Hello, and welcome to another episode of the construction corner podcast. I'm Dylan, I'm your host. And I'm joined now as always with my blue collar. Bad-ass with cohost, Matt. How's it going, man? How's Michigan.
Michigan's good, man. We got a little warm up this week. So the the maple SAP is flowing rapidly. We are, we are busy cooking down syrup as we speak. So things are good.
Yeah. Yeah. You got to wait another 12 days to eat that though.
Yeah, I, I won't be having that anytime soon. I'm trying to finish up phase one first, but we'll get there. Yeah.
And guys I don't have like the greatest intro for this guy, James Hillegas.
If you are in construction whatsoever, you know them we're going to go beyond them. He is. The man who comes to prefab, BIM, all that kind of stuff, which is kind of the world that I live in these days. But James, welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me appreciate it.
Looking forward to it, man.
There's, there's so many ways to, to start this off, right? Like I think he probably one of the best places to start. So we were talking about seventy-five heart and something. That's not glamorous before we went live here. But to, to talk about, you know, the, you know, construction in and of itself, right.
Isn't necessarily the most glamorous of industries, most glamorous of professions. There's a lot of very, very cool aspects that we talk about a lot in here. But maybe just give a little bit of Background one on like 75 hard. Cause we talk about that on here quite a bit, but just your experience with it first, I think is probably a good place to start.
Yeah. So I did 75 hard last year. Shortly after I moved to Georgia, I started like the week before Memorial day and finished just towards the end of August. And I want to cash out a couple of things. One is we waste a lot of time. Me personally, I, I mean, because when you have to do safe at Hardy, you can get a lot of things done.
Pretty early. I got the early workout was always first thing in the morning, the progress photo, eventually after I missed a couple of times, it kind of set up a system for like Susan, another workout and we get this done. I would do the reading before I went to the gym and then it was just matter of got a water.
And that second workout in the second workout would always be like, for me, it was always the hardest to not necessarily get in, but it was always typically at night and it was dark and, you know, doing whatever. But just the biggest thing was just how much time we wasted, or I wasted. Because he, I still event towards the end of the program.
I was still getting the powerless done. And then obviously keeping up with doing 75 hard. But biggest thing was the time management, which I think is a huge thing in construction, because I think a lot of things are just poorly ran meetings are pointless, or just not to the point that we kind of like beat around the Bush.
Like I'm going to standard project meeting for construction. It's like, we're talking about the same five issues, five weeks in a row, and then nothing ever happens. Or we talked about five topics and the number one answer to all those topics is I got to check on that and then we check on it for the next five weeks.
And it's the same thing. So biggest thing is a source of you start to not put up with a lot of crap. He's like, dude, I got to get, I guess, still done.
Absolutely man. And, and I mentioned, I'm doing phase one, so we take 75 hearts tasks, and then you add three more critical tasks for the day you add bastard, cold shower every day and you add some, some visualization stuff and.
You're right. You nailed it. You, you stop putting up with the bullshit because you just don't have time in the day, and you have enough time to do all this and to pack it in and get done what you need to get done. But if you're messing around in, in meetings or on worthless phone calls or playing on Facebook, you're going to be starting over real soon.
And, and nobody wants to do that because as a program itself, it's not fun, you know, but, but you touched on meetings. I think meetings have gone construction wise. I'm a, I'm a contractor. You know, we're all kind of doing the remote thing still. I'm in my new home office here. And for a while, the zoom meetings, when we first kind of kicked them off, they were more efficient.
It seemed cause they were quick. Cause people were still uncomfortable. But now we've sunk right back into where we were when we sat in front of each other, everybody's used to it. And these meetings will drone on for, you know, a construction weekly meeting that goes for two hours is about an hour and a half too much, at least.
I, I don't know how we fix it, but it's, it's a huge time suck.
Well, I mean, I think one of the biggest things is a couple of things, like for like the BIM meetings, like most then people are not necessarily like a type personality. I mean, I'm generalizing. I don't know. I'm not a psychologist, but, but not like the construction superintendent, you kind of have like the two dichotomous.
So you have like one construction superintendent, the old guy that everybody always talks about. It's like, just up people down people's throats and like, we need to get this done. We need to get this done. Then you have like the BIM nerds and I am one, so I really don't care. And then they're like, Oh, it's okay.
You know, we can kinda know, maybe we'll get it done maybe next week. Oh, you didn't get it to us. We got it's okay. And it's like, we drone on for hours and hours and hours. So you kind of need, I caught off in the tube. And then another thing is like, most people would come product managers who would because of a degree or some form of piece of paper and they don't teach you anything of like real value in college.
So no one's really taught any, any leadership principles or putting any situations where like, you have to say, no, you have to, you know, call people out and not, and being like, don't be an ass about it. But you know, I mean, Jordan, wasn't exactly light when, by his teammates, but they all like to win. So you have to be able to call people out on what needs to be said.
And you know, obviously when you're younger, it's a little bit harder cause you don't know as much. And then construction is a huge experience-based industry. You know, it's hard to know what you don't know and unless you've either seen somebody mess it up or mess it up yourself or had someone tell you what to look for, you really just don't know if that makes sense.
Yeah,
this is this is a great, great topic. Cause there's, there's two sides of this, right? There's the side of people coming out of school and they don't know anything which I'll agree to. Right. I've got the degrees and I didn't pick up most of the stuff that I know from school. Right. But it put me in positions that opened doors to.
Put me in the seat to move forward. And then it's a lot of learning, reading books, doing the powerless, doing things to make you uncomfortable outside of that. But the other thing that I've experienced and seen it really throughout the industry, right? My experience is on the design side and there's no real training programs, right?
It's follow this guy around and learn this right. And this is what historically the union has been great at is here's the plan. Here's how you progress, right? From an apprentice to a master of whatever, right. Electrician plumber. And you go all the way through fall. This guy take these exams, that test your actual knowledge of things that you should know on the job site.
And you know, that's a great program to have a level of mastery of your, your skill, your trade, but for a lot of construction, right? For project management, You could say that like the PMP has that, but if you've ever taken like a PMP exam, they don't test your actual level of like running a meeting. It's can you, do you understand all these phrases and words and terminologies not?
