Doc Brown Would Be Proud (Part 2 of 2)
Doc Brown Would Be Proud (Part 2 of 2) From the People, Planet, Profits & Projects Blog by Richard Maltzman, Dave Shirley In Part 1 of this post, I introduced you to (probably re-introduced you) to Dr. Emmett Brown, that slightly wacky scientist of Back To The Future fame. I referenced several articles, and in this one I’ll continue with those and others, like this one from Clean Technica, which opens like this: “Researchers at MIT, led by professors Franz-Josef Ulm, Admir Masic, and Yang-Shao Horn, have discovered that mixing cement, carbon black, and water in certain proportions results in concrete that doubles as a supercapacitor that is able to store electrical energy. I like how Professor Masic wraps it up.“You have these at least two millennia old materials (carbon black and cement) that, when you combine them in a specific manner, you come up with a conductive nanocomposite, and that’s when things get really interesting.”, he says.” So, great. We have our ‘conductive nano composite’ – our own ‘flux capacitor’. Now what? Well, the best place to start is to remember that we’re literally talking about something foundational. The foundation of a home, the foundation of a wind turbine, the foundation of a highway. If all of these things which were formerly structural are now sources of energy storage, well, that changes things. Charging your car just by driving on the road Doc Brown may have famously said, “Roads, where we going we don’t need roads”. But we still do, and we need electric cars to be easily charged. How about if that was done by … just driving? This has been attempted in the past (see this article about Sweden’s first swipe at it), but these required installing electrical rails in the road. Forget that – with supercapacitors, the job can be much easier. From an article in New Zealand’s DrivenCar Guide magazine: The researchers propose an intriguing concept: integrating this technology within a concrete road could potentially facilitate on-the-go charging for electric vehicles, akin to the principles employed in wireless phone chargers. With this application, the road surface would become a battery while solar panels or windmills provide continuous power. Don’t get too excited yet, though. There is more project work (development projects!) needed to get this to scale. The scientists have only produced a button-sized version of the material. Can’t drive too far on a button. Also adding more carbon black does increase the power storage capacity of the material, it also decreases concrete strength. There will be research needed to find the ‘sweet spot’ – probably between 3 and 10 percent carbon black that retains enough of the strength of the material while providing the supercapacitor properties. No good having your car charged but falling through a carbon black hole. Same deal for home foundations. It’s great if your home can store energy down there, but not so good if it falls over. There are skeptics (and that’s always a good thing especially when it comes to safety). Witness this article from Eric Worrall, in Waats Up With That:Eric says: My concern is the application. When capacitors fail they go with a bang. Old style televisions were notorious for this kind of failure, the loud bang which preceded the magic smoke was usually caused by capacitors suffering catastrophic dielectric failure, and releasing all their stored energy in a fraction of a second. What concerns me is, if a TV capacitor explodes, abruptly releasing a few joules of energy, you spill your beer and curse a bit. But if a 10KWh household super capacitor goes, that’s 36 million joules of energy – equivalent to 8.6Kg of TNT, enough to turn your house into a sizeable crater.10KW (10,000 watt hours) x 3600 seconds in an hour = 36,000,000 joules of energy 36,000,000 joules / 4,184 joules / gram = 8,604g = 8.6Kg of TNT Even more interesting, brittle materials like concrete are vulnerable to mechanical shock. So that 8.6Kg of TNT equivalent, enough to utterly destroy a normal house, could trigger a chain reaction of adjacent dielectric failures, resulting in thousands or even millions of houses abruptly releasing their stored energy. And that’s not even considering the energy storage requirements of even greater concentrations of energy, like high-rise apartments and office buildings. The failure of 115 adjacent household storage super capacitors holding 10KWh could release a kiloton of force – think the Beirut explosion in 2020. Worse, each additional household energy storage system recruited into the chain reaction and explosion would increase the risk to the next house. I’m thinking, that would not be a good day to visit town. Of course, all this risk could be mitigated by using expensive spring or rubber loaded mounts and shock resistant supports, to minimise the risk of the house foundation capacitor detonating because of an adjacent explosion. I’m sure no building contractor would be tempted to cut corners and use cheap, substandard shock protection components, right? See an example of a capacitor blowing up in slow motion here (and imagine this scaled up by Doc Brown levels of magnitude). https://youtu.be/6WUxgmMDts4 This type of advocacy for ‘what could go wrong’ is so needed, and it’s best to consider this NOW, not after the first 10,000 kM of roadway and 300,000 homes are built. So: more project work to do, but this is quite certainly a breakthrough that will lead us Back to a green Future.
