Confidence, CrossFit, and the Maui Fires with Brian Brandt

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! 

On today’s episode, we talk with Brian Brandt, Director, Operations Management at Dawson Global, about Confidence, CrossFit, and the Maui Fires.  Read his full bio below.

Help us continue to create great content! If you’d like to sponsor a future episode hit the support podcast button or visit www.environmentalprofessionalsradio.com/sponsor-form 

Showtimes: 
1:03 - Sponsor Shoutout
2:08 - Art of Decision-Making 
10:43 - Interview starts
26:42 - Maui Wild Fires
46:13 - Job Seekers
48:40 - Crossfit

Please be sure to ✔️subscribe, ⭐rate and ✍review. 

This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with Brian Brandt at www.linkedin.com/in/brian-brandt-p-e-786b4a267

Guest Bio:
Brian Brandt is originally from Pittsburgh, PA and currently lives in Fort Worth, TX working for DAWSON Global as Director, Operations Management. He has a BS in Civil Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh, an MS in Building Construction from Auburn University and a Professional Engineering License from Ohio.

He recently left the US Army Corps of Engineers – Fort Worth District where he was a Supervisory Civil Engineer with over 15 years of experience in managing large-scale complex construction projects. His direct project experience has been focused on O&M and MILCON projects related to secured facilities, civil works, border infrastructure, large (+$300M) construction projects, and emergency response actions.

Music Credits
Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa
Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

Hello and welcome to EPR with your favorite environmental nerds, Nic and Laura. On today's episode, Nick and I talk about making decisions. We talked to Brian Brandt about confidence, CrossFit, and the Maui fires. And finally, Lahaina was the first capital of Hawaii. It also has the world's largest banyan tree, which has to be amazing, because if you haven't seen one, you should Google it. I totally agree. It's actually one of the coolest trees that exists, and I don't want to say any more than that because you should really look it up. Wait, I want to know what you like about it though. Really, I, I mean, honestly, I think it's just really unique. They don't look like any other tree that I've ever seen before, so that's why I like them. I like them because it looks like a place where fairies would live. Very cool. All right, uh, we're gonna end it as you should Google one.

Hit that music. Hit that music. Stop making noise, Nic. 

Today's episode is sponsored by Dawson. Dawson is a native Hawaiian global business enterprise serving federal clients through construction, PTS, and environmental services operating worldwide. Dawson is headquartered in Honolulu, Hawaii, and with offices across the United States, rooted in the Hawaiian values of aloha, embodying humility, respect, and compassion for all, and Ohana, meaning family, Dawson carries forward aulana or responsibility to benefit the native Hawaiian community. Dawson's Environmental Branch brings science, solutions, and sustainability to planning, compliance, munitions, and remediation. With a permanent 8 day status, Dawson is the perfect solution to all of your business needs.

NAEP's 2025 annual conference and training symposium will occur on April 28th through May 1st in Charleston, South Carolina. Enthusiastic environmental professionals from across the country gathered to share and the opportunity to learn about new projects, share technical knowledge, network with other industry professionals. Engage with leaders in the environmental technologies and practice. Learn more at www.AE.org. 

Let's get to our segment. Laura, my favorite part of the interview that we did with Brian was literally watching you grin ear to ear as he was talking about how to make decisions and how not to be afraid of it. Honestly, I think the, the phrase we really got out of him was that decision making is something you have to practice. It's something you learn. And I thought that was really cool and the way he phrased it, the way he sees decisions was really neat and something we've talked about a couple of times, but I don't know what you think about it and what he brought to the interview. Yeah, well, you know, I nerd out over anything, process improvement, leadership, whatever. So yeah, when I hear somebody talking about that, it resonates with me. So because I want to know more. I want to, you know, how do you make good decisions, you know, as, as a business owner, multiple business owner, you, I make decisions all day. And sometimes I don't want to make any more decisions. But if I couldn't make a decision fast, I would never get anything done. So I love that that is a skill, you know, Marley said to us afterwards that she hadn't even heard of that as a skill. Obviously, it's something people do, but it's something you can develop and sharpen. Yeah, and there's like, there's big decisions and small ones, right? And people will often say they can't make decisions or they're not good at making decisions, which is not true patently, patently can't be.

If you're wearing clothes, you made decisions, right? Like so, and even actually if you're not, you also made a decision. So, we make decisions all the time. I think sometimes we give importance to certain decisions over others, and some are obviously more important than others, but that doesn't mean you're not, you don't, don't have the ability to do it. I, I've heard that a few times and it always frustrates me. I'm like, you know how to make decisions. You not wanting to is a very different thing than not being able to. Everybody can do it. And like with public speaking or doing any kind of engagement of any kind. The more you do it, the better you get. I think there's kind of 3 areas that come to mind when I think about if you're going to talk about developing the skill of decision making on the surface, it's like, OK, well, how do I practice that? I just start making a choice faster, but that isn't really just doing it faster isn't the right skill. You should get faster at it when you start to develop it, but I think it comes down to knowing what your values are, what's important to you. If you know clearly what your mission is, you can make a decision much faster. If you don't know or you're not sure, then you might flip-flop or be easily swayed by other people. And then you say, Oh, I think I'm going to do this, and someone else gets in your ear and they tell you something else, you, 00, maybe I'm gonna do that, you know? And so that's a key part of it. 

Another one is goals. If you know which direction you're going in, it's easier to say no to things that don't take you where you want to go. So that's the other part of it. And then You know, like Brian was saying, just having the courage to make a choice before you might have every little piece. Some people, this goes back to more of the disk assessment and personality test we're always talking about. Some people are analyzers, and they, they won't make a move till they have all of the pieces of the puzzle. But whereas some people can see 50% of the puzzle and have enough information to make a choice. Oh yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think You know, we talk about that quite a bit, where people sometimes can get in their own way, where it's like, well, I need to wait for, and sometimes, you know, sometimes a decision, the decision, like making it is the scary part, but once it's made, it's easy to do because you've made it, right? So we'll get hung up on that specific piece, oh gosh, once this is done, everything else is going to be different and most decisions are obviously not like that, right? Even really big decisions. Change over time. 