Can you actually run an effective meeting? So there's a lot of training lack throughout the industry on like, this is how we run meetings. This is, have you ever heard of Robert's rules of order, right? This is how you run a meeting. This is a to B, do we have a quorum? You know, are we doing anything on quorums, majority rule or is this a dictatorship?
Right? What this person says goes, and that's it. But we sometimes rule by majority not, and we need to have those decision thresholds throughout a project, which are never established. No one's ever talked about them. And I think it brings up just a great point in, in the continuing education that needs to go on for everybody through the industry, right?
Whether, and getting that seat coming out of school and being a PM. That's great that you were able to secure that position, but there also needs to be a training program for you to understand what the hell you actually need to do to get a project from start to
finish. I mean, a hundred percent, I don't think personally, I don't think I've gone through college.
I have a graduate degree and I told them on the way out, I said, this is a joke. And I had the same professor for six years, not for the same class, but he taught like more freshman level stuff. And then on the way up through, into grad school, and I told him, I said, this is a joke. This is a complete joke.
And there needs to be something that's a mix between what the trades do with vocational school and what college does because college now it's like we have the internet. Everything is online. Like your you're everything's in theory. And it's pretty easy to solve things in theory, when it's like, okay, yeah, this cute little circuit and we have one load here and one load here, you need to balance out like your teeter-totter, but then in reality, that's not how it even works.
So it needs to be something, and you learn best with hands-on by actually doing something. So you need to understand the concepts of whatever the case might be, but then learn through actual experience and just figuring it out. And like I said, they're like homework problems with textbooks. It's gotta be like a physical project.
Like maybe it's not okay, we're going to design, you know, the Eiffel tower, but maybe they give you 50% of it solved and you have to figure out the other 50 program or whatever the case might be. But I don't think college is designed to serve people anymore. To be completely honest. I'm kind of pretty jaded horses.
I would tend to agree with you. I mean, I think it's designed to rake in a whole lot of cash and create a whole lot of debt. It's got its place right there. There are definitely professions where. I don't want my brain surgeon coming out and telling me that he's, you know, he spent two years in the field cutting up heads and I watched you too.
All right. But, but for a lot of stuff, you know, you can get that right. Specialized training that you get in, that you should get in school. You can get it after the fact, you know, go and hang your feet over the fire and learn what you want to do, or figure it out for that matter. You can learn in the field or learn in the office, whatever you're doing.
And then, then you can go back and get specialized degrees, specialized training for whatever you want to focus in. That that seems to make a little, a little more sense in my mind anyways, but you know, I, I, we don't have to get into it, but I did the school thing. I have a bachelor's degree. Do I use it? No, you know, I'm in construction.
I paid a lot of money for it. I've got three boys. My oldest is going to be in high school next year. So this is a big topic going around our house right now. And you know, what, what the hell are you going to do? And. You know, we have different conversations. He's mentioned trade school because he listens to this show and he's like, well, dad, you're always talking about trade school and voc-tech, and I said, do it, what do you know, what do you want to do?
Let's find what you're interested in. And granted he's, you know, he's not even 14 yet, so it's hard to gauge, but you know, the, the machine of college is, is kind of getting to the expiration date. I think.
No, I agree. I think one of my favorite arguments is like, you would rather pick a person with passion than a personal piece of paper.
Like if someone really likes something like art history or some degree that they have to get, what'd you Rachael hire the guy that like, just liked our history, and spent all this time, YouTube it and Googling it and trying to learn on, I mean, I don't know, no prepping a heart Paso and you know Michael and I don't know, but would you rather have the guy, that guy, as a curator of your museum who just knew everything was, was passionate and outwardly passionate?
What spoke about it with passion? And people wanted to like, listen to him talk because he was such a good tour guide give her of the museum, or does it have someone just like, yeah, I got a piece of paper now I'm six figures of debt and I have to be here because you know, essentially it's a weight tied around you until you get paid off.
If he ever get paid off. I mean, it's pretty, pretty obvious. I mean, look at the same thing with like Tom Brady, like, would you rather have the first round pick who was like highly touted or really have you guys won seven super bowls? Look, I'm not a Michigan fan, but I was put to get off when seven super balls and he's not number one pick, but he had passion to learn the game.
I mean, it's the same thing. It's the same thing with college, where they have the guy that has a piece of paper, who's like highly touted and, you know, valedictorian or the guy that's passionate about it and willing to figure out whatever needs done to get it done.
Yeah. Passion, heart, and willingness to learn.
That's why you can't grow that. You've got to have it inside.
Yeah, which so I'm gonna, I'm going to transition topics a little bit here. Cause we, we definitely hit on this, you know, every episode I think it's worth mentioning and, and everybody brings a, a slightly different viewpoint to the whole point of view college and then trades and in construction in general.
But the kind of pivot that I want to make here is to really productivity. So we, we start off talking about meetings and how unproductive. A lot of this becomes and you know, recently James, you've had some, some posts and talked about productivity and things like that. I'd like you to give your, your take on productivity in construction.
I've got a few points that just recently it's been grinding on me on how people approach productivity and construction and really tech in general for it to, they want the flashy thing to your point, not things that actually do the work, which is you know, just a, a sore spot for me. But if you want to give your, your take on tech productivity, all that kind of stuff.
Yeah. So I think there's a couple of things. One is, I mean, just using technology for the sake of using it, if you don't have a good process for it, which I get, it gets doll. Cause people are as a process. But if you suck at driving a Prius, giving you a Porsche is not going to make you any better drivers finding make you crash faster.
So when it comes to technology, I don't think it's, it's a tool at the end of the day, just like anything else. So it's how you use it. Not necessarily what it is. And I think for one thing, like would get bad with, nobody can focus. Like nobody can sit down and truly focus on a problem and try and figure it out.
And construction's complicated. And the best way I like to explain to people is just stand here. This is an empty field. And in this in two years or three years or one year, there's going to be a building here that defies gravity devise mother nature provides in the case of a hospital life-saving systems, oxygen, all the other ones that go in there, medical gas, it's going to keep the building falling down and fire and all this is going to happen in 3d space.
