Hello and welcome to the construction corner podcast. I'm Dylan joined with my now luxurious and new cohost, Matt veteran, Matt. What's going on,
man. Luxurious and new that's a new one for me. That's a nice title. Thank you for that. So it's a good day today. How about yourself, sir?
It's been one of those days, man.
Some, some good news, some bad news, some You know, weather changes snowing like a bitch here.
It looks like it out of your back window there. It's just freezing cold here in the low twenties and windy as all. Hell.
Yeah. Well, So, I mean, I used to live in the Midwest too. And one of the things that I think it's, it's really funny.
So out West, you've got like, just these huge microclimates right. Are all these microclimates. So I live at 3,500 feet. I go 10 minutes down the Hill. It's probably just raining right now. And if I go 10 minutes up the mountain, it's probably snow and even worse than it is here. That's pretty wild. How's are the driving conditions out there then?
Is it pretty treacherous? Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, so it's definitely like very mountainous roads. They're pretty like curvy mountain roads. So right now I mean, most everybody that like drives Jeeps and trucks out here, like I'm driving a car for the most part. So it's, you know, two wheel drive, not advise.
We're in the Midwest. Like, that's the thing, like when I lived in India, you could totally get around with a two wheel drive, you know, vehicle for the most part.
Yeah. Not, not where I'm at. We moved kind of out into, to the rural sticks, a little bit to get some property about six years ago. And there is no way to reach my house without driving down about two miles of the absolute nastiest, dirt roads I've ever seen.
So when we moved here, I've always had a truck, so I've been fine, but my wife had a minivan and the minivan was great back in the, in the suburbs and, you know, got great mileage, had movie screens for the kids and all that nonsense. It lasted about a year and a half out here. And the poor thing was falling apart.
It was just, it was ripping apart at the seams. So now we have two trucks.
I think that that's like every construction guys thing is drive it till the wheels fall off.
Pretty much. Yeah. It just sucks. Cause I never have a clean truck.
Yeah. Yeah. That's a, again, like a. No man's vehicle. It needs to be, you know, go to work Monday through Friday, you know, take the kids to practice and games on Saturday and then get a church on Sunday, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Well, so at least, you know, we got power back. That's the other big thing here. I was without power the last like three days, so, Oh wow. From wind storms. If it's not one thing it's another, you know, here in the mountains.
So are you on a generator backup at all or are you just out of luck?
So we, we bought a generator a couple of years ago, but it's, you know, the extension cord extravaganza is what we're running.
Gotcha. We've got a little gas one, but it, it pipes right into our circuit breaker, but it doesn't power our whole house. The main item being our furnace. So when power goes out in the winter, we burn lots of wood.
Yeah. Yeah. That's for us too. All right, man. So with, you know, and guys, we're going to do these kind of little intros here.
Just feels good to be talking to somebody else on the show and not just mean getting right into it. But for today's topic, Matt and I thought that we would be talking about communication with the field, you know over the last year with COVID and everything. You've, you're limiting people that are on site, right.
It's a big, big issue that everyone is dealing with. You're only trying to have required personnel. So you're, you've got to really increase that communication between. Office the field, your project managers, your coordinators, like everybody up and down the chain. So we thought that talking about communication between office and the field and really just everybody, right?
Because your project managers probably aren't on one project, they're on multiples, they're driving to multiple sites and this has always been an issue if you will. But with COVID and with job site restrictions have become even more right now. It's not just the office. It's home offices. Main office field multiple job sites.
So wanted to bring this kind of, you know, into the forefront and then really talk through some of the best practices and things that we've found to be. Extremely beneficial. So I guess with that, Matt, I'll let you lead off on, you know, your take on communication with the field. And I really just, this means communication in general.
So obviously communication is key across probably all facets of, of any business. You know, from my side, we have, you know, Obvious communications with clients and owners that that have to be kept up. We have to set expectations in the very, very beginning. You know, we have to be the experts providing knowledge.
We have to be responsive, all that good stuff, but when it comes to my field or to any field, I guess, really it is so mission critical to be able to have clear, concise. And, and correct communication with my team, because like you mentioned, we're, we're all running in different directions. We're, you know, we're looking at a few projects at a time, at least, and it's kinda like, you know, my guys out in the field know what they're doing.
They're all very well qualified to do what they're doing, but it's kind of like being out at sea in a boat, you know, a good captain knows how to steer his ship. He knows how to use a compass. But it's a whole lot nicer when you've got somebody on shore, you can kind of bounce ideas back on, and if you need help, if you need directions.
