The podcast by project managers for project managers. Following the 2020 devastating explosion in Beirut, project manager Kevin Gemayel's journey is nothing short of inspiring as he tackled challenges head-on. Hear firsthand accounts of his experiences during the blast, his strategies for managing tasks, stakeholders, budgets, and time, and the invaluable lessons learned. We discover Kevin's extraordinary project and the power of resilience in the face of adversity.

Table of Contents

04:27 … Meet Kevin05:30 … Kevin’s Story of the Tragedy07:25 … Gathering a Team08:18 … The Family Façade Business09:44 … Deciding How to Prioritize13:34 … An Emergency Response15:33 … Resources and Supplies16:47 … An Economic Crisis20:08 … Personal Impact21:36 … Keeping a Team Motivated22:38 … Ren Love’s Projects from the Past25:00 … Planning Time Management and Strategy28:21 … Creative Problem-Solving29:31 … Kevin’s Lessons Learned31:08 … Personal Growth Through Tragedy34:57 … Looking Back36:37 … Advice to Younger PMs38:46 … Contact Kevin39:59 … Closing

KEVIN GEMAYEL: … in leadership, they say you should become a leader and personally lead yourself before leading anyone else.  And I would advise every project manager to learn and to focus on how they should lead themselves before going out there and leading projects and people and teams because, when they do things right themselves, … they will be able to influence the people they are working with.  …  So don’t just focus on books and numbers and theoretical things.  Focus on yourself, as well.

WENDY GROUNDS:  You’re listening to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  My name is Wendy Grounds, and with me in the studio is Bill Yates. 

We want to feature some younger talent in the project management community.  We’re calling it our Rising Talent series.  So for the next two episodes we’re going to be sharing the stories of two young project managers who are not only inspirational, but they’re also making waves with their incredible contributions to the field.  Now, we have spoken to some young project managers in the past.

BILL YATES:  Yeah, Episode 165 we had a great conversation with Kat Shane.  You may recall she had a startup company that she began at the University of Georgia, and it was working on a solution to help people, governments, and businesses figure out what products or packaging are locally recyclable.  So, can I recycle this?  And how to get them where they needed to go.

WENDY GROUNDS:  We also spoke to Christelle Kwizera.  That was Episode 146.  At the age of 20, Christelle founded Water Access Rwanda, which was in response to the dangerous conditions Rwandans would face when collecting water from rivers and dams.  She was quite an incredible young lady.

BILL YATES:  What a story.  So inspirational and so young.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Yes, yes.  She was also a PMI Future 50 2021 honoree.  And the folk that we’re talking to in these two episodes are also Future 50 2023 honorees from PMI.  We are really enjoying featuring younger talent in the project management community.  The first one is our guest, Kevin.

BILL YATES:  Yeah, this is a heavy story, this conversation we’ll have with Kevin.  It’s heavy.  It’s about the blast in Beirut.  And many people lost their lives, and many people who survived it will be dealing with it for a lifetime.  So, we wanted to recognize that.  But there are so many powerful lessons for us to learn from that, and to hear from Kevin.

And we’ve tackled these kinds of topics before.  We spoke with Matthew Harper about the attack on the USS Cole and the lessons learned from that.  Peter Baines joined us from Australia.  He led international identification teams after tsunamis or terrorist attacks.  So, he’s talked with us about that.  And of course, Chuck Casto, that story was so engaging, looking at the Fukushima disaster and the 11 months that he spent onsite after the accident, and all the lessons learned he had from that after that earthquake and tsunami.  So, this is a topic we’ve been down before in terms of, okay, how do you lead through a tragedy?  And Kevin’s perspective is going to really be insightful.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Right.  Today we embark on a story of resilience, determination, and the unwavering spirit to rebuild.  Just to give you a little more background, in 2020, Beirut’s port was engulfed in a catastrophic explosion, leaving behind a wake of devastation.  There were over 200 lives lost, 6,000 injured, and 300,000 people were homeless, with countless structures in ruins.  The aftermath of this tragedy was what set the stage for this immense rebuilding process.

