Ideas for Project Managers

  “The hardest thing facing any Abidu is to remain constantly aware of where he ought to return.” In 2004, inside a freezing solitary cell at Ain al-Asad Air Base in Iraq, Dr. Lassen Ismed Ano—an Assyrian-born, American-educated structural engineer and successful businessman—sits blindfolded and chained . Accused of high treason and selling weapons during wartime, he faces relentless CIA interrogators determined to extract a confession . Yet for Lassen, the interrogation room is only the latest battleground in a lifetime spent caught between two worlds, two homelands, and the weight of a family legacy he never asked to carry . In my novel, Abidu: The Lost One (the newly released English edition of my original Arabic novel) , I weave a sweeping multi-generational saga spanning Kirkuk, Baghdad, London, Cairo, Upper Egypt, San Diego, and Washington, D.C. —exploring what happens when a man belongs everywhere and nowhere at once . A Story of Exile, Memory, and Unbroken Devotion T...

Originally written in April 2009—and later expanded into my full practitioner manual, The $26 Million Oops: A Comprehensive Case Study on Modern Project Planning, Control, and Subcontractor Execution Dynamics —this two-part case study examines why mega-projects fail at the governance level even when field workmanship is solid. Part 1: The Entertainment & Sports Arena — Anatomy of a $26 Million Overrun On July 1, 1997, construction began on the Entertainment and Sports Arena in North Carolina with a planned completion date of September 1, 1999, and an approved budget of $120 million . By handover, the schedule had slipped six months to March 2000, and final costs had escalated to $158 million —a $26 million overrun driven by systemic failures across core project management disciplines. By screening the project against Tom Mochal’s classic project management pitfalls, we can separate what failed ( Red Zones , ranked from highest to lowest impact) from what worked ( Green Zone...