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Your Hosts

The Faces for Radio

A South African and an Australian starting a podcast sounds like a bad joke, right? Well, that's exactly how this began...

Dale Foong

Dale Foong

🇿🇦 The South African

Co-Founder & Co-Host

Most people build podcasts to showcase their expertise. Dale built one to steal everyone else's. 🎙️

Starting out in project controls, Dale got lucky - great mentors, solid opportunities, and a front-row seat to how the industry really works. But here's the thing: he knew most people didn't get that same lucky break. So instead of gatekeeping what he learned, he grabbed a microphone and started asking the best in the business to share their secrets for free.

200+ episodes later, Dale's turned casual conversations into a global knowledge-sharing movement. Oh, and co-founded Project Connect Group along the way - because apparently running a podcast wasn't ambitious enough.

#PayItForward 🚀

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Val Matthews

Val Matthews

🇦🇺 The Australian

Co-Founder & Co-Host

Val's superpower? Spotting BS from a mile away and calling it out with a smile. Perfect skill for a podcaster, really. 💼

After watching too many talented people hit invisible barriers just because they didn't have the "right connections," Val decided the system was broken. The fix? Build a platform where the best minds in the industry actually want to share what they know - freely, openly, and without ego. Cutting through the BS is exactly why Val loves what he does.

200+ episodes later, Val's helped turn a podcast into a genuine community. Co-founding Project Connect Group was the natural next step - taking conversations off the mic and into rooms where access actually means something.

#PayItForward 🌏

Support the podcast and keep the knowledge flowing

Why We Started This Thing

Back when we worked together, we realised we were always the youngest in the room - and not by a little. We'd look around the boardroom and think, "How did we get here? And why doesn't everyone have access to these opportunities?"

We had great mentors, amazing opportunities, and - let's be honest - perfect faces for radio. So we started this podcast to make expert insights freely available to anyone who wants to learn, grow, and level up their project careers. No paywalls. No gatekeeping. Just raw, real conversations.

That #PayItForward mindset led us to co-found Project Connect Group - free community events in the UK and Australia where people can connect, find mentors, and keep the cycle going.

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200+ industry leaders share their unfiltered insights - from Fortune 500 executives to startup founders

228+
Episodes Published
Since 2018
200+
Expert Guests
Across 30+ countries
10
Seasons
Of insights
6+
Years Running
#1 in Project Controls

Past Guests Include Leaders From:

🏢 Fortune 500 Companies
🏗️ Major Infrastructure Projects
🎓 Leading Universities
🚀 Tech Startups

Latest Episodes

Fresh insights from project experts worldwide

S10E228

S10E228: Shadow AI: Your Free ChatGPT Is a Data Breach with Joe Klich

Someone on your project pasted the schedule into a free ChatGPT account to get it analysed. That is a data breach, and the confidentiality clause they signed does not care that it was convenient. Joe Klich calls it shadow AI, and he thinks it is the most under-discussed risk in construction right now. Joe spent 18 years in commercial construction operations, from the field through executive leadership, before founding Klich Consulting, an operational risk advisory for construction executives. He joins Dale and Val to talk about how fast AI capability is actually doubling (the METR curve has gone from every seven months to every three), why most people cannot keep up and what that gap means for project teams, and how regulators in the US, UK and Australia are all reacting rather than leading. In this episode: why Chinese models at three cents a task will put AI everywhere and magnify the governance problem; the difference between AGI and ASI and why nobody smarter than you will design their own off switch; AI as a hammer, not a colleague; why companies get AI backwards by starting with the tool instead of their people; the cybersecurity parallel from 2010 and why insurers, not legislators, will force AI governance by refusing to pay for AI-related losses; what the jobs of the future look like when a team of ten becomes five; and Joe's closing advice for anyone using AI at work. Connect with Joe Klich on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-klich-96020635/ Hosted by Dale Foong and Val Matthews. The Project Chatter Podcast has been running since 2018 and is free to access, always.

