WEBVTT 00:00.031 --> 00:06.220 [SPEAKER_01]: On this week's show real talk, with Rob Slayer from Cast Construction. 00:16.616 --> 00:20.842 [SPEAKER_01]: Alright, Nathan Wood, back at the wheel, getting it done. 00:20.902 --> 00:22.765 [SPEAKER_01]: This is one we've been waiting for, man. 00:22.795 --> 00:34.595 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh man, it's so much fun when you actually get to chat with someone that you know and can, you know, point out all their Not flaws, but you know, you see they're shining moments, you know, well, we'll get into it. 00:34.615 --> 00:34.916 [SPEAKER_00]: You'll see. 00:35.216 --> 00:36.037 [SPEAKER_01]: We'll get into it. 00:36.058 --> 00:45.213 [SPEAKER_01]: That he's referring to Rob's lawyer, Rob It is awesome to sit down with you again talk to you get you on the show catch out and see where you're at. 00:45.774 --> 00:46.696 [SPEAKER_01]: How's things right now? 00:46.756 --> 00:47.537 [SPEAKER_01]: Where are you? 00:48.175 --> 00:48.576 [SPEAKER_01]: Good, man. 00:48.816 --> 01:00.980 [SPEAKER_02]: I'm actually in my backyard, down in Florida, so apologies for those of the folks in the rest of the country that are still dealing with bomb cyclone number two or three year or whatever, but I have a Florida boy. 01:01.000 --> 01:03.805 [SPEAKER_02]: So I am also in my fleece because it's like 60 degrees, though. 01:03.970 --> 01:08.057 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, he's six degrees and he's fleeced up. 01:08.577 --> 01:12.584 [SPEAKER_01]: Listen, you guys know all about what I've been saying, following us on social media. 01:13.024 --> 01:19.234 [SPEAKER_01]: It'll be interesting, though, because following us in posting and maybe tagging us gets you on the show sometimes. 01:19.715 --> 01:21.318 [SPEAKER_01]: Rob Slayer got it up. 01:21.338 --> 01:25.184 [SPEAKER_01]: Got an article on last week's content crew news. 01:25.324 --> 01:27.968 [SPEAKER_01]: So you never know when we're going to call you out. 01:28.048 --> 01:29.691 [SPEAKER_01]: So follow us on those social media. 01:29.873 --> 01:34.021 [SPEAKER_01]: and check us out at youtube.com forward slash at the contact crew. 01:34.502 --> 01:36.385 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm watching and you guys are subscribing. 01:37.066 --> 01:37.788 [SPEAKER_01]: All right. 01:37.968 --> 01:43.057 [SPEAKER_01]: So Rob, for those out there that don't know you haven't come across yet, give a little bit of a background. 01:43.077 --> 01:44.440 [SPEAKER_01]: You've been in the street for a while. 01:44.881 --> 01:46.684 [SPEAKER_01]: So tell everybody your kind of story. 01:47.457 --> 01:47.998 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, sure. 01:49.060 --> 01:53.791 [SPEAKER_02]: So been in the construction business in South Florida since 2001. 01:54.392 --> 02:04.133 [SPEAKER_02]: Grow up as a Lego kid, thinker toy kid, feel in lumber to build tree forts in the woods, kind of kid up in North Florida and went to UF. 02:04.113 --> 02:12.744 [SPEAKER_02]: moved to South Florida in 2001 when I got out of a grad school, a little early prior to finishing, been down here ever since, worked for G.C. 02:12.764 --> 02:17.249 [SPEAKER_02]: initially that was primarily a school and municipal builder. 02:17.430 --> 02:26.261 [SPEAKER_02]: We got acquired by one of the large publicly traded companies, a couple of years into my tenure there, whether the recession by being volunteer to be the BIM guy. 02:26.481 --> 02:28.163 [SPEAKER_02]: So my 02:28.852 --> 02:37.179 [SPEAKER_02]: Undergrad was an architecture and the company associated architecture with CAD CAD with BIM, therefore you are the BIM guy. 02:38.801 --> 02:52.412 [SPEAKER_02]: So that kept me employed through the recession and came out the other side, went back to project management for a few years, and then the opportunity to come to CAST came up 10 years ago. 02:52.572 --> 02:57.897 [SPEAKER_02]: Then a CAST 10 years now initially came on board to 02:58.028 --> 03:16.857 [SPEAKER_02]: Start our VDC department at CAS as well as just general construction technology and related things and I was the first in a line of support department, though we've been added quality safety scheduling warranty slash customer care. 03:16.917 --> 03:22.786 [SPEAKER_02]: So it's expanded from there, all those kind of separate entities within the company. 03:23.046 --> 03:26.331 [SPEAKER_02]: So today I managed to manage our VDC group. 03:26.513 --> 03:44.379 [SPEAKER_02]: Also, our ProCore implementation and anything else that construction-specific technology, we always say, we're not the IT guys, you don't want to fix an e-mail, my promise, and then also work closely with our senior leadership on standards, procedures, that kind of stuff. 03:44.720 --> 03:48.806 [SPEAKER_02]: My passion is really around improving things for the folks in the trailers. 03:49.106 --> 03:50.649 [SPEAKER_02]: It's been a long time since I sat in a trailer. 03:50.669 --> 03:53.533 [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know what it's like to do that today, but I know it's, 03:53.513 --> 03:54.275 [SPEAKER_02]: what it was like. 03:54.696 --> 03:58.184 [SPEAKER_02]: And especially these days, sometimes they get left behind. 03:58.244 --> 04:04.078 [SPEAKER_02]: So try to be the voice of the field and those corporate level conversations and discussions. 04:04.639 --> 04:10.172 [SPEAKER_01]: The field needs its voice and they need somebody who's been through it. 04:10.152 --> 04:21.274 [SPEAKER_01]: What was it like to, I mean, the recession was 2008, the BIM guy, what was that experience like, I mean, that's got to be, because you were running work before that. 04:21.394 --> 04:25.883 [SPEAKER_01]: And so it's kind of like, I got here's a whole new, how do you tackle that? 04:26.065 --> 04:27.809 [SPEAKER_02]: Well, first I went back and Googled what has been. 04:28.450 --> 04:30.394 [SPEAKER_02]: So thanks for the Google existed already. 04:30.875 --> 04:33.321 [SPEAKER_02]: And we had a guy in our local market. 04:33.381 --> 04:36.227 [SPEAKER_02]: I think you guys know him or no of him, David Thorewell. 04:36.347 --> 04:38.993 [SPEAKER_02]: He was kind of the original South Florida BIM guy. 04:39.033 --> 04:41.819 [SPEAKER_02]: And I was lucky enough to get introduced to him. 04:41.899 --> 04:46.369 [SPEAKER_02]: And he kind of helped teach me what I needed, like back then. 04:46.855 --> 04:48.957 [SPEAKER_02]: Navis Revid, everything was bought separately. 04:48.997 --> 04:53.422 [SPEAKER_02]: There's no doing it on a laptop, you know, in 2009, that was all desktop. 04:53.442 --> 05:03.953 [SPEAKER_02]: So I really just approached it with the skills that I guess I had, which was a combination of going through the gauntlet of undergrad design school and just getting crucified. 05:04.614 --> 05:11.361 [SPEAKER_02]: Every time you go to present your work, so you get a fixed skin and you get really good at it's kind of defending your, and explaining your position. 05:11.982 --> 05:20.806 [SPEAKER_02]: And then the skills that I had developed in the project management side of just, you know, everything is planning scheduling budgeting and just using those same skills. 05:20.946 --> 05:28.506 [SPEAKER_02]: So that's kind of my approach and then just baptism by fire, you know, kind of figured out back then. 05:28.790 --> 05:42.102 [SPEAKER_00]: Man, well, now and I want to tell a story because I bet there's a lot of folks that are on the Slack group that I think it's now technically the context for him, but he used to always be bit them in beers and that originated out of the South Florida been group. 05:42.122 --> 05:44.604 [SPEAKER_00]: Do you want to do I tell a little bit of that story of kind of how all that came together? 05:44.664 --> 05:46.205 [SPEAKER_00]: Or I think that's my understanding. 05:46.305 --> 05:46.766 [SPEAKER_00]: Are you telling me? 05:47.026 --> 05:49.148 [SPEAKER_02]: No, yeah, that's accurate. 