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Chad and Matt dive right into the question of the day: Why is growth necessary for construction companies? Growth means many different things, and they start by clarifying that growth doesn’t always mean higher revenues—sometimes, it means developing process and adding stability. Meanwhile, other times, it has everything to do with increasing revenue and profits. Either way, central to the need for growth is the fact that great people want to have something to strive toward; with grow comes opportunity. In the X vs. Y section, Matt and Chad argue about whether you should show your team your org. chart. We hope you enjoy and learn how to grow your business effectively through this month’s episode. Subscribe to be notified when new episodes are released on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or LinkedIn. If you’re looking for more ways to engage with the wider construction community, check out our affiliate podcast, The Morning Huddle Construction Show, hosted by Chad Prinkey, Well Built Construction Consulting and Stacey Holsinger from Steel Toe Communications. Tune in every Tuesday morning at 9 A.M. EST on LinkedIn Live for discussions with A/E/C experts, advancing the construction community. 0:00 What is the "Well-Built" series? 2:00 Check-Ins! 8:55 How do you get started into creating growth for the long term? 16:15 Why is it important to maintain growth? 20:46 How does revenue growth tie into growth for other parts of the business? 28:30 Should we share our future organization chart with our staff? 39:05 What are we reading and what are our biggest takeaways? 42:25: Check us out at Well-Built Consulting.com! Thank you to our sponsors! Well Built Construction Consulting https://www.wellbuiltconsulting.com/ Steel Toe Communications (Digital Marketing for Contractors) https://www.steeltoecommunications.com/ Katz Abosch (Tax, Audits and Accounting) https://www.katzabosch.com/ Lawrence Law (Legal Challenges for Contractors) https://lawrencelawllc.com/ Sandy Spring Bank https://www.sandyspringbank.com/ Genesis AEC (Full Service Architecture, Engineering, Construction in Life Sciences) https://www.genesisaec.com/ Marsh McLennan Agency https://www.marshmma.com/?utm_source=... Construction Links Network: https://constructionlinks.ca/ For additional episodes and information visit: http://www.themorninghuddleconstructionshow.com/ Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/82318299/admin/dashboard/ Subscribe to our weekly e-newsletter for the latest updates: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/sl/Ro2QrVt/Themorninghuddlepodcast?__cf_chl_tk=9S8PSaN6zCOUNBhPtHXE.qk8HWtzxNNluBDlsEYhZkg-1726511898-0.0.1.1-8361

In this episode, Michael Fortinberry, co-founder and COO of Protiv, discusses whether it's time to rethink the hourly pay system in the construction industry. Together, we'll explore innovative compensation models to boost productivity and efficiency, offering valuable insights for those looking to improve workforce performance through new pay structures. 6:28 Guest Intro: Michael Fortinberry Protiv.com 7:30 Close the Gap Between In-Person and Zoom Calls 11:08 Performance Models 12:06 Innovating Compensation 14:17 Shaping Company Culture: Numbers Based 17:07 Who are you when you are at your best? 18:42 How well do you know your people? 20:06 Merit Based Compensation Structures 22:09 Connecting Labor Budget: Getting Your Crew to Understand the Goals 23:18 Stop with the 1099s. 24:42 Incentives and Bonus Structures 25:59 Goals for Incentive Programs 26:28 Transparency 27:30 Creating New Ideas to Get the Job Done 29:40 How the Software Works 37:50 Case Studies and Examples 41:00 How Bonus Structures are Paid Out Thank You to Our Sponsors: Well Built Construction Consulting https://www.wellbuiltconsulting.com/ Steel Toe Communications (Digital Marketing for Contractors) https://www.steeltoecommunications.com/ Katz Abosch (Tax, Audits and Accounting) https://www.katzabosch.com/ Lawrence Law (Legal Challenges for Contractors) https://lawrencelawllc.com/ Sandy Spring Bank https://www.sandyspringbank.com/ Genesis AEC (Full Service Architecture, Engineering, Construction in Life Sciences) https://www.genesisaec.com/ Marsh McLennan Agency https://www.marshmma.com/?utm_source=... Construction Links Network: https://constructionlinks.ca/ For additional episodes and information visit https://www.themorninghuddleconstructionshow.com/about Subscribe to our weekly e-newsletter for the latest updates. https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/s...

While many construction companies focus on technology for efficiency and transparency during construction, significant opportunities remain in applying advanced tools to the preconstruction phase. Michael Ho, CEO of Bespoke Metrics Inc. discusses the importance of tech stack integrations, growing concerns around data ownership and security, and the role of prequalification in preconstruction. 1:00 Sponsors 7:23 Bespoke Metrics Intro 9:17 High Risk Prequal and Bringing Structure 10:30 Owner Developer GC Risk Management 11:20 Not Pricing Risk Appropriately/Eliminate Low Bidder Wins 12:30 Prequal will grow 16:00 Working on Prequalifications 16:12 Larger GCs Tracking Metrics and Data Points 17:09 Is Prequal Part of Precon? 17:56 Consider Personas: Partner Vs. Risk Who is the decider? 19:40 May have a Predisposition or desire to get a cheap price? 23:08 AI in Prequal Process 26:51 Data Collection, Data Verification and Standardization 28:28 Generative AI 31:30 All-In-One Solution? 33:05 Concept of Building Tech like an App 36:25 Tech Overload, Need Fewer Choices 37:43 Get a Tech Plan Now 38:48 Choose Best in Class 40:20 Has Tech made us more profitable yet? 41:20 Apples to Apples Pricing: Flat to Lower- Price Tech Accordingly 42:49 Invented Terms and Pricing Thank You to Our Sponsors: Well Built Construction Consulting https://www.wellbuiltconsulting.com/ Steel Toe Communications (Digital Marketing for Contractors) https://www.steeltoecommunications.com/ Katz Abosch (Tax, Audits and Accounting) https://www.katzabosch.com/ Lawrence Law (Legal Challenges for Contractors) https://lawrencelawllc.com/ Sandy Spring Bank https://www.sandyspringbank.com/ Genesis AEC (Full Service Architecture, Engineering, Construction in Life Sciences) https://www.genesisaec.com/ Marsh McLennan Agency https://www.marshmma.com/?utm_source=... Construction Links Network: https://constructionlinks.ca/ For additional episodes and information visit https://www.themorninghuddleconstructionshow.com/about Subscribe to our weekly e-newsletter for the latest updates. https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/s...

In this episode, we’re joined by Scott Arias, CEO of ACE Consulting, and guest host Tom Hughes, VP of Construction Operations at Genesis AEC, to tackle the vital topic of construction scheduling. Scott breaks down the essentials of time impact analysis (TIA), explains the importance of "frag nets," and dives into how the critical path influences scheduling. With real-world examples and actionable advice, Scott makes it easy to understand how accurate scheduling drives productivity and protects your business. 6:57 Introduction Scott Arias 8:25 What is Time Impact Analysis? 12:00 When to Submit Change Order for a Contract Extension 12:45 Example of Contract Extension 14:56 Retrospective Claim Analysis 16:52 As-Built Schedule 17:12 Modeling Perspective: Design Change 18:20 Firm Impact of Overall Project 21:15 What is a “Frag Net?” 23:10 Who has the financial impact and owns the responsibility? 25:19 Need a Basic Understanding to Negotiate a Change Order 28:35 Keep Proper Project Documentation 30:16 A Dozer Costs Money if Its Sitting 34:13 AI Impacting Scheduling 33:30 Tools Used for Time Impact Analysis 36:36 Concept of 3D 37:39 Integration between Primavera and Procore 40:45 Baseline the Schedule 43:40 The Navy Used the Critical Path Method to Construct Submarines 45:30 Marking Up the Schedule Thank You to Our Sponsors: Well Built Construction Consulting https://www.wellbuiltconsulting.com/ Steel Toe Communications (Digital Marketing for Contractors) https://www.steeltoecommunications.com/ Katz Abosch (Tax, Audits and Accounting) https://www.katzabosch.com/ Lawrence Law (Legal Challenges for Contractors) https://lawrencelawllc.com/ Sandy Spring Bank https://www.sandyspringbank.com/ Genesis AEC (Full Service Architecture, Engineering, Construction in Life Sciences) https://www.genesisaec.com/ Marsh McLennan Agency https://www.marshmma.com/?utm_source=... Construction Links Network: https://constructionlinks.ca/ For additional episodes and information visit https://www.themorninghuddleconstructionshow.com/about Subscribe to our weekly e-newsletter for the latest updates. https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/s...

In this episode, we’re thrilled to welcome Dr. Estelle-Marie Montgomery, Executive Director of the FH Faunteroy Community Enrichment Center. Over the past four years, Dr. Montgomery and guest host Mark Drury have collaborated on workforce development initiatives, and today, she shares her inspiring journey to Deanwood along with her vision for Washington DC’s first Resilience Hub. We’ll dive into how resilient communities benefit employers seeking talent, the importance of candidate vetting in construction bootcamps, and how the construction community can support this exciting project. Don’t miss this insightful conversation! 0:36 Meet Our Sponsors 2:22: Introduction of Guest Host, Mark Drury. 3:45 Mark’s role in the DC Students Construction Trade Foundation 5:15: Introduction of Guest, Dr. Estelle Marie Montgomery Executive Director, F.H. Faunteroy Community Enrichment Center 10:16 What is a Resilience Hub? 11:36 How does building a stronger community help fill our pipeline? How do we find people to fill our First Source Agreement? 16:49 Success with Construction Bootcamps and Investing in People Upfront 22:40 How Construction Companies Can Support Local Communities 23:33 Workforce Development Plans and Cohorts for Candidates 25:53 Next Steps for Faunteroy Center and How Construction Industry Can Assist 25:44 Current Funders 32:04 Ward 7 Flooding Issues and Mitigation Projects 35:45 Parting Words on Workforce Development and Careers in Construction Thank You to Our Sponsors: Well Built Construction Consulting https://www.wellbuiltconsulting.com/ Steel Toe Communications (Digital Marketing for Contractors) https://www.steeltoecommunications.com/ Katz Abosch (Tax, Audits and Accounting) https://www.katzabosch.com/ Lawrence Law (Legal Challenges for Contractors) https://lawrencelawllc.com/ Sandy Spring Bank https://www.sandyspringbank.com/ Genesis AEC (Full Service Architecture, Engineering, Construction in Life Sciences) https://www.genesisaec.com/ Marsh McLennan Agency https://www.marshmma.com/?utm_source=... Construction Links Network: https://constructionlinks.ca/ For additional episodes and information visit https://www.themorninghuddleconstructionshow.com/about Subscribe to our weekly e-newsletter for the latest updates. https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/s...

