This site is also a place to share what I’m learning. AI has helped me turn ideas and questions into things people can explore, and that possibility is part of what makes this project exciting. Criticism, corrections, and practical experience from others are welcome.