#139 Pre-Con Staffing w/ Gareth McGlynn
Hello, and welcome to a, another episode of the construction corner podcast. I'm Dylan, I'm your host and guys today, before we get into it, before we introduce our guests, um, you know, the church corner I've been doing this for year and a half, and the whole reason that I started and brought Matt on is to really help you guys throughout the.
You know, we, we tackle a lot of tough questions, a lot of things that, you know, all of us want to kind of know a little more, or we talk about behind closed doors and don't necessarily air it in public. And that's what we're here for. We're here to talk about the things that really everyone is talking about, but nobody wants to do it publicly.
We're willing to do that. Uh, so you can share the show, share our insights, you know, it can come from, from my mouth for all I care, uh, you know, and share with your friends. Some of these kind of hop on issues, hop on topics that we're going to talk about and have talked about for the last year and a half.
So that's really the mission here is to help everyone throughout the construction industry. It doesn't matter what side of the table you sit on, whether you're a architect and engineer, a designer, an owner, a GC, a subcontractor, we don't care really where you fit in this industry. We just want more people to really have the tools, the knowledge, the experience.
To move forward to help you to progress through the industry, to bring more people into construction. It's a great industry with a lot of space for everybody. And really our ultimate goal here is to, to build a great America, a great world and provide, you know, a lot of opportunity for people across construction.
So with that, Matt, my friend, how's that.
Things are good. Dylan. It's been, uh, I can't complain about the weather this week. Cause it's, it's been really nice. So projects are moving. It's been a very productive, uh, two weeks. So we're doing well.
Awesome. And guys, so today we're going to talk about pre-con.
We're going to talk about the state of staffing and hiring in construction in the market. Gareth McGlynn also hosts the pre-kinder. Podcasts. We're so happy to have you on ultimately, you know, you provide staffing, uh, solutions in the estimating side of construction, uh, which I'm sure is a hot button topic and, uh, and something that we want to get into.
But, um, my first question for you is how in the world did you end up in this like niche of.
Well, this could be the start man of it. If I start telling you about my journey, first of all, lightly, thank you for invite me on love what you're doing, because it's not being talked about enough. Um, all the topics that, that you guys to touch on are, are topics that should be talked about much more and it's something.
Within pre-construction definitely and construction as a whole that we're not doing enough of. We're not talking about the topics. We're not, we're not thrashing it out together collaboratively. Um, so thank you for that guys. How did I get here? Uh, well, first of all, I, when I was 16, probably best, best when I was 16, none of my family are in construction.
Uh, no matter family and, and recruitment, uh, none of them. Parents aren't entrepreneurs. My couple of my uncles and my grandparents were entrepreneurs, but when I was 16, I, all I wanted to do was play football. Or as you guys call it soccer. And, uh, my parents were like, right, you're in school now you're in high school as you would call it and they say, right, you're going to, you're going to go now and you're going to do your degree.
And I went. No, I'm at sure. Why do I need to do my degree? And I I'm going to be a professional soccer player and they earn millions and they were like, no, you're not. Um, well, it doesn't tell me that. They said, oh, okay, fair enough. Yeah, we won't stop eat. We'll just let you go. But one thing we're going to do before you, you, you, we allow you to, to feel as you got to go and get a degree.
Once you get a degree, you can do what you want. So that's what I did. And I picked engineering because. Um, so it was a electronic electrical engineering type degree. Uh, then a lot of it was kind of getting through just if I was playing professional football at the time first and soccer, uh, along with my degree, which was, I quite enjoy.
Um, today that, uh, got me degree after my degree play professional soccer for about 13 years up until I was about 29. Um, then a 2,900, they said, yep. I needed any look elsewhere. Soccer's not gonna not going to pay the bills and amend them at forties. And in the mid fifties, so did a bit of travel and road Asia and Australia and New Zealand, um, fell and the recruitment, um, I worked in a bit, a little bit of construction as well, the open Australia and the mains with an iron ore and oil and gas with Rio Tinto and BHP, uh, really liked that.
Really enjoyed that, but I never felt satisfied with the social aspect of being an engineer. Um, it wasn't fast paced enough. Uh, there wasn't enough human interaction really, really sought that. Um, somebody told me about recruitment, went straight into it, found in recruitment, stayed in Australia for two years, working in recruitment.