Whether you are a minority contractor or not, this episode delves into what new opportunities exist within the electric vehicle industry and infrastructure. Specifically, our guest, Larry Bullock from the US Minority Contractors Association discusses how minority contractors can capitalize on the growing EV industry, and what partnership opportunities may exist for non-minority contractors. 00:46 The Morning Huddle Construction Show Sponsors 2:12 Catching Up with Stacey and Chad, Return of the Show Season 7, Episode 1. 4:00 Well Built- Chad's New Book 6:42 Steel Toe Communications discusses launch of Instagram and TikTok @CHAT_CTE 7:35 Introduction of Guest, Larry Bullock 12:57 The Economic Boom of the Transportation Industry. 15:10: 1/3 of where we need to be in fulfilling the 500,000 Station Promise, and half way through funding. Lots of opportunity. 15:53 The Joint Office for Energy and Transportation, www.driveelectric.gov/contact 17:12 Justice40: Goal is 40% of every dollar spent under the $5B operation should be spent in disadvantaged communities. 23:50 Which Non-MBE firms are partners with MBE firms. 28:00 Become Bid Ready 30:58 What kind of trades will be involved in installing and maintaining EV. 33:41 17 Electric Car Business Ideas: You Get in Where You Fit In 46:49 Closing Thank You to our Sponsors: Well Built Construction Consulting https://www.wellbuiltconsulting.com/ Steel Toe Communications (Digital Marketing for Contractors) https://www.steeltoecommunications.com/ Katz Abosch (Tax, Audits and Accounting) https://www.katzabosch.com/ Lawrence Law (Legal Challenges for Contractors) https://lawrencelawllc.com/ Sandy Spring Bank https://www.sandyspringbank.com/ Genesis AEC (Full Service Architecture, Engineering, Construction in Life Sciences) https://www.genesisaec.com/ Marsh McLennan Agency https://www.marshmma.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=ppc&utm_term=ntl&utm_content=resilience&utm_campaign=ntl-brand-awareness-mma&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw3P-2BhAEEiwA3yPhwBStkU82B0UALO_Ro1GKvn_sfhRJaY7TaEfwisj92ciDKSpYt52NwhoCPAcQAvD_BwE Construction Links Network: https://constructionlinks.ca/ For additional episodes and information visit https://www.themorninghuddleconstructionshow.com/about Subscribe to our weekly e-newsletter for the latest updates. https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/sl/Ro2QrVt/Themorninghuddlepodcast?__cf_chl_tk=9S8PSaN6zCOUNBhPtHXE.qk8HWtzxNNluBDlsEYhZkg-1726511898-0.0.1.1-8361

Making money on every project is essential for a construction company’s success. That said, the profit motive can sometimes get in the way of building strong, lasting client relationships. In this episode, Matt and Chad help us to strike the balance between profit and relationships. Also, a great conversation about the right timing to hire a Business Development Manager. If you enjoy this content, consider subscribing, and for those looking for more, you can visit our website at https://www.themorninghuddleconstructionshow.com/. Subscribe to be notified when new episodes are released on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or LinkedIn. If you’re looking for more ways to engage with the wider construction community, check out our affiliate podcast, The Morning Huddle Construction Show, hosted by Chad Prinkey, Well Built Construction Consulting and Stacey Holsinger from Steel Toe Communications. Tune in every Tuesday morning at 9 A.M. EST on LinkedIn Live for discussions with A/E/C experts, advancing the construction community. 0:00 What is the "Well-Built" series? 2:53 Check-Ins! 6:11 Do you put client relationships before profit? 15:59 How do you maintain your relationships with customers? 32:28 What simple rules do contractors need to follow when considering if they should put relationships before profit? 36:20 Should you hire a business development manager? 56:05 Where do you see a business manager's role ending in the sales process? 1:01:18 What are we reading and what are our biggest takeaways? 1:11:30 Thanks for joining us! See you next time! Thank you to our sponsors! Well Built Construction Consulting https://www.wellbuiltconsulting.com/ Steel Toe Communications (Digital Marketing for Contractors) https://www.steeltoecommunications.com/ Katz Abosch (Tax, Audits and Accounting) https://www.katzabosch.com/ Lawrence Law (Legal Challenges for Contractors) https://lawrencelawllc.com/ Sandy Spring Bank https://www.sandyspringbank.com/ Genesis AEC (Full Service Architecture, Engineering, Construction in Life Sciences) https://www.genesisaec.com/ Marsh McLennan Agency https://www.marshmma.com/?utm_source=... Construction Links Network: https://constructionlinks.ca/ For additional episodes and information visit: http://www.themorninghuddleconstructionshow.com/ Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/82318299/admin/dashboard/ Subscribe to our weekly e-newsletter for the latest updates: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/sl/Ro2QrVt/Themorninghuddlepodcast?__cf_chl_tk=9S8PSaN6zCOUNBhPtHXE.qk8HWtzxNNluBDlsEYhZkg-1726511898-0.0.1.1-8361

In this episode of The Morning Huddle Well Built Series, Chad and Matt discuss why so many contractors “can’t find good people” and what must be done to end that cycle in your business. In the X v Y segment, there’s also a lively discussion about firing slow or fast that leads to excellent lessons for anyone struggling with how to handle underperformers. Subscribe to be notified when new episodes are released on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or LinkedIn. If you’re looking for more ways to engage with the wider construction community, check out our affiliate podcast, The Morning Huddle Construction Show, hosted by Chad Prinkey, Well Built Construction Consulting and Stacey Holsinger from Steel Toe Communications. Tune in every Tuesday morning at 9 A.M. EST on LinkedIn Live for discussions with A/E/C experts, advancing the construction community. 0:00 What is the "Well-Built" series? 5:35 Check-Ins! 9:10 Why do construction companies have trouble recruiting people for positions? 13:30 How do you overcome the mindset of high expectations when recruiting? 24:43 What is "poaching" and what is our stance on it? 31:35 Should you fire fast or slow when handling under performers? 43:20 What is a positive view you can have for firing someone? 50:51 What are we reading this week and what are our biggest takeaways? 56:19 Thank you to our sponsors! Thank you to our sponsors! Well Built Construction Consulting https://www.wellbuiltconsulting.com/ Steel Toe Communications (Digital Marketing for Contractors) https://www.steeltoecommunications.com/ Katz Abosch (Tax, Audits and Accounting) https://www.katzabosch.com/ Lawrence Law (Legal Challenges for Contractors) https://lawrencelawllc.com/ Sandy Spring Bank https://www.sandyspringbank.com/ Genesis AEC (Full Service Architecture, Engineering, Construction in Life Sciences) https://www.genesisaec.com/ Marsh McLennan Agency https://www.marshmma.com/?utm_source=... Construction Links Network: https://constructionlinks.ca/ For additional episodes and information visit: http://www.themorninghuddleconstructionshow.com/ Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/82318299/admin/dashboard/ Subscribe to our weekly e-newsletter for the latest updates: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/sl/Ro2QrVt/Themorninghuddlepodcast?__cf_chl_tk=9S8PSaN6zCOUNBhPtHXE.qk8HWtzxNNluBDlsEYhZkg-1726511898-0.0.1.1-8361

0:23 Independent Electrical Contractors: Skills USA Involvement and Workforce Development 2:58 How IEC works with parents and students to train future electricians. 3:24 Jacksonville, NC Teacher and Skills USA Coach chats about his all girl Teamworks Team: Carpenter, Plumber Bricklayer and Electrician. 4:40 Skills Jam Documentary 5:39 Teacher Involvement with SkillsUSA. 7:22 Using Associations to connect schools to businesses. 7:52 Otis Elevators talks about careers in the Elevator Industry. 9:36 Why all trades can transform over to the Elevator Industry. 10:08 Career Pathway Showcase for Career Services: Students Discuss Why SkillsUSA 10:42 National Technical Honor Society looking to make quality connections with Top Contractors: 100k Active Members, 65k New Members NTHS.ORG 12:47 Don't shy away from a school that doesn't have a construction program, have a conversation with a CTE instructor. 13:14 Skills USA Competitors talk about their involvement in the largest skilled trades competition. 14:07 General Dynamics builds destroyers for the navy, and also visits high schools to develop relationships with students. 18:06 York Technical College, SC student is set to compete in the HVAC category. 20:51 Recruiters from McCarthy on fall and spring apprenticeships and internship programs. 22:58 Interplay Learning talks about non-traditional academics, and consistently adding new modules to their program to help businesses, schools, and non-profits who want to learn about the trades in a digital format. 26:52 CBRE employs over 45k technicians all over the world. 29:18 Virtual Reality Demo 30:20 Two Skills USA student competitors talk carpentry and drywall.

Has this happened to you? A high-potential employee with a bright future shows up one day and tells you, “Sorry, but I got a job offer for more money. I’m leaving.” If you’re like most contractors, the answer is a resounding YES! In this episode, Chad and Matt discuss if and when employees really do leave for money, and what other hidden factors are at play. Here’s a hint: it often comes down to leadership and culture! You will walk away from this episode with some tools to better retain great people, and be a company where people want to work. After that, the guys debate whether it’s feasible to hire executives from outside, or if you need to promote from within. Let us know who you think won the debate in the comments!

Construction company owners are often highly capable sellers and doers. They built their business from scratch to where it is today for a reason! This all works fine until one day, they wake up and realize they've created a time-eating, stress-producing monster with themselves at the center. What they need is a team of trusted leaders inside their business to help them take control and reduce the pressure on a single owner. They need an executive team. In this episode, Chad and Matt talk about how and why owners should create an executive team. Also, they fight about work-from-home arrangements in the construction industry in our XvY segment. Subscribe to be notified when new episodes are released on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or LinkedIn. If you’re looking for more ways to engage with the wider construction community, check out our affiliate podcast, The Morning Huddle Construction Show, hosted by Chad Prinkey, Well Built Construction Consulting and Stacey Holsinger from Steel Toe Communications. Tune in every Tuesday morning at 9 A.M. EST on LinkedIn Live for discussions with A/E/C experts, advancing the construction community. 0:00 What is the "Well Built Series?" 3:00 Check-ins! 3:57 What is the "Well Built" book? 6:18 What was Chad's inspiration for writing "Well Built?" 12:57 Why do we build executive teams? 23:05 What is an executive team? 26:37 What is the difference between a management team and an executive team? 32:54 How do you go about setting up your executive team? 35:23 Where do you start when choosing your executive team? 47:25 Home vs Hybrid workplace 57:33 How do we create a positive work environment? 59:40 Can working from home in the construction industry be successful? 1:01:25 What are we reading and what are the biggest takeaways? Thank you to our sponsors! Well Built Construction Consulting https://www.wellbuiltconsulting.com/ Steel Toe Communications (Digital Marketing for Contractors) https://www.steeltoecommunications.com/ Katz Abosch (Tax, Audits and Accounting) https://www.katzabosch.com/ Lawrence Law (Legal Challenges for Contractors) https://lawrencelawllc.com/ Sandy Spring Bank https://www.sandyspringbank.com/ Genesis AEC (Full Service Architecture, Engineering, Construction in Life Sciences) https://www.genesisaec.com/ Marsh McLennan Agency https://www.marshmma.com/?utm_source=... Construction Links Network: https://constructionlinks.ca/ For additional episodes and information visit: http://www.themorninghuddleconstructionshow.com/ Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/82318299/admin/dashboard/ Subscribe to our weekly e-newsletter for the latest updates: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/sl/Ro2QrVt/Themorninghuddlepodcast?__cf_chl_tk=9S8PSaN6zCOUNBhPtHXE.qk8HWtzxNNluBDlsEYhZkg-1726511898-0.0.1.1-8361

Military veterans possess a unique skill set that can significantly impact white-collar and blue-collar roles in the construction industry. Their transition from military service to construction is seamless, and they bring valuable experience. In this episode, Zach Scheel, co-founder and CEO of Rhumbix, and Scott Friend, founder of The Construction Veteran, discuss their experience being Veterans in construction. They'll explore tools that enhance efficiency and address the frustrations field employees face. Additionally, they share insight into how hiring veterans mitigates labor shortages and enriches the industry. Tune in to discover how transitioning veterans can embark on a rewarding construction career! 🔗 Follow Scott on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-friend-a8a05723/ 🔗 Follow Zach on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zscheel/ 🔗 Follow Chad on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chad-prinkey/ 🔗 Follow Stacey on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/staceyholsinger/ 🔗 Subscribe to Show YouTube Channel: / @themorninghuddleconstructionshow Follow Us: The Morning Huddle LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/themorninghuddle/?viewAsMember=true The Morning Huddle Construction Show Newsletter: / https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/sl/Ro2QrVt/Themorninghuddlepodcast Visit Our Website: https://www.themorninghuddleconstructionshow.com/about Thank You to Our Sponsors: Well Built Construction Consulting https://www.wellbuiltconsulting.com/ Steel Toe Communications (Digital Marketing for Contractors) https://www.steeltoecommunications.com/ Katz Abosch (Tax, Audits and Accounting) https://www.katzabosch.com/ Lawrence Law (Legal Challenges for Contractors) https://lawrencelawllc.com/ Sandy Spring Bank https://www.sandyspringbank.com/ Marsh McLennan Agency https://www.marshmma.com/?utm_source=... For additional episodes and information visit www.themorninghuddleconstructionshow.com Subscribe to our weekly e-newsletter for the latest updates. https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/s...

Join Greg Sizemore, Joe Xavier, and Haley Moyers from Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) as they delve into the critical topic of mental health in construction. Discover how ABC is revolutionizing industry attitudes and explore their transformative initiatives like the Total Human Health Initiative and the pioneering Vital Cog program. Gain actionable insights into implementing mental health support within construction companies while hearing inspiring stories of contractors championing worker wellness. Thank You to Our Sponsors: Well Built Construction Consulting https://www.wellbuiltconsulting.com/ Steel Toe Communications (Digital Marketing for Contractors) https://www.steeltoecommunications.com/ Katz Abosch (Tax, Audits and Accounting) https://www.katzabosch.com/ Lawrence Law (Legal Challenges for Contractors) https://lawrencelawllc.com/ Sandy Spring Bank https://www.sandyspringbank.com/ Marsh McLennan Agency https://www.marshmma.com/?utm_source=... For additional episodes and information visit https://www.themorninghuddleconstructionshow.com/about Subscribe to our weekly e-newsletter for the latest updates. https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/s...

