All right. Hello and welcome to another episode of the construction corner podcast. I'm Dylan. I'm your host joined by my new cohost, the blue collar. Bad-ass Matt Vetter, Matt. How's it going?
It's going great, Dylan. It's another nice Friday, a chilly week here in Michigan, but what we're getting through guys this week, we have a special guest. We were so impressed with her from our round table episode that we aired a few weeks ago to here. Ali, she's an executive director at Nika, formerly at Milwaukee, and now it's focused on their kind of product innovation to hero. Welcome to the construction corner podcast. Thank you so much, Dylan and Matt, it's great to meet you.
It's great to, to reconnect and I'm so excited to be here with you all and wrap up the week.
Doing these on Fridays. I know Matt was joking a few weeks ago that we might see him with a beer or something like that. Since we're, you know, three o'clock on a Friday here, this is, to me, this is the celebration, right? It's the good conversation. And we can all end the week on an inspirational note,
definitely on a positive note, you know, regardless of what happened during the week, this is kind of a.
Half hour, hour or so to just decompress and, and have some good conversation and move into a nice weekend. Yeah.
Now from our round table, a couple of weeks ago, we talked technology innovation, but there was a kind of maybe a good starting point. Well, first is to kind of give your background for anybody that might not have listened to that, that last episode. But kind of a little bit of your background and where you're coming from on the construction side of things.
Absolutely. So as you mentioned, I am the. Executive director of industry innovation for Nika. And that's the national electrical contractors association. So we represent the union electrical contractors about you know, a huge part of the specialty contracting industry. And so how I kind of got into this position, it's a, it's a bit of a tale, but I actually, my background is in advanced technology.
So I worked on things like. Machine learning, artificial intelligence robotics. And to be honest, how I got into that field was I have two degrees in mechanical engineering with a computer science focus. So I wanted to build machines and make them smart. And how I got into that field was the fact that I was actually really bad at math and science.
And I had some really great teachers and mentors who kind of encouraged me to, to, to, to poke deeper and to find the why. And so to, to kind of rewind and fast forward, back to how I got into the construction industry, I came up again, doing very technical work, very detailed work. And one day I happened to be in Wisconsin at a tour for Milwaukee tool, a just kind of you know, learn about the company sort of situation.
And I saw this opportunity that I had never in my life seen of. Being able to focus on products and design them and be completely user-focused because the people who are designing your products, that Milwaukee tool are not necessarily people who've been, you know, lifelong career driven in the trades.
So they're not a blue collar champions as, as, as you said. And so having the ability to really focus in on the user piece, Was so huge. And so I spent many years at Milwaukee and one of the things that I learned there was the ability to, again, focus on the problems at hand, right? It's not about the next best drill or the next best saw, or even adding Bluetooth to, you know, anything you can.
It's about dedicated user driven solutions to solve the industry's pain points. And that's really what allowed me to grow in my own role there. And. You know, learn about, and preach about and advocate for construction technology. And we've kind of created this, this movement in the industry, those of us who care about construction technology, that it's really about culture.
It's about passion. It's about people, it's about the process and then the technology comes after. And so I'm delighted to be a part of the Nica team. Now I've been here almost a month. So you're catching me on week three, but it's just so incredible because now I get to be that one step closer to the contractors and that one step closer to the people who are actually building the buildings or putting in the wiring and, and, and, you know, looking at the new you know, low voltage or electric vehicle or micro grid opportunities and truly help to support them as they continue to build the future.
That is impressive to say the least none notwithstanding the, your, your current title, executive director of industry innovation. Does that fit on a business card?
Well, luckily we don't go anywhere these days because of COVID. So I don't even need to worry about that. Right.
I like the title it's very official.
I guess my first question would be what, what does that role really entail at Nika?
So that's, that's a great question. And you know, I'll be honest with you. The thing that excites me the most about being the head of the industry innovation team at Nica is that we are really focused on innovation at its core.
So the idea of, you know, whatever you're doing, figure out a way to evaluate are you doing it the best way possible? Could you be faster? Could you be safer? Could you be more, not just more. You know, efficient but more effective. And so it's all about how do you continue to grow? Not just the technology piece of it, which is a huge part of innovation and what we most traditionally think about, but also the strategic and the business development piece.
So it's as much about change management and that growth mindset and looking with a critical eye on how you disrupt your own behavior and disrupt your own innovation as it is, you know, what's the next robot. What's the next headset. What's the next Bluetooth, you know, IOT device that could be changing the industry?
Very neat. Very neat,
I guess, with that. So being, you know, Nika, right? The overarching harm for, for all these hundreds of thousands of electrical contractors, you know, across the U S and really the U S and a lot of ways sets the stage for. Kind of the rest of the world and our practices and codes and everything like that.
And obviously, so I'm an electrical engineer, so this is right up my alley. But for, for a lot of this and, and just talking change management from like the Nica side of things, obviously with trade associations and the ability to get out in front of your people fairly often, granted, we're not doing that as much in person anymore.