And we have to figure out how to make it all, not run into each other. Then it's not, it's not that simple and straightforward. So no one can get a chance to focus. Cause emails are open. You know, phones are always open. There's a pavilion apps that send notifications, playing all of them, send notifications.
I'm not even going to name them because they all do it. And they all say, Oh, we'll get rid of email, but they email you notifications. So you can have like, especially if you're a stub and have like multiple GS, excuse me, multiple projects with multiple GCs and some use playing group and some are on pro core and some are in Bluebeam and we get notifications from all and you never get a chance to focus.
So I found an author name. I could be butchering his last name, but Steven Kotler has written a lot of books on like flow in the art of human performance and like how to get the best out of it yourself. I, one of the things I, this is the first week doing it insights. So with our senior leadership and I was like, Hey, I get a lot more modeling done when it's quiet.
So if I can start the first, like two or three hours of the day at home, And then I'll come into the office, I'll have my phone in case there's like some crazy production issue that I need to come in for, because no, it happens. And if I need to shift that time around to where, you know, maybe I'll leave early and go home and do modeling that we can do that just for whatever works for production.
But if I get like two or three hours a day of just like silence, like no emails open, my phone is off and just focus. The output is ridiculous because you're focused on it. And if you're getting no noise in the office or people coming in and ask you things, and everything's always an urgency, you can't get anything done.
And then you look at the end of the day, like, damn, I didn't do anything. And so, you know, it's kind of one of those things and all the other apps are designed to be addictive. I mean, all of the apps are, that's why like you look on LinkedIn and you get a notification you're so excited, you know, like, Oh yeah, you gotta like, and they're all designed to be addictive.
I mean, they're specifically designed to be addictive. So you have to control that. Otherwise you're not going to get anything done today.
Yeah, they all, they all hit that, that little dopamine hit and it started with outlook, right. Everybody points at Facecrook and all the other ones, but I think outlook started it, right.
Because all of a sudden you have this, this little thing, little thing, a little ding, and there's numbers, racking up. So they, they, they channel you to focus on that. I I'm with you. I don't do it nearly often enough, but you know, when I'm working on estimates or proposals, I will try and do what you just said, and I'll shut my email off completely.
I'll shut my phone off. I'll lock the doors and when I can actually force myself to do it, it's fantastic. You get so much more done. You're so much more productive, but the second it all comes back on it's right back into the chaos.
So in productivity and like semen collar stuff deep work by counting parts.
Another good book to read in this, when you, when you're in a flow state or in a deep work state where you don't have any distractions, you're actually focused on the thing that you're doing. And in that moment, the productivity rates are like 10 X. What you normally would be, it's something insane. So if you're, and most people get like 15 minutes of flow, like a week, it's, it's something extremely small.
If that, if they're lucky to get into like a peak flow state for 15 minutes, like the timeframes, and I'm probably butchering like what it actually is, but it's something a busily small. So if you're able to get two, three, four hours a week, It's like a, it's a huge productivity bump, right? It's basically that four hours of flow can cover what most people do in 40.
Now, if you stack that to where you're getting two or three days a week now, right. And you're doing a month's worth of work for most people in those same two to three days. And then, but this is also the shift that most people have to make is, and it's a hard one to make is from, I'm getting paid to be here too.
I'm getting paid to produce results. And those are two very different. And I mean, the gap is very wide on those two different mindsets, right? I'm getting paid to be here versus paid to produce results. And the more that you can shift to I'm paid to produce results. Not immediately, this is not instant gratification.
This is not you know, leveling up in a game, but it is over time, you will be paid more for what you do, because you're able to produce results. You're going to be wanted on teams, but it's a shift. Most people have to make from a I'm paid to be here and sit in the office, regardless of what I do to I'm here to
produce results.
So if I can jump in James, I, I spent some time on your LinkedIn yesterday and today. Just kind of doing some prep. You do a whole lot of stuff, man. Can you for those of us that are not as familiar with you as, as some, can you kind of give me the cursory overview of what you're doing these days?
Because you got a big list on your, on your resume there, man.
Yeah, so I guess the best way to do it. So I like, like we talked about with the college thing, I got a graduate degree in engineering and then engineering was kind of, I just didn't like it. I liked the office space, right. I worked through grad school as an engineer and just went back to construction.
And then it worked as a PE and superintendent was the first job out of school. And I honestly shouldn't have been in the superintendent role, but I learned a lot of stuff the hard way. And I learned really good about how to get people's trust because when I first came in, you were one of the glazers at the end of the job.
HomeAway was like two, when you first got college job site, I thought you were an asshole. And he was like, and the guy was, I mean, I don't know. He probably was right. I mean, he was had experience. I didn't have, he was 40. I was 24 at the time. So what did I know? And there was a, it was a huge job as a, $170 billion hospital in Akron, Ohio.
I mean, it's not, that's a lot of money in Akron, Ohio. This isn't LA, this isn't in Las Vegas or some other major city. I mean, it's Akron. So. Worked through the field and this kind of the way I got in technology. And it's kind of a roundabout way, which I guess will streamline some of the conversation. I wasn't a tech kid.
I didn't get a computer science degree. I really didn't do anything with technology growing up. But the way I saw it was when I worked as an engineer, it was mid 2015 ish and drones kind of were starting to become relatively popular at the time when DGI still had a huge problem with drones flying away.
I think they're on the Maverick one or two, maybe at the time. And I was doing bridge inspections. So how it turned like, and I remember making these schematic sketches of what the issues were. And I just like, this is stupid. This doesn't seem very viable. I'm kind of estimating really where things are.
And I Googled do drones and bridge inspections, some phrase like that. And I found this report, it was done by Collins engineers out of Minnesota. And they did a study of using drones for bridge inspections. This was a couple years after they had that crazy collapse in Minneapolis. I think it was over the river.
So they, they Minnesota, Minnesota department of transportation, this engineering firm located in Minnesota and then a drone company out of Colorado Springs. I read the report, it was 300 pages, three 50, something like that. And I called the guy who kind of led the drone flight stuff. His name was Kevin. He was a former Royal air force pilot for great Britain.