Applying AI in Project Procurement
Applying AI in Project Procurement From the AI IQ Blog by Paul Boudreau Technology offers an incredible opportunity to improve project performance. This blog shares the latest research and how organizations are implementing AI into their project methodology. Come with an open mind, increase your knowledge, share your concerns, and become a project manager with new skills to offer an organization. Project procurement management is critical to the success of many projects. There are three important areas where artificial intelligence (AI) technology will change current practices: the contract statement of work, vendor selection, and tracking procurement progress. The contract statement of work (SOW) takes on additional significance when outsourcing work to a vendor. The SOW is the basis for requesting bids, evaluating potential vendors, and finalizing a contractual agreement to deliver the SOW contents. Therefore, the SOW needs to be accurate and comprehensive. Natural language processing (NLP) is an essential tool to provide this requirement. NLP uses documents from similar projects and the wording in the SOW to find errors or omissions. NLP performs entity recognition to extract objectives, deliverables, and stakeholders. Sentiment analysis is performed to analyze the tone or content of communication and ensure no issues or conflicts. NLP identifies and extracts keywords critical to project success, then compares that data to find omissions. The vendor selection process is one of the most challenging areas to maintain ethical behavior. NLP software can remove human bias, similar to current software that scans a candidate’s resume to determine how well they meet job requirements. In addition, seller bid submissions will be automatically checked and ranked based on the selection criteria. To track vendor progress, the performing organization needs to observe vendor behavior and, if possible, access vendor project data. Robotic process automation (RPA) software creates reports and determines the most critical metrics. A machine learning algorithm detects anomalies and predicts future performance. Unsupervised learning performs clustering of data, compares trends in performance, and highlights variances that may result in unacceptable deviations. This allows both the vendor and project manager to be proactive to avoid any deterioration in the probability of project success. The future of project procurement will be based on applying AI technology.
Doc Brown Would Be Proud (Part 1 of 2)
Doc Brown Would Be Proud (Part 1 of 2) From the People, Planet, Profits & Projects Blog by Richard Maltzman, Dave Shirley Most of you are probably familiar with Dr. Emmett Brown. That’s a photo of him at the top of this post. He is not a famous psychologist from the University of Chicago, nor is he the leading cardiologist at the Boston Medical Center. He doesn’t even have a PMP(R) credential, and he’s not even a real doctor. Well, he is a real doctor character, the ‘mad scientist’ in Back To the Future, played eloquently by Christopher Lloyd. And he uses an interesting device to power his Delorean electric vehicle: a flux capacitor. See the sign below. Watch out! Of course, there is no such thing. Or… is there? I have encountered two recent articles which, while not using the term “flux capacitor” are using the term “supercapacitor”. The articles are not from science fiction magazines, either, they are from IEEE Spectrum and from New Scientist. To me, the irony of the story is very sweet, because this is about using two ancient materials – concrete and carbon – to create capacitors which can be built into the environment to power houses and potentially vehicles. Here’s the paragraph that got my attention – in an article from New Scientist magazine, August 2023: A mixture of cement and charcoal powder could enable houses to store a full day’s worth of energy in their concrete foundations. This new way of creating a supercapacitor – an alternative to batteries that can discharge energy much faster – could be incorporated into the foundations of both buildings and wind turbines. When paired with renewable energy sources, it could also someday let concrete road foundations wirelessly recharge electric vehicles as they drive along. This is striking in several ways, not the least of which is the idea that the power source for homes, businesses and vehicles could be built into the environment, which smacks of the whole concept of The Built Environment, for which PMI now is offering a credential (the PMI-CP™). Indeed, I am working with industry professionals and academics to work this into our curriculum at Boston University. The Supercapacitor But let’s get back to this supercapacitor – the project that led to its development and the projects it will undoubtedly launch – projects that would make Dr. Emmett Brown quite proud. Here’s an image of the supercapacitor in the lab (courtesy of IEEE Spectrum): Let’s start with the ingredients. This is another irony. To power the modern world in an environmentally-responsible manner, requires the generation and storage of electricity without the need for fossil fuels, without hazardous or rare-earth chemicals (like those used in batteries). You would think that some brand-new whiz-kid material would be invented to do that. Not so. One of the main ingredients in this supercapacitor is carbon black. To give you an idea of how new this material is – it was used to write the Dead Sea scrolls. So: not new. The other material is concrete, also ancient. The trick is in the surface area. To make the material for their supercapacitor, the team at MIT (see story here) stirred up a paste made of cement and water, and then introduced carbon black, a fine, charcoal-like form of carbon which is highly conductive, into the paste. As this cement mixture cured, the water was absorbed, and when evaporated, left behind a veinous network of tunnels when ended up being filled by the carbon black. The resulting material is now a latticework … with a large surface area of conductive, winding, branching tunnels, without expanding the overall