Um, through a family illness had to get come closer to home. So myself and my wife. Girlfriend at the time, which asked my wife to set it right. A table we'll do we'll move closer to home. So we were given the opportunity of New York, London, or Dublin. Obviously when you give a lady a chance to live in New York, there's only one winner in New York, uh, worked for a company for two years and then saw a massive, massive gap within only pre-construction in the re the, the, the construction recruitment staff and sector, um, and started up.
So, uh, just a real quick aside, my wife is a geologist, uh, limestone mine. So Rio Tinto is, uh, you know, for those of you don't know, reattune says one of the largest mining companies in the world, uh, they own some of the largest copper mines. They do a ton of stuff, uh, which is pretty cool and everything that they do.
And then my background is electrical engineering. Uh, a lot of,
a lot of synergies, a lot of common ground there like that,
on that side. But in that, like, what was the gap that you saw in, in that pre-construction. Side of things.
So I work with two of the largest recruitment firms in the world, um, and great companies, fantastic companies, really efficient what they do.
But what happens is you're sitting in a construction desk, a construction company calls you up and they go, I need a project manager, superintendent, project engineer, estimator, and pre-construction manager five things right away as a company, they go for the low-hanging fruit and they go for the easy money.
The easy money is not finding a pre-construction manager or not finding a senior estimator. The easy money is getting a project manager, superintendent or project engineer. They go and follow the three rules and then they move on to the next claim. It's just not serviced. Um, and that's why there's a huge lack of people.
And people saying, listen, there's, there's a gamut of reasons why there's not enough people in pre-construction. Um, but essentially it just wasn't being serviced from a, from a staffing point of view. So we found a, a niche that we call the company niche, SSP, and we went after it. Um, and thankfully we haven't looked back since we've been we're as busy as we've ever been.
Um, and, and we're loving it. Great people do.
I a hundred percent agree with that Gareth and previously to where I'm at now, I worked for a larger GC and I ran the pre-construction department and it was
an estimator, just, it was almost impossible.
Yeah, exactly. And another thing is, where am I at? What was wrong? Because it wasn't being staffed. You, you wouldn't believe that the, the, what a recruiter does on a day-to-day basis, how much influence they have on a young engineer who rings them up and ask them questions about the industry and where they should go career ways, what, how they should upskill themselves, what they want to do.
Long-term they asked all these questions and they just weren't. It just wasn't being talked about. There wasn't enough media out there. There wasn't enough content. There wasn't enough, obviously within the. The degrees, the masters, all these, even in high school, I mean, pre-construction estimating is maybe one or two modules of a degree.
It's literally a bark and exercise, get through it and get to the good stuff. Um, whereas, and we'll probably go into it later. It's, it's, it's much more than that. And it's just it's to me, the single most important decisions are made within pre-construction and.
That's the stage for a good project or, or the.
Yeah, exactly it can make or break you as a company. Um, if an estimator gold high, uh, goes low and gets it wrong, you're you're, you're in the pocket for two or 3 million on, on the concrete or whatever they messed up. Um, so it's, it's so, so, so vital and it's even more vital because of the way the construction industry looks at cost management, quantitative survey and estimate, and it's done completely differently in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, UK Ireland.
Um, the quantity surveyor as it's called over there as just got so much more control over the project and the costs. And you very rarely do you see these blowups leggy legacy in the U S
so, and that's, you were kind of touching on what I was going to ask next. You know, that's why I really was intrigued when I heard about your firm, when you know, I was on Gareth's podcast back in February, I think, um, You know, the pre-con manager or the estimate or whatever you want to call them, it's really a thankless position, right.
Because if you get it right, the project goes on and it's successful and the PM gets all the accolades. If you get it wrong, you're, it's your worst day ever. But there's never a period where, where the estimator gets put up on that platform and says, Hey, you know, congrats to the guy that built the project in his head first.
So, you know, how do you. Uh, obviously you're very successful what you do and you get a lot of people coming to you, but do you see, you know, is it a constant influx of people really, truly wanting to go into estimating or into the pre.
Yeah. The honest answer is no, no. Especially at that junior level, when I start talking to project engineers, APM, they ring me up and they go as a senior stuff on LinkedIn.
Tell me a little bit about, about, they always asked me for salary advice. A lot of people ringing me up. We do a salary survey, but it only looks at at pre-construction engineer, project manager, senior estimator pre-construction work. There's no APM project manager, but they always ring me up and say, they may ask me and they ask, constantly ask questions about pre pre-construction and estimate.