And because at the time when people really flying drones were either people ate illegally because there was no rules at the time. So I guess it wasn't really illegal if there was no rules or you had to have like a commercial pilots license. And most of the commercial pilots were obviously being commercial pilots.
And so the other guys doing that were basically, you know, former military air force, Royal air force, whatever the case might be. I ended up working for these two guys like remote, like doing inspections with drones and I was still in college at the time. Like I was, we were testing all the software and all this stuff because nothing existed, nothing existed.
Like what does now? And we were testing software, they have sent me Dropbox files of photos, still have a lot of them. And we just kind of worked through the process. And before I knew it, I was like talking to CEOs and presidents within the Cleveland Akron area of Ohio about drones and bird inspections.
And I, and I was still at 20, 20, 20, 21. Maybe I didn't think he even had a, my undergrad yet. And I was like, this is kind of, you know, kind of interesting. They're obviously well more seasoned than I am. And they're asking me these questions and I was going into their board meetings and presenting. So I kind of picked it up and always kept that in my back pocket as like, I'll just use technology as my way to kind of accelerate my career and then kind of, you know, leverage the internet for what it's good for and kind of wrote it the rest of the way.
And you know, we started working towards prefab and BIM and all the other stuff that, you know, I guess I posted it on LinkedIn.
Wow. Very cool, man. So are you still, are you still active in the drone space?
So, yeah, I, so in 2016 we was like a friend, two of us. One guy was a GE aerospace engineer, and it was located in Cincinnati where GE has a huge aerospace presence. And then one was an asset engineer and we started building drones.
A company still exists. There's a lot of actually has a lot of contracts. I'm not as involved with it since I don't live in Ohio anymore, but I'm still kind of involved from a behind the scenes standpoint, if that makes sense and built a couple of things. And there's a couple of partnerships that we've established over the years with that.
So I'm still involved, just not as much as I was when I lived in Ohio. Gotcha.
Which I guess brings us to prefab. Right. That's probably the thing that you're, you're best known for. Obviously, breadth of knowledge and experience as far past that, but prefab is probably the big thing. And the thing that you spend a lot of your time doing so prefab for in pre-con have a lot of definitions by a lot of people.
So if you want to give us your definition of prefab pre-con and kinda how you, what your take on it is.
So prefab to me is taking anything that's good. Go onsite and build it, not on that site and then ship it there through some method. That's what I, I mean, there's all a name come like I could talk about earlier, like just names for everything DFMA and prefab and modular, and people just need an acronym so they can market it.
It's all the same crap to me. I mean, people debate, I'm not an English major, so I'm not gonna debate the words for us. So, yeah, I mean, prefab has, I mean, I'm only, I mean, I'm only good with one trade. I mean, I've only done drywall and framing. I'm involved with other people doing prefab and other trades just for the coordination processes and stuff like that. And a few multi trade things here and there, but I've never, and I mean, I've toured other, other trades shops, but I've never fully delved into their work.
So I'm pretty focused on one specific trade, which is framing more specifically metal studs. I have detailed wood models in the past, but I'm just not as familiar with it. And drywall.
And so this is the, or go ahead, Matt.
No, you're up. Ma'am you're
good. So take it from there. And really going a little deeper on the prefab side of things and the tech side, since this is your, your big area of expertise is. You know, what do you, what do you see coming what's in existence today on the prefab side.
And I guess you could talk about BIM as a whole, which I know there's, that's a whole can of worms which we can open. I'm fine to go there too.
Yeah. So I think you can certainly do prefab without BIM. I don't think it's necessarily a requirement. I think it's definitely helpful, but there are certain things I think you can prefab without it.
And then I think there are certain things, I mean, I think you can even prefab payments without it. You don't technically need it. I just think it's a lot easier to do, especially with coordination. And one of the things that I didn't know when I first started prefab that I kind of learned just through experience later on is like now, I mean, now we're getting the point where like the entire job is being ran to the shop.
Like every, every piece of it almost. And so that's a lot of responsibility. But I didn't really understand when I first started, like I'm making all the, not all, but I'm making most of the decisions at the end of the day around how a job's going to go, but this can either go really well. Or it can really suck because I mean, I'm setting like I'm, I'm dictating stud layout.
So guys hanging drywall, they're kind of like you do, they're going to be a really good drywall hanging experience or they're going to hate their life for the next two or three weeks where they hang that drone. So there's a lot of those decisions that get made and by myself in not necessarily an asylum, I mean, I'm involved with other people, but at the end of the day, they're going to be like, who the hell drew this or who designed this?
And that's my ass, if it's messed up. That's the only thing is I didn't really understand when I first started, prefab was like, you're taking out a lot. It's a lot of responsibility. I mean, you can really sink a job quickly by messing it up. So it's hard to do because you don't have a lot of experience.
If that makes sense. I mean, over the course of time, I've definitely have built a wealth of checklist of like, this is everything I've seen, I've messed up or just have come across. And I, it's a checklist I'll go through on every project and make sure, like, not everything might apply, but it's something I want to make sure that we've all thought about and agreed that as either an issue that we need to be addressed or is not an issue.
And so like when it comes to BIM, I mean, I'll go over the top with them. We have a job in Alabama where I'm the only one modeling GCs, not doing coordination. And I had modeled the steel guys stuff because I'm not sending out stuff. That's not going to fit or it's not going to be right. I even modeled some ducks to show the GC, like you got to drop us the Siemens, aren't going to fit where the architect and interior designer have.
It's not my responsibility, but again, at the end of the day, if we're going to send out our entire package prefabbed, it's gotta be right. It can't be wrong. So that's one of the things I really didn't understand first starting. And the best way I gained is, like I said, I didn't come up with the field as I just spent an extensive period of time in the shop, like with, I had a great, at the last place I worked in Cleveland OCP, there was a great foreman named Matt.
I still have his phone number. We still talk pretty often. And he taught me everything I know about carpentry. You would, you know, we would, I would stay in the shop with him and ask questions if you would answer. I mean, I still talk to my phone. Sometimes I call stupid ideas and I was talking to him because he's always at least open and wants to do his, he wanted to do his job better and I want to do mine better.