05:49.348 --> 05:58.476 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, the OGs back in the day were like me David Thorewell, Chris Lenge's a few other guys that were just. 05:58.709 --> 06:05.696 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, you don't hear the term so much anymore, but back then everybody talked about lonely BIM, because you were probably by yourself in your company. 06:06.337 --> 06:09.740 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, the only person you had to talk to might have been a competitor. 06:09.801 --> 06:27.619 [SPEAKER_02]: We went to an event called BIM and Bagel, and it was a little more corporate, a little more like there for sort of marketing purposes, and that kind of thing, and I just smarted off one day and said, you know, we need to have a BIM and beer 06:28.358 --> 06:45.515 [SPEAKER_02]: have a couple bruises and, you know, real talk about what's going on and and learning from each other too, you know, made a lot of those relationships and there's still people, you know, Chris and our still friends today day and our still friends today and I still reach out to them for things that I need and vice versa. 06:45.595 --> 06:56.085 [SPEAKER_02]: So it was, yeah, eventually somebody, a corporate entity stole the name and then sort of threatened and copyrighted it and sort of threatened to do us that we kept using our own name. 06:56.245 --> 06:57.066 [SPEAKER_02]: So, uh, 06:57.856 --> 07:12.709 [SPEAKER_02]: for a while there it was BIM and BIR because we were worried about, you know, none of us had any money to be going getting sued or defending our intellectual property, but, yeah, I mean, we still, the group David still does a good job of kind of, 07:13.516 --> 07:15.339 [SPEAKER_02]: kind of manage that group and get people together. 07:15.359 --> 07:18.744 [SPEAKER_02]: If you are in the South Florida market, we do have a wet that group. 07:18.824 --> 07:23.091 [SPEAKER_02]: So we'll try to find us and we'll add you to the group, but we do still get together from time to time. 07:23.331 --> 07:23.592 [SPEAKER_00]: Awesome. 07:23.612 --> 07:25.054 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, just the power of community, right? 07:25.114 --> 07:27.738 [SPEAKER_00]: Because I was part of the Bay Area, kind of been community. 07:27.798 --> 07:29.761 [SPEAKER_00]: And I know there's like a Phoenix has a big community. 07:29.801 --> 07:36.071 [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, South Florida, I think was one of the ones that surprised me that there was such a big, and such an early been community down there. 07:36.231 --> 07:37.834 [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, that is a cool story. 07:37.854 --> 07:40.418 [SPEAKER_00]: I think a lot of folks don't know that now very large. 07:40.398 --> 07:43.647 [SPEAKER_00]: with a lot of folks on its Slack group that got started out of South Florida. 07:44.048 --> 07:49.181 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and it's expanded, too, you know, so many people around the country that have been added over time. 07:49.241 --> 07:55.538 [SPEAKER_02]: So there's Paul Hedgebath, people like that, that, I mean, even you, like tell a lot of, I met a lot of you guys. 07:55.889 --> 07:57.571 [SPEAKER_02]: either directly or indirectly through that. 07:57.731 --> 08:19.095 [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, to mark the record too, yeah, all the folks yeah, yeah, keep keep in the fire via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via 08:19.075 --> 08:45.825 [SPEAKER_01]: So Linkisa was on Linkisa's the was probably the part impetus to me learning what it's like to be in rob shoes because I was an IT guy was listening to Chris on the show about all the things you could do with them and In virtual reality in augmented reality and I went running into the Masonry company like this is what we're going to do and I ran directly into a wall and found out that certain technologies not built for certain things wasn't quite ready yet so 08:45.805 --> 08:49.990 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and that community became like a sounding board for all of us. 08:50.370 --> 08:57.158 [SPEAKER_01]: It created, you know, and then it was, you know, we'd meet at shows and on the road, now to the places and have those conversations, right? 08:57.178 --> 09:10.373 [SPEAKER_01]: We've always said, the Bimm and Beer conversation was better than sometimes on the stage, just because on the stage, you're always trying to bring, you know, information to everybody at every level, right? 09:10.413 --> 09:11.975 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, they're not out in those communities. 09:11.995 --> 09:13.737 [SPEAKER_01]: They're not out having those 09:13.717 --> 09:15.701 [SPEAKER_01]: So how do you have the further conversation? 09:15.801 --> 09:16.903 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's the hallway. 09:16.983 --> 09:20.669 [SPEAKER_01]: So also, I mean, we all sort of helped each other figure it out. 09:20.749 --> 09:25.057 [SPEAKER_01]: I think we still, there's still a quality of, of needing to help each other out. 09:25.498 --> 09:26.820 [SPEAKER_01]: But we've all had to grow. 09:26.940 --> 09:32.350 [SPEAKER_01]: So talk about you're now, you've passed through the trailer seats, you've passed through the BIM seats. 09:32.752 --> 09:40.220 [SPEAKER_01]: You've moved into that technology space and watched it, it grow and sort of become the organizational piece of it. 09:40.240 --> 09:43.743 [SPEAKER_01]: You're doing more beyond just solving your own problem. 09:43.843 --> 09:46.846 [SPEAKER_01]: So talk about how that shift's been for you over time. 09:47.187 --> 09:58.118 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I was reflecting on that actually, over the weekend, it occurred to me that in May, it'll be 25 years and was thinking about when I started, 09:58.942 --> 10:01.726 [SPEAKER_02]: the technology was the fax machine in the next cell. 10:02.147 --> 10:07.935 [SPEAKER_02]: I literally did not have a corporate email address where the first maybe year or two years of my career. 10:08.536 --> 10:13.924 [SPEAKER_02]: I think I went and got like a hot mail somewhere to be able to send stuff on like on my own. 10:14.565 --> 10:26.603 [SPEAKER_02]: So that was the technology, like the fax machine, the cover letters, the paper cuts from the 12 copies of every sub-edible, that kind of stuff. 10:27.190 --> 10:54.717 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, we all have no kind of those big milestones along the way, you know, BIM really started to, I think, create a space where you could have somebody dedicated to that role within a construction company, and then, you know, some of us just started latching on to other things, you know, that out about BlueBeam, iPad to came out, figured out how to get the drawings on the iPad, you know, through a cloud server, and it was, for me, it was really always just, 10:55.793 --> 11:03.003 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I jokingly say you always want the smart lazy guy right on how smart I am, but I definitely qualify on the lazy part like hold on a minute. 11:03.043 --> 11:11.916 [SPEAKER_02]: I can either carry this giant role of half-sized growing down to the field and that no one else can see or I can take this iPad out, you know, so like coming out of the recession. 11:12.717 --> 11:16.062 [SPEAKER_02]: The company I was with got a large municipal project and downtown Fort Lauderdale. 11:16.863 --> 11:18.064 [SPEAKER_02]: I still have a picture where I had. 11:19.006 --> 11:22.390 [SPEAKER_02]: I think 13 iPads sitting on my counter. 11:22.451 --> 11:25.615 [SPEAKER_02]: I had no idea what I was doing just trying to figure out how to get. 11:25.915 --> 11:26.796 [SPEAKER_02]: iPad set up. 11:27.697 --> 11:29.860 [SPEAKER_02]: I think that was the most you could have on one eye cloud account. 