So that's kind of how we play it at, at Schaefer construction. And you know, it's just, it's gotta be strong communication. It's gotta be quick because we don't have time for the, you know, the dribble all day long. But we also gotta be able to solve problems and it comes down to that. That's the biggest key is, is.
Good communication helps solve problems, help keep things moving.
One of the things, and those are all fantastic points. One of the things that I want to add that often in construction and really, I mean, this goes to most, anything but often in construction is we tend to have shorthand for different things.
And we need to be sure that we're speaking the same location. So your you know, Northwest corner, Could be, is it plan Northwest? Is it actual Northwest? Is it, I mean, there's really, those are the two, but you know, looking at a set of drawings, you know, in the fields, the people in the office are looking at it and, you know, Northwest plan versus actual Northwest are.
Two different things, or it could be two different things. So it's important to be clear and that type of communication, which might mean that your, your email, your phone call, whatever is longer, right? You gotta expand upon what that is to make sure that everybody's talking about the right location. But that's, that's critical is to make sure that in that clarity, it, your clarity might mean that it's longer not
shorter.
Yeah. And you know, it's funny, two of our superintendents are, are also firefighters and in the fire world, they have names, you know, and I'm not a firefighter. I don't remember what they are, but they'll talk to me about, you know, the alpha wall or the, this and that. And they know exactly what they're talking about and where it is for me.
I'm always grabbing them saying, hold on a minute, let's, let's speak English. You know, w which, which part of the plan are we looking at here? And. You know, we, we kind of bumped into those a little bit, but you know, technology helps a lot with that. We, you know, we have a lot of, not necessarily new tech, but we've brought a lot of technology into, to the field to kind of link back and forth so that it's, it's a lot easier if, if both my superintendent and myself are looking at the same drawing at the same time when we're having these conversations, it just, it helps keep things clear.
Yeah. And I mean, like, don't be afraid to FaceTime granted, you know, the site that you're on for internet and all that kind of good stuff, but like, don't be afraid to FaceTime or send the picture to, you know, do a zoom call and share screen and go through all that. Information, right. Know, far, often it's been a phone call and then we're, you know, we're each looking at a set of drawings, the office and the field, and hopefully you have the same set of drawings that you're looking at and, you know, go from there, but being able to share a screen and saying, Oh, that's, that's different than what I have.
Really goes a long way in helping that communication to be clear. I dunno how many times, you know, it's, Hey, what title block do you have update? Are you there? Yeah. And that's, that goes a long way too, is to, again, clarity, he can expand that, right? If you're looking at drawing set dated, you know, whatever versus, or, you know, version, whatever Can go a long way and making that communication clear.
Yeah. And you know, I come from the days when I was building houses, we had, we had the old Nextels, you know, the big walkie-talkie bricks. And, and at that time, you know, that was, that was pretty cool. We could just, you know, be peep and buttoned to anybody's conversation at any point in time and, and demand answers.
But what we use now is, I mean, there's, there's lots of apps out there. There's. There's tons of different options. We use one called field wire specifically, and it's, it's similar to like a plan grid if you've ever seen that. It's not as robust as pro core, but it also doesn't cost nearly as much as pro core, but w with dealed wire my guys in the field have it all loaded on their laptop or on their iPads rather.
I can be in the office. We can pull up the same drawing and in real time they can be, you know, circling areas of the plans. And within seconds it pops up on my monitor and you know, or snapping pictures and pointing arrows, do doing all that stuff in an almost real time. So the possibilities are almost endless and the communication breakdowns.
Have don't get me wrong. They still happen. But what we've cut down in them significantly by, by investing in some of this, this tech for the iPads.
Yeah. And I mean, there's a ton out there. You mentioned three really good ones. You can do the same with like blue beam, creative Bluebeam studio for markups.
And you can have your own so with the applications that you talking about and field wire, that's usually like an internal. Thing with fuel wire. So I'm not familiar on field wire, but can you share markups and stuff would be owner or on a project? Or
how does that work? You can we pay for it? So with our, our licensing, yes, you can, you can export drawings so you can Mark up a drawing, attach photos, put it in report.
You can do lots of cool stuff. The only downfall with field wire. And I hope they're listening. Cause I think this is bullshit, but if you. If we go to email direct an invitation, say to an owner or a sub for that matter, that's not already licensed. They will tack that new user onto our licensing and charge us the monthly rate the second day, open it so we can give an owner access, but now all of a sudden I'm paying for their access, which maybe they can work that out in a future update.
Yeah, cause with like Bluebeam studio it's, you know, whoever has the Bluebeam studio license pays for it and then, you know, can share it with anybody. They just need to like download Bluebeam use it or to log into the studio session, which you can do, I think, mostly online. So that typically works out and most, most donors that are at least.