And, um, but it's, it's, there's a huge lack of people going in there, but everyone seems to be common to college and go straight into the field. And to be honest with the general contractors are responsible for that because that's what they want. They want people to go to as a project engineer in an APM.
And to be honest with you historically, that's probably been a good thing because you, you understand, and you get a visual of how your project goes together and you learn on, on the, on the, on the, on the field, know that we've got 2d, 3d 40, all this, this, these modules, all this similar. All the mistakes that have been learned.
You don't need to go on the site. You can actually look through previous projects. What you've been put together. What's the clash detection, correcting it, or read the notes and you can actually see that, see that, see the problems that have, that have occurred. And that's where we've got to tap into because a lot of people want to get involved in construction, but they don't want to go.
So there's got to be another option, obviously VDC and Burma and our option, but even those guys prefer to go onsite as well first. Um, so there's gotta be an option to, to attract them and especially the hay, the high-tech case, that the guys that you've got to start competing with Facebook, Amazon, apple for the real, highly technical guys.
Um, because pre-construction day. Manipulating this present them using all these, these pre-construction technologies that are common items, you need highly efficient, good tech people within your company. The future of construction is pre-construction. The future of pre-construction is talent and technology.
I like that a lot. And I think, you know, Dylan is, is very heavy into the tech side too. You know, I'm not so much, but, but I see it coming and. To have talent like that on a team is going to be a huge advantage. That's
right. And it's going to keep, it's going to keep everyone else around because all the guys that are doing the 12 hour shifts and doing all the mundane.
Jobs that can be done. It can be automated. Let's be honest, automated. There, there are certain degree of, I mean, technology is never going to take over. Um, let's be straight about that. It's always th th th th the, the, the towns and the brains, they're always going to be working side by side. They're never going to be never going to be, let, let, let run the show.
Um, but the, the capacity deficit that the hospitals or schools, the roads, or the, the, the, the brain. The homes that have to rebuild over the next two decades is, is humongous. And we're already stretched. You guys know that we're stretched. So, so, so far, um, it's only going to get worse. And I tell you that the pre-construction and estimating a word is only going to get worse.
I mean, I, because of obviously the lack of projects that went through 20, 20, 20, 21 people are, are we're betting four or five jobs a month. There are no bedding for jobs. There's no way. There's no way that the quality of those jobs are good and there's no way that the people bedding them and estimating them are enjoying their work.
Yeah. You're going to see burnout rates through the roof if you're not already.
Exactly. And we're just going to lose people. We're going to lose people from pre-construction to the field, or we're going to lose people from pre-construction and to all these tech companies or pre-construction technology companies, or just away from the industry.
Um, and then that's going to have a knock on effect and actually trying to try and trying to recruit people.
And I agree on so many of these points, the, the thing that I see that, especially in construction, this goes, I mean, both sides of the table is people typically aren't willing to pay for top talent because. Seeing that, you know, one guy can do it and we need this job done. And a guy's a guy as a guy. And what I think it's forgotten, or maybe just lost in looking at technology is that one guy who, or girl who is just extremely smart, talented, creative, and what they can produce is going to.
Way maybe 10 or a hundred people. Right. And what they can, they can do on the tech side, because if you start to automate it or have, you know, processes systems, they put in place, they design, they build for a given company that can now do a lot of work where it can bid those four jobs a week seamlessly, or it can win an extra job of a week, a month, whatever, you know, what's that worth to the company on the other side of it, you know, if they're able to.
Effectively and profitably bid jobs, you know, clearly defined scope across those projects and allow companies to win more. You know, how much is that person worth? Especially in a bigger company, you know, when you're bidding, you know, a given job could be 20, a hundred million dollars and you bid say one of those a month, right?
So you're bidding a billion dollars worth of projects. You know, if your company can handle that type of work, You know, what's that worth in profit. On the other side of it, 10%, it's a hundred million dollars. If you win them and you can deliver it, you know, and scale it accordingly for your company, right.
For $10 million firm, you know, that could be an extra a hundred K in net to the bottom line, right. Or a million dollars in net to the bottom line. And I think sometimes that gets forgotten. And, you know, if you can PR profitably do these things to win jobs, to, uh, move your company forward to where you can do this.
You're not getting anybody behind that person. Right. If they quit, you're screwed. Cause no one else knows how to run those.
