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Hi everyone, here is Ricardo Vargas and this is the 5 Minutes Podcast I will never forget. April 15th, 2019, I was in Vancouver attending the Ted conference, and when I was on break, I took my phone and saw the Notre Dame in Paris in flames. At that moment, I had been to Paris and Notre Dame many, many times, and at that moment, I saw it was over because it's such an old building, of course, with a lot of materials that would be on flames very easily, and it would be just impossible that church is lost. Okay. They will have to rebuild something else in the same place. And last week, you know, all of us were stunned by the opening of Notre Dame. You know, the opening of the Notre Dame church, fully renovated after five years. And this is absolutely remarkable in terms of project management, in terms of cultural restoration, in terms of integration. And I want to share with you five key project management insights from that work that you may not know. So the first one was such an ambitious goal setting. I remember when French President Emmanuel Macron said such an ambitious five-year restoration deadline to coincide with the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. At that moment, everybody was saying this is nearly impossible. Many experts said that. But, you know, now we can see it was not ready for Paris, but, you know, it's ready in 2024. So it's just an incredible unified stakeholder management innovation, finding innovative ways of solving problems and setting such an aggressive timeline.
This gave probably a strong sense of direction for that team to drive the project. And the second aspect that I just mentioned is about stakeholders. How do you unify a very complex arrangement of stakeholders? Just to give you an idea, more than €1 billion was donated by 340,000 individuals from all over the globe. This requires strict financial transparency and accountability to make sure that you know, this money will be well spent. The second challenge was how to combine and unify the views of preservationists, government bodies, the Catholic Church, and the public. All these groups had to collaborate, balancing historical integrity with the modernization debate, because it's not just rebuilding, because if you rebuild exactly the way you rebuild, there is a risk that a new fire could spark any time. So, how do you keep that integrity? And this is such a complex topic. And just to give you an idea, the controversial debate took over a big discussion among the French society. Should they inspire design? You know that the roof of Notre Dame should be completely modern, like the I.M. Pei pyramid in front of the Louvre Museum, or should it keep the historical flavor of the ancient Notre Dame and the public sentiment decided that it's better to go towards historical accuracy. So imagine how challenging it is to make these stakeholders agree with a set of directions that you know were required for such a complex project. The third aspect is risk management. Honestly, when I was studying to prepare for this podcast, there were many things that I didn't even know had happened.
The first one was the lead contamination. The fire melted the roof that was made with lead, requiring extensive safety measures to protect the surrounding communities and the workers. And this is massive because, remember, all the lead was melted due to the fire. The second fire happened in 2019, and in 2020, we had the Covid 19 pandemic that caused several work stoppages, health restrictions, and disrupted timelines, and people had to work and adapt to much stricter protocols of safety. The third thing that you may not know is that the leader of the project, Jean-Louis Georgelin, passed away suddenly in the middle of the work. And this was a major emotional and operational setback. And imagine, because one of the biggest challenges a project can face is to lose the leadership. And these happen at the top of all criticalities of this project. You know, so the team was very resilient and adaptable. If you look at the church during the opening last week, one of the most emotional moments was when the workers that rebuilt came into the church, and everybody was waving, clapping, and rewarding them for this amazing work of resilience and adaptability. The fourth aspect is innovation and tradition. This was a perfect example that innovation does not need to kill tradition. It's not the competition. It's possible to have both. Just to give you an idea. Cutting-edge technology like 3D scanning and building information modeling, or Bin, created a detailed digital twin for precise planning. This is the most detailed 3D scan ever done in a historical building, using cutting-edge technology.
At the same time, more than a thousand craftsmen were used to do the timber frame. So imagine how you build, you know, a 3D scanning with people using and doing the work with their hands, using techniques that are hundreds of years old. Just to give you an idea about a thousand oak trees, some of them, more than 200 years old, were sourced across France to rebuild the iconic timber roof. So this is a perfect example. It's something we should be very proud of where innovation and tradition were able to coexist in such a massive project. And last but not least, balancing quality and speed. You know, five years. It's an incredibly aggressive timeline, but they built it with a master, so the team worked tirelessly to meet this aggressive timeline without compromising quality. Just to give you an idea, just a stabilization of the structure alone. Because when the fire took place, one of the biggest concerns was the full collapse of the church. Okay? So they had to do a stabilization and just that work for two years. What they did was they did parallel work streams outside the church to make sure that they reduced the critical path of that project. The third aspect of this quality and speed is modern fire prevention because, of course, nobody wants this to happen again. At the church, they were discreetly integrated into the church. So it's ensuring safety without detracting from historical esthetics. Imagine you are in the middle of the church, and you see a fire hose, you know, painted in red.
So they blended that in the best way to make sure that you do not lose the historical esthetics, but at the same time, you never, ever allow something like that to happen again. So, this balance was incredible. Just to give you an idea of the amount of the challenges, the restoration team had to remove 40,000 pieces of calcified scaffolding without further damage. 40,000. It's not four, it's not 400. It's 40,000. And this makes me, of course, Extremely proud. I was not the project manager. I was not engaged in this project. But just being on the field is such an amazing thing. It's such an amazing example of how you can make things happen; if you have the desire and the drive, you can make this happen in the best possible way. So now it's time to celebrate the fate of our human ingenuity, with tradition and the same technology, and at the same time, the best project management skills to build something like that in five years. Honestly, many people are struggling to do a renovation or to build their homes in five years. Trust me, I know people who are trying to finish their homes in more than five years, and they rebuilt them. And it's such a pride and something that I need to mention this week. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you can learn from this podcast and see you next week with another 5 Minutes Podcast.