So I, I think we do this, this fun thing where people think everything is linear, right? Where you look at literally anything, any business, any group program, whatever, the growth of it is always a little bit, you know, of a wave. It's never a straight line. No companies like that, right, Laura? Yes, no company is like that. No person is like that. You're never gonna have a straight life path, career path. It's, you know, people want to make a choice. I've had this problem with some of my career coaches, they like, I have um multiple offers from schools, college degrees to go to. I don't know which one to pick. Well, again, if you know clearly what you want out of it, it makes it easier to decide. Do you want to study abroad? Do you want to take advantage of one of the extracurricular activities or their alumni, what things are important to you, and when you know you're more in line with those, you can make an easier decision. But if you are more like, well, I don't really care. It's a lot harder or don't know. I have never thought about it. But like you said, for me, like, I have a harder time figuring out what to wear every day than I do making a big business purchase decision, you know. 

But you know, I want to go, I actually want to go back to the college thing. I think it's a great one for me too. And I think we put a lot of weight on what colleges we all go to and like the longer you're in your career, the less your college matters. And so I think a degree from a college can help you get an interview. It doesn't help you get the job and, you know, all things being equal, it might, but at some point, that changes, you know, like if I'm applying for a job somewhere, they're gonna care a lot more about the program I'm running than what school I went to, right? And that does change. So when you're younger, it is important to a degree, but sometimes we make like one of the things Brian was saying, when you have something that's that that you have two decisions. That are pretty close to each other, then, you know, making a decision one way or the other isn't going to change a whole lot. Yes. And the same thing with picking the job. I've had another issue where a career seeker is like, well, I've had two offers, which one do I pick? And it's like, which one aligns with your values? Which one does the work you want to do? Don't worry about where it's going to take you or where, you know, you might be in 10 years. A year later, you might be coming back to me telling me how much you don't like it. Right, yeah. And like, especially when you're young, your goal is to learn as much as possible. Like for me, when I was there, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I had no idea. And I had an idea. I had like a core concept, right? You know, something biology related, right? That was my, my whole scope, but what does that actually mean? And you know, that took time, which I hate to say, but it does. So you just learn. Through doing that, I made a decision to take a job in the DC area, one, because of like, uh, you know, the recession that had gone on. I needed a job, and it seemed like it was close to what I was doing. 

One of the best decisions I ever made in my life, I didn't think anything about it at the time. I was like, well, you know, it's kind of annoying that it's far away from where I am right now, but it's a job and I need a job, you know, it's in my field, and it ended up working out. So like, it ended up being a really consequential dis and I never thought that at the time. Yeah, and I think that's why making quick, you know, best guess decisions is a great tactic because it at least moves you forward. If you're not making a decision, you're just standing there, you know, while other people may be passing you by or opportunities may be going by. And you're just like not growing. No, you know what's funny, I don't think I've ever said this, but I actually turned down a job right before that because it was in a lab doing chemistry type work, which I didn't have any experience in and I didn't really like and I really didn't like the interview that I was in, like the boss that I interviewed with was like, we don't do gossip around here, and I'm like, that's OK. I didn't say I would, but that's a really strong take on that and uh it's, you know, what does gossip mean to you, right? Is it like, are we not allowed to talk to each other or or can we just not say, you know, guess what happened yesterday, you know, because people do that. But it was funny cause I remember not liking it. And I remember making that decision and being really scared. Like I was like, oh gosh, I just turned down a job, like an actual job, what am I doing? And literally, like, I think it was 3 or 4 days later, I got the other offer. Exactly, and that is a huge part of developing that skill and Brian alluded to it is just being OK with like, where does this decision take me?

 I think it's the best information at the time and knowing that something else is going to come along. Or you can correct it later, you know, whatever that is. But I'm gonna decide that we just we end it. Yeah. What do you want to keep going? No, that's great. I'm right there with you. I'm right there with you. I'm gonna make a decision long enough. I would like to bring Brian in. Yeah, and um let's get to our interview. Very cool. 

Welcome back to EPR. Today we are excited to have Brian Brandt with us. Brian is a professional engineer and the director of operations management at Dawson. Welcome, Brian. Hi, thank you. I'm excited to be here. Awesome, we are excited to have you because, you know, if you haven't heard, there's some fires going on in LA and we want to talk to you about some work you might have in that area. But before we dive into those kinds of things, can you just give us a little bit of an overview of Dawson? We know some from Nick being here, obviously. But your role and what you do there, how long you've been there? Sure. So Dawson is a native Hawaiian organization. We manage federal contracts for the Department of Defense, mainly all different organizations within the Department of Defense. So I've been with Dawson for about 2 weeks now. I come from my background with the Army Corps of Engineers, so I was with them for 15 years prior to making the switch over to the private sector, and Dawsons. A lot of work with the Army Corps of Engineers. 

So, overseeing contracts where basically, the government has a need, to get funding to do anything from, it could be a professional service, it could be construction, environmental cleanup type of projects, planning, anything like that could be IT, any of those type of, where you need a technical solution, such as like an engineer or geologist, IT professional, uh, I mean, the range is unlimited as To what we could fill that need for the federal government. So basically, we go into a contract with the federal government, such as an agency like the Army Corps of Engineers. Once we get that contract, then we would go out and perform that work. And so there's specific rules we have to follow as being a federal contractor, it's almost like being a federal employee, as I'm finding out my first few weeks here, it's not all that much different. There's still a lot of rules that apply to both sides. 