11:31.001 --> 11:35.386 [SPEAKER_02]: But as many as we could for one eye cloud account and got the tech out there. 11:35.586 --> 11:47.580 [SPEAKER_02]: But that was that job was really a great experience because I was back on site mostly full time and really learning to the stereotypes of this person or that person that's not going to use technology. 11:47.820 --> 11:49.442 [SPEAKER_02]: Probably 11:49.912 --> 11:52.614 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, you can have a young kid that wants nothing to do with it. 11:52.915 --> 11:55.337 [SPEAKER_02]: That maybe got into construction because he wanted nothing to do with it. 11:55.637 --> 12:02.543 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I had an old superintendent come in and that the iPad down in the counter and say, you got any trigonometry apps you can give me? 12:03.463 --> 12:07.907 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, and I'm looking at this like Willie Nelson looking to do doing what, and the how is he going to do with a trigonometry app? 12:08.067 --> 12:12.651 [SPEAKER_02]: But he was an old surveyor layout guy and he wanted an easier way to do the math. 12:12.671 --> 12:19.497 [SPEAKER_02]: So that was the gateway to getting him in. 12:19.932 --> 12:39.730 [SPEAKER_02]: that really finally got the last of the holdouts into the cloud, at least for us, you know, we had people that still wanted to VPN into the local server and carry around their half-sized drawings and suddenly wanting better access to the files and the data and that kind of pushed, that was kind of the last thing that pushed everybody into the cloud. 12:39.878 --> 12:57.634 [SPEAKER_00]: So Rob, I wonder, you know, now in 2026, the flip side of that, you've now got this generation that has only known the iPad world has never seen what it's like to slip sheet a drawing set and really understand like the manual process of what it takes to keep a drawing set updated. 12:57.614 --> 13:25.512 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's why I used to love about doing Blooming Trainings because like all those tools that's all those little buttons and things, they would mimic what you would do in a paper-based world because that's essentially what we're doing is we're replicating those processes of change management and of drawing versioning of all these other things and I think somehow like with so much of this tech like you miss what you had to do to get there and like I guess are you teaching that does that matter like what what do you sing with the newer generation coming in? 13:25.981 --> 13:36.004 [SPEAKER_02]: We were trying to keep thinking, you've heard me say this before, but you've made the comment before about, we digitized bad process, you know, and my twist on that is, no, we digitized good process, right? 13:36.024 --> 13:37.587 [SPEAKER_02]: It was a good paper-based process. 13:37.928 --> 13:42.218 [SPEAKER_02]: Like, we had no choice, but to have 12 sets of the paper drawings. 13:42.518 --> 13:47.446 [SPEAKER_02]: we had no choice but to mark them up and hand them off to the next person that was the technology that was available at the time. 13:48.287 --> 13:50.631 [SPEAKER_02]: And in a lot of ways we've digitized that process. 13:51.132 --> 13:55.799 [SPEAKER_02]: And in some ways made it less good because it hidden behind a veil of technology. 13:56.220 --> 14:00.286 [SPEAKER_02]: And the value of the slow work is what I think we lost. 14:00.506 --> 14:03.231 [SPEAKER_02]: If I got a stack of submittals, they duck workshop growing. 14:04.392 --> 14:07.918 [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm reviewing them literally red pen, you know, 14:08.624 --> 14:24.338 [SPEAKER_02]: and the flantable in the trailer getting interrupted by people coming in, marking this up, I was way more incentivized to kick that back to the sub that I was to pass it on downstream, you know, so we should always be trying to improve things as we hand them off, right? 14:24.378 --> 14:29.183 [SPEAKER_02]: We, anything we take in and we give to somebody else, we should be making it better before we get it to the next person. 14:29.843 --> 14:34.307 [SPEAKER_02]: And so sometimes that mean, hey, this isn't good enough to make better, I need to give it back to the first person. 14:35.008 --> 14:38.631 [SPEAKER_02]: So I would look at that somewhat selfishly and again, 14:38.611 --> 14:43.338 [SPEAKER_02]: I'm not going to copy 300 comments onto 12 sets of drawing. 14:43.779 --> 14:44.980 [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to get this back to the sub. 14:45.000 --> 14:45.761 [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to get on a call. 14:45.781 --> 14:46.563 [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to talk about it. 14:47.284 --> 14:49.246 [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to revise it and fix it before we pass it on. 14:50.288 --> 14:53.913 [SPEAKER_02]: Now, the digital process, it's way easier to just pass that forward. 14:54.514 --> 14:58.300 [SPEAKER_02]: And we lose that value of the slower work. 14:59.161 --> 15:03.387 [SPEAKER_02]: What I'm interested in with the technology sort of today and where we're going is 15:04.210 --> 15:10.841 [SPEAKER_02]: Do we start to give people back some of that time to actually do the slow work that we want them to do? 15:11.802 --> 15:22.620 [SPEAKER_02]: What I worry about is where I hear people say, like, oh, we're going to automate, say, the middle review, automate the middle review, that's the key training tool for how people learn and grow. 15:23.181 --> 15:27.788 [SPEAKER_02]: So if I'm busy training the model, does that mean I'm not training my person? 15:28.409 --> 15:41.446 [SPEAKER_02]: And are they now losing that ability to learn about mechanical systems, plumbing system, you know, masonry, drywall, acoustic treatments, like all these things, orchestra pitless, that orchestra pitless on my first big job, right? 15:41.466 --> 15:54.062 [SPEAKER_02]: Like this opportunity, if the tool just reviewed the orchestra pitless and set it on, I wouldn't, not that I've encountered another one since then, but if I do, I'm ready because I actually had to learn something about it in the process. 15:54.329 --> 15:58.415 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, in that process that you're talking about, that's how you learn a job, too. 15:58.956 --> 16:08.610 [SPEAKER_01]: Not just your job itself, but that job you're working on now, because, you know, we talk about those speculists, we talk about what we're seeing, but that's also designed in 10. 16:08.751 --> 16:17.023 [SPEAKER_01]: It's calling out what the customer client and user really wants out of their product when you're done building it. 16:17.143 --> 16:20.128 [SPEAKER_01]: And so the machine can never really know that. 16:20.228 --> 16:22.952 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it can know a little bit. 16:22.932 --> 16:25.816 [SPEAKER_01]: it would be better to have time to think, right? 16:26.397 --> 16:28.720 [SPEAKER_00]: The only way it can get better is by learning from mistakes. 16:29.000 --> 16:34.127 [SPEAKER_00]: And the only way it can learn from mistakes is by us admitting that mistakes happen and feeding them into the machine. 16:34.167 --> 16:38.873 [SPEAKER_00]: And that comes back this whole privacy, you know, comfort was sharing information. 16:38.933 --> 16:40.255 [SPEAKER_00]: And what is the risk exposure? 16:40.335 --> 16:43.118 [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, Rob, I know that's that's a stuff you love to dig into. 16:43.138 --> 16:49.767 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, all the really messy stuff. 16:50.135 --> 16:54.683 [SPEAKER_02]: the whole before the, I guess I'm going to be the first one to say the word before the AI explosion. 16:54.843 --> 16:58.610 [SPEAKER_02]: We all wanted was to share data in an automated way. 16:58.650 --> 17:01.655 [SPEAKER_02]: We wanted, you know, you've big project management solutions. 