Duane Craig

Construction cost overruns don’t just happen; they stalk projects right from the start. They hide in project design, project schedules, and nearly any other project aspect, waiting to surprise and confound when least expected. Follow these strategies to reveal cost overruns and contain them early.

I've used cameras for 35 years. Film dominated in my photojournalism days and I spent many hours in dark rooms wrestling the best images I could from trays of chemicals and photo paper. Then, along came digital and it was love at first sight. It was almost as freeing as when a computer's copy and paste came along to supplant typewriters and "white-out." Now, there's a tepid resurgence in film. So, I took an old film camera and put it up against two modern digital sensors. Here's what happened.

When Barbara Jackson talks about women in construction, she frames the conversation in human terms. She recognizes the unique aspects each gender brings to the table and calls the phenomenon gender intelligence. According to Jackson, it exists where companies leverage the talents, skills and natural tendencies of either gender to the advantage of the whole.
Jackson, founder & CEO of Women Building Change (formerly Women Who Build), describes WBC as an ‘on-demand resource network’ on a mission...

I wrote the text for this eBook about future trends in Construction, published in late 2019.

The Writers’ Long Game — hoping beyond hope to have hordes of fans hopelessly hooked.
I’ve made a living by writing twenty years of my adult life. When I look back on those years, it was never about having enough ideas, having enough time or having enough skill. It was always about having enough hope.
Hope must accompany the idea behind what you plan to write, otherwise, why even bother? At first, you must hope you can arrange the words in just the right fashion to both attract readers, and g...

I’m not a superintendent on residential projects anymore. I’ve had time to reflect on how my projects might have been better if I had been better. Here are the five behaviors I came up with.
More Questioning
I was probably more trusting than I should have been. I assumed the due diligence of owners and architects was adequate for my purposes. Unfortunately, it turned out that was often not the case. I expected all specialty contractors to study the plans as much as I did and believed people o...

Saying no to news bias and conspiracy theories is easier than you think.
It’s been clear for some time that polarization in America is directly caused by the information people feed on. And I use “feed on” metaphorically here because I’m just tired of “consume.” The information we allow into our brains drifts around in there until it sticks to something familiar, like our distrust of government or our dislike of people different from us.
Once stuck, it needs constant reinforcement. That’s whe...

This tutorial shows you how to use Photoshop's Camera Raw Filter to fix serious exposure problems in photos. It includes examples of exposure problems, how to use the Photoshop Camera Raw Filter to fix them, how to adjust the exposure and color in large parts of the photograph, and how to save your results.

June 2019 Photoshop Daily Creative Challenge. This is a collection of my photoshop projects.

Retouched Bird Photographs

When Brandon Lopez, field operations manager for ABLe Communications, found himself tracking employee and task times by taking notes on box lids, or whatever was at hand, he knew it was time to look into better ways to beat the clock.
“We needed to get a little more up-to-date, so we started looking into our options,” Lopez says. “We needed a way to be able to track time and give employees a little barometer to show how they’re doing and performing against the budget.”
ABLe Communications is ...

Contractor differentiation is becoming increasingly important for long-term survival in construction markets that are flush with competition. The difference in getting the work, or being invited to bid, often hinges on a contractor’s ability to stand out from the crowd. The reason setting yourself apart can work for you is because your market is dominated by sameness.
The difference between one contractor and the next is well hidden among overused marketing phrases and the rush to simplify. O...

Something very telling has happened for the programmatic audio advertising marketplace and it signals a coming-of-age for the medium’s future. In the latest version of the API Specification used for selling and buying ads, OpenRTB 2.4, digital audio is now a separate object within the protocol. That means sellers can now specifically offer audio impressions for sale and avoid the confusion of offering audio through the video object.

You don’t have to look far to find evidence that working in construction is dangerous. And, nothing drives the point home better than the stories of those who have died building America. This 7 minute video presentation makes the case for investments in safety. It focuses on the construction industry, overviews an employee's death in Georgia, provides accident and death statistics, and outlines the requirements for setting up a safety and health program.

The U.S. EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program allows foreign nationals to gain citizenship by investing in America. This 5 minute presentation video reveals the details of the program, outlines its points of contention and provides examples of where it's been used.