So, it's kind of like basically working for the federal government and trying to provide the tax. Taxpayer with, you know, a final product that meets their needs and is at a, a reasonable cost as well, which is very important. And so that's basically kind of the gist of the whole program of what we do. My role at Dawson, after I worked with Dawson on the Maui wildfires, which I know we're gonna talk about. I was on the Corps of Engineers at that time. And just we developed a really great relationship. I was interested in, you know, maybe seeing what it was like on the outside of the government, and they were interested in. Bringing me on board. So when I came into, we talked about my role would be. So, as mentioned, I'm currently the director of operations management. A lot of that is looking at our operations as a whole, which includes professional technical services, construction, environmental, O&M, and other services, and just looking at all how all those work and basically how we can manage risk moving forward, you know, as a company, you have to make sure that. As you're operating, that you're doing so in a smart way. 

So you wanna make sure that you're doing so sustainably and that your business can remain in business, but also where you can kind of manage things so that you can grow as well and take some chances on doing some new work, or just trying to help out as much as possible. So we kind of find our niche within the government where we can help out. And then basically. Establish yourself in that role. One thing that's unique with us being a native Hawaiian organization, it's similar to being like a small business, is that we have specific rules where we can be asked to do projects that others may not have to. So a bigger contractor, they're gonna have to compete a little bit more on some work. We may be asked to do it directly, and that's a lot of that's based on our reputation. And our ability to develop relationships as well. While I worked with Dawson for the Army Corps of Engineers, that was one thing I was very impressed with Dawson was our relationship was very good. We had a very transparent communication. 

They wanted to do the right thing. We wanted to do the right thing. And it really was a successful relationship that that provided a successful project as well. That's awesome. Thanks for sharing all that and there's a couple of things in there I want to touch base on. One of them is you mentioned that your experience with the government was pretty much a strength, like why would Dawson want to hire you because you kind of have insider knowledge. I think when I career coach with people who are in government but feel stuck, they kind of feel like they're wasting their time or that they're, you know, should have done something different, but I think if you look at it that way, that's different than, well, you're probably gaining some experience that you can definitely take with you, but not in the way that they're thinking. So can you talk a little bit about how That transition happened and were you thinking that beforehand or is that something you found out in hindsight? It was something that came up in hindsight. So like I said, I've been with the Army Corps of Engineers for 15 years. And yeah, it's the same kind of thing that goes through your head, you know, the government offers a lot of benefits that can kind of make you stick around for a while. 

There's a lot of stability there, especially my main role with the government. I did several roles. I was in design, engineering. I was also in operation and maintenance, but I mostly was in construction contract administration. So when we would hire contractors, basically my office would take over that contract, oversee everything, make sure that they were following all the specs, the plans. We were doing everything, you know, per the contract, paying them for the contract and the work was all correct. Basically, we've had inspectors out there all the time, a lot of meetings. So over all those years, you know, I would see on my end like, man, these, these contractors. Because they've got to move around to wherever the work is. They kind of have to be, go and move around and do different things and work a lot of hours. And I get to stay where I'm at and work my 40 hours a week. And I was always like, I'm pretty good with that because I like the work-life balance that came along with it. As I grew in my career and I started to become a supervisor and a manager, basically, I kind of thought, well, I'll never be able to work in private because I don't think. I'll be able to make that leap over without them wanting to meet a project manager or be on one of those construction sites. And I, I didn't really want to kind of take that step back down. 

But as we went along, and I worked with Dawson and developed that relationship, I started to talk a little bit more after the contract was up. They had another project in Maui. Which was the temporary housing project. I was still out in Maui for the core overseeing the debris removal at that point from the wildfires. So we just, we met up, we started having some conversations, and it just kind of casually came up, and I'd never really thought about it and we just discussed a type of role that might fit. My strengths or what I'm looking for and what, what Dawson needs. And it, it was kind of just the perfect marriage at that time where I was at my career, what they were looking for and what they want to do. And I thought that would be really exciting. I also thought to myself, like you said, over the years, like, do I want to get out? Do I want to stay? The government was great because, I mean, they paid for me to get my PE. They paid for me to get my math. Master's degree. So there's a lot of advantages, a lot of training, I mean, a lot of opportunities. I got to go to Afghanistan when we were in the Operation Enduring Freedom. I did that for a couple of years. I lived in Germany for 3 years. I worked over there managing construction on some military bases and a lot of like sensitive skiff type of construction, which is like sensitive facilities for classified information. 

You know, I got to go different, like I got to go Maui. I've worked in Texas and Fort Worth is where I live now, and that's where I was working, doing some big projects here. So. It's really cool the diversity I got, but, you know, being able to take that, all that experience, like you said, I'll be able to apply on the other side. Just seeing that difference in, as opposed to we're spending the money we're trying to, you know, be a good business. So, but it's taking the same values and principles. Like I said, what I always valued with the government was, you know, You're trying to deliver something to taxpayer, and your goal is to make sure it's done right, not just to get it done, right? Um, make sure you give value to the taxpayer. And what I see with Dawson is that same type of mentality and, and the values line up there as well, where it's not just going to get a job, to get the job done and make money, it's to do it well. I'll do it right, build those relationships so we can continue to provide that to the taxpayer. But then also, part of that as well as being a native Hawaiian organization is to give back to the native Hawaiian community as well. And that's part of our mission, is part of that too. And we have to make sure we show that we're actually giving back to the community. And Maui was one great way we got to do that. Yeah, which is, oh man, I mean, we really can spend probably a full hour just talking about Maui and But even talking about your career and how you got to where you are. So you got to work in Germany and Maui while you're working for the federal government. That's quite wild. Was that challenging? I mean, like, I know it's rewarding, right? There's lots of different things that come like the value you got from seeing the world really through your career, but was it ever a challenge? Were you ever like, why am I in a desert, for example, or whatever it is? Yeah, certainly. 