17:01.675 --> 17:04.520 [SPEAKER_02]: We wanted, we asked them questions about, hey, what are other people doing? 17:04.580 --> 17:07.485 [SPEAKER_02]: What's a typical RFI response time you're seeing? 17:07.904 --> 17:26.740 [SPEAKER_02]: And then now we've moved into this new scary future, I guess, and nobody wants to say, you know, it's all, it's all like, I want the model train on everyone's data except mine and I don't want to share mine to help train the model, you know, so I think it's it's definitely an interesting. 17:26.956 --> 17:37.130 [SPEAKER_02]: topic around, you know, not only who owned it, but, you know, who owns the device that's being stored on the day, are they do money to store your data? 17:38.271 --> 17:41.175 [SPEAKER_02]: Should we or should we not be using it to train the model? 17:41.455 --> 17:50.027 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I'm like super interested in what, what we could learn if we were actually able to sort of reliably train the model on, on, on, 17:50.564 --> 17:52.847 [SPEAKER_02]: reliably anonymized data, you know? 17:53.167 --> 17:54.368 [SPEAKER_01]: That is the conundrum, right? 17:54.389 --> 17:55.209 [SPEAKER_01]: Because you want it. 17:55.710 --> 18:01.697 [SPEAKER_01]: And what's interesting too is, and we, you know, we can take this all the way back to an individual company level. 18:01.777 --> 18:05.522 [SPEAKER_01]: Like that data is only valuable at your company level. 18:05.762 --> 18:15.273 [SPEAKER_01]: If everybody participating in the company is feeding that data in, I've come across multiple companies where it's like, oh, yeah, we have like, say, you got a pro core. 18:15.573 --> 18:18.597 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, 80% of the people projects use pro core. 18:18.577 --> 18:20.259 [SPEAKER_01]: What are the other 20% use? 18:20.539 --> 18:24.062 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, they haven't really come along in that group. 18:24.082 --> 18:27.546 [SPEAKER_01]: Specializes in doing X, Y, and Z, and so we just let them on their own. 18:27.586 --> 18:30.449 [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, so you're blind to 20% of your company. 18:31.230 --> 18:37.456 [SPEAKER_01]: And most of the time, that's the 20% that's probably driving more revenue, driving more work. 18:37.856 --> 18:40.379 [SPEAKER_01]: And it might even be riskier work. 18:40.399 --> 18:46.845 [SPEAKER_01]: So you're like, the totality of the data is the important part. 18:46.825 --> 18:50.390 [SPEAKER_01]: you know, how can we can make sure that it's anonymized? 18:50.430 --> 18:53.373 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm thinking about this from like a plans perspective. 18:53.433 --> 19:09.694 [SPEAKER_01]: That is architects, IP, and very important that, you know, they hang on to that IP, but it's also contributing to an industry that's building the world around us that needs to know more about what's working and what's not working. 19:09.714 --> 19:10.776 [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm with you, Nathan. 19:11.356 --> 19:16.663 [SPEAKER_01]: We're love to share our successes. 19:16.643 --> 19:43.731 [SPEAKER_00]: failures is often as we want to think that's that's the cultural mindset is that when you're inside the fence when you're inside a cast you should want to share everything because everything should be fair again because you're not at risk to yourself other than feeling a shame or something when it goes over the fence outside of the company that's where we have to talk about strategy and risk and what should I share or should I nod and that's the whole team team topic at the AC integration summit this year and should I share or should I nod but 19:43.711 --> 19:57.408 [SPEAKER_00]: But I think internally, I guess Rob, where do you feel like things are at with building that culture says, hey, when it's inside the fence, like, of course we're going to open the kimono and share our faults and share whatever because we should be learning from that. 19:58.009 --> 20:01.813 [SPEAKER_00]: I know that's a very big stretch to say that you're there, but how close are you? 20:01.974 --> 20:11.946 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, well, I mean, I think one of the challenges is that, you know, if we go back 20:12.753 --> 20:15.176 [SPEAKER_02]: data's going to change the world, friend. 20:15.777 --> 20:19.062 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I said back then, there's the stages of data analytics. 20:19.482 --> 20:21.225 [SPEAKER_02]: Stage one is figure out what you want to measure. 20:21.806 --> 20:23.688 [SPEAKER_02]: Stage two is figure out how to measure it. 20:23.869 --> 20:26.112 [SPEAKER_02]: Stage three is figure out how to report it. 20:26.212 --> 20:28.996 [SPEAKER_02]: Stage four is figure out it's all crap and start over again. 20:29.376 --> 20:38.649 [SPEAKER_02]: And if you look at, I would say that back then, maybe 10 to 20% of the companies were really trying to do something, really trying to do something with analytics. 20:38.670 --> 20:41.173 [SPEAKER_02]: And you fast forward to today. 20:41.592 --> 20:45.195 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's maybe 10% art trying to do something with AI. 20:45.576 --> 20:49.700 [SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, we talked for years about a structured and unstructured data. 20:49.760 --> 20:52.783 [SPEAKER_02]: I don't think we have a structure problem so much anymore. 20:52.843 --> 20:56.707 [SPEAKER_02]: There's not, you know, there's not as much of like handwritten notes in the yellow note book. 20:56.727 --> 21:00.671 [SPEAKER_02]: There's not as much of scanned in hand filled out sheet. 21:01.351 --> 21:02.853 [SPEAKER_02]: What we have now is a governance problem. 21:03.113 --> 21:11.481 [SPEAKER_02]: It's the same, but almost worse, because the digital people think it's accurate and trustworthy 21:11.782 --> 21:22.108 [SPEAKER_02]: the top three or four different AI tools, what the code allowed dropped from floor drain to a P-trap was. 21:22.729 --> 21:25.757 [SPEAKER_02]: They all answered it differently and they all got it wrong. 21:26.564 --> 21:37.218 [SPEAKER_02]: Even when you're talking about internal data, I'm really keen on some ideas around being able to leverage AI to make the job easier, but also provide the training. 21:37.439 --> 21:43.487 [SPEAKER_02]: I want to bring Cliffy back, but I want Cliffy to be a RFI, Cliffy, like bounces around and gives you suggestions on how to make your RFI better. 21:45.269 --> 21:51.778 [SPEAKER_02]: But we had the really careful about what we feed that as part of that training topic. 21:51.893 --> 21:54.898 [SPEAKER_02]: We could easily have RFIs within the company that have been answered wrong. 21:55.719 --> 22:02.491 [SPEAKER_02]: And again, the lack of knowledge, the person that's probably processing them is not necessarily the most knowledgeable and experienced person. 22:03.272 --> 22:07.780 [SPEAKER_02]: They just, we send an RFI over junior architect to answer it, PE gets it back. 22:08.641 --> 22:09.783 [SPEAKER_02]: They market close, right? 22:09.803 --> 22:13.429 [SPEAKER_02]: They're incentive, and I guess this goes too to sort of the, 22:14.371 --> 22:18.715 [SPEAKER_02]: how to do it internally, we had to be careful that those incentives don't become disincentives. 22:19.216 --> 22:25.642 [SPEAKER_02]: We start grading people on RFI response time, Nathan US, they show me how I'm measured, I'll show you how I'm act, right? 22:25.662 --> 22:32.689 [SPEAKER_02]: If you're graded on RFI response time, you're not graded on good, you're not graded on code, you're not graded on anything else. 22:32.749 --> 22:37.713 [SPEAKER_02]: You're just like, hey, I gotta get my number down, and you just start hammering away at closing RFI's. 22:37.974 --> 22:41.577 [SPEAKER_02]: I think we do want to share internally, but we need like, 22:41.894 --> 22:47.663 [SPEAKER_02]: grown up eyes and grown up hands on that sharing and what do we use to train those models even internally? 