That I've dealt with typically have blue beams, which not like a huge, huge issue. You know, at least an owners that are dealing with like construction documents all the time. They typically have blue beam. So like a Bluebeam studio session is pretty easy. And especially like during the design phase, it's great tool to make sure that you get feedback from everybody.
And then it's all logged within like a studio session and you can export all the comments, everything from every sheet which makes it pretty nice to have as a, you know, simple markup tool for all intents and purposes on, on the Bluebeam side.
Yeah. We, we have not dabbled into Bluebeam yet. I've run across it on a couple of projects, but by and large, we just haven't.
Yeah, for a long time, we didn't use anything. It was paper plans and, and emails and, you know, and then that was it. Or, or taking a picture with your phone and bouncing it back and forth. So in our eyes, we, we made a huge leap when we invested in field wire and it's, it's relatively inexpensive for what it does.
And, and in all honesty, I'm sure we're only just scratching the surface of the capabilities of the software of the app. But we use it. Like I said for communication on a daily basis is great. We've automated all of our forms. So all of our daily reports, our time sheets, expense reports you name it.
We we've automated those and, and input that. So they're, they're all built into the app now. But it really comes in handy doing punch list type work. So we can very easily communicate to our subs, to the owner. And you, you circle the area on the plan. You can take a picture of the deficiency. You can put a quick description, you can tag it.
The possibilities are really endless on that end. And it's super helpful.
Yeah, I've done a few punch lists. This was years ago cause I've used a bunch of different stuff. When it comes to punch lists because being an engineer on the child side, it's whatever the, the GC is using on the project. So we've used a plain grid to do it, which works out pretty well.
And you can filter by discipline, all that kind of stuff. Use Procor we've used just a few others over the years. And and some of it is to just like walk in with the GC and there, they got their iPads. They're putting it on their system. And we just go through, so it's all done. You know, we're not taking a license or anything.
And just walking through as we go, they do the assignments. And that works pretty slightly for a punch list. You know where we're walking, it, it might take, the walkthrough might take an extra. Say an hour or two to go through and make sure everyone's typing out everything as you go. But it's like when I get back to the office, I don't have to spend the next three hours, you know, typing up the punch list or handing it to somebody to do it.
It was all just done in the field and it, I don't think it. I mean, so one of the projects I punched was like a 40,000 square foot dorm. When GC would walk in with a iPad in it, it might've taken an extra half hour, hour. It wasn't, you know, crazy then than it would've been for me to like, you know, hand-write everything
out, right.
Let's go back with your Nelo and you you're a yellow notepad. And. Try and remember
it all. Yeah. Yeah. Or take pictures and make sure that you pick the right picture linked to the right thing and then format it back in the office and where we were formed. We had to. To do punch lists to then, you know, get somebody to proof it, so then send it.
So that was a, that was a big deal. Cause then when you, when you got back to the office, you're done, right. It was already done. The subs had it instantly you know, and everybody could move forward and they weren't waiting on a report. They weren't waiting on whatever. And I think that's a, that's a big step forward in a lot of these punch list items, especially when people are trying to close out a job, you know, you want that.
As quick as possible. And while everyone's still there before moving to the next job.
Yeah. And from a financial perspective, a lot of our contracts won't allow us to release any retention payments until that punch-list has done. So the quicker we can be through that, the more efficient we can be, the better it is for everybody across the board.
Yeah, and I mean the biggest thing and a little more past this, but the other thing that I, I found that was most often that we had to knock was OEMs. Those were like the biggest things, engineers that like, we wanted to make sure all of our maintenance people had or the OMS. And that was the last thing to ever get submitted.
They would finish punch list. Well, before an ONM was submitted. You know, and usually those could have been done months before close. But that's, that was like the one thing we were typically very big stickler score.
Yeah. We'll butt heads on that because I'm, I'm part of that problem. And, and, you know, we're, we're very organized on our closeout, but sometimes getting all that sort of stuff and the warranty information, it, you know, in my mind, by the time we hit that point in the project.
Yeah. I'm already gone. I'm running in the next project and you know, it, it's, it's a, it's a breakdown in our system for sure. Cause you need it. It's it's definitely important, but that's one of those ones where we're still trying to keep up with.
Yeah. And I mean, like, I've just done enough lead projects too with like commissioning agents and everything else, and they're looking for them and then, you know, their maintenance guys are involved and especially cause most of the projects that like I was heavily involved with where we had, it was repeat client, right.