The Well Built Series is a special podcast designed for decision-makers in the construction industry, as well as those aspiring to be leaders. Hosted by Chad Prinkey and Matt Verderamo, this series delves into the best practices perfected by successful contractors. Join us as we explore the “Do’s” and “Don’ts” that transform good companies into truly “Well Built” organizations. Whether you’re an industry veteran or just starting out, this podcast offers valuable insights to enhance your construction journey.

AI and automation are reshaping the construction landscape. Technology enhances efficiency, safety, and cost-effectiveness by optimizing equipment usage, predicting maintenance needs, and streamlining processes. Companies that stay at the forefront of technological advancements position themselves strategically, ensuring they are well-prepared to address the evolving needs of future owners. Tune in to this engaging conversation with Adam Stark, CEO of Jet.Build, where we discuss how a top-down approach driven by construction owners, combined with contractor readiness, can shape the future of sustainable construction.

In this episode, we delve into the private side of the public-private discussion. We're joined by Neal Rackleff, Attorney at Law at Rackleff LLP, to uncover the challenges faced by professionals dealing with government entities. We’ll explore process-oriented reasons behind the distinct behaviors of government employees versus their private sector counterparts. Neal dispels common notions about the public and private sectors, sharing his unique experiences. Tune in to understand Neal’s impactful journey—from private roles to federal government positions and back again.

Join us on The Morning Huddle as Jeremie Harrison, Senior Project Manager at Leebcor Services, LLC, and guest host Tom Hughes, Vice President of Genesis AEC, delve into the pressing need for proficient Project Managers (PMs) in construction. Discover how the Project Management Professional (PMP) program provides a transformative solution, equipping PMs with vital expertise in contract language, project scheduling, and construction sequencing. Tune in to explore the impact of skilled PMs on project completion, efficiency, and innovation in the industry.

Join The Morning Huddle for an insightful conversation with Jennifer Todd, President of LMS General Contractors, as she explores the nuances of unconscious bias and its impact on the construction industry. Drawing from her experiences, Jennifer reveals how these underlying attitudes shape the industry, potentially impeding efforts toward inclusivity and diversity. Discover strategies for cultivating a more equitable future in construction as Jennifer uncovers the effects of unconscious bias and shares her insights.

In this episode, Pat McGettigan, Vice President of Excellerate Manufacturing, joins us to share his unique insights into modular construction. From UPS data centers to driving innovation in off-site manufacturing, Pat's expertise sheds light on the pivotal role of modular solutions amid labor shortages. Throughout the discussion our guest host, Tom Hughes, Vice President of Genesis AEC, also shares his valuable knowledge, enriching the conversation on the convergence of manufacturing and construction.

In this episode, join Chuck Rakich, Superintendent Safety Manager at Henley Construction Co., Inc., as he reveals the keys to running projects that meet OSHA standards and cultivate a culture of safety excellence. Chuck passionately emphasizes the transformative power of viewing OSHA inspections as collaborative partnerships rather than dreaded encounters. Tune in as Chuck shares invaluable strategies for establishing a robust safety culture from the highest echelons of management down to the frontline workers, setting your job sites up for unparalleled success. Don't miss out on this episode packed with essential insights that will empower you to navigate OSHA inspections seamlessly and turn them into catalysts for improvement and collaboration.

As the economy goes, so too will the construction industry. It always helps to learn about economic trends and their likely impact on construction. Niladri Sannigrahi is the Senior Director of Product Management at Liberty Mutual Surety, and his passion is economics. He'll join The Huddle to talk about interest rates and their impact on developer-driven construction, the likely impact of the 2024 election on the construction economy, and many more topics to help you plan for what's ahead.

Traditional leadership programs often overlook the hurdles obstructing women's path to leadership in the construction industry. During this interview, we'll confront these barriers head-on. By identifying the real issues holding women back, we can lay the foundation for genuine transformation.

One of the challenges is the double bind - Women are told to be more assertive and confident if they want to advance to leadership roles. Then they’re reprimanded for being too bossy or called aggressive.

We often hear from well-intentioned men who want to contribute but are unsure how. During this interview, we'll talk about how to shift the burden of change off of women’s shoulders and create a shared responsibility for change across your entire organization. We'll also share evidence-based strategies that you can use to accelerate the path to leadership for the women in your company.

Mike Henderson has served the construction industry as a part of the Associated Builders and Contractors for over 30 years. In his role as the President of ABC Baltimore, his sights have turned to positively impacting the minority contracting community as well. Chad and Mike will discuss an innovative approach they're both working on in the city of Baltimore to create profitable growth for the minority contracting community and the good of the overall construction industry.

In this episode, we'll debunk myths around government contracting, navigate the challenges of transitioning from commercial to government work, and uncover hidden opportunities in this dynamic sector. The stories and insight provided by Eric Coffie, founder of Govcon Giants, promise a thought-provoking journey into the world of government contracts. Join us for an enlightening conversation that might reshape your business strategies!

In this episode, we explore the evolving landscape of social media strategies and transformative tactics in the commercial contracting sector. We'll examine the strategic collaboration where marketing, sales, and business development should converge, making "collaboration" a vital force in content creation. Our guests, Matt Graves, founder of Construction Yeti, and Jonathan Cor, founder of Customer Growth, share unique insights and uncover out-of-the-box approaches for securing optimal coverage and selecting the most impactful social channels. Join the conversation as we dive into innovative strategies to up your game in the competitive commercial contracting world.

In this episode of The Morning Huddle, explore the role of schedulers, debunk misconceptions, and delve into the necessity of schedules for all projects. Gain insights into software preferences, critical paths, and the complexities of delayed claims. Discover the evolving trend of a proactive scheduling model focused on efficiency, execution, and the challenges subcontractors face with CPM schedules. Uncover the value of a two-week look ahead and pull planning in this concise discussion on construction scheduling intricacies.

In this episode, we dive into the captivating world of Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) with our guest, Ben Nichols, President of Harkins Builders, Inc. With over two decades of experience, Ben sheds light on the inner workings of Harkins' ESOP, dispelling myths and highlighting its role as a robust accountability and culture-shaping tool in the construction industry. We explore the tax benefits, recruitment strategies, and value-maximization tactics employed by Harkins, showcasing how being an ESOP isn't just a retirement plan but a key to empowering employees and building lasting wealth. Tune in for an engaging conversation as Ben passionately advocates for broader adoption of the ESOP model and shares Harkins Builders' success story beyond traditional retirement planning.

In celebration of National Apprenticeship Week, we have designed a special episode that focuses on the recruitment of seniors and recent graduates into the electrical industry.

We'll explore the benefits of choosing a career in the electrical industry, debunk common misconceptions, and uncover the vast opportunities that exist within this exciting field. Our guests will share their personal journeys, providing firsthand accounts of the hands-on training, career growth, and job satisfaction that can be found within the electrical industry. From apprentice success stories to the mentorship and support offered by contractors, you will hear inspiring narratives that showcase the rewards of pursuing a career in this dynamic trade.

As governments and school districts recognize the massive need for employees in the construction industry and the phenomenal opportunity that need presents to their students and constituents, many are finally investing time, money, and energy in developing successful CTE programs. Our guest, Catherine Schoenenberger, joins us to share a time-tested and proven methodology she has been overseeing for years.

In this episode, we delve into the fascinating dynamic of semi-rivalry and discord between contractors and engineers. Join us as we explore each profession's crucial roles, uncover the valuable lessons they can glean from one another, and discover how they can unite to drive success as a cohesive team. Our guest, Sol Rosenbaum, owner of SR Engineering and Consulting, is a seasoned mechanical engineer who supports due diligence firms and building owners in the CRE world. The founder of Sol, sets an excellent example for younger engineers by inspiring them through mentorship. Join us as Sol lends his insights to this insightful discussion.

It has been proven that exposure to the construction industry for school-aged kids inspires many to join the industry upon graduation. By the time kids are in high school, many have preconceived notions about the industry that make them hard to reach. In this episode, Mr. Jarrett joins us to share his story about the first CTE Program in Middle School in Philadelphia and the impact it's making on young lives.

With over 20 years of experience and certifications across multiple trades, Jason Blackwell was in a wreck that changed the trajectory of his life. Approached with the opportunity to teach, Jason found ways to inspire and support his students through his CTE program. In 2022, as the high school industrial maintenance teacher at Escambia Career Readiness Center in Brewton, Alabama, Jason was named a grand prize winner of the 2022 Harbor Freight Tools for Schools Prize for Teaching Excellence, winning $30,000 for himself and $70,000 for his program. That then led to his current role with the Alabama State Department of Education and dreams of running for Governor. Join us to uncover what it takes to master craft training in and out of the classroom.

Sadly, too many construction projects fail to meet schedule and budget expectations and more than a few come completely off the rails in every mark in every year. Owners, architects, general contractors, and subcontractors alike retreat to their corners and focus only on protecting their selfish interests. In this episode, construction attorney Michael Wagner joins us to explore what happens to cause a project to become derailed, what behaviors worsen the situation, and what to do if it happens to you.

Great leaders are formed through their experiences. From the interactions they have with bosses, colleagues, and mentors to the education they receive from books and classes, our construction leaders are a product of the development they’ve received. In this episode, Vice President of Construction at Foulger-Pratt, Brett Harton, joins us to share his own leadership development journey and advice for current and future leaders alike on how we can build a better leadership culture in the industry.

A significant number of our field employees do not speak English as their first language. This language barrier has contributed to thousands of injuries and even deaths each year. In this episode, two-time Morning Huddle guest, Oscar Garcia, joins us to discuss how he is using artificial intelligence to breakdown language barriers and create safer job sites for Hispanic workers.

Countless women in construction have been sacrificing comfort and jeopardizing their safety for years by adopting PPE designed for male bodies. Dave Rosenbluth National Sales Manager for Utility Pro Wear will join us to discuss a manufacturer’s perspective on Equity and Access to Safety Apparel for women. This episode contains a discount code for apparel, so be sure to tune in!

While Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a part of our lives and work for many years now, the release of ChatGPT in 2022 has brought the possibilities of this advancing field to the forefront. People like Morning Huddle guest, Stjepan Mikulić dedicate themselves to researching the latest advancements and exploring the most viable technologies AEC firms can implement in the near term. He joins us to simplify the topic and help our audience understand how they might apply AI in their construction businesses.

For any business, cash is crucial to health and success. Employees and vendors must be paid, or the whole thing comes to a halt. Contractors, in particular those who must purchase materials for installation, face a high-risk environment dependent on their customers’ timely pay. Scott Peper from Mobilization Funding has a front-row seat to the unique cashflow challenges faced by contractors, and he joins The Morning Huddle to discuss the topic and share strategies for maintaining a healthy cash position.

Most construction companies recognize opportunities to improve their business. Few have a track record of capitalizing on those opportunities and driving positive change. In the fast-paced environment of designing and building, companies become accustomed to their problems and focus on getting their work done instead.

In a first for The Morning Huddle, host Chad Prinkey will become a guest and share his experience driving organizational change as a consultant for the construction industry over the past 15 years. We’ll discuss why companies get stuck and what employees and executives can do to get better today.

The spaces we occupy for our work can make a world of difference in profitability. Our guest, Nitin Govila, is the head of Sales and Marketing for global textile manufacturer Serge Ferrari. Their materials are integral to a wide array of construction products, ranging from acoustical panels to PT concrete. He’ll share insights on constructing workplaces with sustainability and profitability in mind from the start.

Guest: Nicole Coates

Guest: Heather Groves

Guest: Catherine Schoenenberger

Guest: Doreen Bartoldus, Jacobs

Guest: Heather Groves

Guest: Catherine Schoenenberger

America's top-performing contractors in every field have certain things in common. One of those things is a strong culture that allows them to maintain consistent results for customers and employees as they grow. Few contractors have done this more effectively than Ruppert Landscape. With over 2,000 employees across 8 states (and rapidly growing!), Ruppert has built a culture of success.