So we had a great team and I really, I really enjoyed it a lot. I really did, as far as that's, I guess, in the prefab the piece. And they usually have been to its fullest capability. No, I think you can shortcut it a lot. You know, we try to make everything easier. Let me take shortcuts that kind of defeat the purpose.
Like we, or people don't use know it's kind of a touchy subject with people, but it's a tool at the end of the day. And there's a lot of information that's in there and we can drive a lot of processes from it essentially. So one of the biggest things I'm referring out right now is kind of how to it's still really early.
I'll probably take me until the end of the year to have some valuable data, but one is building dashboards for our PM's out of the model. And then two is kind of productizing our panels in a way so I can streamline some processes in terms of one cost and estimating two detailing and then three driving, a few more robotic processes in the shop.
So we have a study, we have started ordering equipment. And so that part's taken care of, of like manufacturing, the studs onsite, we're buying master coils, you know, the big 40,000 pound poles you see. On the highway and they get slit down to a slit with the slit with varies, depending on the size of the stud, like I was T3 and five's done the smaller slit with than like a six inch stud.
So if you take a stud and flatten it all the way out, take a lips, take a flat and just flatten everything out. Like you're slit with essentially there's honestly elongation in there. It's not a one-to-one relationship. So, but now the process, the problem is everything. After, you know, manufacturing, the studs is slow because no one no process after he keep up with the machine.
So it's like, well, how do we start getting everything else? Like start to speed up the subsequent steps. And how do we start to add another trades? I mean, I'm going to start, I'm going to start adding another trades in our walls, whether they're going to do it or not. I mean, that's essential constructions.
It's kind of going back to everyone, one or two major players versus 50,000 other players. And. One of the things in the Southeast that's different from Ohio. My main experience in the Midwest was Ohio was heavy. You like, it was always, Oh, I ever knew it was union work down here in the South East. So it's not like that.
There's like substance, substance, substance subs of subs of subs. And it's, it's crazy. And so, especially with jobs getting as complicated as they are, you have all this scoping broken out across multiple people. It becomes very hard to manage all of that information. It's a lot easier to go to one guy or two companies and say like, figure this out versus like, you know, this, this trade stops here.
And then he comes in here and then this connects to that. And this left over that, we got to make sure there's not compatibility issues here. And it becomes pretty confusing to think about. So I think prefab gives you the ability to kind of set yourself apart because everybody's doing it essentially at this point.
And then you can start to add another trades and kind of. Gain will work for yourself. Just kind of what it's going towards. You know, you see more and more GCs performing trades and more and more single trade contractors performing multiple trades, just because everything's getting compressed in the middle of getting squeezed out of pretty much everything.
So in your shop. So you're rolling out studs with the machine, obviously. And then are you, or are your guys there, are they assembling by manpower or do you have machines doing that? Or how does that process
look? So right now it is what manpower. Okay. You have a few, this is one of the things I started researching this week and I won't talk about it yet.
Maybe we have a follow-up show or like later in the year, once I figured some things out, there are a few things that I have goes back to the product conversation of that'll help us with some more machines in the shop. As far as you know, assembling the panels and then she, you know, And doing that kind of stuff.
Some of the things I'm just trying to think through is a lot of the robots that exist today. And there, I mean, there's some that are phenomenal, but they're just taking human held devices and putting them on like a robot. Which, I mean, I don't know if that's necessarily the best answer. I mean, I'm not trying to knock anybody and it's a lot of work to figure out how to, you know, get robotics to work.
But at the end of the day, I mean, drywall is drywall because it's four by eight. And if you gave me a sheet that's like five feet wide. I don't think I can hold it. So isn't necessarily, I think there's a lot of things I think, and I learned this through grad school was we 3d printed concrete, which is a lot harder in person than it is on YouTube.
I learned are pretty friendly. Concrete is hard, but what I learned, what I, that the end of my thesis basically concluded on was like, are we really solving the right problem? I was on the right problem. Concrete's been around for, I don't know, 2000 years in some form or fashion hasn't changed drastically, much me I've got admixtures.
And our chemical engineering is definitely a lot better than what like the Romans had, but a majority of its weight is still the same water, sand, and aggregate of some kind. We just had came up with, you know, figured out the chemical reactions, a little bit added admixtures to, you know, make it cure faster or slower, you know, whatever we needed it to do.
But it's still essentially the same, whereas 3d printing. I mean, if you go back, I think we're starting the seventies ish was the first like quote unquote 3d printer. Not that not that 3d print in the seventies is what it is today, but it's still relatively new. And so we're taking a very old technology concrete and trying to put it in a 3d printer really will all we want because we want the performance of concrete, not necessarily concrete itself.
You want someone just has really good compressive strength. And maybe some of the better intention, just concrete sucks intention, you know, that's why you have rebar. And, you know, it's kind of taken up a modern engine, like take up engine out reports or put in a model T you're going to axles are going, gonna fall off the wheel to try fall off.
Nothing's gonna go handle the power. So it's the same, it's the same kind of concept. Why are we taking concrete? It's been around for 2000 years trying to run it through modern technology. All you wants to performance. If I told you spinning on your head and spit in quarters was going to give you a compressor strength of 10,000 PSI.
And that's what you did. You didn't care how we got there. That's just the result you want. So as far as the tech goes, I think, you know, comes to prefab. Why are we taking tools designed for humans or things are designed for humans and just using them for the robots where we can gain a lot more efficiency by just removing some of the limitations that humans just have, because you know, we don't have all of us, don't have eight foot wingspan.
I like it. And we'll, we will definitely follow up with you in a few months or towards the end of the year. Cause I want to hear more about that.
I'm trying to post videos, one side things out. All right. I gotta keep thinking.
Yeah. Which, which step exit a really good question in that. When you, when you start to do these processes where a person necessarily doesn't have to be involved or is involved in like operating crane or driving the semi right now, your dimension with, or limitations are or that right. Of something go down the highway.
So now you're looking at 10, 15 feet wide by 50 plus feet long to. Set in place, you know, what, what can you do at that point? Then you gotta worry about lifts and other things like that, right? You're not going to lift a single, you know, 10 by 50 sheet of drywall without it busting somewhere. You know, so those are the limitations that you end up with, which creates a whole different set of problems to solve for.