The first thing was the opportunity to go to deploy to Afghanistan. Part of that was, I mean, I had student loans after school and then, you know, you could work all these hours and make all this overtime and all this stuff and get experience. And I was like, well, that sounds pretty good to me. I mean, I get to work. Basically 24 hours a day, you're not spending any money and I can pay off loans. So selfishly, that was one of the main drivers, but also just the opportunity to see the world. I mean, I got to, I left the country before that I was 24, 25 years old. And I was like, I just, I wanna, I'm from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I grew up there, lived there. And I'm like, I'm ready to see more, you know, see what's out there. So that was the first part and like you said, yeah, it was challenging, but, you know, I had some really amazing people along the way that helped me and just always kind of supported me and That was a big thing that helped, you know, when you get to a new place, you don't know anything and you're overwhelmed and you just have people that care about you and, you know, show you the ropes and help you along. And it also just builds that confidence within of, you know, if you can take on these challenges that most people are like, you're insane for wanting to do that. Um, it just builds your confidence and then once you do that once, it's in your blood and you're like, I can't just Settle for wanting to be, do one thing forever. I need to continually grow and not necessarily have to move around and go different places, but new challenges with the work. 

I mean, and each challenge was different in itself. And it's almost like what I learned about myself over the years is once I kind of get good at something, I'm like, what's next or what else add to it. And I, I think you don't know that until you put yourself in that situation. And I think a lot of people avoid that out of fear, which, you know, if you asked 23, 22 year old me, I would have been like, that sounds scary to wanna be a director in a company, you know, or whatever it might be, or go to these places and take on these difficult jobs, but until you do it, you really test yourself and you see what you're made of, and then you build that confidence and then it's like at this point. After all those things I've done, I, I feel like I can take on any job. And it's not because I think I'm so great. It's just I've done it before and it, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna fail. I'm gonna mess up and make mistakes and say some dumb things and you get corrected and cool, great. Now I've learned it, and now I'll do better and know next time. So that, it's putting yourself in those challenging situations, failing, having hopefully good support around you, and then applying this. 

Lessons is the most important thing, you know. One thing I always realized was my original job, you know, you have 6 layers of bosses on bosses, you know, I've got 8 bosses. Um, OK, you don't get to make any decisions. You do your job, hey, here's a problem. They're gonna basically tell you what to do. Right. Afghanistan, Germany, Maui, those places, it's a contingency environment where things happen now, and there's no waiting. You don't, you can make decisions and you can have that opportunity to fail. And that's where I learned like, making decisions is a skill. I, I don't, I'm not gonna sit and overanalyze every little thing. And that's engineers typically do that. Over analyze everything. I need 100% of the information before I do anything. I'm like, what do we have? OK, based on On this, here's the decision, and we move forward. And if we, if it's wrong or we get off course, we could just correct it and keep going. And that's what I think a lot of people get scared of that end of it is like, well, if I make a mistake, I'm gonna look bad. It's like, still make 10 mistakes and we'll be 100 steps ahead and we can fix them, versus now we're just sitting right where we are and never moved cause you're still waiting to feel like you know what, what you want to do. So those are all the things that really helped me with those challenges. 

Yeah, I, I love so much of what you said in there too. Like, I know Laura and I are both grinning because we've talked about exactly what you just said several times on the show. So I, I love to hear that. One of my favorite observations about the way people are, right? Sometimes you can be so worried about being perfect, like, perfect it's in the way of good. And my favorite, like, you know, simple example of that is like, you never want to be the person who hits the bull's eye dead center 5 years after the war ended, right? That's not helping anybody. So you always want to make sure you're doing things in a way that still allows you to move forward, doesn't mean you don't. Do hard work, doesn't mean you don't do your due diligence, but it doesn't mean you're paralyzed by, let's make sure it's dead center instead of just in the center. Um, I want to know more about like, there are times, even if you're good at making decisions, there are times when it's like, these both of these look great. Like, what do you do when you are, what's your personal process for like, I'm going to make a decision, but which one of these do I choose? Oh, that's a great question. You know, each situation is different. That's where it takes experience. and really knowing and having that intuition of like what to do. But sometimes it's just having those experts around you too. 

You know, a lot of times, I think my biggest value over the years is like, I wouldn't say I'm the smartest or the best in any one area, but doing construction in general, I know a little bit about everything, you know, enough to be dangerous, right? Um, and so I've always been my biggest strength is bringing people together, like the really, really smart people who know their stuff and just saying, hey, like, let's have a discussion. And usually the right, the right answer will come out of that. And if it's that close that one A or one B, you really can't go wrong, cause if you start going down 1A and it, you find an issue, you usually can correct it back and fix it, and that's Usually it's, it's not that big of a, of a problem, but that's where, you know, you really rely on the people. You can't have that, that ego of like, I know everything. I don't know, I hardly know anything. I just know enough to like collect information and how to make a decision based on that. And usually that's where you get your really smart people in those areas and you say, what, you know, hey, tell me what you got here, and they give it to you and then you take, you know, what I always said is in my usually my job was you've got several technical areas, right, like say 10 or 15 different experts and you have owners, you have customers, you have end users, you have OM, you know, maintenance, you have the public or whoever it might be. Everybody has different interests, right? 

Some political, some personal, whatever it may be, and it's taking all Those interests into account and making the best decision that's gonna be best for everybody, right? And sometimes that is like, this one person's gonna be very, very happy with you for like a week. And everybody else can be a little bit mad at you. You know, and that's usually how it goes. So you're kind of in that middle ground playing referee all the time. And so yeah, as far as making the decision on when it's close, usually if it's that close, you can't go wrong. It kind of works itself out. Yeah. Yeah, one of my favorite sayings is just pick a decision and then once you've picked it, live with it, you know, you have to make the most out of whatever decision you choose, even if it's the wrong one, make the most correct it, whatever you need to do, but you chose it so now live with it instead of regret it. Sometimes he will dig their heels in no matter what, and you're like, well dude, it's the wrong decision. I that's where you gotta be able to be like, OK, that was stupid, we're we're gonna. Yeah, yeah, that's an amazing point. 

