Check Out All Activating Curiosity™ Episodes

Construction has spent decades trying to solve labor shortages, productivity challenges, and rising costs. But what if the greatest opportunity isn't simply changing how we build? What if it's changing what we consider "standard?" In this episode of Activating Curiosity™, Ryan Ware sits down with Melanie Taylor, Vice President of BILDT, to explore why industrialized construction is about far more than prefabrication or modular buildings. Together they discuss how leadership, collaboration, manu...

Construction has spent decades improving physical safety. Hard hats. Harnesses. Glasses. Training. Procedures. PPE. But what about the things we can't see? In this episode of Activating Curiosity™, Ryan Ware sits down with Dina Fodero, speaker, certified Enneagram Practitioner, and creator of I-PPE™ (Invisible Personal Protective Essentials), to explore the human side of safety in construction. Together, they unpack why protecting people may require us to think beyond physical safety to psych...

Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming the construction industry—but technology alone won't determine who succeeds. In this episode of Activating Curiosity™, Ryan Ware sits down with Timber Barker to explore why successful AI adoption starts with people, not software. Rather than asking whether AI will replace jobs, this conversation challenges leaders to ask a different question: How can AI help people do their best work? From architecture and engineering to construction and facilit...

For years, sustainability has often been framed as a choice between doing what's right for the planet and doing what's right for business. But what if the fastest path to climate action has nothing to do with asking people to sacrifice? In this episode of Activating Curiosity™, Ryan Ware sits down with Josh Dorfman host of Supercool and co-founder and CMO of Plantd to, explore sustainable construction, climate innovation, building products, and the human side of change. Together, they unpack ...

Affordable Housing Starts With Better Questions | Purpose, Community & Construction Affordable housing is often framed as a construction challenge, with conversations focused on cost, speed, and supply. Yet behind every housing project is a deeper question about community, purpose, and the people those spaces are intended to serve. In this episode of Activating Curiosity™, Ryan Ware sits down with Rory Rubin, Founder and CEO of SI Container Builds, to explore her unique journey from socia...

For over 20 years, the construction industry has discussed prefabrication, modular construction, and industrialized construction as solutions to labor shortages, productivity challenges, and project inefficiencies. Yet, adoption has been slower than many expected. Why? In this episode of Activating Curiosity™, Ryan Ware sits down with Josh Mensinger, President of Integrity Built Texas and Prefab, to reveal a hard truth often overlooked: The biggest barriers to prefabrication aren't technical—...

Construction leadership culture shapes how teams work, perform, and respond to change. Yet across the construction industry, burnout has quietly become an accepted measure of commitment, leadership, and success. But what if burnout isn't evidence of high performance? What if it's evidence that we've accepted the wrong standard? In this episode of Activating Curiosity™, Ryan Ware sits down with executive leadership coach Julie Riga to explore construction leadership development, workplace cult...

Construction delays are often blamed on labor, cost, or materials—but what if the real problem starts much earlier, during design? In this episode of Activating Curiosity™, Ryan Ware sits down with Robb Andrade of Overcast Innovations to explore how siloed design decisions create downstream friction, rework, and unnecessary change. Instead of focusing on what happens in the field, this conversation shifts upstream—where critical decisions are often made without full visibility into how they im...

In this bonus episode of Activating Curiosity™, Ryan Ware sits down with Tom Raftery—speaker, sustainability strategist, and host of the Resilient Supply Chain and Climate Confident podcasts—to explore how global energy disruptions are reshaping construction, supply chains, and the future of resilience. Using lessons from the 1970s energy crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain disruptions, and today's geopolitical uncertainty, Ryan and Tom examine what happens when critical systems become ...

In this episode of Activating Curiosity™, we explore a hard truth about construction: we’re not just facing a labor shortage—we’re facing a productivity problem. If the construction industry is “busy” every day, why are projects getting slower, more expensive, and harder to deliver? This conversation challenges the idea that we’re solving problems and reveals how often we’re just firefighting symptoms like rework, delays, and inefficiency. Ryan Ware sits down with Wayne Larsen, CEO of PT Blink...