But your, your limitation now, isn't the person it's, you know, the, all the other equipment that you're using to set it in
place. What made to your point? Like one of the things that I mentioned at one of our PMs was the, the biggest issue now with everyone doing prefab is buck hoist and cranes. I mean, with everyone, prefabbing, you know, buck boys time is like it's worth gold because everybody's trying to get crap onto the floor from their shop.
And it's multiple trades. I mean, everyone's trying to get crap when we had, when I did that hospital job in Akron, to me, the, you know, the mechanical contractor would show up like, well into the early hours of the morning, Just so he could have a, can ask the black voice and B could just start, you know, cause you can only fit so much duct on a buck hoist and especially in a hospital when the duct is like huge, like I mentioned, the hospital type duck Creek crawl through it, you know, like four or five pieces on the thing, plus the operator.
And especially, you know, you've got travel time with going up to the floor and that job was a six story. You know, some of the jobs are going to Atlanta or 30 stories. I mean, you're looking at a lot of time of like, you know, crane time becomes a pricey or very valuable as it as buck waste time. And with everybody prefab and those are like the two pinch points for everybody.
And so we need to come up with better ways to get stuff onto the floors or into the building with everybody building things off site. Those are two limitations that we just, you know, currently have that prefab has created that I don't think anybody's necessarily solve yet because you only put on one buck hoist.
It's not, you can't just like put a bunch of buck hoist on because now you've got a bunch of holes in the building. You got to repatch. Right. The same would put in mass climbers for some other, like, you know, up and movable scaffolding. Can we use mass climbers as a crane? Quote, unquote, you know, we can put like stuff on them and then like dry the mass climber up, but it's slow.
And then now you got to go repatch, all those holes in the building, which are now possible water penetrations in the future, because you left giant holes and building, so you can tie the mass Klenner off suit. So yeah, prefab opened up a whole nother set of problems, I guess, for it to be figured out because yeah, people are having to show up at, you know, early hours in the morning or stay late or coming on weekends to load floors.
That's getting written to like a lot more contracts of like, you know, you can only look, we can only do, you know, loading or unloading during these hours or during these times during these days you have to sign up for it or, you know, whatever the, the GC dictates for that project or owner. Hmm.
Yeah. And one of the, so one of the questions that we got here was about feeling conditions and prefab.
And I think some of this goes to, you know, BIM as well as like laser scanning, right. To where you can, you can go through and you can scan, there's a bunch of laser scanners out there where you can scan a building, you know, super accurate use total stations throughout the year, pinpoint accuracy and survey within the buildings to get those existing conditions, to then be able to prefab some stuff.
But I guess, how, how have you approached some of the field conditions or do you prefab only on like new projects versus, you know,
re remodels? So I haven't prefab on renovate. Let's see the last renovation. I just, I haven't done any renovations in Atlanta. I do quite a few in Cleveland just because the city, I think is much older than Atlanta, relatively speaking to infrastructure and.
We did not do a whole lot of pre-fab on renovations. There are probably multiple reasons. One, we just had new construction going on. So it's easy to pretty fast. We just focused on that. You can do laser scanning. You can also, there's certain like you can do like telescoping studs. Like there's certain like things that you can get kind of get around it.
One of the things that, that teaches us, it teaches you how to get really creative with tolerances or like creating tolerances for herself that may or may not be there. So, you know, we might use slot interactive cases or a deep relay track to allow us to, you know slide the track up or down to account for floor issues or sealing issues, depending on what we're doing.
Or we might use angles pieces of angle, maybe with a longer leg than what we normally would to give us issues of, you know, again, tolerance, if we're making brackets or stuff like that. And then in some cases it's, I mean, it's just not enough, so worth it to, to prefab an existing project because you have to think about the other issue is.
It was an existing building, whatever you're prefabbing. So I'll have to get to that spot. I knew construction is a little bit easier because it's typically more open up an area. You're your constraints are not as great in terms of logistics. As the project goes on, the building gets more and more closed up and prefab becomes not necessarily impossible.
It just becomes sometimes more difficult to get stuff onto the floor. You either have to break into smaller pieces or, you know, come up with different ways of doing it per se, to get it there, like prefab in of itself. Isn't hard when you're taking, you know, instead of donating this jig onsite, you're putting in a shop.
The part that gets a little bit hard harden might not be the right word, but it gets you in trouble as all the logistical pieces of how to get on the floor. And I say logistical, I mean like every single step and how you're going to get it from here to there, because we did stuff like we, we. Just just dose stuff and you just mess it up now, you know what not to do, like we did tops for a two story or 2 billion apartments in downtown Cleveland one time.
And we pre-read these tops when we stack the pallets to heavy to wear, like they exceeded the load limitations provided by a structural engineer for that floor. So the guys in the field had to break down these pallets into smaller pallets so they can get them up onto the floor. Just stuff like that.
And like, you know, how are you going to get there? Is it going to be a cart? No. Or what turning races do you have with doors? You're trying to go through, how big is the buck hoist? How big is the trailer using a wall using a crane? How are you going to pick it and all that? And just all that stuff comes into play.
And again, either make a checklist of what to look for, or you end up messing up once you two times get a few calls of, Hey, what the F,
because I definitely got a few of those phone calls.
I think that brings up a good question too, is, you know, construction is, is everything right? Like you, so one of the things is like productivity, right? And pairing it to manufacturing. I like comparing it to cars. Cause that's probably the most straight forward everybody understands, but in, you know, a car, right.
It's manufactured in one place and then it's shipped to a dealer we've got highways and everything in a car trailer, car semi, right. That these go on where construction, right? It's some of this is prefabbed right from a shop to the job site, but everything is built there. So when you look at all of this it's how do you get material or whatever from this place to here.
And then you start talking. And getting all the trades involved to coordinate all of those pieces. Construction is Mo as much of a logistics problem, which you typically, when you take a logistics class or talk logistics, it's, you know, I want to ship this thing from, from where I am to you right in Atlanta.