Through conventions or anything like that, but how does Nika go about kind of pushing some of these best practices out to, again, you've got hundreds of thousands of electrical contractors, you know, from residential all the way to do utility scale you know, installations. So what's kind of one of the wet methods that you guys use to, to outreach to, you know, this broad group of people.
Well, you know, that's a really great question and I think COVID has really put us in this position. And I learned this in my role at Milwaukee, as well as my, my time at Nika. You really have to almost innovate yourself. Right? Look at things from a, you know, how can you improve and how can you be. Ever more impactful, create ever more opportunities and channels and connections to help people grow.
So at the end of the day, it still all goes back to construction, being a people business. And so what I find to be really powerful is you want to approach it in as many ways as possible. You want to always be making a positive impact, whether you're talking to you know, executives at the top, or you're talking to governing boards, or you're talking to.
You know, the one-off the apprentice, or you're talking to students who are studying construction management, it's all about helping people understand that these are problems. We can tackle one step at a time, one incremental change at a time. And one of the really great things about, you know, the vehicles that we have to do this is that there are.
So many out there, right? There's podcasts, there's webinars, there's direct phone conversations. Let's not forget that, you know, before people started going to these big conventions, just being able to pick up a phone and call someone. And now we have that elevated because now you can pick up a phone and see someone like we're doing here.
So that's a really powerful thing as well. And then there's also. There's the virtual conventions. There's the you know, just, just grabbing a quick, one of my favorite things to do is to just grab a quick 15 minute or a 30 minute call and just connect with someone and talk to them and learn about what they are looking at.
What's worrying them what they're doing to prepare for the future of their business. And, and we also have some really great avenues. Nico puts out several different podcasts, including the innovation overload, which is one of the podcasts that my team and I created. Kind of around the idea of how do you handle this overload of information.
And there's also so many industry standards, right? You've got your trade organizations. So you know, Nika is a great example. That's always putting out education. You can go do training, whether it's training on. You know how to be a better estimator, how to be better at project management or coordination, or even, you know, technical trainings, like learning more about Bluebeam or learning more about, Revit learning more about BIM three 60 and then there's also some of the, maybe the lesser known, but incredibly powerful vehicles out there include learning about industry research.
So going to places like. You know, Nika actually has a non-profit arm called electri. And so it's like electric without the sea. And so electric.org actually has free reports for everyone in the industry that are carefully curated by the electric foundations and boards around specific topics that are important to all of us.
So that's, you know, a really great free resource FMI has great, great reports, right? Dodge data analytics, ENR the list goes on. So again, you know, from a Nica perspective, we are really, really focused on how do we bring targeted information to those within our network and those throughout our network, to make sure that we're working with our partners to deliver the best results and the best conversations from an industry as a whole.
I think the opportunities, whether you're interested in digital content, whether interested in a peer group or a conversation, or even a periodical. Right. There's still those paper, you know, magazines that are out there like electrical contractor is one that allows you to learn more about what's going on in your neighborhood, in your district, but also in the world.
That's great. You mentioned, you know, getting to know people and doing your 15 minute 30 minute conversations. And to me, that's, it, it started off as an annoyance with COVID having to do all the zoom meetings and having to. You know, look at yourself in the, in the, in the screen next to the Hershey you're talking to, but it's, it's completely become a, a great way to quickly engage and get to know more people on, on a worldwide scale.
And we couldn't have done this last year. Well, we, we could have, but we, we probably wouldn't have gone this route, you know, and it involved travel, which. You can't do right now easily. And it's great to hear and to see different groups using this technology. We have, you know, we kind of got forced into, but you're using it for a real positive purpose.
That's so true. And I, you know, I've heard, I've read about, especially this time last year, and as things started to slow down, you, you heard all these fears about. 2020 being the year, the year of last innovation, the year that everything just ground to a halt and we all shuttered our doors and, and everything stopped.
And the truth of the matter is that everything didn't stop. We just learned. To innovate in a different way. And so it almost became the year of burgeoning innovation. So, you know, whether you all of a sudden found yourself putting, you know, all of your files on a, on a cloud-based network, or you were investing in things like the VPN networks, or you were looking at zoom versus teams versus Skype versus GoToMeeting.
So many platforms out there got a boost from this idea of we, we all still have to connect and what's also really powerful is so many companies and their culture has got a boost from how do you connect in unorthodox ways to continue to drive these conversations? One thing, for example, That was really powerful.
That happened at Nika during that time is there was actually a deliberate effort, not just to, you know, put your cameras on what you hear about the cliche of, you know, camera's on engagement, like you said, but even an effort to create an opportunity for employees to take turns, telling stories about themselves and sending it to the whole company and then nominating the next person so that you actually got to people you've worked with for.
Five 10, 20, 30 years. You actually got to know them on a whole different level. And who would have made the time who would have made that deliberate intention to connect in that way? How do we not been in the situation where we weren't sitting next to each other anymore?
That's a great point. We at Schaefer construction, we're a much smaller firm, but we kind of got into the same sort of thing.
And, and through. Meetings like this. And even on our social media channels, we kind of started introducing our team to the world. And it was just, it was, we had time to do that sort of thing that we never really had thought of doing before, but it, it keeps the human element human.