22:48.564 --> 22:53.111 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I see that's a beautiful use case for what AI can do for you. 22:53.171 --> 22:56.917 [SPEAKER_01]: If you take that RFI clipi, which somebody's going to steal that for me. 22:56.957 --> 23:01.143 [SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, we'll try to give you credit, at least be on here. 23:02.365 --> 23:05.590 [SPEAKER_01]: But that RFI clipi should be telling you, 23:05.570 --> 23:13.965 [SPEAKER_01]: The, you know, the RFI has particular structure and things that's got to go, especially could change from job to job depending on the contract. 23:14.586 --> 23:22.279 [SPEAKER_01]: It can walk you through that telling you what these sections need to be, not what needs to be in them. 23:22.259 --> 23:29.346 [SPEAKER_01]: And requiring you to learn and go out and get that information and provide it and read it. 23:29.806 --> 23:37.754 [SPEAKER_01]: And by the way, everybody, this is what they're getting wrong, I think, is everybody's like, AI can make you 50% faster. 23:38.955 --> 23:42.759 [SPEAKER_01]: You can do 50 RFIs at the time of one. 23:43.239 --> 23:45.542 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, you're right, Rob, that's the disincentive. 23:46.302 --> 23:48.064 [SPEAKER_01]: But what if I can do 23:49.225 --> 24:01.422 [SPEAKER_01]: three or four more RFIs and a higher quality because I'm not having to learn what the format necessarily is for this exact job and make sure I'm putting in that wording. 24:01.523 --> 24:05.288 [SPEAKER_01]: It's helping me with the basic languages in between, right? 24:05.308 --> 24:14.521 [SPEAKER_01]: Because an RFI has a lot of detail that's required each time, but a lot of that's not thought, date, you know, other specific things. 24:14.581 --> 24:17.325 [SPEAKER_01]: It aren't, you can be pulled from the data, that's fine. 24:17.305 --> 24:24.402 [SPEAKER_01]: It's the if that spec itself or if that, you know, is meeting the intention or is safe, right? 24:24.562 --> 24:26.868 [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I think we can also use it as a tool. 24:27.389 --> 24:30.697 [SPEAKER_02]: There's a to me there's kind of two if we just stick with the RFI example. 24:30.717 --> 24:33.062 [SPEAKER_02]: There's sort of two tiers of how we can use it. 24:33.182 --> 24:34.285 [SPEAKER_02]: One is. 24:34.265 --> 24:35.307 [SPEAKER_02]: best practices. 24:35.428 --> 24:37.091 [SPEAKER_02]: Did you comply with company standards? 24:37.973 --> 24:46.894 [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe a little bit of extra sauce of saying, hey, if you didn't cite a drawing, we find that RFIs that site drawings get entered 25% faster, little things like that. 24:47.696 --> 24:52.206 [SPEAKER_02]: But the other piece is that actually replacing that. 24:52.372 --> 24:56.821 [SPEAKER_02]: what I'm worried that we're going to lose is that ability to train in the process. 24:57.202 --> 24:59.848 [SPEAKER_02]: At last year at CPF, I went to Raisin Kane to never been there before. 24:59.928 --> 25:00.369 [SPEAKER_02]: I walk in. 25:00.429 --> 25:01.571 [SPEAKER_02]: It's right across from the hotel. 25:01.631 --> 25:03.856 [SPEAKER_02]: I said, hey, I want some chicken fingers. 25:03.876 --> 25:04.778 [SPEAKER_02]: They go, okay. 25:05.770 --> 25:08.934 [SPEAKER_02]: A four piece or a six piece, a four piece. 25:08.954 --> 25:09.876 [SPEAKER_02]: Do you want to do it or not? 25:10.697 --> 25:11.378 [SPEAKER_02]: Yes. 25:12.079 --> 25:12.900 [SPEAKER_02]: Do you want fries? 25:12.960 --> 25:13.200 [SPEAKER_02]: Yes. 25:13.821 --> 25:18.387 [SPEAKER_02]: And as I left, I realized, well, now I've been trained by the model, right? 25:18.467 --> 25:22.052 [SPEAKER_02]: Next time I come in, I'm going to say, I want a four piece with fries and a coke. 25:22.072 --> 25:23.714 [SPEAKER_02]: Please stop talking to me, let me get the hell out of here. 25:23.915 --> 25:25.577 [SPEAKER_02]: I'm surrounded by college students, right? 25:25.617 --> 25:27.880 [SPEAKER_02]: I want to go. 25:27.860 --> 25:40.677 [SPEAKER_02]: But I bet that's the kind of thing that I envision these tools really bringing to the table and helping us grow our people is, you know, being able to sit down and say, Remember that video, the steel will not work. 25:41.540 --> 25:42.763 [SPEAKER_02]: A little little cartoon guys. 25:43.317 --> 25:48.024 [SPEAKER_02]: I pre-post their unlinked in the other day, sit down and start to write in our fine, say the duck does not fit. 25:48.645 --> 25:50.648 [SPEAKER_02]: And then it prompts you back and says, okay, what duck? 25:50.668 --> 25:52.371 [SPEAKER_02]: Well, the duck to above the meeting room. 25:52.811 --> 25:57.538 [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, I see in the drawings you have five meeting rooms, which meeting room to one on level three, right? 25:57.639 --> 25:59.541 [SPEAKER_02]: And then get more detailed. 26:00.102 --> 26:02.306 [SPEAKER_02]: Hey, I see that, you know, it why won't it work? 26:02.326 --> 26:03.908 [SPEAKER_02]: Well, a titting this field. 26:03.888 --> 26:05.911 [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, I see these joists in that space. 26:06.552 --> 26:18.950 [SPEAKER_02]: The next time that person sits down to write that RFI or similar RFI, maybe the people out there that are just going to want to sit there and be gentle-parented, but like the most people I think are going to want to skip to the end, right? 26:18.970 --> 26:21.534 [SPEAKER_02]: So they're going to go, okay, the system's going to start asking me these questions. 26:22.055 --> 26:27.583 [SPEAKER_02]: Now I know ahead of time what to go look at, what to learn, you know, and I think anybody that's really 26:27.867 --> 26:38.340 [SPEAKER_02]: The permit to ever use, anybody at the builder in the business is going to have that level of interest to say, oh, he's the things that need to be looking at these are how I get questions answered. 26:38.641 --> 26:43.547 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, what would be great is if he get to the end of his architects, let me say, this is not an RFI, it's already in the drawing. 26:44.288 --> 26:52.879 [SPEAKER_02]: The awesome, it's the tool just came out and told you that from the beginning, like, just FYI, I do see a detail for a drop, soffit in that area, maybe put the ductwork in there. 26:52.927 --> 26:53.828 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, that's what I was going to say. 26:53.848 --> 26:58.472 [SPEAKER_00]: I think here's your holy grail of that Clippy AI example is, what is the RFI? 26:58.492 --> 27:08.861 [SPEAKER_00]: Because you said before, there's an RFI that could be asked that could be answered wrong, but you would never know it until maybe two years later when you're installing the other piece of equipment that is now the reason why it's wrong. 27:09.381 --> 27:18.029 [SPEAKER_00]: But when you write that RFI, where's Clippy to show up and go, hey, by the way, this other RFI was asked and answered two years ago in that exact same area. 27:18.069 --> 27:22.933 [SPEAKER_00]: And now you can go flag that one as being a bad RFI and not being the correct answer 27:22.913 --> 27:40.956 [SPEAKER_00]: cleaning up the data as you go, because like, yeah, if we don't create systems that both govern and clean the data simultaneously, we're never going to, you know, make up for everything we've lost along the way, but yeah, I think these are all, yeah, great strategies and stuff I know you're implementing so keep going. 27:40.936 --> 27:43.382 [SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's a great training opportunity as well, right? 27:43.422 --> 27:50.901 [SPEAKER_02]: Because we have so many people in the industry, like we're trying very hard to retain people, but the way the industry has one of the ways it's changed. 