Southland Speaks: Recent Episodes
Southland Industries
Carl Winter, Project Executive, provides his perspective on the traits that make a project manager effective and how Southland's core values show up in his daily work. From his experiences, Carl shares the valuable lessons he learned throughout his career managing projects and teams.
While technical expertise is crucial, Carl emphasizes the significance of intentional behavior in driving project success. From maintaining regular check-ins with team members to ensuring thorough preparedness for meetings, he highlights the importance of being proactive and transparent in order to achieve desired outcomes.
As a respected team leader, Carl also discusses the power of cultivating trust within a project team. Listen to learn how he leverages the unique strengths of each team member and fosters an environment for success.
With over 25 years of expertise, Sid Ruiz, Senior Safety Manager, shares how construction safety has evolved throughout his career and highlights the significance of building relationships to foster a strong safety culture within an organization.
Sid provides examples that demonstrate the pivotal role played by every team member in ensuring the utmost safety and well-being of Southland's job sites and personnel. Supported by top leadership, he emphasizes the importance of empowering individuals to voice concerns and actively contribute to creating a safe work environment.
From implementing a programmatic safety plan to conducting job hazard analyses and instilling an "if you see something, say something" mindset, Sid shares the intentional actions that effectively contribute to driving a strong safety culture.
Craig Ahrens, Solutions Development Manager, shares insights and lessons learned throughout his career within the energy business. Drawing from his extensive experience, Craig offers his perspective on how energy expertise can play leading or supporting roles in any project.
Through Craig's insights, we gain an understanding of how Southland's expertise across the entire building lifecycle translates into tangible benefits for clients. Craig reveals how collaboration between the energy and other cross-functional teams can yield tremendous benefits for projects, fostering innovation and creating sustainable solutions that go beyond traditional approaches.
In this episode, we sit down with David Dade, Construction Manager, as he shares his valuable insights on what it takes to be an effective field leader and how our core values manifest in our daily work.
Throughout the conversation, he uncovers the essential traits that define a successful field leader in the demanding construction industry. From accountability to integrity to innovation, David explains how embodying these core values sets up the ideal model for team success.
Zeke Emmons, Project Executive, dives into the crucial role of project managers and their impact on project success. Zeke shares his insights on the essential traits and skills that enable project managers to excel in their roles and drive positive outcomes.
Drawing from his extensive experience, Zeke shares key learning moments from his career in leading projects to success. From strong communication and stakeholder management to strategic thinking and adaptability, he explores the critical attributes that empower project managers to navigate complexities and deliver outstanding results.
Join Ashley Hayes, Project Executive, as she dives into the essence of inclusive leadership. In this episode, Ashley shares what it truly means to be an inclusive leader and explores actionable steps that can be taken by everyone to foster an inclusive environment within their teams and projects.
Ashley talks about the essential qualities and behaviors that define inclusive leadership. From embracing diversity to nurturing psychological safety, she provides valuable guidance on creating a harmonious and empowering work environment where every team member feels valued and heard.
In this episode, Nelson Beaver, Director of Engineering Operations for Brandt, helps us learn a little more about Brandt’s culture and shares his perspective on the roles and responsibilities of engineering throughout a project and how they can be effective in their role.
In this episode, Michael Kimmell, the North Texas Sales Leader for Brandt, shares his thoughts on Brandt’s culture, the role of business development, and how someone in business development can impact the success of a project.
Nikki-Ann Bosque, Project Engineer II in the Mountain West Division, shares how she landed a rewarding career as a recent graduate out of college.
In this episode, we sit down with Larissa Wehling, Project Engineer in the Mid-Atlantic Division, to learn about her experience being recruited as an intern and eventually agreeing to join Southland full-time.
For this final episode of the year, we’re highlighting the insights we heard and lessons we learned from each of our guests over the last year. We’ve included some of our favorite clips of each episode to give any new listeners a taste of what they missed and to serve as a refresher for others.