Yeah, yeah. A hundred percent. And what you just touched on Dylan, to be honest with you, a lot of the big guys have already made the decision. Um, the, the Turners, the Scouts, cause these guys Mortenson, these guys are aware, has they have made the decision 7, 8, 9 years ago by technology.
They've got their own R and D it's the mid-level guys that haven't really got on that, that the technology can have bandwagon. Those guys are gonna get left behind and as the capacity devils, and as the projects keep coming in, they're just going to be better than. You're going to be been there.
Everything who's going to be completely lost. They're going to be bidding projects. They know very little about in different sectors that they normally wouldn't bet on. And there'll be wondering, well, I built skills way may not get many schools anymore because the other guys are just more efficient.
They're more tech savvy. They're presenting more better. The owners, the developers, the architects are using the similar technologies. Um, these are the guys that are going to get burned because there's no more schools. So they're going to go in the light industrial. They're going to try their hand at office buildings and they're going to get that wrong.
And it's just sure. One bad decision just snowballs in to multiple discussions. Then you lose, you lose a lot of people. I hear about it all. I get one call from a GC or a gala, GC saying this, this, this, and this is going to. It's just it's it's 18 months of constantly just people, drip feeding out of there and all the best people leave first.
Um, and it's sad because I mean, we've seen it happen before. I mean, we're, we're so far behind. Well, not we, but the, the, the middle LGC, some of them are so far behind. Oh, you're going to do is watch the big GC. You don't have to spend their money, but just gradually watch what they're doing, watch what they're doing well, and just not copy it, but just get on board with it and know the other, the other part of that.
And I want to kind of kind of preface this is there's a lot of shiny toys out there. A lot of shiny technology that is just. For certain people. And that's that, to me, that is, well, I mean, I'm trying to solve the, the, the, the town side of it. But to me, that is a platform that needs to be solved. There needs to be a user group of users within technology, not salespeople, not the techno, the pre-construction technology companies themselves.
I'm talking about user. So we can name, go through them all the six or seven that are out there. And because majority people rang, rang me and asked me, Gareth, what are you saying? This techno, I don't want it to start mentioning, I don't know if you can, but there's pre-construction technology. And I go, well, I don't know very much about it, but I know three guys that have just implemented and have been involved in it know for two or three years, pick them, bring in, find out what their, what, what, what, what challenges they had find out if it's good for you, the FEDSIM with your workflow, your size, a project, your industry, um, because there's loads of good stuff, but it just doesn't fit everyone.
And especially the workloads. And if you get that wrong, if you don't do your doodling, And I'm not saying about doing demos or asking the sales people within these companies. Like, that's not very good about it. Uh, I mean, from my point of view, I'm in a, I'm in a group of, uh, probably around 400 recruitment owners throughout Australia, New Zealand, UK, Europe, and the U S and I it's just a constant, constant, constant, better information, all the tank, any of my technology straight up in that group, guys, I'm thinking about doing this pros, cons, this is the size of company, and this is what I do.
This is how I spend yeah. What's the cost and as it beneficial, And that, that, that to me is Muslim. That, that that's a key part of, of, uh, and it's, it's, it's kind of like the pre-construction technology companies won't want to, uh, make this, right. They're not going to start a group to do this because it just looks, it just looks wrong.
It's opt to that. And again, it's up to the, the, the, the, the pre-construction technology enthusiasts within these companies willing to share their information, this idea that I'm not telling the guy next door, whatever. That's got to go. We will not move forward. And we will all be put on the show, much pressure by not doing that.
I'll tell you what the BIM VDC guys are actually without it. These guys, all talk to one lawyer, no matter if they're in a consultancy or their energy GC, and they all make each other's life better. And then they look better internally and everybody wants, we're able to build bigger, better, safer projects.
And the pre-construction word needs to get off there. And learn and, and the whole, the whole crew construction industry, uh, operations, whether it's robots on site words, 3d scanning, whatever it may be. We need to get off our high horse, start talking with Lenore and helping each other.
I couldn't agree more, man.
It's all about collaboration because at the end of the day, you know, everybody that I'm used to that I'm around, everyone's so secretive. No one wants to talk because they're afraid of somebody finding the secret sauce. Well, the reality is we're all been the same. Okay. We all have the same numbers. We might change a fee here and there, but it's, there's nothing spectacularly different about the way we approach the market other than our culture and intrinsic value.
So to boost that collaboration you're right. It will do nothing but benefit the industry as a whole. It just it's absolutely necessary. And it doesn't happen very often.