27:51.582 --> 27:57.898 [SPEAKER_02]: In my tenure is you see a lot of these people move every two years, every year, every 18 months, they're a new company, new company. 27:57.878 --> 28:13.542 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, you're just getting settled and starting to actually be helpful and learning things, and somebody gets to another 10 grand so you're off to down the road, that forward looking vision, right to your specific example, Nathan when when they get reminded later on. 28:14.534 --> 28:16.877 [SPEAKER_02]: Hey, you mentioned the air handler isn't fitting. 28:17.338 --> 28:30.458 [SPEAKER_02]: Remember two years ago, when you asked about the duck that wouldn't fit in the meeting room, and we tell you there's an air handler, like that's also the kind of training, like I see experience getting more and more poo-pooed in the industry. 28:30.898 --> 28:34.904 [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe as I get older and all I had to offer is experience, I get to have to be about it. 28:34.964 --> 28:44.338 [SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I think those are the kinds of things that I would love to find a way to accelerate that learning, and bring that in as part of that training 28:44.875 --> 28:52.011 [SPEAKER_02]: things, you know, maybe even prompting that person, hey, I noticed there's also an air handler in this space, you know, did you want to maybe look at that too? 28:52.352 --> 28:53.876 [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yes, right? 28:53.916 --> 29:00.471 [SPEAKER_02]: Because that's at a superintendent one time that said, I don't always know the right way to do it, but I know a crap load and not ways to do it. 29:00.451 --> 29:13.829 [SPEAKER_01]: does totally valid right in your prompting thing there and just any way of using the software for that kind of feedback and training also hits on this new generation wants to make an impact faster. 29:13.969 --> 29:18.014 [SPEAKER_01]: They're used to a shorter feedback loop. 29:18.034 --> 29:27.927 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we just have these conversations back in the day about like, you know, most millennials at the time I was doing studies, we're leaving 29:27.907 --> 29:32.954 [SPEAKER_01]: Because they didn't feel as though they were having an impact on the company and impact was what they wanted. 29:32.974 --> 29:38.681 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, you, all of us know, it takes a lot longer to create those relationships that do create that impact. 29:39.502 --> 29:49.095 [SPEAKER_01]: But if we can speed up their impact on, in that case, if you look at that, they find the, the air handler and they get ahead of it. 29:49.135 --> 29:52.520 [SPEAKER_01]: Then when somebody's building it, they're like, wow, that was great. 29:52.580 --> 29:55.163 [SPEAKER_01]: You took care of that ahead of time for me. 29:55.143 --> 29:56.185 [SPEAKER_01]: Now they get the impact. 29:56.285 --> 30:00.331 [SPEAKER_01]: Now they feel like they're being valued. 30:00.351 --> 30:01.593 [SPEAKER_01]: And that goes to retention. 30:01.633 --> 30:07.301 [SPEAKER_01]: The moving every 18 months to two years, some of that we've created ourselves. 30:07.522 --> 30:08.663 [SPEAKER_01]: Some of it is the money, right? 30:08.724 --> 30:11.348 [SPEAKER_01]: There are people who are gonna chase that 10 grand everywhere they go. 30:11.868 --> 30:17.477 [SPEAKER_01]: But a lot of them, how are you approaching, hey, we're gonna give you more than just that 10 grand? 30:18.378 --> 30:19.400 [SPEAKER_01]: You're gonna learn. 30:19.780 --> 30:22.264 [SPEAKER_01]: We're gonna give you something more. 30:22.919 --> 30:29.410 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, well, and you know, like everything, everything post recession has been up, right? 30:29.870 --> 30:38.785 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, depending on where you live, there might have been a COVID dip, not a Florida we stayed open, but some regions may have had an economic dip. 30:39.288 --> 30:44.757 [SPEAKER_02]: during that time, but really, we've just been on this rocket ship of growth for 15 years. 30:44.817 --> 30:48.924 [SPEAKER_02]: And a lot of those people were not around for the recession. 30:49.184 --> 30:51.488 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I, you talked about what changed. 30:51.508 --> 30:52.911 [SPEAKER_02]: One of the things that changed was my ego. 30:53.111 --> 30:57.999 [SPEAKER_02]: As I came out of school, I was getting recruited and had hunted and thought I was amazing. 30:58.059 --> 31:00.083 [SPEAKER_02]: And then all of a sudden, everybody around me is getting laid off. 31:00.103 --> 31:02.747 [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm, you know, I'm getting shoved in the gym closet. 31:02.727 --> 31:14.183 [SPEAKER_02]: to not get fired, you know, that experience of that recession, I think, for those of us that went through it, kind of gave us a different perspective on the economy, the industry, and that kind of stuff. 31:14.204 --> 31:25.680 [SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, that too has led to that rapid moving, you know, and the, I keep thinking about the labor shortage and the even on the project management and superintendent side, 31:25.812 --> 31:52.039 [SPEAKER_02]: I'm not entirely sure we're not just all passing the same people around, you know, like they're saying like, oh, we're short 40% of what we need and I think it's probably really more like we're short 60% we just all keep like, you know, we're counting the guy that's starting next week and the other guy's not counting and this being gone yet, so we're just kind of, I think we can address some of that with the technology tools as well, right, with that if we can make people feel appreciated feel like they're contributing, you know, I guess. 31:52.019 --> 32:03.497 [SPEAKER_02]: My pushback to that would be what I would tell any younger person getting into the business today is it like you want to have an impact go outside and find somebody to help and that that was my 32:04.692 --> 32:10.519 [SPEAKER_02]: key to my early career success was, I got into this business to not, I run a clean house. 32:10.599 --> 32:20.591 [SPEAKER_02]: I spent only time inside, but I got into this business to go outside and going outside and engaging with the supers and the trade foreman and all the people out there, what do you need? 32:20.651 --> 32:27.479 [SPEAKER_02]: What can I do to help start at your own project with the impact you can have and look for those people that need help and they are probably outside. 32:28.200 --> 32:30.042 [SPEAKER_02]: The people that need help are probably outside. 32:30.308 --> 32:57.261 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the ones putting in the work are the ones that need the most help because we need them not doing paperwork and not filling out forms and we need them installing work and thinking about that flow and productivity and keeping people safe so it's that that's a it's a great lesson and I think it's a lesson and I'm going to spin you to this because we're getting close to the end and I I do want you to get a little bit of this out there I think the software companies should have less. 32:57.241 --> 33:16.245 [SPEAKER_01]: of the salespeople out there and more of the people that are the technical support, the the ones that know the tools learning from the problems more frequently and now you sit in that role Rob where you know you have to feel the lot of this you have that. 33:16.411 --> 33:17.513 [SPEAKER_01]: that killer word. 33:17.533 --> 33:24.343 [SPEAKER_01]: You have innovation in your title, buddy, which is just a LinkedIn searcher way. 33:24.403 --> 33:27.968 [SPEAKER_01]: It's a sales navigator searcher way from a phone call. 33:28.389 --> 33:33.857 [SPEAKER_01]: So talk a little bit about how that process is for you now and sort of your feedback on it. 33:35.679 --> 33:40.967 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think it's completely overwhelming and the amount of time that we spend 33:41.588 --> 33:58.196 [SPEAKER_02]: spending that off filtering it, you know, even sometimes internally, somebody who get a hold of somebody at a project came, get them all excited about something, now I'm spending off to salesperson and my own internal person, you know, the data guide that we brought on recently came from a consulting firm. 33:58.216 --> 34:04.426 [SPEAKER_02]: And now he's the, has a data title at a construction company, you know, and it comes to my office one day, like, what the hell? 34:04.446 --> 34:06.129 [SPEAKER_02]: I would, I can't get any done. 34:06.189 --> 34:07.832 [SPEAKER_02]: I'll do it in a spending 34:07.812 --> 34:09.815 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, this is the unwanted attention. 