Our guest, Phil Key, is the President of Ruppert Landscape. He joins us to discuss how Ruppert has built and maintained their culture and why it has worked so far!

New construction laws are passed virtually every session, leading to challenges and opportunities for contractors to navigate. Join us and our guest, construction attorney Jackson Nichols to discuss the 2023 construction legal landscape so you can learn about the legal changes that may impact your business.

Many construction Project Managers have never received an education in their craft. Finding the time to travel to a training facility and sit for hours can be challenging for the average PM. We have so much going on and limited time, but quality professional development creates efficiency and reduces stress. In short, it is always worth investing time in training that will elevate your performance.

Join me, Stacey, and our guest Jim Rogers, a LinkedIn [In]structor who dedicates his time to delivering top-quality, easy-to-attend, online training programs for construction professionals right here on LinkedIn.

Virtual design and construction (VDC) as a tool for building better spaces is quickly becoming the norm, but our guest for The Morning Huddle's 47th episode, Darren Young, believes in taking things a step further.

What if your VDC efforts were aimed at reducing waste, creating scalable and resilient technical frameworks, increasing data quality, and leveraging opportunities to generate new revenue?

Join us as we discuss aligning proven VDC technology with compelling business goals to build a better future!

$7M in baby boomer businesses will sell by 2030. Many of those will be building contractors. Whether you’re in the market to sell or potentially buy one of these firms, or you simply want to understand the changing ownership landscape of the construction industry, join us for this episode. We have Eric B. Pacifici, Partner with SMB Law with extensive experience with acquisitions joining us for the discussion. He is leading small to mid-sized businesses to get smart about buying and selling in this dynamic market.

Ryan Lanser, the Dirt Jedi, joins our podcast to talk about how his company has applied GPS and Drone technology to revolutionize how site work contractors estimate and plan their projects. We'll talk about how it works, what value it adds, and the future of this exciting tech.

If you've ever been a part of a project team that doesn't communicate and where every entity acts selfishly, you may have thought, "there must be a better way." You're not alone with that thought, and you're right. There is.

The Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) method is a teamwork-based approach to construction. Imagine pulling the GC, architect, engineers, and specialty contractors together to work collaboratively throughout preconstruction and construction. Kevin Hollenbeck has experience with real-world applications of IPD and joins us to share his story to help bring more attention to this game-changing approach.

Economic uncertainty has become normal for all of us. Contractors who are busy today are just waiting for the music to stop. While nobody can predict economic conditions with certainty, smart companies pay attention to the trends and plan accordingly. Nobody may be better at reading the tea leaves for the construction economy than our guest, Anirban Basu.

Anirban joins The Morning Huddle a second time for a fun and enlightening discussion about the latest economic trends impacting the construction industry.

The Morning Huddle gets a jump start on Women in Construction Week with this episode featuring three successful women working in construction. Each of our guests has their own unique story to share. Through their stories, we’ll explore what can be done to draw more women to the industry and inspire women in construction everywhere to follow their passion.

We also hope to hear inspirational stories from our live audience during the show!

Transcript:

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00:12
Speaker 1
All right, it's morning huddle time. Good morning. I'm not saying it works. I wish you nodding. Godspeed with all of that. I think that's really nice. I'm not sure what kind of success you're going to have with that today because the world, my friend, has changed. Right? A lot of American construction workers, they have completely different.

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00:33
Speaker 2
These awards have a huge, like, criteria that you have to fill out and they usually have a community service or community relations portion, you know, the most.

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00:44
Speaker 3
Productive with a high performance value. And, you know, sometimes it's 11 o' clock at night.

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00:52
Speaker 1
Funny, isn't? Yeah, not for me.

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00:55
Speaker 3
Not for me.

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00:55
Speaker 1
At 11 o', clock, I am guaranteed to be snoring. So foreign. It is morning huddle time. I'm Chad Prinky here as always with co host and producer Stacy Holzinger. Stacy, how are you today?

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01:14
Speaker 2
I'm doing great. I'm very excited for this episode. I got my new red toe boots that I posted yesterday about and looking forward to learning more about space to feel, build and, you know, Morgan's company with her woman work gear. So it'll be a fun episode.

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01:32
Speaker 1
It sure will. I'm excited as well to get into this. I'm gonna work really hard today to be a listener. We have three guests. We've got Catherine Hart, we've got Emily Sulaby, and we've got Morgan Dawson. The three ladies joining us today are Women in construction. We're getting a jump on Women in Construction Week, which is next week. We're first to market. We're first to market on that. But no. So I'm really excited to hear some awesome stories about these women and you know, I, I think put the audience in a position where, you know, they might be inspired, they might be, they might find interesting connections and ways to work with and support the people who we have on the show. So I'm psyched as always, Stacy. You put together a really cool list of guests.

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02:29
Speaker 1
So with that, why don't we go around the horn a little bit and just have each person introduce yourself just who you are and what you do. And I'm gonna want to get into your stories, but let's just orient ourselves, briefly with like a, a, whatever 10 second intro and then we'll go deeper. Why don't we start with Catherine Katherine Hart.

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02:48
Speaker 3
Hi. So my name is Kathryn Hart, Tennis. I recently got married. I am the owner and podcast host over at Space2Build and I also work in business development for D2 LLC out of Rockville, Maryland.

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03:01
Speaker 1
Awesome lot going on. Look at you. You're similarly all over the damn place. Like Stacy and I. I love it.

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03:09
Speaker 2
Good.

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03:10
Speaker 1
And a fellow podcaster. I want to talk more about that. That's great. All right, Emily, why don't you introduce yourself?

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03:15
Speaker 4
Yep. I'm Emily Salaby, founder of Juno Jones. We make stylish safety boots that are made especially for women's feet. I'm also the host of the Hazard Girls podcast, which is a podcast all about women in the construction industry and other industries that are male populated.

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03:32
Speaker 1
I love it. Awesome. All right, cool. I know Stacy talks about your podcast. I feel like I've got a, you know, get invited to join a ladies podcast, maybe. I will definitely check that out, but Stacy has mentioned. All right, and then we have Morgan.

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03:53
Speaker 5
Hi, everyone. My name is Morgan Dawson. I am the founder of Dawson Workwear, and during the day, I am a development associate for Orchestra Partners. So.

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04:01
Speaker 1
Awesome.

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04:03
Speaker 5
No podcast yet, though.

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04:05
Speaker 1
Well, you know, not everybody has to have a podcast, but. But I will tell you, they are extremely stressful if you're interested.

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04:14
Speaker 5
I might have to leave that to you all.

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04:16
Speaker 1
Yeah, thanks. Yeah. All right, well, good. So. So I'd like to, you know, hear your stories. And I think the, the thing that we're interested in this episode and kind of building on is our understanding of the experience of women in construction. How you got involved, how you found your current niche, the space that you like to operate, and what you're doing today, you know, in some more detail. We certainly got the highlights, but I think it would be good for our audience to understand how you got where you are and exactly where you are today. So let's go in reverse order. We started with. We'll start with Morgan.

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05:00
Speaker 5
I got into the construction industry in college. Actually, I went in undecided, and I really didn't know what I wanted to major in. And I met a friend who introduced me to a professor at Kent State University in Ohio. And then I joined the construction management program and it's kind of history. From there, I got an internship with Hensel Phelps, a general contractor in the D.C. area. And as I'm getting into, the construction industry is kind of where Dawson Workwear was slowly born. Along the way, I didn't know what to wear to the job site, so I went just wearing jeans and, you know, whatever boots I could find. And then I got a full time job offer at the end of my internship, which was amazing.

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05:41
Speaker 5
So I went Back to Ohio, finished school, came back to D.C. and the whole thing kind of started again. What do I wear? I tried a couple different options, including little boys pants. And when those still didn't fit, I was like, okay, I'm going to take things into my own hands. And Dawson Workwear was born. So I couldn't really manage the, you know, 12, 13 hour work days and Dawson Workwear. So I started to look around for a new job, which brought me to Birmingham, Alabama. I worked for Orchestra Partners and I'm on site kind of managing the construction, managing the contractors, making sure everything's going smoothly. And then in my spare time, I'm running Dawson Workwear.

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06:22
Speaker 1
Oh my gosh, that's awesome. What a hustle. I love it. And so, and so why construction management? That professor was just something clicked or you know, what happened that made you go from undecided to decided?

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06:36
Speaker 5
I had a little bit of background in construction. My dad's a mason, so I kind of grew up on the job site with him. And then talking to my professor, I knew I didn't want to do something that I'm sitting at a desk every day, same thing over and over. So when he was talking about the problem solving and what goes on at Construction site, I was sold right then and there. And I joined like the next week.

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07:00
Speaker 3
Nice.

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07:01
Speaker 1
That is awesome. So having the story there is having personal experience of being in the field and specifically having this realization that like, I can't find pants, which is something I can't even wrap my head around. But I get, I can only imagine. Yeah. As I think about it, right, there's not a lot of work wear that's particularly, you know, that I think is intended for women. So, so you find that and you become passionate about it. And so you're. How, how long has Dawson Workwear been around?

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07:41
Speaker 5
So it, the idea was born, I believe in May 2021, and then in December I kind of had started production and all of that. And I just launched this July. So I've only been, you know, functional for eight months now or so. And it's been amazing. I love what I'm doing and I can't wait to take it even further and do more than just one pair of pants.

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08:05
Speaker 1
I love it. I love it. That's so cool. All right, good. And one last little question about your day job. Is this, is this a construction management company that you're working for or a third party?

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08:20
Speaker 5
It's a development company. So I Kind of stepped back from the field so much. Like when I was working for Hansel Phelps, I was in the field every day managing the trades directly and then managing our self perform work as well, which I loved so much and I do miss it. But with orchestra partners, I'm kind of more of the ownership role instead of the contractor.

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08:40
Speaker 1
Got it. So you're out there as a representative representing the owner's interests on staff, saying, you know, this looks good, what about this?

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08:50
Speaker 5
That, inspections and stuff like that, reporting progress, all that good stuff.

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08:55
Speaker 1
Awesome. Very good. All right, cool. That's a really interesting background and I totally understand how you got to where you are. It's so exciting to have such a brand new business and I can only imagine the pride and fear that you're experiencing every day at the same time.

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09:12
Speaker 5
Yep.

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09:14
Speaker 1
Well, that's great. So let's hear from Emily. Emily, what's your story? How did you get to where you are?

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09:20
Speaker 4
Yes, very similar to Morgan's story where I needed something that didn't exist on the market. But my background is actually in law. I was a domestic violence victim advocate. I was a lawyer. And so I did that for a while and then ended up switching careers. My husband and I took over a family business in the truck driving industry where we do truck driver and heavy equipment training. So that's triple a school of trucking. But we built that company and shoot from a mom and pop into a larger business with national reach. And so I'd be running from the office to the job site and meeting with clients, traveling, doing all of these different things, being around heavy equipment. And the only boots that I could find that would actually protect my feet were these ugly, clunky, you know what boots that you've seen.

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10:16
Speaker 4
And the problem was twofold. It was they weren't fitting me right, they were too loose and I just didn't feel safe. But also they just didn't look good with what I was wearing. And I, yes, I like fashion and I like to present myself in a certain professional way. And so it just wasn't cutting it. I began to speak to women in trucking, in the Women in Trucking organization and then other industries and people were like, yes, this is a problem. We can never find enough different. Enough different options. So the excitement was there. I have a background in shoemaking and just in shoe loving in general. I've studied shoemaking over the years as a hobby. So everything came together and we decided to launch Juno Jones.

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11:02
Speaker 1
That is amazing. And how long has Juno Jones been around.

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11:05
Speaker 4
Okay, so we launched February 11, 2020 on Kickstarter. And so if anybody doesn't know what Kickstarter is, it's a platform where you can go in and you can sort of pre order things that may never get made, but you just hope they get made one day. So went. But we knew were going to make the boots. So, yeah, we launched on Kickstart 2020. Covid hit. It was right in the middle of our campaign. But we did fund our campaign actually in the first 29 hours.

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11:36
Speaker 1
Oh, my gosh. Is the. The demand, right? Like, what an incredible unmet demand that the moment you brought something to market, it was a matter of hours by the time you were ready to roll.