Exactly, exactly. And I think one of the things that's also really cool is I've heard from a lot of contractors out there that they actually saw their younger employees start to step up more.
Because of working remotely because it's the easiest thing in the world. I think we've all been guilty of it when you're sitting next to someone, when you're, you know, just down the hall from the people who've been doing, whatever you're learning for so many years, whether it's estimation, whether it's VDC, whether it's the accounting side, it's the easiest thing to just you know, get up and go ask them.
But now there's that extra layer. And, you know, especially millennials, gen Z, a lot of the newer generations are not so comfortable or we're not so comfortable with making a phone call. So people, especially in construction have started to see this, you know, the younger talent is rising more because they kind of have to go through this, this exercise of figuring things out by themselves.
Before they make that call or before they reach out for help. So it's in a way, you know, some of these, these opportunities are allowing us to have our teams Excel.
Yeah, absolutely.
And that was always one of the biggest things that I learned. And especially early on in construction is to pick up the phone, right?
Like there's no, there's no transcript it's phone calls most of the time. So when it comes to the fourth phase of construction and litigation that those things are not recorded or written down to come back and bite you, but always pick up the phone, have a conversation and it comes. Across, not only for that which we have to worry about in construction, but also for just an ease of communication, right?
There's a lot of intention tonality things that you, you're not going to pick up in an email that you can get across a lot, a lot better when you're on the phone with somebody to make sure that you're understanding it correctly. And then the on top of that now with the screen sharing and all that kind of stuff, you can pretty easily collaborate.
Make sure that you're looking at the same thing, the same set of drawings at the same time, so that, you know, everyone's on the same page and looking at two different versions of something to, to move forward. And I guess this brings up a pretty good point in that, you know, we're. In the construction.
And you made this point at the round table is we're looking to build communities, right? We're not looking or in one of our biggest assets in construction is, is the people right? Not just the buildings that we build, the roads that we create. But all the people and knowledge that It gets retained through the industry.
And one of the things too, in that, you know, that Nick is doing a great job of is writing articles and having things that people can go back and look at in two podcasts that are a whole new way of communicating, I guess, what. Are you seeing for contractors in some of the ways that they're able to not only share the information, which I think we've talked about, but kind of help retain some of the best practices within their firms?
I think knowledge retention has been, and this is across construction, whether it's a contractor design firm, that that knowledge retention becomes one of the harder things. You know, you have somebody of 30, 40 years’ experience that. You want all this information and knowledge that they have to pull out of them.
But they're not going to write a white paper, but they'll have a two hour conversation with you. No problem. But how does, how does kind of knowledge retention and knowledge transfer? What are some of the best practices that you've seen?
I think that's, that's such a great. An interesting topic to think about.
And especially, you know, because it is our status quo is to remain at the status quo is to always kind of do neurologically. We want to do what we've always done. And I have to tell you one of the things that's been incredibly powerful. And for those, you know, those listeners and those we have who are tuning in today, one of the most incredibly powerful things that we have right at this moment in history.
Is that we are more connected than we've ever been before. Whether you're looking through a trades lens, like you said, or through an owner or a general contractor, or, you know, any, you know, a technology provider or manufacturer, any level of engagement can be amplified. And so we talk about these virtual conferences and yet it's a bummer because you can't.
Be in person in the same room together. But what you can do is now you don't have to pay for the travel to send your team, you know, to some fancy destination, because there's a conference going out there now you're not paying for the hotel room. And so we've actually even seen conferences where instead of just paying for one license for somebody to attend the event or one ticket, you can actually go, and you can actually pay for essentially a company.
A ticket or company attendance, and that'll give you several licenses that can be used. And so that's something that's been huge because now, you know, when there's a technology conference, you don't just have to send your BIM or VDC manager or your head of it or your CIO. You can actually have the safety person be there.
You can actually have, you know, again, some of your, your journeyman, you can actually have. Your project managers, your estimator is you can have different people going and looking at things through different lenses. And I'll tell you from the standpoint of how do you, how do you make sure you retain, how do you make sure that information is shared?
One of the best things I've ever done with any team I've ever worked with is when we send people to an event, we always have them come back and share, you know, just, just three things you've learned. Three things that will affect the company. So what are you personally learning? Because so many of these events will have, you know, prefer professional or personal development.
So what are you personally learning that might've changed your life and what are you seeing for your company? You're seeing for our practices that can help elevate or change, or just even incrementally help us get started down, you know, considering a different path. So that's a really powerful thing and I'll also.
I'll give you guys a little bit of inside baseball. And I don't think I've ever told anyone this, but when I go to shows whether they are virtual or in-person I always try to engage with at least someone else, one other person to where I am, that person build up enough rapport that I can then say, Hey, is it okay if I call you in three months, six months, whatever it is.
Can I just give you a call? And this interesting thing we're learning about today. Can we just touch base in, you know, in six months from now on how this thing has changed, the way you do your job or the way you live your life. And it's so amazing because it, it enriches what you're able to do and it helps you again, it doesn't have to be something that everyday you're changing a new piece, but just, just that one little bit of accountability with someone who you you've now connected with.