This was what Kevin Gemayel got involved with.  Kevin is a second-generation leader at a prominent building façade firm, and he found himself at the forefront of restoring Beirut’s shattered historical and cultural landmarks following the blast.  His tenure in the family business, marked by innovative project management and quality control methods since 2014, laid the groundwork for impactful change.  Today Kevin and his dedicated team navigate the profound personal and professional challenges posed by this tragedy, and he’s driven by a deep commitment to revitalize the city’s cherished landmarks.  So, join us today as we delve into Kevin’s journey and hear about his incredible project.

Meet Kevin

Hi, Kevin.  Welcome to Manage This.  Thank you so much for joining us today.

KEVIN GEMAYEL:  Thank you.  Thank you.

WENDY GROUNDS:  I must congratulate you on being a PMI Future 50 honoree.  That is really quite an accomplishment.

BILL YATES:  That’s phenomenal.

WENDY GROUNDS:  And we have been so excited to find your story and to learn more about you.  So, we’re looking forward to talking about your projects today.  The first thing is I just want to know what motivated your career in project management.  How did all of this get started for you?

KEVIN GEMAYEL:  During my university years, we got some courses on project managers, as all engineers do.  And I found out that it’s quite an interesting subject.  I actually chose mechanical engineering to keep my options open.  And when I found out what’s the scope of work of project manager usually, it was very interesting for me because I didn’t really like to go into technical details.  I preferred understanding them, but not working on them on a daily basis.  So managing them was the best combination for me.

Kevin’s Story of the Tragedy

WENDY GROUNDS:  Today we’re talking about a pivotal project that has shaped your career that was really a big impact in 2020.  What was your experience, your personal experience of that time when the tragic blast happened in Beirut?  Were you living there at the time?

KEVIN GEMAYEL:  I was in a city a bit far from Beirut.  But because of the scale of the explosion, we could hear the sound of it, and the house was shaken even at a very distant location.  We knew that something wrong happened, but we didn’t know the size of the damage.  Everyone in Beirut thought that the explosion happened right next to them because the sound was so loud.  It was around 6:00 p.m., and there was no more light here at 6:00 p.m.  It’s already nighttime.  So, we started making our phone calls, and we knew what happened.  We understood the size of the damage.

So, I decided to go down to Beirut to witness it in my own eyes.  And that was honestly a disaster.  It’s like in the movies when a meteorite strikes, and all the roads are blocked.  It was exactly the same thing here.  And we found a way of walking there into the city.  Everyone was going there to see and to help because it was an unprecedented situation, honestly.  So when we got there this night, I had a house right next to the port.  First, I went to my house to see what happened to it.  It was a disaster. 

And then the second day, in the morning, we also went down to help other people on the streets with our own hands.  That was the work of all the Lebanese, not just me.  Like I was on the ground with millions of people who were there pro bono, if you want, just to help because they didn’t care about work anymore, about anything.  For them, their city was struck.  And this day I realized that it was useless for me to stay on the grounds personally because I could have done so much more impact.

Gathering a Team

And that’s how I decided to gather a small team and to manage them in a way to start working on the imminent threat because we work in glass.  That’s our main specialty.  And there was so much glass that was going to fall on people, on people walking around the streets.  So that was the first threat after the explosion, other than the people who needed the first aid.

So, I gathered a team because no one dared to carry glass with their hands.  It’s very dangerous.  We gathered a specialized team to do that.  And we started getting phone calls and categorizing the most important and the most critical places.  And that’s how the work started.  At the day of the explosion, we were a team of around 90 people, and this number kept on growing.  I don’t like to give precise numbers, but we were in the hundreds a few days later working together for us to rebuild our city.

The Family Façade Business

BILL YATES:  That’s amazing.  So help me understand, Kevin, was your background as a mechanical engineer, your background happened to be you knew a lot about glass and glass construction.  So when the explosion occurred, glass was blown out for miles, and it was glass all over the street.  And then, as you said, there’s glass just hanging, too; right?  It’s perilous for the efforts to recover people and start the cleanup.  So that happened to be some of the engineering knowledge that you had going into this?

KEVIN GEMAYEL:  Not just that.  Actually, we have a family business, which is façade contracting.  Our daily work was windows and glass.