It was a university system. It was a. Healthcare system. So I dealt with the same four people all the time on that's five minutes. So closing out, I mean, it's, it's different if you have. You know, like you're dealing with developers or, you know, clients that probably either don't care or it's a one-off. But with, with clients where you're dealing with the same poor people, you know, in the same maintenance staff, all that kind of stuff, and they want to get up and running Asia is just something that we always ran into.
So we were, because we knew our clients were big stickler sport, so, but again, like. It's all in the communication pieces of it. It's, you know, in commercial instruction, there's so many forms. There's so many things to fill out that, you know, if you're, if you're looking to move from residential to, and I don't know how many here we have listeners that are in the residential side, but commercial, you know, it's, everybody understands.
There's a lot of paperwork, you know, you can do a residential project with like 10 pieces of paper and be totally fine. And commercial not even close. So it's, you know, like everything guys is making sure that your paperwork spilled out. You both the, for the engineering side, like OEMs were a big thing for us, right?
As well as like punch lists for, you know, Matt, you probably have some other things that you're a big stickler on that we, we didn't care about at all. Pardon.
Yeah, our daily reports are huge. And I will bark at my guys endlessly about these because you know, there's a huge amount of paperwork. Like you said, everything is, is checks and balances.
Everything is documented. That's one of those documentation items that we insist on because God forbid, if something happens and. You know, we get pushed back once in awhile and they go, it's, it's a pain in the ass. It's all this extra work I've got to sit down at the end of the day. And, and field wires helped that because they can actually kind of work on their daily throughout the day.
They, you know, as things are happening as trade show up, they just tap, tap, tap, and it's added. But our concern is as GCs as owners of this company obviously is that it's not, if something comes up tomorrow or even next week, it's in seven years when. You know, something breaks down, something happens. And if I find myself in a courtroom and they're asking me what happened on January 21st, 2021, and it's 20, 28.
I can't remember yesterday. There's no way I'm going to remember, you know, that far along. So to be able to have now it's electronic, but even a paper copy of, okay. Here's what happened. We had five masons on the site from this company we had. 10 carpenters on the site from this company, they were doing this, this and this.
We had these deliveries, we had all of this equipment and it's Bulletproof at that point. So that is our, our internal kind of sticking points that we, we stomp our feet about quite frequently.
Yeah. And again, like the communication, the documentation is so, so critical and I cannot stress this enough. I mean, new and experience everybody like this is, this is a big deal.
So it's, you're never going to be questioned on what happened yesterday, for the most part like you, you know, or last week, nobody cares, but you will be questioned about it seven years from now, 10 years from now. Right? When the roof leaks, when you know something broke and it's, you know, the 12 year Mark right before warranties, like that's when it's going to happen.
Not. Not next week, not at substantial completion, you know, it's going to be some point after that. So it's, it's important to understand the criticality of it. But over a longer time horizon, not something that's, you know, next week, next month. Heck probably not even next year. It'll be five, 10, 15 years from now.
Yeah. You know, we, we kind of joke, but you know, we offer what we call inside our one-year lifetime warranty. So, I mean, we, we operate on relationships. We operate on repeat clientele. So within reason, you know, at any point in the future, if something goes wrong, we're at the very least going to, going to try and rectify a situation at the very least.
So to have records, to know who to talk to At some point in time to know who to point at, or, you know, grabbed by the collar and dragging to the office. It's we gotta have it. And you know, that's frankly, that's why I personally hate running projects myself. We're, we're actively recruiting right now for a project manager because I hate all the paperwork.
I like the conceptual side of it. I like the front end all the record keeping it's necessary and I will, I will stand up for that in front of anybody, but it's. It's tedious at best, but it's necessary.
Yeah. And I mean, the, this goes into hiring a little bit and finding the right people in the right seats.
You know, you need somebody as a project manager as a, you know, site super to, to care about that type of stuff. Right? You need somebody that, that cares about the details. They don't, they don't need to be, you know, business development. They don't need to be chatty Cathy. Right. They need to be the people that.
You know, make sure all the I's are dotted. T's are crossed, you know, signatures are where they're supposed to be and do every day. Right? You need somebody that's super detailed oriented to be in those positions and making sure that, you know, not only core values, but that they're a fit for that type of personality.
And far too often, I've seen that. Not. Fulfilled in companies. You know, that it's the next promotion, right from You know, maybe your project engineer to project manager. Same thing happens on the design side where they're, they're a great engineer. They should not manage projects you know, or great something else.
Right? They're a great manager, but you know, don't let them design anything. You know, it happens both ways, right? Where some people are much better at management and getting everything done, clearing the path for the people to do the things that they're great at. So this, it really goes to in all these, like with communication too, right?