It, it creates such a strong network effect.
That's hugely powerful. Thank you for sharing that. You know, it, it, it stretches the collaboration. But, but the accountability is great because so many people, whether, whether they listen to podcasts or go to the events or, or pay for coaching, you know, there there's so much information and, and new things always being thrown at us.
It's, it's hard to, to grab them sometimes and to follow through with it. And if you learn all this great stuff, but you never implement any of it, you're not really, you're not really moving forward on the, on the ladder at all. So that's a. Fantastic idea that kind of built in follow-up. I'm going to write that one down and use it myself.
I'll put it, I'll put it to you this way. The most powerful thing you can do is make a decision. Whether it's a decision to adopt something new or not adopt something new, you're still making a decision either way. And so having the ability. To think critically again, that goes back to, this is what innovation is.
And I, you know, I, it, it's so fascinating, you know, as someone who comes from a very technical background, I love. Machinery. I love electronics. I love putting new solutions together in a way that changes the world. That being said, not every solution is right for every situation. And one of the things, when we talk about technology, when we talk about innovation, so often you hear people talk about, Oh, you got to go paperless, or you got to.
Employ the software you don't look Excel is, is, is this dinosaur, but for some companies, depending on the size, depending on the business vending, depending on a myriad of factors for some companies going from paper to Excel is huge. For some companies, they don't need to use the biggest software platforms out there.
They don't need to be on the best data lakes in the industry. They might just need to be using. You know, QuickBooks or Microsoft teams or FaceTime on their phones. And that I think is the coolest part of innovation is innovation. It doesn't have to be a one size fits all, or here's my check that I'm going to write for this R and D budget.
It can be, what is that one small thing that you can do to change what your, your path is? And it starts today.
It's the 1% better every day theory, right?
Exactly. Exactly.
As long as you keep it moving forward and, and growing, you know, we all do it in different places at different levels, but you know, I thought you were going to tear into the Excel and QuickBooks users, and I was going to have to butt heads with you. Cause that's what we still do it at Schafer construction, but you know, it, it. It's not to say that we don't look at other technology because we always are. I'm constantly looking for the next greatest app or, or some communication technology that we haven't seen yet, but it's also difficult, you know, given that we're a small company.
So given our size and our revenue, we don't have budgets available to, you know, lock in pro core or some of these other really great platforms, but what we also know how to survive without it. And you know, as long as you keep growing and keep moving forward. I think that's the, that's the key.
Well, and I think it's also interesting because sometimes your solution can have nothing to do with technology at all.
So I've seen companies make huge gains by moving, moving the port-a-potties once a month, you know, moving to a system where you have your lay down area, you have your, you know, your makeshift tool crib on the job site, but instead investing in everyone, having one of those, Uline carts. Right. If you can have your tools next to you, if you can have your equipment next to you, if you don't have to walk, you know, get on a lift, and go down 20 floors, just to use the bathroom, think of how that changes every single day.
You're making that small change and you're making a huge difference, not just in your worker comfort, but also in the safety you're exposed to less also in the productivity. You're not wasting as much time looking for your tools also in the morale. You know, in the engagement. And so again, you know, innovation doesn't have to be, like you said, it doesn't have to be a license fee.
There's nothing against those license fees, but everyone's at a different spot. And that's the, that's the, I think that's the secret is you have to kind of bloom where you're planted, figure out where you are and figure out how to grow and change with what you have.
I think that, I mean, you're spot on with all this stuff and that when we look at, or when we think innovation, right, everyone goes to AI and software and robotics and all this really fancy stuff that for the most part isn't necessarily the cheapest either, but that there's. What we're ultimately getting at is waste reduction.
Right? That's the thing that we're ultimately driving for is increased efficiency, you know, happiness that you want some return on whenever you're investing, right? Whether that's, somebody's taken half an hour, an hour to, to move a port-a-potty up, you know, a floor or 10 or whatever that that's, you know, hugely important.
And it saves a bunch of other time in it. Whether that's safety and increasing, you know, the, how people work, whether that's through a new tool or just in a new practice, right. It doesn't have to be these big, robust things, but you're looking for something in your process to, to improve and reduce the amount of waste the waste of time.
And especially like on job sites today, we don't want as many people onsite. So you're looking to find ways to improve, you know, your workflows, your efficiencies, your throughput. For all that. So I think and we mentioned this on the round table was a waste reduction, and I think that's really the core of this is to really help your people be better at everything that they do.
Well, and you hit on something really interesting too. The idea of, you know, you're helping your people. And that brings me to something that I think is always on people's minds when they, they think about or talk about the pain points of our industry, which is the, the, the talent acquisition, right? You got to get people, you got to get them in, and you got to train them up and you got to get them to stay.
And then you got to elevate them. And that succession planning is now more than ever. Something that's on so many people's minds and this is where again, technology. Yeah. It drives, you know, efficiency that makes your people better and more effective at doing what they're doing, but it also can help you to bring people into the industry and it can also help you to create those avenues for people to shine.