We’ve added the timestamps below to help you identify which speaker and episode are being highlighted. Then, if you want to hear more from that episode you can find that episode within Stream to listen to the entire episode.
Mindset
Julianna Falzon - Episode 1 - 2:27-3:15
Ryan McShannon - Episode 2 - 3:15-4:16
Ryan Nagle - Episode 6 - 4:16-5:28
Keith Thomas - Episode 8 - 5:28-6:32
Elizabeth Arredondo - Episode 9 - 6:32-7:16
Inclusive Mindset
Jose Felsmann - Episode 3 - 7:56-8:35
Henry Nutt - Episode 5 - 8:35-10:24
Keith Thomas - Episode 8 - 10:24-11:09
Jose Felsmann - Episode 3 - 11:09-11:50
Nikki-Ann Bosque - Episode 11 - 11:50- 12:46
Ryan Nagle - Episode 6 - 12:46-13:51
Henry Nutt - Episode 5 - 13:51-14:50
Core Values
People
Tony Lowe - Episode 7 - 15:35-16:47
Nikki-Ann Bosque - Episode 11 - 16:47-17:25
Innovation
Ryan McShannon - Episode 2 - 17:25-18:07
Jackie Bates - Episode 4 - 18:07-19:52
Tony Lowe - Episode 7 - 19:52-20:55
Larissa Wehling - Episode 10 - 20:55-21:33
Collaboration
Jackie Bates - Episode 4 - 21:33-22:34
Larissa Wehling - Episode 10 - 22:34-22:54
Sustainability
Julianna Falzon - Episode 1 - 22:54-23:52
Accountability
Elizabeth Arredondo - Episode 9 - 23:52-24:38
In this new episode, we sit down with Elizabeth Arredondo, Design Engineer II from the Northwest Division, to learn more about getting the most out of working with groups.
In this new episode, we chat with Keith Thomas, Executive Vice President from Burns Mechanical, to learn more about the art of relationship building and why you should never burn any bridges.
Tony Lowe, Project Superintendent, Northern California Division, shares his expertise about Lean thinking and the tools and underlying principles that help make Lean an integral part of the Southland culture.
Ryan Nagle, VP of Service and Special Projects, shares insights from his career journey and the lessons he's learned along the way while highlighting the importance of focusing on learning and growing from each of your experiences.
Ryan McShannon, Construction Manager, shares how rightsizing your goals is the key to actually achieving them. By defining your expectations with clear steps, creating sustainable habits and rituals, assessing yourself throughout the process, and ultimately getting out of your comfort zone, you can reach goals in all areas of your life.
Jose Felsmann, Preconstruction Executive, shares how his experience playing collegiate and international water polo taught him the importance and power of a team. Jose explains how strong teams have members that take care of themselves and others, leverage strengths and weaknesses, and utilize distributed leadership. Through communication, collaboration, and creativity, strong teams can be built to reach common goals on and off the jobsite.
Jackie Bates, Business Analyst, offers her unique perspective about how to cultivate your passion, create a meaningful path, and be a true team player at Southland. Having held multiple roles throughout her tenure, Jackie highlights the importance of focusing your expertise to bring value to your team, staying humble and remembering to continue to learn and grow, and creating environments where people can share their thoughts — ultimately driving innovation.
Julianna Falzon, Project Manager, shares insight about training for an Ironman Triathlon and how she applies the lessons learned from her experience to set herself up for success at Southland. From the importance of pacing to tracking against goals, setting routines, and getting in the right mindset, the goals we set and achieve outside of work can make the biggest impact while on the job.
Henry Nutt III, Preconstruction Executive, shares his experience as a leader and the importance of amplifying voices to create an environment that supports diversity of thought. By recognizing that all voices need to be heard and understood and that everyone deserves a seat at the table, Henry explores how we have been shaped from our life experiences and how we can shape the experiences of others to achieve success — without quitting even when it gets hard, staying true to our values at work and in life, and being an example for others.