Breaking The Bottleneck with Ali Mafi | S3 EP3

Riccardo Cosentino welcomes Ali Mafi, an industry veteran whose career spans construction, automotive, and consultancy. Ali shares his journey from site engineer at Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 4 to leading transformative project management practices at Balfour Beatty, where he introduced innovative methodologies like critical chain management and lean principles. Drawing comparisons with the automotive sector, Ali emphasizes how better project monitoring, bottleneck identification, and accountability can improve outcomes in construction.

"My definition of project management is knowing the impact of every task on the end date, every day. If you don’t know that, you cannot manage the project. You’re managing tasks, or you’re managing resources, but you’re not managing the project." – Ali Mafi

Key Takeaways

• Reshaping project management starts with daily monitoring of tasks driving the end date.
• Time is the largest cost in construction projects, yet it is often mismanaged or overlooked.
• Lessons from industries like automotive manufacturing highlight the value of lean principles and shorter feedback loops.
• Complexity and uncertainty are inevitable, but they can be mitigated by prioritizing work and adopting adaptive strategies.

Links Mentioned

• The Goal by Eliyahu M Goldratt https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/113934.The_Goal

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The conversation doesn’t stop here—connect and converse with our LinkedIn community: 

• Follow Ali Mafi on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/ali-mafi-345821/
• Follow Navigating Major Programmes on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/navigating-major-programmes/
• Follow Riccardo Cosentino on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/cosentinoriccardo/
• Read Riccardo’s latest at wwww.riccardocosentino.com

Music: "A New Tomorrow" by Chordial Music. Licensed through PremiumBeat.