Somebody that's good at communication should be in the seat that needs to communicate a lot.
Yes, definitely. And another one of my big pet peeves, as far as communication goes to get back onto that is I have to know what's going on at my jobs before my clients do. Right. So if, if there's an issue that comes up, which happens, I don't know, every day something comes up, I have to be aware of it before my clients do, because the worst thing that can happen in my eyes and from a credibility and, and responsibility standpoint is if a client or an owner calls me and starts asking questions about.
An issue on site that I don't know about that, that degrades confidence so rapidly and in a, in a business that is built on you know, no like trust a hundred percent you can't afford to lose any confidence or trust that you've gained. You worked so hard to gain. So that's a big it's not a sticking point because our, our guys in the field are very good about it.
But it's, it's hugely important that they have to let me know immediately if it's, if it's something of substance, I don't need to know if, you know, Johnny put the wrong color, paint on the wall, go ahead and just fix it. But if Johnny knocked over an HPAC unit with a sky track and we've got a hole in the building, now I need to know that immediately so that I can prepare and do damage control on my end before it becomes a bigger problem.
So let's dig into like, Albums, you know, like that are in that similar vein of, is this going to go two ways and it's, there's nuance in here, right. Of you need to know. But at the same time you also need to have a game plan. And how, how bad is it? What are you doing to fix it? Right. It's one thing to make the call and, you know, something happens.
But at the same time, like you need to have a. In place, you need to start moving forward to fix that. A specific thing versus just raising, raising the red flag and then sitting there, right. That doesn't quite quite work. So it's, it's nuanced and like, Hey, you know, we're, we're on it. We're we raise the flag, we're on it, we're doing this you know, keep me updated type of thing.
But maybe walk through a. A scenario or a make believe scenario, if you will. And something that's, that's come up that you've experienced like that, man.
So you just nailed it. And I guess I misspoke, I don't want my guys to call me with every little thing and I surely do not want them to call me with problems.
I want them to call me with solutions. Hey, Matt, this happened, this is how we're already working to fix it. And. If I don't agree with it, I'll voice my opinion, but you know, I'm not just here to be a sounding board and to fix everyone's problems. We all have to be leaders of our own areas. But a good example I can think of is in 2019, we were building a carwash for a client and it was about us high end of a carwash is I've literally ever seen the owner spared, no expense.
I mean, Over the top great owner where for a group project, but it was, it was an expensive carwash it's carwash still, but really expensive carwash. So it was designed with with attic trusses. So there was storage space up above everything, so they can store their chemicals and paperwork and whatever.
The engineer designed it with attic trusses, spaced 12 inches on center. Which is absurd. And I don't know that the last time you'd been on a wood-frame job site, I'm no huge guy. I can tell you. I have a real hard time squeezing between trusses that are 12 inches on center. And I'm probably one of the smaller guys on my job sites.
So we're loading trusses up. There's no room to move and they get done with the entire wing. It was kind of an L-shaped building. So they got down with one of the legs. And I get a call from my, my then superintendent who is no longer with us. And he tells me that the doorway is on the wrong side. So basically basically in a nutshell, they put about half of the trust is a backwards.
I didn't know about it until the owner already knew about it. So the owner called me first asking what was going on. Then I called my superintendent. He told me, well, yeah, this happened. And this happened, what should we do? I said, well, Mr. Superintendent, you tell me, what should we do? How are we going to fix this?
Because I'm an hour and a half away, you're there looking at it. You'll let it happen. How are we going to fix this? And unfortunately on that project, we had, you know, a few issues like that, and it boils down to a lack of communication, a lack of. You know, chain of command communication where, you know, this owner was very involved.
Rightfully so. So he was out there probably more than I was sometimes, but for my guy to be talking with the owner about something like that, something major before I even knew about it, it really, it stirred the pot in a bad way. It eroded confidence. It, and it just caused a lot of problems kind of throughout the project.
Yeah, and this there's a, I can go a couple of ways in this one. You know, the communication chain, the two is how important, like review is through a process, right? So. Yeah, communication for sure. Up and down the chain, like as things are happening going, and I don't know how many walls I've either heard or seen built that were just raw.
Right. And then everybody gets mad when you got to tear them down. They're not in the right place or they didn't have the, you know, the wall section wasn't right. And at that point, a lot of people are probably pretty bad, but it like has to happen. So it's, it's not only, you know, the communication up and down the chain, but like, don't be afraid to review as things go along.