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S10E227

S10E227: Your Project Is On Time. So What? with Matthieu Sors

Your project is green. Every milestone hit. And the CIO still can't tell the business what value it created. Matthieu Sors has watched that conversation play out inside banks, telcos and software companies for 20 years, and he thinks the fix is a shift most PMOs haven't made yet: stop tracking outputs, start owning outcomes. Matthieu is French, based in Sydney, and has spent his career on portfolio management: NBN, banking EPMOs, and now Planview, where he works with executive teams on what comes next. He joins Dale and Machine Gun Martin to unpack the difference between an output and an outcome, why senior executives are already ready for the outcome conversation (and why the middle layer isn't), and what OKRs look like when they are done well. In this episode: the bank that reported 10 platinum, 6 gold and 5 silver milestones and still couldn't answer "what did we deliver?"; why large programmes are being broken into waves; delegation and empowerment without blowing the budget; the asset lifecycle and the sponsor role on infrastructure projects; value streams and product operating models; why OKR rollouts fall apart after two quarters; AI, quantum and the human in the loop; and Matthieu's final thought for every project manager updating their CV in a panic: you are not going anywhere. Connect with Matthieu Sors on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthieusors/ Hosted by Dale Foong and Martin C. The Project Chatter Podcast has been running since 2018 and is free to access, always. Contains one instance of strong language.

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S10E226

S10E226: Is Work Killing Your Relationships? with Sabrina Starling

Is your work killing your relationships? For nine in ten business owners, the answer is heading that way. Dr Sabrina Starling started out as a psychologist in community mental health, burnt out, and rebuilt her working life around one limit: a 25-hour week. Today she runs Tap the Potential, hosts the Profit by Design podcast, and has written the How to Hire the Best series and The 4-Week Vacation. Val is travelling, so Dale hosts solo. They get into: Treating your time as worth $10,000 an hour, and what that means for what you stop doing Why there are no "big C" emergencies in business, and what constant availability costs your team Her research: nine in ten entrepreneurs are burning out Serving the top 20% of clients who drive 80% of revenue, and hiring only for that sweet spot Giving every role one clear key result Dale's PMO story: cutting 70 monthly reports to 12, and nobody complained Building up to a fully unplugged 4-week vacation A deeply personal story about why time, not money, is what matters most Get Sabrina's chart of $10,000 an hour activities: https://tapthepotential.com/10k/ FIND SABRINA Tap the Potential: https://tapthepotential.com/ Profit by Design podcast: https://tapthepotential.com/profitbydesignpodcast/ FIND US Website: https://projectchatter.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/projectchatterpodcast/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoudjc2m0ttmAkyvBnf8EnQ The Project Chatter Podcast has been running since 2018 and is free to access, always. If this episode was useful, share it with one person who needs it.

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S10E225

S10E225: Why Change Fatigue Isn't Real with Tammy Watchorn

Change fatigue isn't real. It's the story you're telling yourself about the change. Dr Tammy Watchorn, the Change Ninja, is back on Project Chatter. A scientist turned healthcare change leader, Tammy learned early that change works through people, not process. Her third book, The Change Ninja vs Zombies, is out on 6 October: a gamified, Top Trumps style guide to spotting the things that drain your time, energy and mojo, and slaying them. Dale flies solo in the host seat for this one. They get into: Why transformation fails when nobody can name the problem it's solving Why you can't put yourself in someone else's shoes until you understand how your own brain handles change Vlad the Macro Zombie, Walter Wrong Question and Wolfie the work-about-work zombie How to answer the awkward question before it's asked "Difficult" stakeholders, and the one word that quietly makes you one Why time speeds up as you get older, and how to slow it down The case for being bored again Using AI as a critical friend, not a ghostwriter Keep listening, keep liking, and keep paying it forward. FIND US Website: https://projectchatter.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/projectchatterpodcast/ YouTube: https://youtu.be/_fy1ZsKSKgA The Project Chatter Podcast has been running since 2018 and is free to access, always. If this episode was useful, share it with one person who needs it.