So one of the things that I, a lot of the companies that I work with that I really, you know, advocate for them is how can you. You know, you say there's too many solutions, everybody's busy, there's so much going on. And all of that is true, but maybe instead of everyone at the top, trying to figure out all the solutions as might have traditionally been the case, are there people in your company that you can set about elevating them, giving them a specific task, putting them on a task force, giving them a specific challenge or even just saying.
Hey, you know what? We're open for comments, we're open for improvements and you know, something as simple as the, you know, in a sense, the suggestion box and give people an opportunity to become champions and become advocates and, and elevate themselves within your organization, because this is how we continue to grow.
And this is how we continue to invest in our people in ways that they will invest back, and it builds engagement. Right. And when people feel that they're valued across multiple levels, there they're more likely to stay. They're more likely to be a better worker, a more efficient, productive member of the team.
Exactly, exactly. And with the fact that we have such a challenge with skilled labor and the fact that we have, you know, this generational gap, we have people among five generations all in the workforce, everyone is motivated in a different way. And just because you have someone who is an expert at the specific craft that they've been doing for 30 years does not mean that they are the best that using cell phones or using zoom or using, you know, any of these digital platforms.
None of this is a shock to any of us. So how can you find the people who maybe don't understand the industry as well? Because they're newer to it. And pair them up with the people who really know a lot about, you know, bending conduit, but maybe don't know that much about how to, you know, take digital three 60 photos off their phone and give people a chance to, you know, everybody likes to be appreciated.
Everybody likes to contribute. So give people a chance to contribute with the skills that they're best at. And then also give them a chance to build and learn from the skills that they, they do have gaps in, where they can improve upon.
I love that Dylan and I have talked a lot about this topic, excuse me, the topic of, of our industry as a whole, the construction industry, having such a huge labor problem, a huge shortage of skilled labor coming in.
And, you know, we, we've kind of bounced that idea around quite a few times of, you know, Telling the, the young, new person on the site to go hang out with, with the, with the old guy, you know, the 30 year vet who's been doing whatever he does for so long that he's an expert at it. It's all part of that collaboration effort.
And you nailed it just now because the young guy or young girl or whoever. Now is bringing a different viewpoint and bringing different skillsets and different talents. And even just through osmosis, the two parties now are going to be better for that engagement for that relationship.
Absolutely. And I'll tell you, you know, I, like I said, I spent many years in academia.
I've spent many years on kind of the. The cutting edge of the, some of the, the, you know, the sexiest technologies in the industry. But one of my first jobs was at an automotive assembly plant. And the things that I learned didn't even have an engineering degree, barely had a semester under my belt. But the things that I learned from those people.
Who had been working in this plant? Who'd been working on cars, on building cars and designing on putting, assembling cars. The things that I learned from them about what they could do with their hands and what they could see in terms of, you know, what you needed to do to create the perfect product. It was just, it blew me away and it really shaped my own perception of where I wanted my career to go, because I never, you know, I don't want to be the person who knows everything.
I don't want to be the person who has all the answers. I know I can't be. So it helps that I don't want to be, but what I want to do is I want to help those people who are experts, those people who are doing their job, the way that they've been trained by generations before them, how do we position ourselves to serve them?
This is at the end of the day; this is a servant leadership position. What I do, what you guys do, where all of us in the industry who care about technology and efficiencies, we're not ever going to solve this by ourselves. And we certainly don't have the perspectives to, you know, come up with all the answers, but it's about how do you understand the process well enough that you can figure out those, those, those incremental ways that you can at least present solutions and get that feedback.
I think this is a, a nice little dovetail. So you have all these people that have tons of experience. And then now you have access to all these conferences that they probably didn't go to. Right. It was usually like, as you mentioned, your VDC, your BIM manager, your CIO, maybe the president of the company.
Rarely. I don't think any of the conventions I saw. It's a handful of those guys, but you have in, they're typically younger, right? They're younger people in those positions. So. Through this now allowing or having the ability for a lot of your veterans to experience some of the new tech, some of the things that are being released and then with all their experience.
They can see how this might be able to be implemented into their process. Right. They're intimately familiar with the process where maybe your BIM VDC guy isn't or Galler, whatever. Right. They don't have quite the experience level, but they know that technology really well. So now this pairing of people with tremendous experience can be.
Exposed really what it is at these conferences, be exposed all this technology and then work with somebody who might know the technology more intimately to, again, streamline those processes much like you would have at a assembly plant or manufacturing facility where you're kind of pairing technology and innovation with somebody that knows how a car gets put together, right.
Or a building gets put together. So I think the, the dovetail of these too, and at the cost that a company can afford to put these people in just creates tremendous innovation.
Absolutely. And that's how we change the industry, right? We're not here because we want to make small changes or we're here because we want to do little things.
We have grand visions, all of us. And I think the cool part is grand visions. All start with small changes. They start with. People, they start with culture and everything that we've talked about goes back to, you know, if you're a leader, if you're someone listening, who's the head of a company you don't, you don't want to be the one who has all the answers, because think of, think of how limited the focus is then.
