Frank Walker has worked for forty years on many unique and challenging projects worldwide for many different industries and public agencies. He was co-founder and president of Gates, Taylor Walker, Corp. (GTW) from 1988 to 1997. GTW was a Project Management (PM) consulting and PM Software company, and the Primavera dealer for Alaska. We worked on many large projects, initially for the aerospace, oil and construction industries on the USA, West Coast. In 1993, thanks to PMI and our relationship with Microsoft, we grew and diversified rapidly into multiple industries, globally, as PM became its own profession and PM software migrated from the mainframe to the personal computer. Fluor Daniel approached us regarding purchase in 1996 and Frank sold his interest in GTW in 1997.
TWG, incorporated in 1998, is a similar, smaller company that supports clients through all the stages of the program or project life cycle. It allows Frank to stay more hands-on with clients and in PM instead of marketing and running large offices in multiple states. He is an excellent leader with the ability to pull the best people together for a project and to create great teams. He is adept in all the aspects of project management including the management of time, resources, cost, risk, scope, procurement, quality and communication. Specialties include, team planning, fast-track project management, management by exception using earned value, litigation avoidance and mediation. He is also experienced at portfolio management and has helped implement PM Offices (PMOs).
Frank has given classes to more than 12,000 people on PM, PMP certification & PM software in North America, Europe and Asia and produced videos for IIL, Atkins, ASCE, et al. At Microsoft’s request, he led a team to produce and market GTW’s Project Partner (derived from our PVS Mainframe software) and to customize Microsoft Project for specific industries and companies. He has been quoted in Fortune Magazine, Engineering News Record, PMI publications, etc. and has lectured on Satellite/Webcasting and Distance Learning classes. Frank has lived long-term in Sydney, Vancouver, Turkey (where he was found equal to a donkey by a Turkish magistrate), Seattle, Dallas and Tallahassee. He now lives in Washington Crossing, PA, USA between Philadelphia & New York City.
There has been no litigation on GTW or TWG projects. However, Frank was called in on other projects to mediate many construction disputes and as an expert witness on schedule impact claims. We have learned from others’ mistakes. We discovered that multi-billion projects are often easier to manage than small projects, which can go wrong so quickly. Frank has a unique perspective because he has worked as Owner, Designer, Contractor and PM consultant. The photo is of a Spectra project to pipe natural gas from NJ into Manhattan. We did schedule control and impact analysis each week for 18 months, and specifically for Hurricane Sandy.