34:10.576 --> 34:18.007 [SPEAKER_02]: In my mind, I always equated to that old meme of like the woman walking down a street past the construction site in New York and getting like whistle that. 34:18.728 --> 34:20.250 [SPEAKER_02]: And I wondered, like, does that work? 34:20.351 --> 34:28.082 [SPEAKER_02]: Did that ever one time work, you know, did all this cold calling ever harassing the all the stuff that that ever really work, you know, I think. 34:29.058 --> 34:35.306 [SPEAKER_02]: I, what I want is, again, I think the same advice is there go outside, we're Bridget Bench customers. 34:35.346 --> 34:46.639 [SPEAKER_02]: I think they have a awesome like founding story of, you know, the two women that founded that company went to job sites and asked people what was wrong, you know, and, and they weren't from industry. 34:46.680 --> 34:52.226 [SPEAKER_02]: I get a lot of, you know, I say at the time, I don't really want to talk to people not from industry and that kind of stuff, that's entirely true. 34:52.827 --> 34:53.648 [SPEAKER_02]: But, um, 34:54.708 --> 34:56.050 [SPEAKER_02]: But I think they did it the right way. 34:56.150 --> 35:06.242 [SPEAKER_02]: They went out and they didn't say, you know, we're here to fix you, you're broken, you're industry staying, you're inefficient, you know, like, great way to fix anybody off is that I'm here to disrupt you. 35:06.462 --> 35:06.843 [SPEAKER_02]: Like great. 35:07.604 --> 35:09.025 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'm closing the door, you're done. 35:09.226 --> 35:10.507 [SPEAKER_02]: I'm not interested in being disrupted. 35:10.547 --> 35:11.188 [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you very much. 35:13.231 --> 35:18.497 [SPEAKER_02]: But I think they really went about it the right way of just they saw an opportunity in the construction industry. 35:18.517 --> 35:22.622 [SPEAKER_02]: They didn't know what specifically that opportunity was and they just went out and asked questions. 35:22.788 --> 35:48.390 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, they didn't show up with a preconceived notion about, you know, I made an app to plan template locations, you know, okay, not interested in that, nobody needs that, but here's like 25 other things we need help with, you know, don't, don't put AI on the end of your tool and then think I'm going to buy it because it's now the template AI location tool, you know, like engage with the people, I think going on podcasts like this, 35:48.539 --> 35:49.782 [SPEAKER_02]: That's where I learn a lot of stuff. 35:49.802 --> 35:56.278 [SPEAKER_02]: That's where I even get my mind changed sometimes about I heard an interview from a vendor on a podcast a couple weeks ago. 35:56.318 --> 36:03.055 [SPEAKER_02]: And it was somebody we'd kind of been shutting down and they started really talking through it on the interview and I was like, 36:03.862 --> 36:33.430 [SPEAKER_02]: they had acquired another vendor as well and a person like I don't know what these two things have anything to do with each other and then they kind of start explaining and like holy crap that's a great idea I totally see a use case for that that's That's absolutely something that we could we could use and may still add you and go build it myself with our own tools but you know nonetheless the good idea is there and it opens up the door to 36:34.203 --> 36:37.116 [SPEAKER_02]: It's a calendar where you can schedule quicker to schedule time with me. 36:37.136 --> 36:39.647 [SPEAKER_02]: It's going to be on behind a paywall, you know? 36:40.009 --> 36:40.129 [SPEAKER_02]: Wait. 36:41.206 --> 36:42.609 [SPEAKER_02]: I'll talk to you for a hundred bucks. 36:42.829 --> 36:50.823 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, we'll donate it to the Pet Rescue where I got my dog, but there's got to be some... 36:50.843 --> 36:53.288 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that really is, you get a couple of things. 36:53.328 --> 36:56.033 [SPEAKER_01]: And I say this over and over, and I want you to take this one with you. 36:56.454 --> 36:59.679 [SPEAKER_01]: Disruption is not an outcome. 36:59.820 --> 37:00.641 [SPEAKER_01]: It's not a goal. 37:01.162 --> 37:03.867 [SPEAKER_01]: Is the unfortunate buy product. 37:04.308 --> 37:05.610 [SPEAKER_01]: So Uber, 37:05.590 --> 37:09.614 [SPEAKER_01]: Those two guys wanted to get a cab in London and couldn't. 37:10.875 --> 37:18.322 [SPEAKER_01]: And then Dad, the same experience in San Francisco, and said, what if we could call them to us with this mobile device thing we have? 37:19.143 --> 37:22.947 [SPEAKER_01]: And that was they were solving the problem that they just wanted to get a ride faster. 37:23.568 --> 37:24.168 [SPEAKER_01]: Same thing. 37:24.208 --> 37:27.131 [SPEAKER_01]: You can't go out there with I'm going to disrupt as the goal. 37:27.251 --> 37:28.793 [SPEAKER_01]: That's it's always going to fail. 37:29.353 --> 37:30.895 [SPEAKER_01]: Go out and search for the problems. 37:30.915 --> 37:34.298 [SPEAKER_01]: And there's so many of those like Bridget Bench that did it. 37:34.278 --> 37:47.665 [SPEAKER_01]: and others that have gone out and just spent the time investigating the problem or we're living the problem in construction and moved over to a founder or whatnot on a technical founder that they went to solve it. 37:47.705 --> 37:49.729 [SPEAKER_01]: So that's the important thing. 37:49.929 --> 37:51.392 [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm with you. 37:52.300 --> 38:03.177 [SPEAKER_01]: at this point in time and it's a little self-serving, but going on and explaining what you're actually that's trying to achieve through the workflows, through the changes on shows like this. 38:03.697 --> 38:07.243 [SPEAKER_01]: And others, there's lots of great shows out there right now that talk about different things. 38:07.784 --> 38:09.486 [SPEAKER_01]: That's where you go to learn. 38:09.686 --> 38:14.113 [SPEAKER_01]: And then I can come to you with a story that makes sense, and you have a problem you want to solve. 38:14.173 --> 38:15.355 [SPEAKER_01]: And by the way, 38:15.335 --> 38:28.956 [SPEAKER_01]: You hit on something else and I think it's something all of us in software need to kind of think about is with AI and with cloud and all these other new tools that you can do you can and most startups can solve almost any problem. 38:29.932 --> 38:49.358 [SPEAKER_01]: It's just does it matter and do you know how what an industry standard is, what a workflow should look like, can you help not only bring them the software, but actually solve a problem and then get adoption across the company. 38:49.625 --> 38:51.147 [SPEAKER_01]: Because that's the biggest hurdle, right? 38:51.307 --> 38:52.889 [SPEAKER_01]: I can get one project team. 38:52.909 --> 38:56.454 [SPEAKER_01]: I can get a couple of people in my BIM group to do something new. 38:57.055 --> 39:02.962 [SPEAKER_01]: But if I want to go across the company and get standardization and get adoption, that's not easy. 39:03.523 --> 39:11.674 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, well, and I think the folks, some of the folks coming out of industry and starting these technology companies, right? 