Right. So they get to the point of. Very expensive returns. It's never an overturn we're in construction. We build things so you can try it again, but you know, it's the, to not be afraid to have that communication and like, Hey guys, let's, let's just double check this, make sure that you know, or something doesn't seem right here.
Do we need to make the call to somebody? Right? Whether it's the architect, engineer, the owner, somebody. You know, if something doesn't seem right, because more often than not, you know, the team, and I'm saying that as a full thing, you know, owner architect, engineer, so GC, like everybody's more than willing to like, come and look at something to make sure it's right.
You obviously don't want to do that for everything. Like it's like overboard. But then it's like the boy pred Wolf, but you know, people are more than willing to, to make sure that things go right or to do a sample. Right. You see the masonry all the time. You know, they build a small little test section.
Hey, is this good? This is what you want to see. Or mortar color and all that kind of stuff. So. But don't be afraid to have that for a grade to their disciplines. Like, again, don't be afraid to make the call or put up a sample or anything like that to have something to go by moving forward on the project.
Yeah. Because so much of construction is it's really a, it's a blend of art and science right there. There's finesse involved in everything. It's not just banging hammers or, you know, stacking steel and. There's a delicate balance there. So you want the guys on site, the superintendents to be watching everything you want them to be buttoned in and reviewing and asking questions when appropriate, because there there's two things that are our most expensive on any project.
One is rework and the second is guys standing around because they can't work. And, you know, as it as a quote unquote paper GC. That is one of our biggest jobs is to make sure that it's, it's a well tuned orchestra out there that everybody's got space. Work sites are prepared ahead of time for each trade.
There are not guys stepping over top of each other, but all that comes down to communication on the superintendent side and. So when, when they wake up, they can successfully do that and orchestrate it and stay involved and keep their eyes on, on what progress is being made. Ask the right questions.
Things go a lot smoother. Cause nobody wants to do it again. Ever. It's costly. It's inefficient. It kills schedules, it kills budgets. But then on the flip side, nobody wants that superintendent that won't shut up. And that is constantly yapping in their ear and, and asking them to check things and redo things.
And so, like I said, it's just this delicate balance and not everyone can do it. I've seen guys go out there and nicest guy in the world, you know, I I'd be friends with him, but from a superintendent standpoint, they just can't hack it because they don't have that. I joke with my guys. And I said, you know, to be a good superintendent, you got to have at least a little touch of asshole in your personality.
You got it. You got to be able to be rude sometimes because you know, construction is still an old man's or an old industry, you know, there's, there's rough grizzly guys and girls out there that you question their work and they're going to bark at you, but sometimes it's required and like any good. Pack of wolves are pack of dogs.
You gotta build the bark back and some guys just can't do that.
Yeah. And boiling down, like some of this in the communication side of things is you need to have like some of the best projects that I've been on is. It's not no communication, but it's minimal, right? It's communication at the right times at like an OAC meeting, right on our architect and cm. Like those are the, you know, those are good points to bring everything up.
And then, you know, maybe you hear stuff every little bit between there depending on what's going on, but like the smoothest projects I've ever been on is you just hear about stuff at the OAC meeting. Everything's on track. It's on schedule. Nothing broke. And, and those are, those are great projects, right?
Or the other ones that I've had that are maybe more complicated, I'll still say they were great projects, but I had maybe more frequent communication. So as the engineer record with the electrician, since I'm the electrical engineer with the electrician and their foreman, because. You know, stub is, it was a complicated project, complicated renovation, and they just wanted to make sure that, Hey, for this thing, can we do this?
Yeah, man, that, or no, we need to do this. Right. And that type of communication is also great. You know where it's a question answer or, Hey, can you come and look at this? Sure. You know, can I be there in the morning? Yeah, we'll be here. You know, those are, those are also great forms of communication, but the biggest, like the best projects is OAC updates, you know, monthly meetings with everybody and it's, it's going great.
But if projects are more complicated or something went wrong you know, I want to hear directly from the sub or whoever prior to that meeting so that when the owners in the room, you know, everything's worked out. And nobody's blindsided nobody's, you know, caught off guard or mad at the other party for not, you know, telling somebody whose responsibility it is to help fix it.
Right. So again, come with solutions or, you know, in those like OAC meetings, Hey, we had a problem here. This is what we're doing to fix it. We're on it. Right. That's what the owner wants to hear at the end of the day. But the, the team I'm saying that as you know, GC. So engineer, you know, design team, everybody needs to be on the same page going into that meeting and nobody should really be caught off guard and the owners should be just adequately updated
for sure.
