Full disclosure...
At the time of writing (July 31, 2026), the C-Birt team consists of one person—me. This doesn't mean that I got here on my own. (In my bio below you will meet some of the wonderful people who were crucial to both my life story and the creation of C-Birt.) What it means is that C-Birt is starting a brand new phase of existence, going from being the bespoke software of one remarkable company—Infinite Concrete Limited—to being taken on the road and offered to the world.
Once that first new customer is enrolled, my team will need to grow immediately. In the days to come I will flesh out my vision for the team and the kind of company I wish to create. I will also list the roles I anticipate needing on the team.
Philip Newman
Owner & CEO, C-Birt
Self-taught software developer with 20 years experience as Project Manager and Project Coordinator in Infrastructure and Residential Construction.
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Philip Newman – Curriculum Vitae
Work Experience
Project Coordinator, Infinite Concrete Limited
April 2006 – August 2026
Looking back on the last 20 years, all the good stuff happened when my plans were frustrated, when all the options were excluded except the one thing I really didn’t want to do.
I had been invited by Fredrik Moe to work for his company Infinite Concrete Limited as a Project Manager for over 2 years before I finally took up the offer. I had zero training or experience in construction but had known Fredrik from childhood. (Definitely a case of “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know!”)
The Winnipeg Years (Optional reading)
At the time, I was living in Winnipeg, Manitoba. I had moved there with my young family in June 1999 with the goal of getting my Commercial Pilot’s License (CPL) in the shortest possible time and returning to Jamaica to fly aeroplanes. The first setback came at the end of July when I did the medical exam and failed the colour vision standard required for night flying. My dream of being an airline pilot was gone, just like that.
But my flying instructor pointed out that the guys flying float planes in the Canadian bush are restricted to daytime flying anyway. So you know what happened next: I spent my remaining savings getting my float plane rating.
By October 1999, I had run out of money.
And I found out that my B. Sc. in Horticulture and Business with (5) years as a Farm Manager in Jamaica were meaningless qualifications in Canada. Luckily, I had my tractor-trailer license. Long-haul truckers are always in demand, and I did that until my son Daniel was born in April 2001.
In the meantime, I had let go of my flying ambitions. Weeks at a time on the road as a trucker revealed that being away from family was not worth it for me.
I got nine months paid paternity leave when Daniel was born. By this time I had met Jamie Musselwhite at the Winnipeg Steinway dealership. Jamie is a piano tuner and rebuilder, (also musician, composer and author) as were his father and grandfather before him. I had one of those one-on-one apprenticeships with him that I thought you only read about in books. I’ve really been blessed by the people God has brought into my life.
I quit long-haul trucking and tried to make a living as a piano tuner. Things were a bit scant. I drove school bus and short-haul trucks, then had the brilliant idea of opening a piano dealership to get my income to where I could survive. That was the fatal move: taking on debt. By early 2006 I was bankrupt, exhausted, defeated; and finally open to moving back to Jamaica and working for Fredrik.
Fredrik wasn’t bothered by my lack of training or experience. He only had one requirement: I had to commit to not quitting for at least 5 years. I had a clear sense this job was going to be a test!
My first assignment was the Wisynco Warehouse project in Lakespen, St. Catherine. The site covered 40 acres and our contract was to build a mile-long wall around the perimeter, put in roads and infrastructure and cast the 5-acre concrete floor of the warehouse. I was the only project manager. Since Lakespen was a garrison community, the labour force was provided by a local “Don”, who had the power to shut down the entire site with a single phone call. Most of the guys carried illegal firearms. Quite a few of them died before the project was complete.
Within 3 months I wanted to quit!
It was on this project that Infinite first acquired a laser-guided bulldozer and grader and were the first company in Jamaica to have this technology.
After the Wisynco project was complete in early 2007, I joined the rest of the Infinite team in a series of commercial projects in Montego Bay:
- Mega Mart Supermarket
- Fairview Towne Centre
- Bogue City Centre
- Fairview Office Park
Infinite was the only company in Jamaica doing tilt-up construction and super-flat concrete floors at the time, and they truly mastered that building technique. Fredrik and his brother Damien went to the USA to learn the techniques themselves, then came back to Jamaica and worked shoulder-to-shoulder with their employees, personally training them and supervising them day-in day-out. They had a dream team, and by the 2010’s had built more commercial space in Jamaica than any other company.
From 2007 to 2011 Infinite worked almost exclusively on tilt-up projects within Montego Bay. This was a pleasant period. We didn’t have garrison issues in Montego Bay, and we were doing straightforward commercial projects using a technique the company had mastered. I continued to work as an Infrastructure Project Manager but also took on the maintenance of the equipment fleet, running of the warehouse, payroll preparation and other administrative functions.
Then came the 22 Freeport project that changed everything. This was a high-end townhouse/apartment development in the exclusive Montego Freeport area and represented the company’s radical decision to switch from commercial to residential development.
We soon realized that managing a residential development was several orders of magnitude more complex than anything we had done before. For commercial projects an excel spreadsheet was enough to capture the procurement needs, and with Fredrik or Damien on the ground supervising the work, a checklist of to-do’s on a clipboard was enough to schedule the work. The workforce never exceeded (40) people.