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S10E224

S10E224: Why We Forgive Bad Behaviour At Work with Lisa Martello

We spend a fortune on governance, tooling and RACIs, then lose our best people to one person who nobody will have a difficult conversation with. Lisa Martello has spent her career in rail, from a Transport for London graduate scheme to programme and director roles at HS2 and beyond, with detours into utilities and construction. By night she runs Catching Bees, a 20,000 strong following built on holding a sarcastic mirror up to workplace behaviour: the exec petting zoo, the strategic seagull, talent stretching, the one way flex. In this episode she makes an argument most organisations quietly avoid. We are far too forgiving to the people behaving badly, and far too demanding of the people on the receiving end. The victim gets a list of actions: gather examples, prepare, call it out in the moment, call it out afterwards, book the meeting. The culprit gets the benefit of the doubt. We also get into: Writing bids and then wishing you could deliver them, and what changes when you become the client Why the fun is seeping out of projects at exactly the point teams need it most The five step slide from benefit of the doubt to resignation, and where leaders usually intervene too late How "below the line behaviour" gets weaponised to shut down anyone who says the project is in trouble Code switching, unprofessional hair, and the role model who arrived at exactly the right moment Skanska's two word intervention, "not cool", and why sitting in the discomfort works better than a meeting Three steps out of dickhead territory, including the "is it me" moment that stopped Lisa from performance managing someone out of a job she has since excelled in Imposter syndrome as a preparation engine, and a healthy disregard for authority A serious conversation with a lot of laughing in it. FIND LISA AND CATCHING BEESCatching Bees on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/catching_bees/Catching Bees on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/catching-bees/Lisa Martello on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-martello-2b65463b/ FIND USWebsite: https://projectchatter.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/projectchatterpodcast/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ProjectChatterPodcast The Project Chatter Podcast has been running since 2018 and is free to access, always. If this episode was useful, share it with one person who needs to hear it.

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S10E223

S10E223: Robots on Site - Why Humanoids Won't Build Your Project with Eliot Dixon

Every robotics demo looks the same: a humanoid doing kung fu, a humanoid dancing, a humanoid folding laundry. Eliot Dixon has spent his career in the parts of robotics that never make the showreel, and his view is blunt. The humanoid form factor exists because human environments are a compromise, not because it is the best way to get work done. Eliot's route into robotics started on a farm and a deep dislike of tractors. Physics, then a robotics degree, then years at Dstl working on sensing and UAVs, then Tata Motors building an autonomous vehicle for UK roads that was ultimately headed for the chaos of Indian ones. From there into ag tech, leading robotics and AI at Agri-EPI Centre, and now into infrastructure and construction. That path gives him an uncomfortable message for our sector. Agriculture has already run the experiment. Brilliantly engineered robotic systems, well funded, technically successful, and commercially dead, because they demanded that the entire farm change around them. As Eliot puts it, you are not designing a robot. You are designing a farm. Swap in construction and the warning lands the same way. So what actually works on a site today? Inspection and monitoring. Quadrupeds running nightly LIDAR scans, compared against the BIM, feeding tomorrow's work plan instead of a six-monthly architect's report. And the economics are shifting fast: platforms that cost well over £100,000 are now available at a few thousand for smaller sites. We also get into why drones are effectively grounded by UK airspace rules, why robotics almost never reduces headcount but changes the job mix instead, where the real return on investment hides, what data poisoning and teleoperated "autonomous" systems mean for trust, and why a dynamic construction site is a genuinely harder problem than a road in Delhi. In this episode: Why the humanoid is a compromise, not an endpoint The agricultural robotics failures construction is about to repeat Inspection and monitoring: the only mature site use case right now Nightly LIDAR against BIM, and the decision loop it creates The collapse in quadruped pricing and what it unlocks Why UK airspace, not technology, is the drone blocker Where robotics ROI actually comes from when nobody loses a job Autonomy 2.0, visual models, and the behaviour problem Strawberries, dexterity, and why touch feedback is so hard Eliot's closing advice for anyone briefing a roboticist Guest: Eliot Dixon, Roboverse Reply UK Hosts: Dale Foong and Val Matthews The Project Chatter Podcast is free to access and always will be. If you get value from it, pay it forward and share this episode with someone who needs it. Connect: Eliot Dixon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eliot-dixon/ Project Chatter: https://www.linkedin.com/company/projectchatterpodcast/?viewAsMember=trueWebsite: https://projectchatter.com/

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