Meet Cathy
I've been on your side of the table.
I'm Cathy Dolan-Schweitzer, a construction professional, author, speaker, and leadership advisor who believes the health of the team always shows up in the health of the project.
For more than 25 years, I've managed complex healthcare, education, and commercial construction projects, including work at Stamford Hospital and Columbia University/NewYork-Presbyterian.
I've sat through the difficult OAC meetings, chased unanswered RFIs, worked through competing priorities, managed challenging personalities, and felt the pressure of being accountable for a project when so much depends on other people.
My understanding of people goes beyond construction.
My background in special education and my master's degree in Integrative and Experiential Health and Healing, earned in 2008, taught me to look beyond the symptoms of a problem and understand the whole person.
When I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2011, that understanding became deeply personal. I returned to construction with an even stronger belief that taking care of people isn't separate from getting the work done. It's part of how we get the work done well.
In 2014, I founded Health Well Done to bring together what I'd learned about people, health, and managing complex construction projects.
That journey also led me to write Health Well Done: A People-Centered Management Approach to Building Healthcare Environments and develop the Health Well Done Framework™.
Construction Made Human™
Today, I bring those experiences together through Construction Made Human™, helping healthcare construction leaders build healthier teams and stronger projects.
I look beyond what's going wrong on a project to understand what's happening with the people, relationships, and working conditions behind it.
I'm not interested in teaching people to be nice just for the sake of being nice.
I want people to communicate honestly, respect one another's expertise, take responsibility, and solve problems before they become expensive.
I believe in clear expectations, difficult conversations when they're needed, a healthy dose of humor, and taking good care of the people doing the work.
And I believe the best project leaders don't have to choose between caring for people and holding them accountable. They know how to do both.
Because projects don't build themselves. People do.