Now we had a workforce of almost (500), a procurement list of over (1,000) products, and over (15,000) discrete tasks in the house production alone, not counting infrastructure. I remember walking the site with Fredrik and him offering me the challenge of being the head project manager. At the time, I knew it was beyond my capability. It was beyond anyone’s capability to run that project efficiently. We simply did not have the required systems.
What Bill Taught Me (Recommended reading)
I met Bill Nightingale Sr. and toured his award-winning produce farm in 2008.
The Jamaican government had put up the 2,440-acre Montpelier property for sale. They also had plans to restore the national railway. It was an exciting opportunity for Infinite to invest in agriculture. We had visions of running a state-of-the-art vegetable operation under greenhouses and using the railway for farm-to-market infrastructure. Being a farm boy, I was chosen to do the feasibility study.
In Jamaica, we have a negative stereotype about our construction workers: we say they are lazy, don’t care about their work, can’t show up on time, can’t ever bring a task to completion, aren’t properly trained, don’t have the right tools, can’t budget their money, and a lot more along that line. When a job is poorly done or a deadline isn’t met, the knee-jerk response is a shrug of the shoulder and something along the lines of “Well, with our *!&^%$ Jamaican labour, what can you expect?!”
And if you have a management meeting and discuss improving quality or productivity, it’s generally assumed that any real improvement would require replacing Jamaican labour with foreigners or with automation.
My visit to Bill’s farm taught me that the blame for poor performance of Jamaican construction workers rests squarely with employers and managers. Bill’s labour force, both on the farm and in the packing house, was almost entirely Jamaican. And he was so proud of them! The man could not stop talking about them: for him they were disciplined, self-motivated, responsible, hard-working, capable and reliable. And he was clearly correct in his assessment. He was running a state-of-the-art operation, winning awards and setting standards.
I was stunned, humbled…and inspired.
His secret? He provided that one key ingredient necessary for human excellence: discipline.
He had rules. Rules for every place, every procedure, every piece of equipment. And he enforced the rules. All the time. For everyone. For those unable to comply with the rules, there was always a free flight back to Jamaica.
Sounds colonial?
But here’s the thing: I’ve never seen such a genuinely happy set of employees. To a man, they were proud and happy to be a part of Nightingale Farms. You can’t fake this stuff. I’m not talking about little prepared speeches that people give when they see you touring around with the boss. I’m talking about people whose eyes are lit, who show you around with an obvious vibe of taking real pride and ownership of their part of the operation.
Of course, it’s not just about rules. There’s also training. The human spirit thrives on always learning. People enjoy doing whatever they know they do well. People enjoy being a part of excellence.
And there was Bill’s commitment to his workers. I put this under the heading of justice: the rules of fairness and respect for human dignity being applied in the other direction. Again, this was the real deal. Not a policy on paper, not a PR stunt, but a real commitment. Governments can legislate to protect employees against abuse. But genuine fairness and respect for people’s humanity must be chosen voluntarily. And people know when it’s real.
I was profoundly affected by Nightingale Farms. It dawned on me that discipline is the path to freedom. Freedom from being stuck in mediocrity, from being dragged down by the lowest common denominator on the team. Freedom from stereotypes and low expectations. Freedom to excel, to enjoy community, to be human, to be happy.
In fairness to Jamaica, it’s not only Bill who has figured this out. Jamaica is full of excellence. In athletics, in hospitality, in academia and so many other areas. This just confirms that the “failure” of our construction workers is caused by our failure to provide the environment they need to flourish.
I saw it as my challenge to preserve the company’s high standards of quality and efficiency by replacing the power of direct owner supervision (no longer feasible in a project of this size) with systems that enforced standards in the workforce and provided transparent project performance (timeline, financing needs and profitability) and automized payroll, warehousing, logistics and procurement.
I wasn’t interested in being a head project manager at that time, because I knew if I had succeeded at that project, I would still be just as stressed out and prone to fail on the next one. I made it my goal to create systems that would guarantee the orderly progress of the project, so that the job of head project manager would be simply enforcing the system.
This idea of the system became an obsession. I was still working as a project manager, but as I went about my work I was continually grinding away at the problem in my mind. I had no knowledge of software development, but I wrote out my ideas in pseudo-code. At the same time, we were grappling with complexity by creating paper systems to schedule, track and enforce quality of work, so this gave me a framework to design the software around.
We were halfway through our third residential project (Tara Estates) before my software finally came online (2016). (The journey of creating the software is captured under Our Story.) Real fulfillment came with the Oceanpointe project, a (431)-unit housing development, where the full-featured version of the software was used for the entire project and its transformative effect on manageability and profitability were unequivocally proven.
The last 20 years have been an incredible journey. I’ve worked with a relatively small company that has done an amazing quantity and variety of work, so my skillset includes the technical minutiae of project execution, as well as planning, procurement, warehousing, logistics, equipment management, labour force management and payroll. Being able to create my own software over the last 15 years, and seeing people using it, has been an unexpected thrill.
I am confident now that I have something real to offer construction companies. Not just a means of getting through a project, but a means of bringing order and beauty to the construction process, improving the quality of life of the project team, bringing control and transparency to the stakeholders, and persisting hard-won company knowledge within systems that survive changes in team composition.
Would you like to be a part of the C-Birt team? Tell us about yourself so that we can have you on our shortlist.