Yeah, because sometimes you're wrong and sometimes and it's, it's literally it's one of those things you learn as a child and it's, it's supposed to stick with you all the time and some people forget that it's OK to be wrong. It's OK. We're all wrong sometimes. No one's perfect. So yeah, I mean, so that leads to, you know, what the Maui wildfires, you know, like I said, we have uh fires going on in LA right now. And it just, we had a thought, you know, like oh, we have experience dealing with fire and how that affects communities, and we wanted to talk about that response. And so you're working for the Army Corps at the time, so how does that process work? Where do you even start when you start to see, oh, we have this really horrific event and we need to immediately get out there and support. Like, how do you come into that and where do you even start? It seems very overwhelming almost immediately. Yeah, so it's, uh, I mean, I could probably give you a course for the next week on how that all workstically and the decision making, but, um, just to simplify it a bit, you know, basically, when something like that happens, a natural disaster, you know, everybody's already tracking it and looking. Added that one, a fire like that, there's already forward of pre-planning. Sometimes the subject matter experts for the Corps of Engineers and FEMA, they'll go and sit through a storm. I mean, they'll, they'll go to a basement of a hotel and sit through a hurricane. It's that way they're there and they can assess it immediately.

So when the fire occurred, I mean, immediately everybody is aware of it and the way it works is FEMA has to be called in. It has to be declared a federal emergency. And then once FEMA's called in, they determine whether or not, you know, the level of detail that the Corps of engineers will get involved. Sometimes it could just be like monitoring it, sometimes it can be overseeing the whole debris removal process, and that's what Maui was because it was so devastating. The state itself couldn't handle that type of response, so they had to call on FEMA. FEMA calls on us. So in that first month or so, basically the core has The Corps of Engineers has subject matter experts in disaster response debris clean up specifically. They have some in providing temporary power. They have ones for debris removal. They have ones for like critical public facilities like the school that was rebuilt or any other facilities that need to be built quickly, um, temp housing, but for debris removal, which I was a part of. So they, they had the subject matter experts out there. They basically assess it and say this is how big it is. This is how much, you know, how many cubic yards or tons of debris we expect there to be. 

Here's where we can take it. Here's the routes, here's, you know, here's what's available. I mean, they collect all that information. There's a lot of people involved. The EPA comes in immediately. They do their sweeps to try to get rid of anything that's hazardous that's left over. So what particularly made Maui difficult was several factors. One was just the cultural Factor, um, well Haina being the capital of the native Hawaiians. So there's so much history there. Everything we did had to have them involved between cultural, I mean, we had archaeologists everywhere we went. So all of that had to be taken into account every decision we made, that made it, you know, not that it was necessary, but it made it at a level of difficulty. Also, on top of that, so once all that's identified, then basically, they say, Hey, we're gonna need a team out here of volunteers to come out to Maui and oversee this. And the way it works, the cops has several teams. So, you know, the core's broken up into districts all throughout the country and the world. So certain districts, they already have some people trained up to do debris removal. 

You volunteer, you say, hey, when, if the disaster happens, I'd be willing to go, you know, pending what's going on with other things because you're leaving your job behind and somebody's picking up the slack. So you basically volunteered to go and at that time when it happened, Fort Worth was next up to go to Maui. I, and I was in Fort Worth District, and my position was contracting officers representative and resident engineer. So basically just everything that's going on with putting the contract together, administering the contract, overseeing it all, that was one skill that I had that I volunteered to do. I went over in October and that's when we awarded the contract to Dawson. And basically, what made it difficult for Maui as well and other factors, they didn't have any landfill space. Obviously, it's a very isolated island, know the Pacific, um, almost they were less than a year left on capacity for their existing landfill. They already needed to upgrade it. The amount of debris that was generated from the fire was 2 years' worth of their capacity. So, oh, they didn't have anywhere to take it. So they were kind of like, well, what are we gonna do? Two things that we, you know, that's where everybody put their head together and that was higher level leadership on down to the teams. How are we gonna manage this? How are we're gonna put it together? That's where they came up with coming up with this phase one and phase two. 

So that's Dawson got the phase one contract, and that was basically going through every single property and assessing it and saying. Here's the amount of debris that's here, here's the type of debris. If there's any hazardous materials, propane tanks or anything flammable, any certain type of, I'm trying to think of like paints, anything like that, they would remove that stuff because, you know, that has to be all separated and handled separately from typical debris that would go to a landfill. So that kind of stuff they look for, they'd mark it, tag it, take it away. They also tested for like a. Asbestos, bulk asbestos materials. They would run tests on every property. If they found it, they'd have to remove that if they could. All of this was done without right of entry. So we got an emergency declaration that we could do this without having each person, each property signing a waiver saying, hey, you come to my property and do this. Just because of the nature of this being hazardous materials, and over, it was basically, hey, this is a public nuisance that we're gonna be able to do that. 

That that was the problem is you need a right of entry to go into somebody's property, you know, with big trucks to clean up all their stuff, right? This is all stuff you wouldn't think of. You wouldn't, it's all liability. So we were able to do all that without it. We didn't have a landfill. We didn't have to take anything yet. So that was kind of what we came up with is like, we can get this part of the work done. We could start moving while we look for a space to build a landfill. And so that's when Das. And came in early. We worked together. We were able to get through that. They had about 3 months to assess, you know, almost over 1600 properties and go out every day and just, you know, come up with these big reports and go through their GPS and tell us where every single hazard was located. Every tree had to be assessed, because basically what happens is if a tree gets burned, but it doesn't fall over, and it's dead now with, within a few years. It'll eventually fall and it could fall on somebody, fall in their house, fall in their car, fall on a person. So those type of things have to be looked at and assessed. They assessed all the trees. They assessed every property to look at, you know, what was there, you know, what type of hazards were there, were their vehicles there, batteries, anything that could be dangerous, hazardous materials. 