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11:51
Speaker 4
Yeah, yeah.

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11:53
Speaker 1
That's unbelievable. So. So what I'm hearing, first off, you know, you. You know, sometimes you get a sense that somebody is just way smarter than you. I've had that vibe from you the whole time. Now it. So that you got that lawyer thing. Like I was. Aha, there it is. That that makes.

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12:12
Speaker 2
Right.

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12:14
Speaker 1
But. But, you know, the. Such a varied background and again, so many different things that you're passionate about. Talk a little bit about your podcast.

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12:24
Speaker 4
Oh, sure. The Hazard Girls podcast came about actually during COVID because we had this amazing community that was backing us and wanting to support Juno Jones and get their boots. But because of COVID we had, you know, of course, major delays, supply chain shut down, factories shut down. So, you know, we found ourselves with some time on our hands and people were reaching out to me, asking to be connected to each other. And I knew that there had to be, you know, better. A better way to connect everybody together. And so we formed the Facebook group Hazard Girls. And from there, the podcast grew.

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13:00
Speaker 1
Awesome. And. And what. How, like how many. How often do you do a show and what's the format?

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13:07
Speaker 4
Yeah, we do a show once a week. I work with Jacket Media Co. And they also do the Women in Manufacturing podcast. And yeah, we interview a different woman each week. And the industries vary from, you know, winemaking to finance. It's anything male. It's all about, you know, being a woman in a male populated field. So that's what we talk about.

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13:29
Speaker 1
That I can only imagine the insights that you've gotten from your guests through that experience and the common threads that, like, it really doesn't matter if it's trucking or construction or winemaking. Right. There are some really similar experiences. I want to hear more about those in a minute. Okay, so let's hear from Catherine. Catherine what's your story? How did you end up where you are?

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13:54
Speaker 3
So I did not have any background in construction, and neither did my parents. My mom's an acupuncturist, my dad's a professor. But I really got into HGTV with my mom. So we binged the crap out of it. And looking back, it wasn't healthy. But it did heavily influence how I grew up and what I wanted to pursue career wise. So between HGTV and my parents buying their first and second houses, I really got into just the built environment overall. And I thought that meant I wanted to be a designer or an architect, because that's what you saw all the women doing. But then I did an internship with an architecture firm the summer before my senior year of high school and learned very quickly that I had zero interest in being an architect.

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14:46
Speaker 3
And I already knew that engineer was just not even remotely close to an option. So I went into my senior year a little worried, But I just applied to a bunch of architecture programs and I was like, screw it, you know, it'll all unfold the way it needs to. As long as I'm getting close to that built environment, I will figure it out. So I applied all these schools and ultimately went to community college instead. And I had a friend who mentioned that Virginia Tech had a construction program. And once I started doing some digging and reaching out to an advisor, I realized, like, this is where I was meant to be, and this makes so much more sense for my personality. So then I went to tech. I pursued a degree in building construction and a degree in psychology.

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15:33
Speaker 3
And I did both those things because I have a passion for helping people figure out what they want to do with their careers and just training and mentorship and things that you naturally do in construction anyways. Which saved me from having to go get a master's degree, which is perfect.

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15:51
Speaker 1
Saved. Saved by the bell from having to go get a master's. I love it. So that journey, really, as you're experiencing all these different options in college, you know, you're just trying to get toward the built environment. Really? Why? What was it about the built environment that you were trying to move toward?

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16:15
Speaker 3
I loved, like, taking something from drawings and watching it physically come together. And it might be weird, but I loved, like, the smell of wood studs. I love just seeing, like, the skeleton of a house and then watching it change over time and get to those really nice, pretty finishes. I don't know, it just seemed fun, right? And it was constant activity. It was different day to day. And I just knew that I didn't want to be in an office setting, which is ironic now, but I just wanted to get out there and explore something that involved building the community. And I think construction is the perfect way to do that.

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17:00
Speaker 1
So talk about what you're doing Today, talk about D2 site work and talk about space to build.

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17:08
Speaker 3
All right, so I guess I need to give you a little bit more backstory. So once I left college, I went to go work for a general contractor and so I ended up working my way up to a superintendent under gc and then I moved over into subcontracting for a year and was a project manager. So I have always been very big on wanting to get a good perspective on the industry overall because we all have these different pain points, we don't understand one another. So I had the opportunity to transition out of operations and move into business development and at the same time balance a new company. So I was able to work with D2 or am able to work with D2 as a business development manager. They do site work out of Rockville, Maryland.

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17:56
Speaker 3
So I got to utilize a lot of my on site knowledge and my network that I had to just continue to help build their network and continue to be a part of that construction industry while I was building up the space to build brand and building up the podcast, which is very stressful, like you mentioned.

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18:15
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. Podcasts are a lot of fun except for, you know, they're a constant panic attack.

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18:21
Speaker 3
A lot of fun. You learn a lot.

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18:24
Speaker 1
I love it, I love it. I really do. And, and talk a little bit about space to build in general. Like, what, what's the. What's the. How long have you been doing it and what's the mission?

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18:37
Speaker 3
So much like what Emily and Morgan have done, they've found a spot where they weren't finding what they needed and they created it. So I was in a similar situation where I felt burnt out, I felt alone, and it was really weird and I was just like, you know what? I think I need an online community of women in the industry. So this all sat in the back of my head for years and I didn't feel confident enough to pursue it. And then about the end of 2019, I was like, screw it, I'm going to do it. I'm going to make this happen. Launched a website Covid hit. And all of a sudden people just felt so frantic and disconnected from one another.

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19:12
Speaker 3
And I realized that it just made so much more sense for people in this industry to have a podcast to listen to. So what I started doing is inviting different women from the industry into the podcast to talk about their career paths so we can talk about the opportunities that are available in the industry. We talked about their challenges, we talked about the trades that they were tackling. And at the end of the day, it's to create these takeaway items that blend together a sense of representation, relevant information, and just a way to introduce different people to the industry and talk about the jobs that no one else talks about to that extent. So I've had plumbers, electricians, lawyers. I've actually had Stacy on the podcast and her episode actually airs in April. And we talk specifically about marketing in the construction space.

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20:02
Speaker 3
So the idea is to share with emerging construction professionals that there are all these opportunities to be incredibly successful in the industry and you don't have to follow what school tells you is the common path. There's so many cool opportunities. And then outside the podcast, I'm creating different resources, building community, hosting events. You name it, I'm working towards it.

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20:25
Speaker 1
Awesome. Awesome. All right, so I've got some specific questions that I want to ask to each of you, given your different backgrounds that, you know, really will speak to the experience of women in construction, women in this environment. And the first question I'll ask is to Morgan. When you came through and you know, obviously leaving company names aside, all that type of stuff, just when you came through, your experience entering the construction industry out of college, spending time in the field, actually hands on, when it was at its best, what, you know, what was the experience for a woman in construction that made you feel included, welcome, things like that. And, and maybe what were some of the moments when it wasn't at its best? You know, how did that experience kind of show up?

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21:20
Speaker 5
That's a great question for inclusion. My team, like my project management team, was so supportive, which was honestly what made me feel so comfortable in the industry. If I had any issues, they were like, come to me, we can talk this out. I had a female mentor in the construction industry, which really helped as well. So I would just go to my team, you know, talk about any issues. It doesn't have to be women related or not. And they were just a constant support system to me, which was amazing. Also, the trades out there were so supportive as well. I mean, as long as you're willing to learn and respectful out there, they will have your back, which I learned right away and I took advantage of.

‍ ‍

22:04
Speaker 5
When I have felt a little disrespected as a woman, I noticed it's like typically the older men, you know, the men that are closer to the retirement age, which no offense to anyone that age, but the younger guys were always super supportive and the older men were the ones that were kind of uncomfortable with me in their space. But again, having a support system, having a mentor is definitely something I would recommend to any woman in the construction industry.

‍ ‍

22:30
Speaker 1
What I, what I love about that two big takeaways I have there is, you know, is you just double underlined is having a woman as a mentor, finding a woman as a mentor. So if you're a young person, a young woman in construction, being able to partner up with somebody who's kind of been through it, experienced it, can give you a little bit of the lay of the land. That sounds immensely valuable. And then the second thing that I took away from that was it really is all about how you show up. Like I don't know how to explain it, but you know, you have to be respectful, you have to be willing to learn, you have to be right.

‍ ‍

23:01
Speaker 1
All these types of things, which is the same rule for anybody if they want to be treated well in, you know, in whatever as a new person in whatever industry they're entering into. And so there is that aspect of it that it's a two way street and you have to have personal ownership for how you show up.

‍ ‍

23:16
Speaker 5
Right. The worst thing you can do is go out there and pretend like you're a 22 year old that knows everything. That will very far right though.

‍ ‍

23:24
Speaker 1
Though. My guess is, in all honesty, my guess is that 22 year old guys get away with that easier than 22 year old women. Right. You know what I mean?

‍ ‍

23:33
Speaker 5
Like, because right away, but after, you know, after you gain the respect of these men out there, they will have your back. So they were actually a little more lenient with me than some of the men out there.

‍ ‍

23:45
Speaker 1
Aha.

‍ ‍

23:46
Speaker 5
Well, the young men out there.

‍ ‍

23:47
Speaker 1
Interesting. Interesting. All right, cool. Okay, so that was. I'll shift gears over to Emily and I want to hear from all of the conversations that you've had with all of these women in male dominated fields. What feels to you like the, the most common threads of how these women are thriving and being successful in these male dominated fields.

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24:18
Speaker 4
Yes, I. It's a great question because I've done about 120 episodes now and that's about how many women I've spoken to and who have told me their stories. And I would say that a really interesting common thread is that many of these women have figures in their past, in their childhood or in their upbringing, or in their young part of their career who are men who have supported them to reach their goals, to know that they had these careers as options or even just, it doesn't even have to be about career. A lot of times women tell me about their dads who taught them how to fix bar cars and doing that gave them that confidence to know that there were not limitations on them because of their gender.

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25:08
Speaker 4
So I would say that common thread really is having men in their lives over the years who have supported them and taught them that they could do it too.

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25:22
Speaker 2
Oh, Chad, you're muted because I don't.

‍ ‍

25:25
Speaker 1
Want everybody to hear me while I'm going like, oh, that's cool.

‍ ‍

25:27
Speaker 2
Yeah.

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25:31
Speaker 1
So, so than you. That was, that was a really interesting thought. And as a, I think, you know, we have this sense in general as humans, regardless of, you know, who you are, that you're, the interactions that you have with people, particularly young people leave a mark, they make an imprint, you know, and so my big takeaway from that is like be really conscientious about leaving good imprints and you know, make sure that I'm not in any way passing along self limiting beliefs or negativity to people. And, and it is, you know, there, the only rules are the ones that we've made up in our own cultures and our own heads. And, and if we pass along stupid rules, they'll continue to be there. Right. So anyway, lots of thoughts going on in my mind on that. So Catherine, question for you on this.

‍ ‍

26:25
Speaker 1
When it comes to doing business development in the construction industry, do you feel that there's any specific advantage or disadvantage to being a female in that role?

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26:39
Speaker 3
You know what, I've never really thought about it that way. I see a good mix of both men and women, but I do think business development falls typically more. You find more women in these roles. And I think that comes down to relationship building skills and communication skills, which women statistically have a better hold of and bring into the industry. Which I think actually if you think about those two skills alone and see how it trickles across all the different fields within construction, you really see where that growth starts to happen. So I think those two would be the biggest benefits to being a woman in the business development space.

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27:21
Speaker 1
Such a good lead in to a question that I want to have each of you answer in your own way. You know, one by one, obviously. But, but that I and I tend to agree with you that there are some distinct advantages that statistically. Right. Not as, not as a law, but statistically you find across the, you know, versus men in terms of skill sets. Why should we want. What would you say to somebody who's asking the question, why should we want more women in construction? What's the benefit? Why. Why is this something that we should be striving for? And I'll toss that over to Emily first.

‍ ‍

28:09
Speaker 4
Yeah. So I think there are a lot of answers to this question. I'm just going to take one answer because there's other people answering. But for me, I mean, I'm going to let the others talk about the bottom line and diversity. But in general, it is a great career. Okay. So there are so many opportunities in construction. There are. It's a lucrative career. It's an empowering career. Why shouldn't women have access to it just like everyone else?