volume of the material, which can now serve as an electrode for the capacitor. The Capacitor I suppose I should digress here for a moment and tell those who don’t have an electrical engineering background about capacitors. There is controversy over who developed the first capacitor, and there’s even controversy over the invention of the predecessor of the capacitor, the Leiden (or Leyden) jar. This was invented nearly simultaneously by German cleric E. Georg von Kleist, but was followed up with more research and intent by by Pieter van Musschenbroek at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands in approximately 1745. In effect, they layers of foil separated by an insulator (called a dielectric). You can see them in action in this video: https://youtu.be/e2EWeOVCO5o they are classically represented by this symbol, a quite logical one, two plates separated by a gap (air, glass, plastic, or other dielectric). As current (excuse the pun) electronic components, they often look like one of these: However, now, the concept of this small electronic component , with this innovation, is expanded into the very construction material itself. In part 2, I will continue with the possible implementation ideas for this technology. References: MIT article New Scientist article IEEE Spectrum article
Presentation Recap: Becoming the Warrior
Presentation Recap: Becoming the Warrior From the PMI Global Insights Blog by Cameron McGaughy, Kimberly Whitby, Heather McLarnon, Julie Ho, Laura Schofield, Michelle Brown By: Dr. Jennifer Donahue Ph.D. Whether it’s in-person or virtual, PMI events give you the right skills to complete amazing projects. In this blog, whether it be our Virtual Experience Series, PMI Training (formerly Seminars World) and our inaugural PMI® Global Summit 2022, experienced event presenters past, present and future from the entire PMI event family share their knowledge on a wide range of issues important to project managers. Last month, I had the pleasure of presenting at the PMI Virtual Experience Series 2023: 15 June. This was a great event with featured speakers, exhibits and networking activities. My presentation was “Becoming the Warrior: Strategies to Break Through and Achieve Your Goals and Dreams”. During this talk, I focused on the fact that we all have passion-fueled dreams that may seem too bold or too risky. We are continually challenged to meet goals, either the goals of our organization, or the goals we set in our personal life. However, we often feel that our goals and dreams are out of reach, that we are not ready, we don’t have the time, or maybe we’re just not good enough. During my 45-minute session, I exposed the reasons why many of you are not moving forward. We struggle with imposter syndrome, self-doubt, the fear of failing, and roadblocks. I received a lot of great questions that I didn’t get a chance to cover, and my responses are below. Question 1: The challenge is knowing when your fear is serving you well or hindering you.I wholeheartedly agree with this. I think a little fear is always required. That little bit of fear tells you that you are doing something extraordinary. You are breaking out of your comfort zone, you’re trying something new, or you’ve made a decision that could create a whole new life for you. This little bit of fear is what counteracts your complacency and status quo. I think of fear as both rational and irrational. Rational fears might be those times when you’re walking at night or in an unknown area and your “Spidey senses” start to tingle. It’s good to listen to this type of fear. Then there are irrational fears. I spoke about my fear of hummingbirds. I know that this is absolutely, completely irrational in every single way. Hummingbirds do not attack people (according to Google). The key is to try to find the difference between the two types of fears. If you were embarking on a new journey, you may have a fear that you will not succeed. Use this type of fear to understand exactly where it originates from. Develop safeguards you can put in place to ensure that you succeed. Being afraid is OK, but not going after your goals and dreams because of that fear, is not OK. Question 2: I’m curious how much toxic culture plays into this.This is an important observation that I have not made before. We understand that we may have feelings of imposture syndrome and self-doubt, but adding a toxic culture will only complicate the situation. Toxic cultures are characterized by unhealthy or negative work environments that might include open hostility, bullying or discrimination. When we combine these imposter syndrome and toxic environments, it becomes easier to reinforce those negative beliefs we have about ourselves. Toxic work cultures are often epitomized by unhealthy competitions, lack of support, bullying, harassment, and devaluing other people’s accomplishments. Working in a toxic work culture creates an even larger uphill battle to overcome our own imposter syndromes and self-doubt. Question 3: We need to remember our TEAMS experience these emotions too so we must remember, speak life, and build people up… not validate the lies/fear people are struggling with internally.This is absolutely the truth! As leaders it is our job to make sure that our teams are healthy. I often discuss that good leadership starts with you and I know this may sound absolutely selfish. As leaders we are told, “it’s not about you, it’s about your team.” And while this is true, we must have ourselves “sorted out” before we go and effectively lead others. Once done, that is when it’s imperative to make sure that we are observing our personnel and assisting them with their goals and aspirations. We are all human. We all have issues that might not be readily apparent on the surface. Understand that others may be struggling and engage with your team to see where you can assist. Many times, just offering positive reinforcement may help others in ways that you might not understand. I had a great time presenting, and the full presentation will be on demand through 31 January 2024. Visit PMI Virtual Experience Series 2023 for more details.
