David Hulett's Travels
I spent 40 years in west Los Angeles, raised 3 children through high school and into college. All 3 are doing well and I have 4 grandchildren (one is pushing 7’0” as a Sophomore at UC Berkeley.).
About 6 months ago, Judie and I moved from LA to Sedalia, Colorado which is between Denver and Colorado Springs. It is really pretty, prosperous country (actually partly horse country) so only some houses are within easy walking distance. We need to walk about 3 city blocks (if we had city blocks here) to get the mail. We bought a house in the hills (6,500 ft. above sea level) and are spending a fair amount of our funds after selling in the inflated Brentwood west-LA market improving the house and fixing things that were not well kept up. Judie is the project manager here with contractors, landscapers, painters, tile guys, plumbers, handy-man and other workers.
The neighbors are very friendly and we’ve socialized a bit. Our homeowners association includes only 9 members. We bought a German Shepherd puppy who is now 10 months old and 75 lbs. of enthusiasm, so we built a large dog run too. We’ve created a new 2-person office, two massive walk-in closets and a modern master bath. We failed completely in down-sizing since we now have 6,000 square feet on two levels, where the main level is our living, entertainment, working space and the downstairs is another complete suite for visitors. We are on a hill so we have wonderful views of the valley dotted with woods and some very large houses, the foothills beyond, and if we crane our necks to the north we see the Rockey Mountains, still with snow on them, peaking out above the foothills. Thirteen acres came with the house and we’ve chopped a lot of scrub oak (called “tinder” here) and planted some nice trees. We get visited by some very healthy deer most days. Some say that there are bears and other creatures that we have not encountered, but a racoon helped us get rid of our garbage the other week.. We have a water well instead of city water, propane instead of gas, septic fields instead of sewer, swamp-coolers instead of forced-air conditioning, and the road up to our part of this neighborhood is not paved. We are about 15 minutes from the nearest city, Castle Rock.
After Princeton I earned a Ph. D. at Stanford in Economics. My first job was as an Instructor in Economics at Harvard. I did econometric research at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, then led the economic statistics branch in the Office of Management and Budget’s Statistical Policy Division. After 7 years I became a deputy assistant administrator in the Federal Energy Administration which became part of the Department of Energy. I moved to Santa Monica CA in strategic planning for TOSCO Corporation, an oil company with synfuels (shale oil) ambitions that suffered from high costs and low oil prices, then with TRW in aerospace. Finally, after big university, big government, big industry, I started a small consulting firm in project risk analysis and management. I have been doing that work for 30 years, still going strong. My clients are in North and South America, Asia, the Middle East and Europe. Those trips, and international conferences in Prague, Istanbul, London and assignment in Brazil and Singapore with Judie, have made for a lot of interesting experiences. I’ve been sent to Turkmenistan, Myanmar, India, Borneo (well, eastern provinces of Malaysia), China, UAE, Venezuela for work too..
I’m still working full time for Hulett & Associates, LLC, project management consulting – cannot fire myself. Since about 1993 I’ve been a consultant on large projects (LNG, offshore production rigs, chemical plants, nuclear weapons, pipelines, refineries, vertical construction, specialty projects such as refurbishing the US Capital Dome and that building’s stone work, building the US Capitol Visitor Center and renewing the 110-year old Cannon House Office building) telling people when the projects will really finish, at what cost – don’t believe your schedule and cost estimate without looking at the risks – and about which risks to time and cost should be mitigated for better results. Last summer I went with a small team to Bahrain for a refinery project and then to Calgary for a co-generation project on an oil sands plant. I recently finished about 1 ½ years consulting with National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA the biggest share of the Department of Energy’s annual budget with multi-billion dollar decade-long projects designing, and building new nuclear weapons and extending the useful life of others for our military) about their quantitative risk analysis practices. I interviewed people at their national laboratories and produced recommendations for their already pretty mature risk analysis on these weapons programs. I’m now consulting on the risk of alternative strategies on a hydroelectric plant in New Brunswick. I am very active in the professional society, the Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering (AACE) International where I was elected a Fellow in 2015 and will receive the Total Cost Management award next week in Atlanta.
People ask me why we moved here (instead of an assisted living setting) so late in life… and if I am still working. I’m lucky to have my health, my wife, and to enjoy what I am doing.