Author

Ryan Lenihan

The Dangers of Glorifying Busyness

Digital By Jun 20, 2024 No Comments

Leaders’ constant expression of busyness can significantly impact team performance and morale. It sets a negative example, leading team members to feel pressured to appear busy to seem important. This pressure sets the scene for a slew of bad habits and poor optics. Leaders who consistently portray themselves as busy may encourage similar behaviours in their team, fostering a culture…

Implementing Lean Solutions for Engineering Workflow Transformation

In my previous posts, we explored the challenges faced by engineering teams working with offshore design support offices and how lean principles can help streamline workflows. This week, we’ll look at specific lean solutions we implemented that can transform engineering workflows and achieve better outcomes. Streamlining Information Flow One major issue identified was the disorganised flow of information, leading to…

Improving Engineering Workflows with Lean Management

In my recent post “Lean Management in Design and Construction“, I provided an overview of how lean principles, originating from the Toyota Production System, can drive significant efficiency and performance improvements in the workplace. This week, I want to look into a specific application – optimising workflows between a local engineering team and their offshore design support office. The team…

Expanding on IFC Metadata Extraction in PowerBI

In a previous post, “Extracting IFC Metadata Directly in Power BI Using Power Query,” we explored how to use Power Query in PowerBI to directly extract metadata from IFC files using a Power Query shared by Shift Construction. If you haven’t read that post, I recommend checking it out first for context. A few people reached out as they found…

Lean Management in Design and Construction

The first subject I studied as part of my Masters was lean management. I had only ever heard about lean management in a negative context, whenever I had heard people speak about it, they were talking about companies cutting staff to the point teams had to work steady overtime to keep up. So I was quite curious as to what…

Extracting IFC Metadata Directly in Power BI Using Power Query

Digital By May 02, 2024 No Comments

If you work with Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) files and want an easy way to access and analyze the metadata, there’s a great article you should check out. “How to extract data from IFC files” by Matthew Osment on Medium demonstrates how to use Power Query in Power BI to directly extract metadata from an IFC file. Matthew also provides…

A No-Code Guide to Local Large Language Models

Digital By Apr 26, 2024 No Comments

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has exploded since the public release of ChatGPT, bringing the power of AI to the masses at a low cost has changed the way that many of us work and interact with the world. However, there are concerns around the privacy and security of using online, privately owned large language models (LLMs). These concerns include data privacy…

The Planning Fallacy

Have you ever wondered why projects consistently take longer than originally planned? I touched on the topic in my Master’s dissertation and found that the answer may lie in a cognitive bias known as the planning fallacy, and I recently stumbled upon a fantastic article by Dave Stewart, “The work is never just ‘the work’” where he discusses his personal…

The Power of Knowledge Sharing

The concept of intellectual property and originality is always somewhat of a hot topic. Many people feel protective of their ideas and content, often becoming upset when they see others sharing similar thoughts or concepts. However, I believe that knowledge sharing is essential for personal and collective growth. In this post, I want to explore why I embrace others sharing…