So that's, that was what Dawson's role was out there. And then the. of Engineers that we ended up doing was, we did some debris removal early at the same time. There was actually, so this isn't very kind of out there as much either, but when the fires happened in Maui, there was several locations where there was fires. One of them was about 3500 ft up to the mountain, the crater where the volcano is. There's a couple towns there, one of the towns there, they call upcountry, uh, the town was called Cooa. They had about 35 properties that burned as well. And so because that was a smaller number, and it was a different community, not as culturally historic, more newer builds and things like that, we were able to take that debris to the existing landfill. We were able to work out a deal to do that. Yeah between what Dawson did with our phase one part and that part, we learned a lot of lessons that we applied then to Lahaina where we did our debris removal. 

It took us almost 5 or 6 months to start in Lahaina. Because we had to build a landfill and trying to find a place to do it where we didn't upset anybody because the culture if you ever go to Maui and drive around, everything's historic and it's not a joke that's not like everything, especially to the native wine. So it was a fight. I mean, we got protests and question on everything we did, everything was under a microscope. So yeah, that's kind of a general overall picture of what went down, but that was mostly what Doss. ' s role was. And I'm sure, I think you guys are gonna talk to Derek next week, and he can give you the whole on hidden on the Dawson side what that was like. He has a lot of different stories I've, I've shared with him and he shared with me. But yeah, a lot of that's kind of what happened. Like you said, Laura, there's so many little things that go into it, you would never think about. And I've never done a fire or even a debris removal mission before. But we had, like I said, we had experts there and everybody pitched in and helped and 

All the little things you need to think about. And then, you know, not only that, you're dealing with recent victims of the worst tragedy they've ever been through, most likely, and, you know, they're in a fragile state and they're not OK and you have to, you know, you, you see these people because you're in a small little community. You see them out, they see you, they, they know who you are and so you're always trying to Help them and do what you can for them and give them the answers and I always say like being an engineer, I mean, I probably wasn't very well equipped for the empathy piece of that, but you learn pretty quickly and, you know, it was very rewarding, fulfilling, challenging, talking about challenging that was, I've been on some hard things that was the most challenging, uh, yeah, and I was, I was gonna ask you made me think of this, I guess it's a kind of a two part question, but like. You know, going into this, knowing what your strengths and skills are probably helps you for being too nervous, but you have to be a little bit nervous, right? Cause I mean you're talking a little bit about the community's response to all that, and it's like you said, there's devastation and there's concern, right, right away, you're dealing with a lot of emotion. 

So, how do you manage your own thoughts and then I don't, I don't want to say anxieties, but like, you know, your own challenges coming to this from outside and the community's response to what you're doing. I mean, we had various levels of leadership, their different roles and their responsibilities. We had a commander out there and and he had to be the forward facing for everybody and go to all the public meetings, and I mean, I went to some meetings, but I wasn't the one up on the stage facing all the heat and You know, I got to know some locals and things, but his job was to take all that and try to be as transparent as possible. So my job was to feed him the right information, um, you know, and we had others, several others that were out there, and that was their role was to kind of manage the overall like public facing side of it. So my job, being the one managing the work on the day to day, I had the most up to-date information. So it was always just keeping them educated and making sure they knew what was going on so that we were all on the same page. And then just being transparent. And that was the key. It was always transparency to the nth degree and every day providing accurate. Updates of what's going on, why we're doing what we're doing. I mean, every day. 

So one really great example, and Derek, I know he would tell you that this, you know, this causes a lot of heartache. But, so, I mean, as we're doing things, you're going through it, one thing we, we would do is they would mark out basically what's called the Ash footprint. So if a structure burns down, it creates an ash footprint. So you can see it pretty clearly, especially if like Lahaina's a lot of houses that are really close, like small footprints. So most of them the whole property was the ash footprint. But if you have like a bigger yard, like up in up in Coola or like a lot of times, you know, California's fires that aren't in the city, you have a yard, you can see where the structure burned, it basically just creates a footprint. So they would delineate that and the way they would delineate it is they would put tape around it. Well, they put red tape around it, you know, not thinking much of it. Hey, we're just putting tape, we have it. It's like do not enter tape, right? So part of it too was the way that Lahaina and that the county was running, people needed to go back to their properties and basically part of it get closure, part of it was to sift through their belongings and they had NGO organizations that were there to provide support and some of them would do it for them and, you know, help them through it. But there was times where they'd go back and it was after we'd already assessed their property. And they see this red tape and they're like a couple, like one or two people said calling, hey, am I not allowed to go to my property? It says do not enter and they were panicking. 

And so, you know, we get phone calls. Why are you putting this red tape and what are you doing? You need to change it. And I remember calling Derek and saying, hey, can you change that red tapes like a different color or you have anything else? And it was all these little things where, like, kind of goes back to our Conversation earlier about decisions is you make one decision and you're like, cool, yeah, let's do that. That works. But it has a 3rd or 4th or 5th order effect down the line that comes up and you never you're like, but that wasn't the purpose of it, but it's what it becomes now and then you have to adjust so. It was things like that that just made it even more difficult. Every little thing we did was scrutinized, asked questions about, we had FAQs and websites with, you know, hundreds of pages of information on what everything means and why we're doing this and that, and you had to. Overcommunicate everything all the time. And you couldn't please everybody, obviously. So how do you sift through all that information because you have to take every single piece of information and then decide what's relevant. And if it's, you know, it's not necessarily literally everything, but it's most everything. So how do you decide? OK, well, this is what the commander needs to know. This is the thing. There's other pieces of this puzzle, but right now he needs to know all of this. 