So how do I get from California to Atlanta is usually the problem, not how do I get out of my house, take the steps down, you know, go to the distribution facility, take a plane or train or bus or not immobile or something, try hallway to Atlanta or fly or whatever, get out of there. And then the last mile delivery, which is the problem that like everybody has from Amazon all the way up or down.
However you want to look at that pyramid, but in last mile, right. To get it to your actual doorstep is the problem. And then you take it for, for construction. It's from the, from the front door to the 12th floor in the back hallway. And there's only, you know, stairs for the last two floors to get to the place.
We don't always think of it was last logistical steps in there. So you'd have a better education on logistics doing construction than I think most people with logistics degree.
No. The funny thing you bring in with Amazon logistics was what time it was a joke. One time as a joke, we were going to make an online, like Amazon store.
We were going to like sell our prefab assemblies back to herself, like a dollar. So that way Amazon had to deal with shipping. Yeah.
I would love to see that. That'd be awesome.
Know what we were doing? Oh, I think we were doing like one of the crazy ideas we had was like, we were going to build concrete countertops for project and like, there was such a pain to work with and I think that's what we were, there were so heavy. We didn't want to deal with it.
And they were so fragile that we were going to like, that's what we were going to do. We're going to put them on Amazon for a dollar let's PM buy and then let Amazon figure out how to ship them to the, the job.
Yeah. And they cover insurance and shipping and all yeah. Abilities and returns
returns.
I so this is funny. I one point we were doing, I did an arc flash and electrical safety for a big chunk of my career. So we got to go into all sorts of different facilities, but one of them was a. Like off-brand, you'd never know the name of the company, but they, they solely took Walmart returns.
That was the only thing these warehouses did. And they were in the Southwest. So we were like South Carolina, but people get creative, man. They'll they'll stuff up TV box full of bricks. So that the weight is exactly the same. Cause people aren't opening the boxes, but the way so the way it was like to the, you know, 10th of an ounce, so they put them on the scale and it, it weighs out and it fills to where like nothing moved in it, but the way it was the same to, to move through.
So when you're talking about weight and shipping stuff people get creative. When they try to rip
off Walmart, I have to get a new career.
I can tell you personal experience, my wife and I had this idea a few years back that we were going to buy that shit. You can, you can find the companies that all the Amazon returns go to a certain warehouse.
Well, and these guys will then put it on pallets and they'll sell it for next to nothing. And so we had this great idea that we're going to, and you can see the bill of ladings for what's on your pallet and you pay a thousand bucks or whatever. And I come home from work one day and there's this, there's this freaking palette in the driveway.
And we start tearing through it. And it's just junk. I mean, it's, it's like 3000 iPhone cords that are all missing the plugins, you know, and just, just boxes of crap. We didn't get boxes of bricks, but it might as well have been it, it was a learning experience, but I'll chalk it up to keeping me humble.
Also, we didn't get rich off it
thousand bucks and a bunch of time
wasted. Yes. In a pallet of junk.
Jay's before we have any more questions, if if there's somebody in our audience, which I would, I would doubt, but where, where can they find you?
LinkedIn? Probably. I mean, I have a Facebook, but it's only for like one or two groups. I have an Instagram, but I deleted an Allianz vault to say something.
Then I deleted it again. Now I talk about value to add. I'm not just posting just to post and I try and stay off social media because it's just not very good. I don't like it. I liked it. It's a tool at the end of the day. Right? I mean, it got me to where I am. I ended up in Georgia because of it, ironically of all things.
So I think it's definitely a tool. That's one of the biggest things I'll kind of distress to people. It's just a tool. I learned them off of the internet and just by doing it and messing it up. So like the first projects I did in Revvit were terrible. I mean, God awful. And then each project, did you learn a couple of new things and you just kinda make tweaks and you keep improving it and you keep improving it and keep improving it and getting better.
But the first, I mean, I did not, I wouldn't drive it on the job when I worked as a structural engineer. So we were doing, went back to the co-op thing. When I was a co-op I was working for an engineering firm at the time I was born engineering and they were kind of going through, it was like 2014 or 2015.
And they were going through the AutoCAD rev, the transition phase. So like one of my jobs as an intern was to convert or work with some of the other engineers and detailers on convert. And a lot of the CAD details into like rabbit families, because they were kind of going through that transition process.
And that's when I first get experienced to rev it. And the rest was just YouTube and Google and forums and videos and watching and learning. And there's a lot, I mean, I have a job where I've learned that all off the internet per se. I mean, it definitely the engineering degree. I'm not gonna say it doesn't come into handy.
I mean, yet it helps to design load bearing structures and you understand. Know, some fundamentals of structural engineering. I I'd be lying if I said it wasn't useful, but I mean, the tools I'm in most of the day, aren't necessarily things I learned through college. I went into the same way. I mean, it's a tool.
I started posting videos in my bedroom at my parents' house with bunk beds in the background that people always gave you crap about, like, which one does he sleep in the top one, the bottom. And I was wearing a hoodie and they weren't professional any means they definitely weren't scripted and they definitely weren't edited.
I mean, I would just, I would see when I started doing is I would see something on job site and then I would try and come up with something hacked together, quasi solution, a step above saying, I have an idea. I was something somewhat tangible. Then I would just film it. And I would say just how it could work or should work or this or that, or I would tell stories of, you know, there's things you saw on the job site and, you know, that's kind of how I started using LinkedIn.
And that's kinda how it grew from there. That's how I ended up in Georgia. So. Ironically, I worked for a startup last year when COVID first started in, in Atlanta, just on the North North East side and Alpharetta. So it was working for them at the time. And COVID started when the stock market first collapsed around this time.
Last year, it was in February and they laid everybody off because they were private equity backed. I was like, Oh crap. Like at the time I already you know, left the employer in Ohio. I didn't have a lease yet in Georgia, but I already was like the week before I was supposed to move, they like laid everybody off.
And I really liked Georgia. Like I I've been to the South before Fran vacations, but when I tell people, like when you come to the South and it's the winter in the Midwest and like you leave Cleveland and it's snowing, I lived right off like URI. So like we got crapped on with no, and you know, it's snowing, everything's gray, it's covered in salt.
