After over 40 years in the construction industry, I decided to try to "retire" having spent over 37 of those years in the public sector. "Retirement" has given me the opportunity to indulge my passion for residential renovation, remodeling, and new construction design. With completion of my second house, I have taken on renovation and remodeling of a larger house and property.
Since Cal Poly is a learn by doing environment, I can't help but participate by working alone, or along side my construction team members. We are currently renovating, remodeling and adding new construction on a much larger house, while planning and designing a new custom house.
Fresno has been my main chapter for years, but Inland Empire was my home chapter while I was working at the University of California in the planning, design, construction and maintenance of campus facilities.
While working at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, as a Project Manager and Project Planner, I volunteered as the CSI Student Chapter Advisor. We invited product representatives to our meetings to learn about the industry and some of the products. We also hosted a Conference and Product Show each year open to the students and professors in the College of Architecture and Environmental Design, and College of Engineering. Speakers from the CSI West Region usually were the main speakers and session leaders. My contribution, in addition to assisting the students with the various planning aspects was to prepare and put on a dinner with assistance from the Fresno Chapter members, the CSI Students and one lone aerospace engineering student and great cook, my son.
Since the 1980's, I have participated in teaching contractors, subcontractors, engineers, architect's in training, purchasing agents, project managers and students on the elements in the Practice Manual, and now called the Project Delivery Practice Guide. At UCR, I spent a year training the new Project Managers using the PDPG. Along with other West Region CSI members, I began teaching Project Delivery webinar classes since 2018. My sessions are Procurement through Construction Phases.
Besides residential work, my other passion has always been to share the knowledge that I have gained from other CSI members who have generously shared, guided and helped me along the way in my career and project successes.
Now that I am semi-retired and have been devoting my time to other interest—restarting the Construction Specifications Institute (CSI) Fresno Chapter, teaching, trying to improve the curriculum at colleges to include a course covering the complete project delivery process, and trying to improve specifications by writing specs for a long time friend who is a landscape architect, and another longtime friend writing guide specifications for a manufacturer.
My educational effort has been developing and teaching the CSI West Region Project Delivery course for 10 years. In 2024, I joined a Team to improve our course. I took on writing the complete 12-hours and creating the PowerPoint slides, graphics and narrative. Another member research education platforms used for teaching and took on managing that website. A third member reviewed and edited content. A fourth member was champion in gather the team and promoting the course. A fifth member was brought in to heavily edit the last chapter, and to narrate the course.
It took me 12 months to rewrite and update the course. We launched it in February 2025. Previously, I taught 3 weeks of the 9-week, online, Zoom lessons. It was quite a commitment. The advantage of the new course is that the 12-hours, prerecorded, online and on-demand course gives the learner the flexibility to set their own pace and listen to 1 or more lessons when they have time and on their computer or phone. The lessons cover 1 concept and are from 3-20 minutes long.
I am trying to be fully retired. However, i find it difficult to step completely away from the industry that has been 50 years of my life.