How do you decide like, what's relevant and what's not? Part of that is just, uh, you know, having communication every day and talking, but then, then building a relationship with the commander and understanding what's important to them. It's a two-way street because if they communicate a certain thing. Then we have to be able to execute on it. So we have to be honest about where we are in the process and what we can and can't do. But then also, it's just making sure that he understands that, hey, there's a risk here, and here's what we're doing, but you might not want to go out and start communicating that because There's a risk, and if we don't do it now, it's just gonna cause more problems. So it's really just, and, and I mean, to be honest, you know, the army trains, they most of the time by the time they get to that 06 kernel level and above, those guys are, they're leaders and they know what to do and how to speak and How to manage that. And so it's really just developing the relationship so that we're on the same page. And when you're with somebody 24/7 all the time, you develop that quickly. 

And that was another part. I mean, we were working around the clock from the second you wake up to the second you go to bed. So, you know, one day there is like one of the the guy we worked with, he would always say, it's like dog years, like one day there. 7 days. So it's like you're cramming so much in that you, what you would, you know, a month there, you would learn like a year's worth of anywhere else. So I was there the longest. So typically with the core, what made it difficult too is another layer to make it difficult, is we would rotate every 30 days, usually sometimes 45, sometimes 60, short timers. And it was just difficult because And I got out there at the beginning and I was there for 45 days, went home a couple weeks, came back for another 60, and everybody on the core team was like, you've got to stay because I set up all the contracts. I had all the rel relationships. I understood where all the skeletons were buried, you know, all that stuff. Right. That, like you said, how do you know? Well, I was kind of the only one there from the beginning that stayed long enough to got the institutional knowledge. So I became the person throughout the whole mission that just had the answers. Everybody would kind of come to me like, why is this? Why is that? And I just knew it because I did it. Like you said. We made all the decisions. We made all the mistakes. We did all the things that were right, wrong, you know, I knew, I, I had all that pain still from we made, we, this happened. I got that phone call at 1:00 p.m. and You know, I had somebody say to me, why are you doing this or that? And um so I, I live that you just know it, yeah, you're like, how do you know that? It's like, I don't know, you just, yeah, you live it, you're living it, yeah, so it was uh interesting. Oh, for sure, for sure, and like the kind of, I guess close out our conversation on it like. 

So I,  did work on um a disaster recovery effort in 2011 for the Tuscaloosa tornadoes that actually hit like all of Northern Alabama. It was quite the debris removal and all that all that wild stuff as well. And one of the things that we started that project off with was like lessons learned from previous efforts, and, uh, you know, at that time, Katrina was still kind of like the Here's what we learned from that effort and how we can do better. So, is there stuff that you learned doing this fire response that you would say can be applied to future recovery efforts? Is there something that comes to mind when I ask that question? Certainly, yeah, and, and the Corps of Engineers' first fire experience really came in 2017 in California Northern California fires. And they had several others prior to Maui, and they had some people who had been on several ones. There was one person in particular who's a chemist for the core, he's a PhD chemist, brilliant man and He knew everything there was to know, and he, you know, just understanding the history. They had already taken lessons learned from the first one and the next one and the next one. There's things that like the cultural and archaeological and just being building a basic building a landfill and all that stuff. There's things that we'd never done before that we had to kind of figure out, but we tried a few new things with our contracting methods like. So one big thing with debris removal is, how do you put the contract together, right? How do you pay? What are the units to measure, you know, what all that kind of stuff. 

Typically, it goes by cubic yard or by tonnage with the trucks, and then there's a lot of games that can get played with truck drivers and trying to hide things and trying to add weights to your trucks and make them heavier or trying to act compartments to. High, you know, so you get less volume, but it looks like more volume. And so we did this fire because in Lahaina especially, most of the lots are similar size, so we kind of just took the total amount of debris that we estimated, divided by the lots we paid per lot so per per per parcel cost. And what that did is it kind of just. Made it go easier and faster. Like the incentive was to just clean up the lot and do it per the contract. And there wasn't as much like, cause a lot of times what happened in California is they'd over excavate the soil, you know, they'd be taking out debris and they would take a lot of soil underneath of it to get more weight, to get paid more. Um, and not to say people were doing anything they shouldn't, but It's kind of what happens. And so things like that really helped to make, it made their relationships a lot better cause everybody's on the same page and things like that, um, the testing methods they use, you know, you have to test the soil. So after there's a fire, there's a lot of contaminants to burn and get into the soils. 

So you had to, we had to test all the soils and remove 6 inches of soil, and then retest it to make sure that those contaminants weren't. Still present so that they could then get a clean lot to rebuild on and things like that. So we've learned through the years of, you know, how to go through that process, what that looks like. I, I'd say after Maui, we've got it pretty good. We'll see how Los Angeles goes, if the Corps of Engineers does the full-on debris removal or not. I mean, that's still, you know, has to go through the whole process through FEMA and everything. But, you know, after our recent experience with, with Maui, I say that they're, they should be applying a lot of those lessons, certainly. And even the lessons from other disasters, I know that they've, they continually look at their processes and try to reapply them and reapply them and try to make them better.

So it's just constantly changing environments and regulations and people and everything else that can make that difficult. Oh yeah. Yeah. I got another question just before we move on, we're getting close to our time, but Do you have any suggestions for job seekers that might be listening who might be able to travel and take advantage of opportunities that might have come up from the LA disasters, you know, they're going to be looking for people to do this type of work. Well, if it's from a, from a government standpoint, if you're working for the government already, it would have to be worked for the Army Corps of Engineers or for FEMA. EPA usually has a lot of people, so they might have some jobs out. There. Those are the different agencies and, and all the federal government jobs are on USA jobs. So I would look for that and look for the LA area. Don't know how many though they would hire for that. As far as contractors go, typically with disaster relief type of stuff, it's kind of already, like, there's a lot of contractors in that pool that do that work. Dawson came in because of being a native. Wine organization with it being a Maui. But now that we have that experience, you know, maybe we could be one of those contractors in that pool. 