And then you come to the South and you're wearing shorts and it's 50 and it's sunny and everything's clean. That's two different things like, yeah. When you come to the South in the summer and it's somewhere in the Midwest, it's like, Oh, it's just hotter, more human version of summer when you come to the South in the winter and it's clean and there's not salt all over everything and there's no snow.
And like, this is kind of nice. And so I knew the company I worked for now, Jackie, the president, I spoke with her through LinkedIn. She messaged me and she was like, we're trying to do prefab. We have some questions. Would you mind talking to us? And I talked on the phone for like, you know, one November in like 2019.
And I reached out to her like four or five months later saying like, Hey, I want to come to Georgia and I have a job. And then that's kind of how I ended up. So, I mean, that's just the power of LinkedIn. I think, you know, putting stuff out there that provides value. Yeah. To answer your question.
No, I'll get an yeah.
So guys, obviously James is tagged in all the groups here and all the posts, so go go follow him. Great videos that you put out, man. They're always thought provoking and all that kind of good stuff. So, and, you know, I know all of our mutual friends, aren't really one mutual friend who you help out quite a bit you know, speaks highly of you and you know, other people, man, it's we're, we're glad to have you on here.
Definitely from the conversations we've had, you know, you know what you're talking about, you're, you know, exuding all the, the core values that abandon IBOs stand for and, you know, do the right thing, stand up for construction. You know, and constantly improving yourself, which, you know, I've seen from obviously distance, but you know, it's, it's something that we love to see and we love to talk to people that, that are all about improving themselves and getting better.
You know, and everything that you do, so definitely a pleasure to have you on. And I love how you've used LinkedIn for, for that type of a use.
I appreciate it. It means a lot. I think going back to our point about conversation of like earlier with college versus the trades or whatever, just pick something and then just work to get better at like, at the end of the day, like just, it's not necessarily what you do, that's gonna make you successful.
It's just how you do it. And I mean, I think one of the, one of the things I don't like about the trade verse, college conversations, people always talk about, you know, how much money you can make. Like you can make a lot of money doing anything. Cause you know, like you have to, even if you get drafted the NFL, let's go back to the Tom Brady example.
You get drafted NFL, maybe you're in for a year and you may, I don't know what the, what the actually mean. I get the marketing of like what ESPN says like, Oh, they can make. $200 million if like you alarm for lands on the moon and they throw 50 touchdowns in the same game, that's the marketing. That's what they tell you on TV.
But that's 500 is probably the low guy, I think, from what I've seen. So if you're like 52nd on the roster, you're making path to a mil, something like that a year. And you might have a one to two year contract. So the low end it's, you're making half a million.
Exactly. So like you, if you're, and if you don't stay around, like you got an NFL for one year and now you're out and it's not, even if you were the best picker, highest pig, and look at Tom Brady, the guys it's not necessarily where you got what you do.
It's just how, how you do it, how you perform, you can make good money doing anything if you're good at it or work to get better at it. So I think that's one of the, one of the points I don't like about the trade conversations. Like if you're a sucky, plumber, new create leaky pipes, you're not going to get paid a lot of money just because you're pulling up.
It's kind of a dumb conversation to have, like, I get it. I understand where you're coming from. Like yeah, you can make good money without going into debt. But I mean, if you're a really good doctor, then you're probably gonna pay that off pretty quick, you know, go to a different school that you don't have to pay six figures for and live on a dorm or some crazy crap.
Yeah. Just working hard, no matter what you're doing, you got to put the effort in. You've gotta put the time in. I agree with you a hundred percent, man. It's cool to follow your journey. You've come a long way from the the bunk bed studio. And I appreciate you coming on and telling
us the story.
Thanks man.
Appreciate it. I'll forgive you for rooting for the team up North.
I want to date myself, but I may have been at Michigan when Mr. Brady was there. I was, I didn't hang out with him.
Yeah, well, and so to, in all honesty, transparency, so my wife went to Michigan but. I went to Louisville, both. So we win championships.
We don't blow them.
So we championships, we had some issues with our when we first got our suddenly machines, they were just an issue. So there's like a lot of things you just don't know about when you're trying to manufacture studs. And like, we finally got to the point where we're doing production and then like, David who's, the owner was like, you know, stud rolling in production.
Those are two words you never hear together. And I was like, it's kind of like Georgia and national titles,
but that went over real well. Yeah.
Obviously I am the South and college football is very big here and there's not, it's very rare to find a car that does not have some college sticker or bumper on it of some kind and there's schools from all over the place. I got my eyes. They want to, don't worry.
Yeah.
One of my buddies that I, I worked with, he went to grad school at Louisiana Lafayette, and you'd go to two games down there and, you know, it's, it's the South and especially it's Louisiana. So, you know, you'd have a 41 court thing, a gumbo, right. For all the tailgates. And he was like, people would yell you if you're wearing the other team's gear to like the game.
Right. You're, you're going to a Louisiana state game and there's like some Bama fan right. Are coming through and they would berate you and yell at you and then be like, Hey man, gumbo.
So it was like that kind of like, you know, cursing at you to your face, but then, Hey, I got, I can't eat all this. Like you want some,
that was pretty good, man. I liked that stuff.
I, I think the the Wolverine Buckeye relationship is not quite as cordial. No.
Speaking of plumbers, my uncle built a man-cave.
And before we feel like the toilet with the hooked up to the water, you put the Michigan decal in the bottom of it.
I love it.
Yeah. That's my last note for the day on that
one. And we won't burn any couches today. So now James, it's been a real pleasure having you on man. I know there's, there's tons of nuggets that people picked up in this show on, you know, anything for prefab to problems to, you know, you can make in whatever you try.
And I think that's really the biggest message that we always put out is look, you can make it whatever you want. Right. Matt is on the GC side, James you're on a subside, I'm from the design side, right? You can all make it and whatever you choose, as long as you choose to be great. And I think that's the biggest message here to pass along.
And then there's, you know, everything else to, to figure out there's, there's definitely problems in construction, but there's, there's always a solution. If you if you look hard enough, Would that guys that is this episode of the construction corner podcast until next time.