‍ ‍

28:40
Speaker 1
I love it. Yeah. Okay, so we should want more women involved because quite frankly, it's a fantastic career path. And you know, we want to, we should want to encourage people into that line of work. Awesome. All right, cool. Let's. Let's hear Katherine.

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29:00
Speaker 3
So she said on the workforce development, I guess transition more on that bottom line. Like, women bring to the table different perspectives that I don't think have really been discussed. And we're really fantastic at disrupting the status quo. You know, we're talking about our well being on site, in the office, work, life balance, parenthood, maternity leave. And we're starting all these conversations, which a lot of guys actually appreciate. And they're like, oh, wait, I do want more time off or I see the benefits of that. And so women are starting this movement of belonging in the industry and creating community and having those open discussions. And honestly, like a sense of belonging in a company actually increases job performance by 56%.

‍ ‍

29:51
Speaker 3
It reduces turnover by about 50, and it decreases the amount of sick days because sometimes, I mean, people take sick days simply because they don't want to go to work that day. And they're just in a bad head space. Right. And so by creating these good communities with good strong communication, these relationships, you're able to encourage people to meet their potential at work, which affects that bottom line.

‍ ‍

30:17
Speaker 1
Love it. Love it. Great stuff. Morgan, what would your answer be? Why do we want women in construction?

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30:22
Speaker 5
Yeah, I mean, I agree with both of these ladies have said, first of all, why not? And second of all, it's a different skill set that women bring to the TABLE I mean, like Catherine kind of stated earlier, the relationships, the organization, communication, that is all such a vital part of construction that women have mastered. And a lot of my superintendents that I've worked for have actually preferred working with women. So it's super exciting to see the percentage of women in construction increasing year over year. So I'm really excited for the next couple of years and to see even more women coming into the construction industry and showing off their skill sets.

‍ ‍

30:58
Speaker 1
Same here. And so all I do is I don't work for any construction companies, but I have lots and lots of different clients who are construction companies. And I will tell you unequivocally that when there are no women on the leadership team, it's like one of my first priorities is to get women to be a part of the leadership team. For all the reasons that you guys are saying, like, yes, all the points that you're making are so right. But purely selfishly, the team desperately needs a difference of opinion. And everybody gets into this really monolithic way of thinking. And if I can have, if we just have to have diversity of thought.

‍ ‍

31:39
Speaker 1
So, so, and what I found is that an all male leadership team is not nearly as intelligent, not nearly as capable as they would be with, you know, more equal representation that way. So anyway, I, I, I love the question. I love your answers, I think great points. So Stacy, what do we have in terms of additional questions? Heck, you probably have like a dozen. So what other questions do we have?

‍ ‍

32:10
Speaker 2
Well, for Emily or Catherine, actually. So your podcasts feature guests for women. Are the women that come on your show when they say that they're attracted to the industry, is it because they already had typically a family member already in the industry? Or do you see more of that being the reason of people, of women joining the industry because they're influenced by family members?

‍ ‍

32:39
Speaker 4
I'd say it's, for me it's 50.

‍ ‍

32:40
Speaker 2
50.

‍ ‍

32:41
Speaker 4
A lot of people are. But just as many people, you know, learn it, learn about it in different ways. Usually in school, they learn about it in college as an opportunity.

‍ ‍

32:50
Speaker 2
Okay.

‍ ‍

32:51
Speaker 3
Yeah. I think more of the women that I've talked to, they gravitate towards it because it is comfort. It's what they grew up with.

‍ ‍

33:00
Speaker 2
Do you have any, or hear of any suggestions on how we can promote the industry with people that are completely kind of like how you shared your story, Catherine, where you weren't, you know, even considering construction as an option, really, because people in your family didn't you weren't brought up around construction. So how can we reach people outside of the industry to come in?

‍ ‍

33:29
Speaker 3
So it's starting young, right? We in school, we talk about, you know, what do you want to be when you grow up? And you've got all your normal stereotypical answers, you've got the high paying answers like lawyer and doctor, but no one brings to the table opportunities in the construction industry which are really high paying as well. It's fantastic. So it's just embedding it more into curriculum. It's after school programs, it's camps, it's just really showing up for the high schoolers, the middle schoolers and the elementary school students and showing them that yes, they learn about architecture, they learn about engineering, but there's this like amazing middle ground that brings all this stuff together and is such a hands on opportunity.

‍ ‍

34:14
Speaker 3
And this caters towards the people who don't want to sit in offices, who want to get their hands dirty, who need the movement, who can't. They don't enjoy that constant day in, day out routine and they want to be able to mix it up while having a very successful career.

‍ ‍

34:31
Speaker 2
We talked on a prior episode about mentorship and sponsorship and how to gear towards looking for a sponsor to help you in your life. Who or how did you go about finding a sponsor or a mentor? I'm sure that's challenging because we already have limited women, you know, in the field. So how do you navigate that in finding someone?

‍ ‍

34:58
Speaker 3
Honestly, most of my sponsors ironically have been men. I think it is funny because Andrea, who talks about the mentorship and the sponsorship, she tends to say that men sponsor other men, but they don't sponsor women. And through conversations with her and just reflecting back, I have been part of that small percentage that's been really lucky to have men who actively have my back and advocate for me, even when I don't even know them. Right. Like I've got one of my mentors, Jeff McCoy, he literally went up to bat, told different people in the company, hey, you're gonna lose her unless you bring her out into the field, let her come work with me, let me teach her what she wants to learn and let's see where she grows from there. And I mean, he constantly pushed me out of my comfort zone.

‍ ‍

35:47
Speaker 3
But I've also had women sponsors and usually those people who are more sponsors versus mentors, they actually seek me out and they actively get involved in my life and ask me what I need and take a front row seat in my own success.

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36:02
Speaker 5
Love to hear that for me, I was lucky. One of my friends was transferred onto my job site, and it kind of turned morphed from a friendship into a mentorship. So she was kind of my sounding board. Like, if I had anything construction related, personal related, I would go to her, talk to her, hear her experience, because she was more experienced than I was. And that helped me out so much.

‍ ‍

36:25
Speaker 1
And it speaks to what you were talking about earlier, Emily, with that. You know, the idea that this common thread was that actually there were men in these women's lives who played a significant role in, you know, help. And so, you know, whether they were sponsors or mentors at that age or whether they were just role models, and that's a different thing. You know, it's an extremely powerful lesson.

‍ ‍

36:52
Speaker 3
Yeah.

‍ ‍

36:53
Speaker 4
I think it's really important that we don't get. We don't depend on just women to be mentoring women, because, of course, just frankly, there aren't enough, and if we do that, we're just doing ourselves a disservice. So we really do rely on men. We need all of the men to be allies in order to move us all forward in the industry.

‍ ‍

37:11
Speaker 1
Awesome. Love it. Stacy, any other questions?

‍ ‍

37:15
Speaker 2
Just selfishly, I'd like to know for Morgan and Emily. So Morgan does the work pants. Is there any other gear that you see coming down the line in the future?

‍ ‍

37:30
Speaker 5
I see all the gear coming down the line in the future. We did start off with pants, just because that was the first thing that I noticed when I was in the industry. We are launching a second pant this spring, so I'm super excited for that. It's called the relaxed pant. It's more of, like a cargo take rather than a carpenter pant. But then this winter, we're gonna come out with some winter lines, which I'm super excited about. So, like, fleece line pants and a really cool work jacket, which I'm really excited about. And that's just kind of the start of it. So I'm really excited for what comes in the future, and I love all the feedback I'm getting from women with their stories and what they want to see me create. So there's a. There's a lot coming.

‍ ‍

38:12
Speaker 2
Yeah. And I'm sure the same with you, Emily, Right?

‍ ‍

38:14
Speaker 3
Yes.

‍ ‍

38:15
Speaker 4
We have some new styles coming out this year. We have one coming out in a couple of months. It's a comp toe. Many people have asked us, yes, we like steel toes, but some people need comp toes. So we're creating a composite toe shoe that should Be out in the next few months. I'm very excited about that. And then we have some other styles as well. Just going by feedback from our. I would say our audience, but it's not just our audience, it's our whole community. People are always reaching out, letting us know what they're looking for, what they can't find on the market. So we have at least three new styles that will be coming out later in the year and early 2024 that we're super excited about.

‍ ‍

38:52
Speaker 2
Do you guys both work with companies like Red Wing Boots does, where you can give a, like a fee, you know what I mean, to the workers or, you know.

‍ ‍

39:05
Speaker 1
Yeah, it was actually. It's a really good point. I wonder about that. You know, what's the best way for a company.

‍ ‍

39:12
Speaker 2
Yeah.

‍ ‍

39:12
Speaker 1
To help their employees to get access to, you know, this as a part of what they offer their employees?

‍ ‍

39:21
Speaker 3
Yes.

‍ ‍

39:21
Speaker 4
Yeah. If you're. Well, if you're a person working at a company, the best thing to do is ask your tell your employer that you would like to use Juno Jones boots or Justin Workwear on, you know, on site. And you can often get reimbursed for. For what it is because maybe they don't have it necessarily at. In their, you know, at the company for you to buy there. So they may reimburse you to do that. But if you're a company and you're looking to support women in construction and industries in general. Yeah. The best thing to do is reach out to us and we can help you. We provide discounts to companies so. Especially with volume so they can supply their workers and give them access to Juno Jones boots.

‍ ‍

40:01
Speaker 5
I agree with that 100%. Just reach out. The company stores are really important. That was one thing when I was working for a general contractor is the men have pages and pages of company merch that they can buy on the company website and the women's. All their stuff fits one page. Page. So if, like Emily said, reach out to us, we can give you like bulk discounts and stuff like that. And then you can supply it to your women on your company website. And we can do branding and stuff as well. So your logos on it.

‍ ‍

40:30
Speaker 3
Yeah.

‍ ‍

40:31
Speaker 1
Cool.

‍ ‍

40:31
Speaker 3
I want to chime in there real quick.

‍ ‍

40:34
Speaker 1
Yeah.

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40:34
Speaker 3
For the people who are responsible for finding their PPE and looking at. Finding material for their company sites, even. Don't wait for the women to come to you. Go to the women. Every single woman who's ever set foot in the field will have an issue with Some kind of ppe. They'll have recommendations. We're all struggling with it. Right. We're constantly sidebarring with each other. So don't wait. Just be proactive. Go ask these women what they need and source it.

‍ ‍

41:03
Speaker 2
I really like that point because a lot of women also feel uncomfortable. So speaking up and asking for things, so going to them would show a huge way of support.

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41:16
Speaker 1
Well, and I can. And I gotta imagine that just so many people don't even know that there are options. So, you know, creating awareness. Hopefully this does that. Hopefully our viewers will spread the word and have, you know, have some light bulbs go off, you know, and bring this back to their companies. Not just. Not just. I mean, I hope they all go onto your stores and that they use the codes that you've shared for women in Construction Week and that they get, you know, boots and that they get pants, but that I also hope that they bring that message back to their company.

‍ ‍

41:51
Speaker 3
Yeah.

‍ ‍

41:53
Speaker 1
Awesome. Stacy, anything else?

‍ ‍

41:55
Speaker 2
That's all we have.

‍ ‍

41:57
Speaker 1
Catherine, Emily, Morgan, Anything before we jump?

‍ ‍

42:00
Speaker 5
Thank you for having us.

‍ ‍

42:02
Speaker 4
Thank you so much. It's been a lot of fun.

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42:04
Speaker 1
Yeah, thanks for joining us. Agreed. You guys are awesome. Thank you so much for taking the time and for joining us to talk about your stories today. I think Happy Women in Construction Week to you next week, again, first to market, and we'd welcome you back anytime. And we'll certainly spread the word about your podcasts and about your companies and about the great work that you're doing. So thank you.

‍ ‍

42:34
Speaker 2
Thank you. See you. Have a great day.

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42:36
Speaker 1
See y'. All. All right, Stacy, let's do a little bit of cleanup here and. And talk about next week. So first things first, as I always reiterate, and. And I think it's so important to build that list of people who aren't reliant on getting a an invite from LinkedIn. Please send Stacy an email right here. Stacey H. Steeltocom.com to get access to our mailing list, which will keep you in the know and make it really easy for you to register for our live episodes, as well as click on links to get access to the recorded episodes. Next week, we have episode number 43, which is. We're bringing back a guest from our very first season, which is a friend of mine and a really smart economist. The economist for.