So it, the opportunity then becomes bringing people in and giving people the chance and then connecting them together and giving them the culture and giving them the trust. That you are supporting them at all levels entry level all the way up so that these solutions, these ideas are coming from the top down and the bottom up so that we can meet in the middle.
That's a great point. Yeah, it's just, it's all about growth and. And setting our goals high. And, you know, you mentioned none of us are here for, for small changes. We have a, a saying that we use that we're, we're here to blow the doors off, you know, we're, we're not looking to just grow as a normal company grows and, you know, Increase our profits by, or our revenue by 3%, each year to cover inflation.
We're, we're here to completely blow the doors off of, of the construction world of the GC side, what we do. And, and we're, we're making these changes through culture through, through building the team and, and everything you just mentioned fits really well into that, into that formula.
Absolutely. And I think it's also too, it's important to remember that this is not a problem.
That's solved by one. Trade or a one company. This is a problem that belongs to all of us. And that's, what's really powerful is, you know, you, whether you're tackling communication in your company or you're tackling communication project wide on a job site or from the field to the office, there's so many ways to look at how we can help move things and move the needle.
Yeah, I agree.
I guess, with this, so. In implementing this change, right? Because it can be a big daunting task and like something like Pro-core, or even switching to BIM from a simple drawing or going from paper to, you know, PlanGrid, so a lot of this, you know, can be a very daunting, overwhelming task, but you mentioned in.
One it's making decisions. Right? So to, to make a decision and move with it, and you don't have to implement this overnight, right? It's not a switch on type of a task. It's a, it's an incremental thing, right. Doing a little bit every day. For the firms and companies that you've worked with, obviously being at a place like Milwaukee and now Nico, right?
There's a lot of companies that, that you work with and you're not just, you know, within kind of your own, you're seeing the industry as a whole and seeing a lot of firms kind of grow or take these approaches. Now the, I guess, in working with all these, these companies across the industry, how have you seen.
Companies really start to adopt this mindset or in some of the companies that maybe as we can be in construction, a little bullheaded, right. And unwilling to change. How have you seen kind of some of that adoption or those mindset shifts take place or what might be some catalyst to help firms that they want to change, but you know, are on the, on the
fence?
I think one thing that's incredibly important is to understand that. Just because we're talking about kicking the doors down and just because we're talking about, you know, everybody's got a move towards these, these big grand solutions does not mean that they have to be employed in the same way. And we, we touched on this a little bit earlier in the conversation.
So the first thing I would say, the very first thing is figure out, you know, identify the people who you're going to have as your champions. And it doesn't have to be the same people every time. And it doesn't have to be the same people for every task, but find people, elevate people, escalate people, and they could be the people who are having the problems.
So let's say if your problem is something to do with the project workflow and how to make it smoother and how to, you know, reduce the RFS, you can work with the people who are, you know, nose deep in the trenches, or you can have people who. Again, you know, might be some of your leadership might be some of your younger, more junior members of the team.
But again, what that allows them to do is it allows them to feel like they have more ownership in the process, bring them in and then give them the opportunity to understand and investigate what's going on. Right. It's not about what solutions they think are the right solutions. Even if they are the ones who are, again, those deep in the process, what you want is you want them to take, take a moment.
Take a beat and just lay out what's going on, understand the situation end to end whether it's workflows, whether it's value mapping, whether it's pain point analysis, whether it's a gap analysis, whether it's a SWAT use, any tool you want and there's a million out there, but the whole idea of it is understand.
What's happening, understand who the key players are, understand where you know, where things are stalling out. And then, and only then only after you've investigated, can you really start to evaluate which solutions might be the right ones? And so many people start by, they don't even start by evaluating which solutions might be the right ones for the problems they're having.
They start by, Hey, I heard this cool commercial, or I read this thing online about this new software or hardware solution, and they go straight to the solution. But if you haven't had the time or made the time to bring your people along with you, and that doesn't have to be everyone, it doesn't have to be everyone who touches the solution needs to, you know, if you have 30 project managers doesn't mean they all have to be in every single conversation, but get a good sample size and be respectful of their time.
And give them that opportunity, give them that opportunity to figure out, you know, what solutions are out there. And then once you have your solutions, do you know I'm an engineer at heart, right? So I believe in forced ranking, I believe in matrices to qualify, I believe in you figuring out, you know, what is the weighted reason or the score that meant that you went with this solution versus that solution.
And once you have. Some something you want to try or test or trial, that's where you come in and that's where you say, okay, if I want to see how successful this may be, I have to measure it. You cannot improve something that you are not measuring. You cannot, it's impossible. So there again, no matter what your measure is, whether it's time, whether it's you know, safety metrics, whether it's a reduced number of clashes, if it's clash detection, everything you do figure out your metrics and figure out a very deliberate way to pilot your solutions.
Figure out a very deliberate way to. Implement these solutions in a controlled environment and like all things that we have in our own everyday lives, you have to have a backup plan. You have to have a pivot. And so, you know, whether your pivot is okay, I tried this on one type of job site. And it's not working.