Yeah. And there is no secret sauce. The difference between each companies. Um, so it's up to the owners to create the culture and, and, and get innovation and the technology and get all these things right.
You will automatically attract the best people and the best people. I don't care who they are, who you think you are, the best people, talk to everyone and help everyone out. That is the best people internally, externally. It doesn't. Um, and that will be the differentiation between a good company and a great company.
And it was grand because everything was gone at a decent pace. The pace is going to start picking up and you're going to see in the best market, they will survive, but they're not gonna, they're not going to make the margins and the profitability and create the culture and the environment that, that they really should.
One thing to note too, in construction, right, is if you make a bad decision, you're not going to see it for 18 years. Right. It's not going to come home to roost for 18 months. And at the rate that you turn over, you know, estimator, if they're only there for two years, you know, they didn't learn enough and they, they're not there enough for internal data.
And if you're not really. Implementing or reapplying the data that you do have into your newer projects. You're not doing any, you're not learning anything, right? There's no previous historical knowledge that's being applied to the next project so that you can bid more effectively or staff it better or everything that goes into that project.
You're not taking everything that you've learned from past projects, the data, the information that you do have and spend some time. To do this. I get that. We run from fire to fire, fire project, to project, to project, to try to just keep up, keep pace, but far too often, you just, you never do anything with that data.
You just run to the next thing and this doesn't help you to move forward as a company. You need some people that are dedicated to. Thinking time to, you know, they might be a quote overhead position, but the amount of money that they're going to save you in the long-term, even if that's you, as the CEO, you need to be doing some thinking.
If you're an executive, you need to be like, not just in the weeds all the time, but, uh, to look forward and see what's next, right? Like everything Gareth is talking about, or you're been so many projects, there's a huge deficit, you know, there's going to be plenty of work for everybody else. To go after frankly, we don't have enough people to, to build the stuff that is in the pipe now.
So like, you know, projects aren't necessarily the problem. It's how are you going to effectively execute on them with the people that you do have, right. You're, you're fighting a war. It's not the word that you choose. It's, you know, the army that you're given. Right. And so you've got to learn to fight with the people that you do have into, you know, maybe you need to make some recruits, something outside of a typical construction.
Background so that you can, again, execute at a higher level and think differently than how we have been is the really, the whole point here in this show is the way you've done things has gotten you to this point to get you to the next thing to again, if you're bidding for projects a week, that's exponential growth in the number of projects out there.
I mean, you could just look at housing growth, the amount of commercial projects. So do that same to do the new level of build that we're going to be required as an industry. You can't do things that the way it used to right. To meet the new level of demand that this industry is dictating. The market is dictating right now.
So how are you going to do that? And I mean, you got to spend some time to think about it and then get the people to deliver on that new vision.
The only way to do this. Literally, as we're not going to be able to create, hopefully we'll be able to keep the flow of people coming into construction and that'll be great.
But if you look down right, 2020 was unprecedented, it give more construction owners, people in construction the most time within a year to be able to think pre-construction technology firms, the good ones never had better years. They all bought on. So they had time, they paused and they started. And they're gone, right?
Any invest knows attain. No that's grand. The best time to make a decision is today because the, see the basket, see the best companies that invested five or six years ago. Where do you see the growth that those companies have had? And I've seen it already this year. They are not going to out of the park.
It is incredible. They are. They've got they haven't they've they've, they've upscaled their, their pre-construction and estimating team very cleverly through 2020, but they've, they've. Can I locked onto the technology side and on both getting both right. It's like a rocket. It really is. And then you just got to find that the delivery guys in operations, but if you get it right, if you have the blueprint rate, the cost rate, the schedule, right.
Everything's right. Operations guys. Don't like me saying this, but it's a student job on site. It has a Steven job. I fight with them all the time. It is a steering job. If you get everything.
It is, you have to, you have to build the recipe before you can bake the cake. And the recipe formulating the recipe is the really difficult part in this.
And I get in the same arguments all the time as a pre-con guy. Uh, I'll tell my project managers that like, listen, it's easy when it gets to you. It's it's not simple. You know, you gotta, you gotta pay attention. You gotta be good at what you do. You gotta have your own nuances. The crazy hard work is all has to be done ahead of time or else you have no chance of success when you get there.