And you know, most of the field communication can just stay in the field, but nobody works their best when they're caught off guard. Right. I mean, it happens all the time. You got to think on your feet, that's that's part of life. But I would much rather be able to prepare for a meeting, even if it's just an hour before then be sitting in a meeting and have a bomb dropped in my, in my lap and have to deal with it then.
So, you know, unless it's catastrophic, most of the field communication, I don't need to know about you know, I, I like hearing when, when my guys or one of our subs will reach out to. Our architect or engineer to try and hash things out or talk things through, especially before they're looking at it saying, well, that looks wrong.
You know, they catch it ahead of time. I love hearing when they're having those talks and then, you know, whether they like it or not, it always gets back to me somehow, but it's a way nicer conversation when I'm on the phone with my engineer and he's saying, Hey, by the way, you know, so-and-so called me last week.
We worked through this and that, and it was really cool to see him being proactive and it solved. A potential issue before it was an issue. Perfect. I can't ask for anything better than that because, you know, again, I keep going back to the, I play project manager right now a lot. I shouldn't probably be doing that and I don't like doing it.
So the less I have to spend on the daily stuff of a project is the more time I have to go find the next project to make sure that we're not just eating today. We're still eating. In a month in a year, in 10 years.
And that's the important thing of knowing what your role is within a company, right? As an owner, you've got very different responsibilities than, you know, somebody who's an employee, right?
Like that's a different vibe, but to know, to know where your, your role is and, you know, ultimately at the end of the day, we're all in sales, we're all in business development and especially in construction, right. If you're you're You know, day laborer or you know, an apprentice or, you know, even a journeyman through that in the trades.
And you're nobody likes working with you. Well, one of two things can happen. You're either going to get fired or to your company will get not necessarily fired, but your company will no longer be picked for those projects. And you'll eventually not have a job because the company goes out of business because nobody likes working with you.
So we're all in the business of sales and to make sure that, you know, up and down, like the communication is good and you're not, you know, overly dickish to anybody on the site, right? Like there's always some little ribbing here and there, you know, guys, but you got to know where that line is and it takes some not only self-awareness, but awareness of others and what their tolerance for a rib is you know, and where you just stay clear of it.
But. You know, job sites, right? You gotta take your legs if you're going to get them. So don't, don't give them with, can't take them and, but understand that like everybody's in sales, communication is really key to this whole thing, right? In field to the office. Everybody up and down, you know, no matter what your role is with on a, on a job site, within a construction firm than a design firm, it's, you're still in sales, right?
It's if the client doesn't like working with you, your company goes away. And like for most of us, our companies are one, not big enough to where you have a lot of people to work on different projects or with specific clients. And for the most part, most clients aren't doing work all the time. To, you know, warrant a particular team for particular client.
So it's, it's, he's like that you know, keep on in mind and, you know, a good recommendation goes a long way in the construction industry.
I love that reputation is everything. I literally just had a meeting this morning with a, a prospective business development guy that we may, we may bring into the organization and.
And I had just that conversation with them that, listen, we're a small shop, small organization. We are a sales based organization, which means that everyone from the top to the bottom and side to side is a salesman salesperson. We we can't feed the beast unless we can and find new leads and convert them into projects.
So yeah, you nailed it. Everybody's gotta be a salesman. Everybody's gotta be always of that mindset, that the conversation you're having today with whomever, it could lead to the project we're building tomorrow. You never know, especially in Southeast Michigan, but I assume it's, it's like this, you know, nationwide, the construction industry is it's, it's almost incestuous.
It's so small, you know, there may be hundreds of companies. But everybody knows everybody, everybody hears everything and it goes outside of construction. It starts spinning off into the owners and the, you know, the different shops and, and, and everything. So to keep that sales focus and to keep your reputation is, is absolute key.
We actually started a program at Schafer where we. And won't get into all the boring details, but we pay guys for lead for qualified leads. And if that eventually turns into a project that we were building, we basically offer a commission, not on the gross profit. So it incentivizes our guys to always kind of have that in the back of their head.
You know, I could sell the next project and it could be pretty lucrative. You know, if you sell, if you bring in the right type of lead, it could be very lucrative.
So I have a, a really interesting story on that. So from a, and this is all communication guys, this is straight up all communication. It's who, you know, in construction, you know, as a, I don't care who you are design GC, like anybody within the construction field probably have 10 clients, right?
You're not, we're not selling books and widgets on the internet. You know, we're doing things in real life. And, you know, as a design firm, as a whatever, like one I'm just in one office, right? Like, so as a, you know, some of these larger firms that got a hundred offices, you know, and then each of those offices have probably 10 clients, but by and large, you've got, let's just call it 10.