Let's evaluate why based on, you know, this is what working looks like in terms of metrics, or I tried the solution with this type of team and the, the challenges that we have are around, you know, maybe it's an educational challenge. Maybe people don't understand the software. Maybe it's a culture challenge.
Maybe people don't understand the ROI that they get out of collecting data or out of you know, using a digital model. These are the pieces where. You have to have in your mind and with your teams, you all, you have to have contingency plans. And so often when people say pivot, they mean, well, I was doing this thing and it didn't work out.
So I pivoted and I quit my job and I got a new career and that's not a pivot. And what a pivot is, is, you know, think of traveling and basketball, right? It's the idea of you keep all things the same, except for the specific things that you're going back to change. So you keep all your, the variables the same as most, as best as you can.
And you change one thing, two things, and you see if that makes a difference, because again, so often, you know, I can't tell you the number of places I've been, where you see sitting on the executives, you know, desk or sitting in their office, you see a virtual reality headset, you see an exoskeleton, you see, you know, you talk to the it team and they say, we've got this great software implemented.
No one's using it. So it's how do you figure out those pieces and how do you go through this process? This exercise to make sure that you're not just going into it with intention, but you're also going into the execution and the pilot with attention as well.
Beautifully said before I have another follow up question to hear, where can everybody find you?
So you can find me at Tauhira at Nika net.org. You can find me on LinkedIn. You can find me. I mean, I think that's really it. It's, it's funny. Cause I'm a technologist when people tease me about not having Twitter, but again, you know, that's the thing is everyone's at a different place in their life with where they adopt technology of their own.
I'm also a mom. I my son will turn six months old in a, in a week or two. So where I am most days is. You know, working on construction problems during the day and hanging out with a baby at night. So, you know, you could find me in my son's nursery, but again, you know, I encourage you. I implore you reach out.
I would love to talk with anyone. I, you know, I'm, I I'm enjoying, although potentially overpowering this conversation, but I, I do think the people connection is the most important part.
I absolutely agree with you and your basketball reference was, was spot on. I'm really glad you brought that up. Cause it, it it's something to keep in mind.
Right? The whole pivoting it's pivot has become a catchphrase and a buzz word like core values have, and you know, there's lots of other ones now. And until people start using these. These techniques and these, these aspects correctly, they don't do anything. You can't, you can't implement a pivot in business or in life.
If, if what you're doing is what you said and, and, you know, turning tail and running away and starting over again, that that's a whole different, whole different technique or a whole different term. So, but, but to bring the basketball role in, I liked that a lot. Thank you.
Oh, well, I mean, I, I have to say my basketball days ended in seventh grade gym, but the lessons that were learned have, have remained with perfect I've coached seventh grade basketball.
So I do, I think this is, you know, so we hit on a few really good points in here and. You know, like everybody out there. Right. So tier as are follow-ups from conferences, I take notes like crazy. And that is still analog for me. Like as much as I like, you know, I'm a software company and do a lot of electrical engineering, design, BIM, all that kind of good stuff.
But like, I still take a ton of handwritten notes and go through a good, you know ledger sheet of notes of probably a month. So for everyone out there, like the. One of the things that I do want to emphasize besides note-taking is data and really measurement, right? So we hit on data collection measurement, and I'm always astounded by.
The number of firms that especially. So I come from the design side and how many firms can't say off the bat, right? Like how, how many hours something takes them to do, right? Like they don't have an hours per square foot of design, right. Some standard metric that they can then, you know, extrapolate for any given building, because everything is quote unquote unique right here.
Every project is different in some way, or, you know, Bob really screwed this one up for us or whatever the thing might be for a given project that that comes across. But that was always one thing that I tried to push heavily was, Hey, we should know like a dollars per square foot and hours per square foot on the design side of, of what this takes.
So we can, we can bid this accurately. We can budget for it appropriately. But I just, there was always a push back in. You know, uniqueness, but with that, I guess to a lot of these points, you know, like on the electrical side, like, and contractors, right. They know how much an estimated based on like how much time it takes to install a light, or an outlet or a given linear feet of pipe.
So through this maybe what are some of the more specific examples that you've seen to really help, I guess, Clarify, the data points, the pieces that, that people should really be measuring against and what KPIs you've seen in particular across the industry that, that people might help to get started with.
I think one of the biggest things when people talk about KPIs and it's a big initiative for Nika as well is you just have to; you have to start somewhere. You have to start where you're at. And I so many times, again, you know, I, I worked in computer science when AI and machine learning were still neural networks.
So back before we even had that cool branding. And so the idea here is that you, you have to really like, it's all about process. It's all about process. And so you have to understand your process and from understanding that workflow. It helps you to understand the gaps and the miseries, the paint points, the challenges, the breakdowns, but it also helps you to understand what can be measured.
Because again, you know, maybe, maybe you need fantastic software, but maybe all you need is a stopwatch and maybe you don't even need a stopwatch. Maybe all you need is your phone to be able to measure, you know, how long does it take you to do this repeatable task? And you know, maybe what you need is Excel.