‍ ‍

43:30
Speaker 1
He's the official economist for the Associated Builders and Contractors Nationally, and I want to say one or two others, but his name's an Iban Basu. Very, very dynamic speaker. A lot of fun and he'll be giving us the rundown on what exactly is going on with the economy and how that is impacting the construction industry in 23. That'll be an episode that you don't want to miss. So please do come and check us out for that. Stacy, what else am I missing?

‍ ‍

44:01
Speaker 2
Nothing else. But you know what? I wish I asked the girls if they were attending the NAWA conference, that we're going to be in person. I believe some of them are. But that's May 15th, right?

‍ ‍

44:12
Speaker 1
Yep. That is. It's May. It's May 5th. You know what? Let me double check that. But, yeah, I believe it's May 5th. Nope. Not. Not 15th. May 6th. May 6th.

‍ ‍

44:21
Speaker 3
Oh, May 6th.

‍ ‍

44:22
Speaker 1
May 5th and 6th. So it's the Friday, Saturday, May 5th and 6th in Washington, D.C. is the NAWIC Northeast Spring Conference. And we'll be running a show live there. And I'll actually be doing a keynote the following morning.

‍ ‍

44:37
Speaker 2
I'll reach out to the girls after we get off here and include it in the E. Newsletter to see if there'll be an attendance. So if you're attending, you can meet them in person.

‍ ‍

44:49
Speaker 1
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised to. To hear that they are and that maybe even they're, you know, featuring some of their products. So, yeah, awesome stuff. I. I can't wait to. To hear the review. Stacy, on the Juno Jones boots.

‍ ‍

45:03
Speaker 2
They're awesome.

‍ ‍

45:04
Speaker 1
They're just already.

‍ ‍

45:05
Speaker 2
Materials nice. It's super comfy. I haven't done too much walking in them yet. I have to get out to some more job sites, but so far, so good. They're beautiful boots. And were talking earlier. My dad's been in the shoe business his entire life, his career, and Emily's down in Philly, so I'm going to set the two of them up because he was in the orthopedic shoe business. Definitely not sexy shoes by any means, but it she. He could probably, you know, provide a lot of knowledge when it comes to people with feet issues working on the field and how to make that comfortable while she can bring the sexy to the shoes.

‍ ‍

45:45
Speaker 1
Telling you, I'm gonna get your dad as a guest one day. I'm just gonna be like, we have a special guest.

‍ ‍

45:51
Speaker 2
No.

‍ ‍

45:53
Speaker 1
All right, Stacy, thanks so much as always for creating such a fun show, such a good dynamic. So we. It was. I definitely would. It would just be me talking at the screen without you. So thank you.

‍ ‍

46:05
Speaker 2
Thank you so much. Have a wonderful day, guys.

‍ ‍

46:08
Speaker 1
You too.

‍ ‍

46:08
Speaker 2
See ya.

‍ ‍

Every contractor needs an accountant, but certain relationships have the potential to become trusted advisors. As a contractor, you may want to be asking more of your accounting provider. Tim was a trusted advisor for several contractors during his time working for an accounting firm. He joins us on The Morning Huddle to share the principles that made his relationships so strong and strategic with his contractor clients, and what contractors can do to find and develop this kind of partnership with their accountant.

Transcript:

‍ ‍

00:11
Speaker 1
All right, it's morning huddle time.

‍ ‍

00:13
Speaker 2
Good morning.

‍ ‍

00:14
Speaker 1
I'm not saying it works. I wish you God speed, Godspeed with all of that. I think that's really nice. You know, I'm not sure what kind of success you're going to have with that today because the world, my friend, has changed.

‍ ‍

00:27
Speaker 2
Right. A lot of American construction workers, they have completely different.

‍ ‍

00:33
Speaker 3
These awards have a huge, like, criteria that you have to fill out and they usually have a community service or community relations portion, you know, the most.

‍ ‍

00:44
Speaker 2
Productive with a high performance value. And, you know, sometimes it's 11 o' clock at night.

‍ ‍

00:51
Speaker 1
Funny, isn't it? Yeah. Not for me.

‍ ‍

00:54
Speaker 3
Not for me.

‍ ‍

00:55
Speaker 1
At 11 o' clock, I am guaranteed to be snoring. So foreign. It is morning huddle time. I'm Chad Prinke. Thank you so much for joining us. I've got, as always, wonderful producer and co host Stacey Holzinger with me here this morning. Stacy, how are you today?

‍ ‍

01:18
Speaker 3
I'm doing great. Good morning, everybody. Welcome, Tim.

‍ ‍

01:23
Speaker 1
Thank you. Yeah. So today we have Tim Klimchock who he and I got an opportunity to meet just I guess what Tim about a year ago, something along those lines about that. Yep, maybe a little less. But in, you know, Tim and I were similar to Stacy and I actually on a similar life journey of having spent a long time working for somebody and being, you know, put in a position to reconsider that and start working for ourselves. And so Tim has been running his own business here for, you know, the past, I don't know, six months or something along those lines. And, and we'll give you an opportunity to talk a little bit about what it is you're doing with that business.

‍ ‍

02:08
Speaker 1
But you know, when Tim and I were connected, it was just one of those things like sharing the wonderful, exciting, scary challenge of being an entrepreneur. So it's, you're in good company here with Stacy and I. We've been, you know, just over the past two years both on the same journey. So Tim spent better part of, I don't know, 10, 12 years or something like that at Stambon Ness, which is an accounting firm in Pennsylvania up and up in York area. He was the director of the AEC Group in that market and before that was an accountant for another firm for 10 years. So 20 plus years of accounting experience. I'll shut up and let you expand on that. Tim, what else would you add? And what are you doing now?

‍ ‍

02:59
Speaker 2
Excuse me. Thanks, Chad. Appreciate it. Appreciate the opportunity to be here today. Yeah, 20, 24 years in public accounting. This is definitely a new experience this tax season that I don't have 450 returns to sign this year. So it's. It's definitely been a little bit of a transition for me, but having a lot of fun. Had a great experience in public accounting. I think it's a great place to have a career. And I think for me it was this next step of just doing a deeper dive with a smaller group of clients and really getting a little more intimate with things as opposed to kind of hitting it with a shotgun approach, really just focusing on working with five to 10 clients at a time and really trying to add value and do some really cool things.

‍ ‍

03:42
Speaker 2
The name of my firm is Collaborative Advisory Group. Like you said, it's been. It's. I've started about four or five months ago, and things are off to a great start and I'm really enjoying a lot of the stuff I'm doing. And, you know, it's been a lot of fun so far.

‍ ‍

03:56
Speaker 1
Well, it's. I'm already benefiting, you know, and my clients are already benefiting from Tim. I've pulled Tim into a couple of different situations. One that we're in the midst of now. Pretty, pretty exciting to, you know, benefit from your experience and. And expertise on the financial front, really as that, you know, small boutique kind of service where, like you said, you can really be, you know, deep in it and. And extremely helpful. So glad that you're a part of it. I'd also be remiss. I have to. I'm seeing them on the chat. Potentially my best friend in the world is. Is. Is with us this morning is Jason Dixon, who has joined. And Jason's actually the reason that we connected and, you know, there's a Penn State connection there that I find a little off putting as a terp. But I'll.

‍ ‍

04:46
Speaker 1
But I'll struggle through. I'll make it.

‍ ‍

04:49
Speaker 2
I've known Jason since I was 16 years old and he was 18, so that was a couple of years ago, to say the least. Yeah.

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04:55
Speaker 1
That's awesome. That's awesome. All right, well, good. So we're going to get in today to talking about something you have a ton of experience in, which is I'm hoping to kind of educate our audience on. You're really the kind of relationship they should be expecting out of their accounting firm. The vast majority of our audience is contractors. There may be some accounting firms and maybe bankers or other professional service providers who also join us on a regular basis or may be joining us specifically for this episode. And they are probably going to have some good ideas for how to be a better service provider based on this discussion. But I'm hoping that contractors take away something that they can, you know, start to a new standard that they can start to aim for when it comes to establishing partnerships with their accounting firm.

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05:41
Speaker 1
So with that, I'm going to dive in. Stacy, as always, master of ceremonies, help us to get some awesome questions in through our, you know, audience this morning and we'll bring you back with about 10 minutes to go and get some audience questions.

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05:56
Speaker 3
Sounds good.

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05:57
Speaker 1
Thanks. See you in a bit. All right, so. So, Tim, let's go. Let's start with a crash course 101. I know this is, you know, maybe even pre 101, but I'm going to ask because I think it helps to set the stage, talk a little bit about just inside a construction company, what their finance and accounting makeup really needs to be and how they, you know, what they're trying to accomplish. Just talk about the goal of that financial silo inside a construction company, like leaving the accounting for a minute. Just what's the goal of the accounting silo or the financial silo inside?

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06:36
Speaker 2
Well, like everything in account, we always joke. Well, it depends and I think a lot of it depends on the size and the complexity of the company. You know, I think there's some differences between general contractors and specialty contractors, for sure. But, you know, a lot of times you're going to see someone in this controller, CFO type role that has the ultimate oversight responsibility of the company's financial operations. My personal definition has always been the controller is more focused on looking at the past and summarizing the past, where a CFO is really more forward looking and looking at the future. However, I do see in my experience a lot of times where that person, you know, again, depending on the size of the company, can't afford both functions or it doesn't make sense to have both that.

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07:21
Speaker 2
That controller slash, cfo, regardless of their title, has the responsibility of doing both of those things. And then to that point, obviously segregation of duties and making sure you have controls in place amongst the different people underneath those folks is important too. A lot of people have somebody separate for billing and then have another person on the payable side. Again, depending on size, somebody might be doing both of those functions. But ideally you want to make sure that there's this segregation of duties, as we say in the accounting world, that, you know, make sure that the checks and balances are in place. And some. There's always somebody reviewing somebody else's work. So. And then when it comes to construction specifically, then someone has to really take ownership of the WIP schedule and job cost and revenue recognition and everything that goes with that.

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08:10
Speaker 2
That's the biggest thing that's unique about contractors is that whip schedule and having a whip schedule that makes sense, that you're tracking your job costs, that you're recognizing revenue and just getting everybody on the same page. And that controller, CFO person really should be the liaison between the project managers and the estimators and ultimately with the owners.

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08:33
Speaker 1
Awesome. I love it. I, I like that idea of the control, pardon me, of the controller being this liaison between the departments tying together the financial picture of the business. So great. I think that's a great picture. Now layer in the 101 level of where the accountant fits into the mix. So do I need to hire an accounting firm or can I, you know, why am I hiring an accounting firm as a contractor and what fundamental role or traditional role am I really looking for that accounting firm to provide?

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09:10
Speaker 2
I think from a traditional perspective, you know, everybody thinks there's really two pieces of the puzzle. You have your financial statement side and you have your tax return side. And as everybody knows, tax returns need to be filed, whether it's for the company and then ultimately for the owners. And a lot of times the CPA firm takes that role of being the tax preparer. And hopefully there's some tax planning involved with that before year end. And then there's the regulatory compliance of filing the returns that you need to, both at the federal level and for most people, multi state level. The financial statement side is really driven by the surety companies and the banks. And there's three types of financial statements.

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09:47
Speaker 2
There's compilations, reviews and audits, depending on, you know, what you're borrowing, depending on what the size of your company is, that's really going to drive the type of financial statement. And it's really three different levels of service that the accounting firm steps into. And think of it as just a verification of your internal numbers and helping you get your numbers in line. And then ultimately we sign off on a report that says that we've either compiled, reviewed, or audited these numbers. And there definitely is different stages and obviously there's different cost levels for all those things as well, based on the amount of effort that, you know, the traditional CPA is going to have in that.

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10:25
Speaker 1
Yep. All right. Good, that totally makes sense. So I look at that as. Tell me if I'm wrong in the way that I'm thinking of this, but I always think of that as kind of the, that's the price of entry for an accounting firm, like. Right. Meaning you better have the ability to handle tax and financial statements perfectly like that. That's the expectation. It's the minimum threshold. And, and you know, in your experience be, you know, obviously you're not in any way, I will say this for you are not in any way talking about your previous employer or throwing anybody under the bus. Right? Like that's not what I'm asking you to do. But what I am asking you is, you know, in your broad and you know, 20 plus year experience as a CPA serving contractors, how many CPAs are failing?