Oh for easy numbers, but it's like 10 clients is what you have, right. That are millions of dollars into your organization. So it's all in network, you know, and out of those 10 peop organizations, you probably have four GA contact people. So you're talking, let's just say 50 people. Right? So again, your list does not mean to be a mile long, 50 people, maybe double it to a hundred, right?
It's not a huge list of people that you have You know, to make a very successful construction company design or engineering or anything, it's truly not that big. So the power of network is I posted about on LinkedIn the round table that we're having this Tuesday. So it'll be today on LinkedIn and.
Friend shared it. And somebody contacted him. He and this guy in particular is not in the construction industry. He's just adjacent through it. He's part of the entrepreneur network and RJ that I'm a part of shared it. He called him and was like, Hey, tell me about this construction thing. It turns out he works for one of the five biggest contractors in the world.
And his like uncle owns it. So. You never know where this stuff is going to come from. And okay. Like doing the right thing, putting your best foot forward. And especially when you're talking sales in particular and this again, it's all communication guys. I don't care if it's through the field, through somebody else to, you know, buddy in the barbecue, you know, drinking beers.
Like it doesn't, it's, it's the same. Right. Be who you are. Show up the same show up. You know, nice, good attitude, you know, goes a long way and all this stuff, but you just, you never know where it's gonna come from doing the right thing for somebody who knows who they're connected to and you can, it comes back, you know, and don't worry about the time or when it's going to come back.
Because again, in construction, we all know that the long game, right. We're talking about five years from now, when they're ready, they remember that conversation they had with, you know, somebody somewhere. So just remember it's a very long game and show up, you know, with who you are in everything that you do.
And it's going to it'll pay off in the long run again, it might be hell going through a project sometimes, but just know at the end of the day, like doing the right thing is always gonna pay off for you
at some point. Yes. And stick to your core values. You know, we're, we'll probably do an episode someday here on core values alone, but it's.
So powerful and your reputation is everything. It can take you years and years and years to build your reputation and it can take seconds to destroy it. And you know, there's another saying that I try and teach my guys and I teach my kids too. And then if you do really, really good for one client and really impress them, they might tell five of their closest friends, their closest context about how great you are, and there'll be a champion for you for sure.
That same client, if you piss them off or you do something really bad or, or you've really performed poorly, they'll tell a hundred people and that's, that's just life. So just stick to your values. You got to communicate effectively, you got to be open and honest and ahead of things. And it's all about preserving reputation in this industry.
Yeah, it guys, you can go back to didn't have a set on core values with Kevin tomorrow of Roseville, Rocklin electric. And in the last year he Forex his company, you know, and that was with moderate growth by sticking to core values and keeping the right people on he could've grown mower. But his top line revenue was four X.
And they'll probably do 10 X this year. And 21. So again, all by sticking to core values, having good clients, good reputation, taking the right projects, saying no to the wrong projects. So it, it matters not just to bottom line, but you'll probably feel better at the end of the day, too.
Definitely.
Hey guys, I think we have probably beat communication to death in this episode. There's a ton of tools out there for you to use. You know, Matt mentioned field wire, blue beam playing grid. Pro-core tons of great solutions out there for communication from office to field, doing daily reports close outs, punch lists, everything and anything in between.
So again, you don't have to be the sharpest techno technologically to understand these tools. Not, you know, hire somebody in their twenties to figure it out for you and get your own. That's really what it amounts to. Right? It's like training your grandma to use an iPhone and now they can't put it down.
You know, figure it out, like go and get some training. All these companies are more than happy to do training or, you know, there's qualified vendors to help you through all that. So find the tools, use the tools. It'll help you to communicate effectively and understand that there's some nuance through everything that you do, right?
Construction is just as much art as it is science and increasing your communication abilities, your ability to talk and email effectively goes a long way. Matt. Is there anything else that you want to add to close us out here? I,
I think you nailed it, Dylan. Only thing I would add is that if, if anyone still has one of those Nextel walkie-talkie phones, I would be all about resurrecting it.
Cause I still think they're cool.
Yeah, between that and Nokia block phone, I don't think you can destroy them.
Yeah,
guys, that's going to be this episode of the construction corner podcast. Again, remember to tune in today. So the 26th of January, 2021, we're doing our round table. It's going to be live on LinkedIn.
So mine (Dylan's) LinkedIn page or on my, Kowabunga Studios, Facebook page or Kowabunga Studios, YouTube you can go into and live, make sure to submit your questions and we'll have a good episode talking tech from everybody within the industry. So guys, that's this episode of construction corner podcast, and we'll talk to you next time.