To be able to make a Gantt chart and to see how your project is progressing, or maybe you can use this fantastic software and it can help you, you know, use AI to determine the health of your you know, your project or your job site. All of these solutions are great. Just depends on where you are. And again, you know what I would caution anyone is think very tactically about how do you want to measure success?
So if you think of something like, all right, I'm gonna use a stopwatch to measure this process, understand, you know, what sort of baseline are you at today and what sort of improvement are you looking for? Short-term mid-term long-term and again, I'll tell you what you can't do is go around a job site, waving a stopwatch without, you know, any sort of preamble or explanation on what, what you're doing or why.
So take the time to bring your team alone. Take the time to help people to understand like, Oh, I'm just trying to figure out, you know, are you spending half your day looking for tools or equipment? Are you spending half of your time? Like, yeah, it's great that you're doing offsite construction or pre-fab, but there's little to no communication between the field and the fab shop.
So at the end of the day, like everything's getting delivered in the wrong way or the wrong time, or, you know, like it's, these are the pieces that are the building blocks that give you a good foundation.
I would suggest that everybody, when this comes out on the podcast version, they rewind it here for the last three minutes and listen to that over and over again, because that is, is perfect.
And it is spot on your, your comment about, you know, thinking tactically about how you want to measure success. It's so powerful because we're all going to be different, whether you're a GC or a designer or in the electrical field or whatever did you do? You know, we all have different goals, and we all have different motivations.
And to, to really map that out ahead of time is going to what is what's going to help drive to that goal. You have to have the roadmap before you, you go on the trip, so to speak.
I think that's very true. And it reminds me of. You know, again, I still know people who will print out a MapQuest set of directions and there is not a dang thing wrong with using MapQuest versus using Google maps versus using government versus looking at the sun.
If the sun gets you to figure out East and Western North and South do what you need to do, but again, you know, figure out what's right for you. Perfect.
Yeah, I think, I mean, this comes down to, you know, it's the curse of knowledge, right? So the, those of us that are further along, down the path of technology, or just engrossed in this stuff and think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread have really.
Gone down the rabbit hole of technology and software and AI and robotics and whatever. And we don't always bring everybody else along for the learning journey that we've been on. Right. And that could be years in the making in some cases, right. To, to understand everything that we do about it. You got to remember and go back to when you were just starting, what you wanted to know, what, what things clicked for you along that, and try to bring everyone else along that journey with you to.
To make it as clear as possible for everybody else. So they understand where you are. And I'm sure if you ask people on a job site, if you're bringing a stopwatch around and telling them why you're doing it, you're going to get a lot of helpful comments back on you know, what, what could be improved.
Right? A lot of people have a lot of opinions on different things and, you know, just by asking you will, you'll get a lot of feedback.
Absolutely. And you know, you could have the best solution in the world, and you may know that it's the best solution in the world. And the president of your company may agree with you.
That it's the best solution in the world. But if you don't implement it the right way, it will fail, it will fail. So make sure that you take the time to invest, because if you have the best solution in the world, then give it the time it needs.
We are approaching the end of our time here together. And I don't know about you, Matt, but I've thoroughly enjoyed this this conversation to hear what final parting words would you like to impart on our audience?
I would say that instead of thinking about this as. There's so much out there.
It's overwhelming. What do I do? I don't have time to do anything. Think of the next one thing you can do for all of our listeners out there. What's one thing you can do. It may be subscribed to a newsletter. It may be, you know, Google me, it may be connect with me on LinkedIn. It may be connect with, with mater Dylan.
It may be re listen to this podcast. Just pick one thing that you can do. And it's by picking these one little things at a time, that's how we change the industry. And that's how we change the world.
That's awesome to hear. I'm so glad that, that you came on. I wasn't in the round table, I was, I was watching it that day.
I called Dylan afterwards and said, man, we need to get her on the podcast because you have a way of speaking. You have a level of engagement that you can just. You can sense it and it’s; it's been an absolute
pleasure. Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much for the opportunity I told you. My favorite part of the end of a week is to be inspired.
And this was a lot of fun. I appreciate the time.
Guys go back and listen to this episode. Again, there's tons of nuggets on starting, starting small, right? We're not trying to solve the world in a day. Rome wasn't built in a day. We all know buildings are not built in a day, no matter what the owner might want.
So just knowing that. Wherever you are, is okay. Right. Wherever you are is perfectly fine. Just look at improving, adding that 1% each and every day. Again, whether that's just learning, whether it's implementing, whether it's sharing a story with your team, going to some conferences, and bringing some other people along or making that phone call back to somebody you met, whether it's virtually or in person, whenever we can do those again.
At a conference to kind of connect, be held accountable and to continue to move forward. So to hear it, thank you so much, guys, go connect with her on LinkedIn, she, and follow the podcast that Nika puts out and the team there to learn everything that you need to know about what's going on in the electrical industry.
And I'm sure that cover way more across the industry. So thank you all for watching and that's going to be this episode of the construction corner podcast.
Awesome. Thanks so much.
See ya.