Hello everyone and welcome to our fourth course of the construction management specialization by Columbia University. This course will be covering the construction finance. And in the construction finance class, we are covering the outline and the topics in kind of three aspects or approaches. The first one is focused on the foundation of building the mathematics of money or what we refer to as the time value of money. To highlight the present value techniques, the IRR, the type of interest rates available for us, all from a construction manager point of a view. After that first part, we are building on it onto two branches, which are the second and the third part of this course. The first one focusing on the vertical construction finance and the second in the horizontal construction finance. The vertical construction finance, we are highlighting it by presenting to you the real estate finance and how that been done with more much in-depth details and examples for you to solve with instructives. From the other part of the horizontal finance, we're focusing into two things. One, we introduced in details about what is public private partnership. And we highlighted around the three case studies about PPP projects, which would be an introduction to project financing in horizontal work or in civil work or infrastructure. And after the project financing with more details and micro details, how the structure been done from the finance point of a view, we highlight and wrap up that by the risks associated with this kind of finance. After that we wrap up the class, by looking similar to what we did in the first three classes of the specialization on lean construction and how it is related to construction finance and why it is important. That's from the finance outline, we have for this course. In addition, as we did, in the other three classes, we gave you the opportunity not to learn just from one professor or one practitioner. We invited top qualified professors and industry practitioners from colleagues followers to highlight critical topics from that outline that I just highlighted. In addition to myself, we have Mr. Robert Dewing Bob who is an Adjunct Professor here at Columbia University at the Business School. He has a great years of experience in the finance market especially from the infrastructure perspective with the project finance. And he is actually teaching a class on that. Eduardo Gamez for those who watched the previous courses, he was also engaged. Talking about also risk and he is currently a deputy director risk Management at AECOM. Karl Reichelt, he is a SVP, a Senior Vice President with also AECOM and he is your main guy for P3 projects, if you want to know more details structured where me and Karl talk a lot about work, a lot about it. And he is a great source. To hear from him about, what is PPP projects with few cases studies. Sam Spata, he was one of my colleagues who get engaged in all the classes we have in the specialization, where me and him actually currently working on entire workshop on lean construction, that we will develop here and provide by Columbia University. He will be talking about lean construction with its connection and connectivity to finance and construction finance. Last but not least, and they want to highlight mister Anthony Webster. Tony Webster, currently he's the Chair of the Bachelor of Science in Real Estate Program. At [COUGH] NYU school of professional studies. He's also an associate clinical professor of real estate finance and a president of the West End Advisors, LLC. He also taught one of my main colleagues for several years before, taught couple of courses for Colombia as well, he is a fantastic teacher. We worked together in a couple of a projects, he could be considered one of the main guru in real estate finance, he still come and speak to my students and we work on projects also outside Colombia for consulting. With no hesitation, I am happy that Tony led a very good, also, portion. In the details of the vertical or the real estate finance structured that I am very looking forward for you to learn from in addition to all that outstanding speakers that I just highlighted their intro and their bio. With that being said, I welcome you for the class and I wish you a great learning experience in the construction finance course. Thank you.