But if, if, if you're, you're saying somebody looking to get work and do that kind of stuff, it would just be finding out what contractors are doing that work and then reaching out to them. I mean, really, it's, I know, um, speaking with the contractors that I worked with in Maui, others, even Dawson and others. There was always, hey, we're always looking for people that want to travel. And I think that's a difficult thing. So I think putting that on your resume, willing to travel or reaching out and just saying, hey, I'm, I'm willing to travel. I'm interested in this type of work. I think that would be the key. So just, you know, reading the news or going and googling like debris removal, who's who's working this, you know, you can find it. It's all public knowledge. So look for those contracts and look for a contact and reach out and say. Hey, I wanna go and do whatever job you want me to do and, you know. Yeah, that's great advice. Right, awesome. Well, I just learned so much in the last 20 minutes. I know we both we both did. 

Um, but we want to switch gears before we end and talk a little bit about your personal stuff, and you are a level 2 CrossFit trainer. I think we've had one CrossFit person on here before, but what does first of all, a little summary of CrossFit, and then what is level 2 and how many levels are there and be impressed or not, yeah, right, right. Is there like 2 levels and you're only at 2 or 3. That's true. One is is one the top and you're like, right, yeah, which way does it go? Yeah, yeah. Well, CrossFit in general is just, I mean, there's some canned answers they give, you can Google that and see it, but basically it's just varying fitness, right? So what is fitness? If, if I can run a marathon, that's pretty good, but like how much can you squat, you know, or like I can bench a lot, but I, I can barely jog. So it's kind of just doing a little bit of everything, every day is different. Every day you have a workout and you have a coach. And they make sure your form is good, they teach you about it, and then they allow you to go. And it's really about intensity. So some days we do 5 minutes of a hard workout, and it's the 5 most intense minutes of a workout you've ever done, and you're like, I can't do anymore. And other days you do an hour and it's, you can do an hour. So, it's varied. It's all over the place. It could be weightlifting, it could be what we would say like cardio. We have machines we use. Gymnastics or body weight things. So it's just always a little bit different. It's always challenging. So as soon as you get good at something, it just, we just make it harder.

Put more we make the, make exactly what you like, right? Yeah, exactly. Uh, and then as far as, as far as the level, that's why I think it fits my personality great cause it's never, it never gets boring. It's always different. It always gets harder. And then as far as the levels go, there's 4. Levels. So level one is basically you take a seminar, you learn about how to do all the movements the correct way. So they go through the, the foundational movements and teach you about them. Level 2 is learning how to coach. So you only need a level 1 to become a coach, but level 2 is where they really teach you about the methods of coaching a group, class, and fitness. Above that, there's level 3 and Level 4. There's only like 100 level 4 people in the world. They're like. You have to be like a virtuoso, like to be a level 4. There's not very many. And then level 3 is like a lot of extra studying work and things. Most people I know that are level 3 or they own gyms, that's their full-time thing. It's what they do. I've thought about doing it. I've been a level 2 for a lot. years or no, 2024 I was a level two first time.

But for me, I'm a part-time coach. I do it because I like it. I don't want to like own a gym and make that my life. I think I would start to, you know, all I do is show up, coach people, help them have a good time and go home and you know, the owners are, you know, they gotta deal with all the business stuff. I don't want to do all that. I want that to be my fun hobby on the side, right, right, but is decently respectable, I'd say. There it goes. Yeah, yeah, that's good. Do you have like one go to coaching mindset, something, some tip or trick you could tell us that's your favorite thing? Favorite thing. So I would honestly say my favorite thing is just watching somebody's confidence grow. You know, like somebody will come in and say, I, I can't, a great example is like a pull up. Most people can't do pull-ups or aren't very good at them. And they're like, I'll never be able to do a pull up. And you're like, you can do it. We're gonna work on it. And then 6 months later they, they come up to you like, I finally got a pull up. see like their demeanor changes, and they become confident in who they are and what they're capable of, and it carries in like, not just in the gym but in life, you know, like it. Shows you that if you push yourself into difficult things that you maybe don't like, I mean, even me, if I go to the gym, I'm gonna do the things I like to do, right? But when I go to CrossFit, I do stuff I hate. 

I never would do on my own, but I, I do it. And that's what, that's what I like most about it is like, seeing people's confidence grows, they do things they would, they would never do on their own, or they would never believe they could do. So that, that's what I really enjoyed about it. Yeah, that's awesome. It really is, and, you know, Brian, like I say, we really enjoyed having you on, and, you know, we're running out of time. I honestly feel like we could keep talking to you for another hour, 2345, but is there anything else you'd like to talk about before we let you go? Anything else I want to talk about if I talk about anything, it's usually my dogs, so that's talk about your dogs in the other room. I was like they, they've been good all day and I'll start barking dogs plural. How many are we talking about? Not 2. I have 2 brothers. They're a husky pitbull, German shepherd mixes. They're about 8 pounds. and 3 years old and yeah that dogs yeah dogs they're dogs yeah they're, they're most like sweet. They're like they they look, you know, they don't even look me and they're like cute, but if somebody came in the door, they would just like start licking him in the face. I they're not, right, right. That's, that's pretty much most of my time work crossing the dogs, so there we go. Now you know me. You know everything. Perfect. And uh if, if people do want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that? Um, you can find me on LinkedIn or, you know, just my emails bbrandt@dawsonohana.com, but that's pretty much it, yeah. Very cool. Brian, thank you so much for being on. We really loved having you here. Thank you. It was great to be here.

That's our show. Thank you, Brian for joining us today. Please be sure to check us out each and every Friday. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review. Bye. See you, everybody.