That's right. Yeah. And so, but with that, I want to kind of switch gears a little bit. You're in a unique position for guests on our show anyways, and that you're in the staffing industry. So you are, are probably clued into the pulse of the job market and the labor. Um, probably more than myself or Dylan, to be quite honest with you.
You know, we hear a lot, we talk about it a lot, but what do you see is the current climate of, of construction jobs in general? Are there, are there more applicants than there are positions or is it completely reversed as we hear all the time that there's there's empty jobs and no one thinks.
So, it's be honest with you, man.
My, my knowledge is purely pre-construction. I can't really talk for operations. Sure. But from what I'm seeing in pre-construction, there is so many jobs are there. I have never been busier. We've actually stopped taking clients on and jobs. And because we've just got too much, we're doing routine though.
So the clients have got to pay up front for us to, to buy our time, to fill up a position. I mean, these, these guys are Witten and ANC Delane touched on it earlier. The schedule Whitten, Nana. Homogenize business and how many bad mistakes has been made. And there was nine months and the, and, and the, they won't pay.
They won't pay us a, a 25% fee for, for, for, uh, for those nine months. It is bananas. I just can't understand it. Um, and again, it's like the technology. If they're not willing to invest in technology, now they're going to be left behind. If they're not going to be able to invest in staff right now, you're going to be left way behind.
But it's, it's, it's crazy. I mean, we were busy. The smart companies were coming to us and they were saying, we need to hire higher strategic people. Now, obviously the demand and the quality that they were looking for last year was top-notch these guys weren't guys that were getting, let go that they were, they were really.
Getting changers. Um, and we got them in there last year, but this year 2021, it's like, I need, I need people on site. Um, cause they know how difficult it is. And as you say, the rest of the team are just getting burnt out. And the be honest with you, the more that the people that ring us up and say, I want to change jobs.
Why do you want to change jobs? Culture? It's just too much. I see my GC. They're just betting there, anything and everything. It's, it's spiraling out of control. We're not left with couple of estimators. We're not winning anything. I said, hoking up. We wanting anything. It's one of the best construction markets that's ever been.
I mean, the next 10 years, if you're not making money in the next 10 or 15 years as a construction owner, you may pack it. And no.
Why do you think they're trying to save a dollar to lose to.
Okay. Listen, it's, it's all different. It's all different. Eh, it's I mean, it's, uh, I work with the top five ours right down to the Walmart buyer and it's all, it's all subjective. You know, we've got internal bureaucracy, red tape trying to save someone.
And then you've got other guys that are just unbelievable to work with. Like the proper partners they condos. They asked us questions. We do more work for them. That we probably should do. I mean, it's not about just getting the right person it's about, they find out about salaries for their internal employees.
They find out about the market. They're constantly calling me up, going, listen, what's happening. I just had a guy he's got this much experience with just a way to make them an offer. Um, and I've gone too high. Am I going too low? Generally, they're going too low. Um, but I'm saying just, just pay him that extra 5,000.
I mean, he's, he's really going to come knock on for it. And six. Or 12 months or two years just pay him and then worry about it, but get them in, get them working, find a little bit more about them, then you'll be able to review it. And in 24, 24 months, whenever it comes to you and has changed your business or one year, 200 million worth of work, you know, um, But not the generally the people we work with are, are, are, are generally passive candidates.
So we do a lot of relocations. We relocate a lot of good, good people from, from, uh, from across the country that are, are moving for genuine reasons. It's all about the need for us. If somebody rings me up and says, I am on a hundred K and I'm looking for 120, and that's the only reason these were moving.
Don't do it go back and ask your boss for a pay raise. Um, it's not, it's not a good enough reason to, if he hasn't convinced his own boss to give him 120, then he's probably not worth it.
Yeah. I can see that two ways. Right? Like it's, uh, some owners are just stingy, uh, you know, and are willing to pay. And then, uh, because like you're saying like five grand, it's a lot to a person, right. The company on the other side of it, especially being in that estimating department is pennies. It's nothing.
And they're not willing to part with, you know, there again, they're trying to save a buck to lose.
Yeah, no. Then Delon, I listened w when you're in this state of may state of it, I mean, internally, I knew with my own staff, if I give the mole a 20 grand raise, then I been in better ballers. There is a happy medium there, but I think this is where long-term strategy and long-term decision making is so important.