39:11.714 --> 39:17.421 [SPEAKER_02]: Some of them, some of them we use, some of them are, I see value and that we don't yet use. 39:17.907 --> 39:32.811 [SPEAKER_02]: But a lot of them, what I see is people that, you know, they might be creating a unitescure to solve the thing that they didn't like doing when they were a PE or an APM or a PM, but what they don't understand is the upstream and downstream knock-on effects of, 39:33.719 --> 39:37.643 [SPEAKER_02]: both the value of what they were doing and that's a that's a problem for people like me. 39:37.743 --> 39:39.766 [SPEAKER_02]: I should be doing a better job of explaining that. 39:39.906 --> 39:44.971 [SPEAKER_02]: Like, hey, look, I know this kind of sucks, but this is why you need to do it. 39:44.991 --> 39:49.676 [SPEAKER_02]: And here's how to go find your own personal value in what you're doing, right? 39:50.737 --> 39:52.860 [SPEAKER_02]: Everybody wants daily report tools, right? 39:52.980 --> 39:56.544 [SPEAKER_02]: And it's all a lot of them are built by guys that had to fill out daily reports and didn't like it. 39:57.104 --> 39:59.727 [SPEAKER_02]: I would make the argument you're 40:00.027 --> 40:03.212 [SPEAKER_02]: And daily report is the report itself is the trash. 40:03.252 --> 40:04.954 [SPEAKER_02]: It's the out, it's the leftover. 40:05.495 --> 40:07.718 [SPEAKER_02]: The value is sitting down thinking about your day. 40:07.798 --> 40:09.901 [SPEAKER_02]: What did I do today, who was here, who wasn't here? 40:10.262 --> 40:11.844 [SPEAKER_02]: What was supposed to start that didn't start? 40:12.545 --> 40:17.172 [SPEAKER_02]: I don't need an AI tool to spit that out at me from you to ignore and put it in an email and send to the office. 40:18.113 --> 40:24.803 [SPEAKER_02]: I should be, you know, when I did the daily logs, I was, end of the day, everybody else has gone, the supers are gone for the day. 40:25.610 --> 40:27.293 [SPEAKER_02]: I've got to do the reports from the trades. 40:27.553 --> 40:28.855 [SPEAKER_02]: I've got notes from the super. 40:29.296 --> 40:31.419 [SPEAKER_02]: Let me sit down and think about what happened today. 40:31.439 --> 40:36.747 [SPEAKER_02]: And I can't tell you how many times I would get to a point and go, well, I don't know if that did or didn't happen. 40:36.847 --> 40:42.215 [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm there at like five o'clock at night, six o'clock at night in the trailer, get up and go back out to the job site to see if it happened or not. 40:42.836 --> 40:50.267 [SPEAKER_02]: That's an example of like the value is so vast upstream and downstream, training people, getting a proper reporting. 40:50.973 --> 40:56.381 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, the manpower count does mount matter because somebody's using that for an RIR, a record of lintonate rate somewhere. 40:56.862 --> 41:02.570 [SPEAKER_02]: The thing is all matter, but the, the, I liked to, the tablet report, because I finished my day. 41:02.651 --> 41:04.233 [SPEAKER_02]: I figured out what didn't happen. 41:04.273 --> 41:10.843 [SPEAKER_02]: And then I was prepared for the next day, the, the paper that I was writing it on was like, sure, you can make use of this great here. 41:11.163 --> 41:12.586 [SPEAKER_02]: I put that in drawer somewhere. 41:13.186 --> 41:14.148 [SPEAKER_02]: I already got what I needed. 41:14.829 --> 41:20.237 [SPEAKER_02]: So I think the, for the founders and the startup folks that are a little bit of time in industry, 41:20.740 --> 41:23.527 [SPEAKER_02]: Get with somebody that got more time in industry. 41:23.607 --> 41:25.672 [SPEAKER_02]: Find out, hey, why do we do this? 41:25.692 --> 41:27.817 [SPEAKER_02]: What's the history behind it? 41:27.837 --> 41:28.839 [SPEAKER_02]: Why do we keep doing it? 41:29.200 --> 41:31.005 [SPEAKER_02]: And we're all about process improvement. 41:31.065 --> 41:34.092 [SPEAKER_02]: But you got to think about how it fits in the larger ecosystem. 41:34.932 --> 41:55.827 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, that's a beautiful tieback because we started this with you wanted things when they were reading plans up front and they were planning and looking expects and you wanted them to learn the job right it's like we can't be just clicking boxes and not learning this job in that precond phase you're learning the job. 41:55.807 --> 41:58.469 [SPEAKER_01]: In construction, you're learning what's going on. 41:58.529 --> 42:00.832 [SPEAKER_01]: You're staying on top of where you are in that construction. 42:00.852 --> 42:15.145 [SPEAKER_01]: So that daily report is not just some piece of documentation that I have to do, what you're saying is the value is, I'm learning the job of what's happening right now in a world where I can't see it all. 42:15.165 --> 42:17.107 [SPEAKER_01]: On those jobs, I just can't see it all. 42:17.767 --> 42:19.509 [SPEAKER_01]: And I need to know the gaps. 42:19.749 --> 42:24.193 [SPEAKER_01]: So I think you've done a good job of tying it all the way 42:24.173 --> 42:28.198 [SPEAKER_01]: It isn't about doing the job for you and clicking buttons. 42:28.418 --> 42:37.170 [SPEAKER_01]: It's about educating and allowing you time to think through the job at every phase and understand your other partners as well in this process. 42:37.190 --> 42:45.260 [SPEAKER_01]: Because when you're talking about the air handlers and the duct, you're talking about, you know, your sheet metal contractors are talking about your air conditioning contractors. 42:45.560 --> 42:47.683 [SPEAKER_01]: You're talking about all these different people. 42:47.663 --> 43:02.079 [SPEAKER_01]: That you're eventually going to have to manage on a job site and have to have more time to understand, and it's a relationship business in the end of how we schedule work, how we coordinate, how we, you know, adapt to problems, etc. 43:02.139 --> 43:11.249 [SPEAKER_01]: So if I can wrap it up, it's don't take it all the way, just make it a little bit easier for us to learn and engage. 43:11.609 --> 43:16.675 [SPEAKER_01]: So hopefully, that's a good wrap up Rob, because it's been awesome to have you on the show for him. 43:17.515 --> 43:19.078 [SPEAKER_01]: Cool, good to catch up with you guys again. 43:20.039 --> 43:26.710 [SPEAKER_01]: Anytime you have an open and invite, if you guys are following Rob on LinkedIn, oh man. 43:26.730 --> 43:28.553 [SPEAKER_01]: Gotta go follow Rob on LinkedIn. 43:30.316 --> 43:31.538 [SPEAKER_01]: You're gonna get real talk, right? 43:31.578 --> 43:36.385 [SPEAKER_01]: We need real talk, we need people who are afraid to give the good, the bad and the ugly. 43:36.606 --> 43:38.789 [SPEAKER_01]: So we appreciate you, Rob, man. 43:38.809 --> 43:40.452 [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for joining us today. 43:40.432 --> 43:41.675 [SPEAKER_01]: Go, you're welcome, that grabbed me. 43:42.196 --> 43:42.697 [SPEAKER_01]: Of course. 43:42.817 --> 43:44.500 [SPEAKER_01]: Nathan Wood, it was good to see you. 43:44.981 --> 43:48.548 [SPEAKER_01]: Looking forward to seeing you in-person soon at the AEC integration summit. 43:48.909 --> 43:52.857 [SPEAKER_01]: If y'all out there aren't signed up, get signed up right now and join us. 43:53.298 --> 43:54.080 [SPEAKER_01]: It's getting close. 43:54.741 --> 43:55.302 [SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely. 43:55.484 --> 44:00.339 [SPEAKER_01]: and thank you for tuning in the day to geek out for our interview with Rob Slayer. 44:00.740 --> 44:06.557 [SPEAKER_01]: To read all our new stories, learn more about our guests and listen to this show, visit thecontacru.com. 44:06.578 --> 44:08.804 [SPEAKER_01]: This is the Contacru signing out. 44:08.824 --> 44:13.358 [SPEAKER_01]: Until next time, enjoy the ride and geek out!