You gotta be in it for 10, 15 years. Uh, I mean, I did a podcast with Wells center there that the VP of dining that rally of, of scan scan, he, they, they made the, the. It years ago about pre-construction data. They are so far ahead of it. Th they're actually there, technology's actually way ahead of the people that are coming in and two, they can't, there's no one else in the market doing what they want to do.
So like, they need to hire a pre-construction data engineer, but it doesn't exist. So they've got to train people up. So this is, this is how this is the evolution of pre-construction teams that I'm trying to prepare companies for. It's not just in your estimation. Pre-construction yeah. It's data engineers.
It's it's people constantly manipulating the data, updating the data, um, working with the data and making the pre-construction managers and the senior estimators do the stuff, the high touch stuff that they're really good at the value engineer and the client relationship architect. Um, the big changes that need to be made.
Absolutely Gareth. Where can they.
LinkedIn. Yeah, always on LinkedIn. Um, Gareth Midland, LinkedIn drop me a message. Drop me a call text. My numbers are all on there. Um, if you need anything, I always, I try and concentrate on the, the, the, the low end so that the, the, the guys that are in university or just at a university, especially for, for like advising them and just giving them a, uh, I kind of a black and white, uh, Rhonda and construction.
Um, but not anybody can get, get in touch with me. Drop me a message on LinkedIn.
Gareth, I'm going to throw one from complete left field here. Um, I'm glad you brought up your, your career in, uh, in soccer and football. Um, so this last weekend, my wife and I, and, and candidly, my three boys all watch green street hooligans again.
How accurate is that movie to the European football scene?
So in the, in the time that that was formed, probably probably 10 years previous to the time it was found, but don't know anything. Um, that's what was going to, uh, English football matches. Um, you didn't see any families, you didn't see any, it was meal 22 to 40, um, skinheads.
It was, it was, it was fun. It was fun. It was passionate. It was, uh, it was, it was proper cult stuff. Um, and listen, it's still there. It's great. But it's not as bad as that night. No. Okay.
Fair enough. Good.
I love it. Love it. Good show. Um, obviously dramatized a little bit, but of course you touched on a few things, but, um, yeah, the patients are unbelievable.
I mean, in England, that's why premierships is a bit, the best league in the world. It's a passion from the fans. I mean, we've saw it over the last 12, 14, 16 months with no fans. It's every sport with our fans is as useless that shouldn't exist.
Yeah. And the traditions, especially like both Trafford and some of those stadiums are, you know, amazing.
Um, unbelievable. And they, they did the right thing. They all upgraded their stadiums, what, during the, during the lockdown and they made good decisions, but, uh, yeah, I'm, I'm looking forward to getting back down feed.
Well, there's a, there's a couple of good, a football bars here in the Detroit area. So if you're making it this way, let me know.
We'll, we'll hook up and have a few pints and watch them.
Yeah, well, that, that, that was the whole idea of the pre-construction podcast was visiting all my clients and all the different cities. But obviously after about three episodes, it became a virtual, but I'll be back on the trail. So, uh, I'll definitely hit you up with her good
deal, Gareth.
I greatly appreciate the time and you coming on, man. It was good to talk to you again. Thank you.
Thanks, Martin. Him keep up the good work.
Yeah. Thank you, Gareth guys. I mean, we've covered a lot of stuff here today at Gareth. We'll probably have you back at some point to talk about staffing and, and really what is going on on the pre-construction world.
It's a huge part of it that I think, you know, as we talked about today is totally under realized under appreciated and frankly, undervalued and understaffed. So as we move forward through all this guys, it's again, it's talking to your. Compatriots to, you know, the different firms, the people in your seat, across companies, across the country.
And even, you know, in this day and age across the world, it's to learn what you can from, from others, not be afraid to share anything. Again, it's, there's no real secret sauce. Um, you know, your, your content is your content. We're all kind of doing the same thing. It's, you know, how you execute, what your systems and processes.
And as Gareth mentioned, it's culture, right? Can you work as a team? Is your team well, oil, well dialed in and can work effectively together. You know, you can have the best system and process in the world, but if nobody follows it, it really doesn't matter. So dial those things in, you know, share information, be willing to go out and find it.
Look for. Spend some time thinking, um, and really upping your game when it comes to all the tech side of everything is Gareth mentioned, uh, from data science to BDC, to BIM, you know, the whole gamut. You're going to need it moving forward. And especially with the volume of work, uh, that is really coming down the pike.
So with that guys, that's going to be this episode of the construction corner podcast until next time.