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11:22
Speaker 1
What percentage do you think are failing to meet, you know, that level? That standard of these things have to be tight.

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11:30
Speaker 2
I think, you know, I think they're. And one of the biggest challenges in the business development area for accounting firms is there really are a lot of good construction accounting firms out there, my previous firm included. They're every region, everywhere across the country. There's a lot of CPA firms that pick construction as a niche and you know that they're really focused on it. But then there are some other firms out there perhaps that we used to joke about it as. And construction. So a CPA firm and it's something, you know, for your listeners to think about is, you know, looking at the whole picture of what this CPA firm does in the construction area.

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12:05
Speaker 2
So the end construction thing is you'll see on their website that we do nonprofits, we do manufacturing and governmental stuff, we do distribution, maybe we doctor's practices and construction will be at the end. And it's like, you know, I think that's really where the differentiator can be, is that you avoid those firms that are the end construction. And how do you do that? I think part of it is, you know, making sure that you're looking at the relationship with the cpa. Do you know these people, Are there people at your, whatever trade organizations that you're involved with, whether it's ABC or cfma, you know, not to promote any specific organization. But do you see these people pushing thought leadership out there? Are they, are they going out of their way to, you know, push webinars out there and content?

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12:52
Speaker 2
Are they sending you frequent emails? Hey, this is what's going on specific to your Industry, those sorts of things are the things to really target on. But that, but it is a challenge because there really are, you know, I could sit here and name you 10 to 15 firms, say in the Baltimore region and up here in south central Pennsylvania that I think are good quality firms. I know a lot of people at these firms and there's a lot of people that are doing good work. So that's really where you get into the next part is what extra value add stuff can these people bring to you? Right.

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13:24
Speaker 1
Yeah. So. And that's so. So if I'm hearing you right, the likelihood that one of these highly qualified construction. Construction accounting groups is missing the mark on the cost of entry, on the tax preparation the, the likelihood that one of them is. Is dropping the ball in that area relatively low.

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13:49
Speaker 2
Relatively low. Yeah, I mean there's, yeah, there's certain people obviously can better than others, but I think that there's a lot to choose from in the marketplace. There's some people that dabble in it that shouldn't be dabbling in it because there are some very specific things with construction accounting that are very unique.

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14:04
Speaker 1
You know, let's jump into that for a minute. I'm interested in just it like, you know, what makes construction unique for an accounting firm that would make it something that the. And construction guys maybe shouldn't be dabbling.

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14:19
Speaker 2
I, I think it's totally the whip schedule and folk, you know, the whole. Everything about the whip schedule, whether it's revenue recognition, whether it's cost, you know, accumulation, you know, whether it's, you know, estimating, you know, and everything about project management, you know, the fact that you're not like anybody that would focus on a manufacturing operation, let's say, let's not pick on the manufacturers out there. But, you know, there are certain things that are consistent and very repetitive with manufacturing a product. As we all know, construction is definitely not that way in a lot of respects. So the fact that there's uniqueness, the fact that you're building a unique product every time really takes a lot more oversight.

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14:58
Speaker 2
And just the whole, that you have this system now, project managers and estimators and a bunch of people looking at these things, because it's not exactly the same thing every, you know, every single time. So it's really about, you know, what estimates are you using moving forward, you know, over under billings. And like there's just, you know, a lot of that stuff comes into play, you know, Manufacturer might just be worried about receivables, but we have this unbilled receivable, the under billing that we have to worry about too. So there's just unique things. It's something, you know, I, as we joked about before, I think, you know, I've been doing this for 25 years and I think I know what I'm doing now.

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15:33
Speaker 2
But I think back to different in parts of my career where it's sort of like, wait a minute, like you thought you got it, but it's like, wait a minute. I didn't understand when I first started what this meant.

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15:43
Speaker 1
So yeah, it's, if that doesn't happen, you haven't been growing, you know, but the key is to remain humble today, knowing that 10 years from now you're going to look back and be like, man, I was an idiot. So that's, that is the key, you know, you do your best and you stay humble. So that's extremely helpful. And I think if I get then past the barrier to entry and I think, okay, I'm working with an accounting firm that clearly understands wip, that understands over and under billings, that has the ability to look at my, you know, financial silo and really make not just heads or tails of it, but have the ability to understand the nuances very quickly and add value in the, in that form.

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16:36
Speaker 1
Like if something's not working internally in the way that you're logging or tracking or you know, cost codes or whatever, that your accounting firm would have the ability to pop their head in and say, hey guys, I'm noticing some stuff that needs to be sorted out. And, and if they don't have, if they're and construction guy, they're probably not going to have that. And, but if they have that construction background, they're going to be able to see it quickly, they're going to be.

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17:00
Speaker 2
Able to resolve it.

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17:00
Speaker 1
That's very useful. Let's talk about the value add where so if you've got this group of 10 to 15, you know, in any given region, qualified capable construction accounting firms, how do I pick which one to really use at that point and what, you know, what criteria should I be overlaying to consider who's adding more value?

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17:25
Speaker 2
Well, I think once you get through that initial scrub of saying, okay, these are the qualified contractors, construction CPA firms, then I, I see the next step is really being, okay, what else do they bring to the table like we talked about before, how are they involved in the trade associations that you belong to? Do you know who their other clients are? You know, get an understanding of what other companies are they working with? And, you know, another thing I've had come up on occasion is on a rare occasion it might be they're working with a competitor that you might not appreciate. The fact that your CPA is your direct competitor who maybe you don't get along with is, you know, we don't want to make sure that we're, you know, there's a confidentiality piece to our business. But there is that perception.

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18:10
Speaker 2
If you, if you do too much work with one particular company, there might be, you know, a risk of, you know, that some people are focused on that. Very few, but I have seen that before happen. But, you know, I think it's really about, you know, focusing on those value add things that they can bring to the table in terms of what associations are they involved with? Are they pushing thought leadership out there? What ideas are they bringing to the table? Are they ask, you know, some things I was thinking about or, you know, are they, you know, what would be wrong with asking your CPA asking you to go on a job site visit? Let me see boots on the ground. Let me see your actual process in the field. Let me understand your whole process from estimating to project management.

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18:55
Speaker 2
You know, inviting your CPA potentially to come to a project manager meeting and just sit there as a fly on the wall just to observe, just so that they, because there's only so much that person can do. It's based on what you're telling them ultimately. So it's, you know, them seeing it live and really seeing behind the curtain a little bit really will help add, give them the opportunity to add that extra value, for sure.

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19:20
Speaker 1
Love it. I love it. You know, it's so the. Mike, My business, believe it or not, is not podcasts. I, I, this is for fun. But, you know, in my business as a strategic consultant, I'm sorry to say that I can probably count one hand the number of times that a client has really connected me with their accounting firm or that their accounting firm has reached out to me and said we should really be, you know, on the same page. In the small handful of times that has happened, these are extremely strategically valuable relationships that those people have. Right. Like they're telling me they're giving me insights into the numbers, if that. So if that client hires me to help them to go from 5% net to 12% net over the next, you know, three years.

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20:20
Speaker 1
And that's the focus, is to drive up that net profit. Having a real strategic accountant. I mean, it's like a, it's like an easy button for me figuring out what needs to occur. Because they have such incredible insight into the, the things that are keeping them from being able to get to their goals. And whether it's people or lack of processes or, you know, markets or lack of technologies, all those things. You know, I'm hearing you say, if you have a relationship with an accountant who is willing to climb inside your business and not just stay on the outside, but actually climb inside your business a little bit and understand how you're operating, they have the ability to add so much more value and really be a consultant and an advisor.

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21:06
Speaker 2
Yeah, it's really about that advisor piece. The fact, like you mentioned the IT side of things, that's another area that can be incredible. And the CPA can play a role in that, too. If you read the trade publications out there's so much technology stuff going on in construction, there's that an owner has to be overwhelmed by, like, where do you even begin? Like, I can only imagine being in your shoes. It's like, okay, what do I invest in? What's not a waste of money you're getting, you know, getting a lot of that comes from the trade associations that, you know, are helping to push some of these things too. But, you know, there's so many ads out there, like, just to weed through that process.

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21:41
Speaker 2
You know, I think the cpa, again, is that trusted advisor can play a role in that if you let them. But again, you have to be willing to open up and show the person what you're looking. Well, this is the help that I need. And if there's a good, caring relationship there. Because that's the other biggest part, too. I'm not saying you have to best friends with your CPA and CPAs. Typical accountants aren't cool people is what most people think. But we can. So it's sort of like, you know, build that relationship, like, understand who. And here's the other part, too, that I didn't mention is I, I, years ago, I, I came up with this idea of just who do you want to meet? You know, I was doing almost 100% of my work for architects, engineers and contractors.

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22:22
Speaker 2
It's been like this for a long time. I'm in a position to make referrals, too. You know, if you have a good CPA and I know you're not thinking of an accountant like this, but, you know, there's opportunities where if you want to meet somebody, maybe I know how to get to that person and can help facilitate an introduction. That's been the part that I've enjoyed.

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22:39
Speaker 1
The second part I would add too.

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22:41
Speaker 2
Is, you know, a CPA that's involved with some of your. If you're a GC that's involved with some of your specialty contractors. One of the things I like about being involved regionally is that I know what's going on about a lot of projects. I know developers, I know the gcs. I know what I hear things of what projects are going where. And a lot of times when you meet with. A lot of times when I'm sitting down with a client for the first time in a while, the coolest part for me was that people would ask, so, Tim, what are you hearing out there? There? Like they, that was the pause and they wanted to hear. And I'm sure you get this too, Chad.

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23:15
Speaker 2
It's sort of like you just have a pulse on things that they don't see because they're so focused and working in their little silo, let's say, for, you know, and they don't get the chance to talk to people sometimes because they're so busy with the office stuff. But you're a guy and I'm a guy that's out there, so they actually like that feedback. What are you hearing from your banker friends? And, you know, what are you hearing? What's going on with legal issues out there, HR issues, all these things. And it's just you have all these resources available to really help people. And a lot of accountants don't want to take that step because it's out of their comfort zone. But a lot of them do.

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23:48
Speaker 2
And those are the ones that you really want to focus on is finding people that can, you know, help. Help make those connections for you.

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23:54
Speaker 1
Makes total sense. So, so I, I'm. I want to provide a quick summary.

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23:58
Speaker 2
And, and I'm, I'll.

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23:59
Speaker 1
I'm going to bring Stacy back because I will have some questions that she'll pose to us here. But quick summary of my takeaways is three categories of value add. The first category is business advisory. That is that your accounting relationship, having a deeper understanding for your unique business, the people in your business and being able to help beyond just a dollars and cents standpoint. But to point it maybe the drivers of the dollars and cents outcomes and give you Some advice and support from a business advisory standpoint. That's number one. Number two is, I would say relationships and, you know, they're being plugged in a complimentary space and having the ability to connect people, bring people who should be collaborating or doing business together, directly pulling those folks together. And, you know, that's probably a relatively rare trait for an accountant.

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25:17
Speaker 1
You know, not that they're not cool, Tim. I think they're cool, but they're not necessarily the most social people in the world, necessarily. Right. Like, there's a. There's a tendency for those, for people who are involved in high detail work to not be socially oriented and external. So that would be. The second category is the relationships they can bring to the table. And then the third category would be market intelligence is that their ability to provide useful data about things that are happening in and around the market. Big projects that might be moving forward, turnover trends and what we're seeing in terms of employees leaving or in terms of materials pricing or in terms of. Right.

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26:08
Speaker 1
All this different type of insight that somebody would be getting from just simply being immersed, plugged into the market gives them the ability to add value from a market intelligence standpoint. So advisory relationships, market intelligence. Add that to your selection criteria for accounting, in addition to ensuring that they have a strong deep construction practice, because if they don't, they're really not going to be able to provide any of these three things in any meaningful way anyway.

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26:41
Speaker 2
Right. So it's a matter of just getting started. You know, set up quarterly meetings with your accountant. Let them come out. Let's, you know, have a conversation with them and just get the ball rolling with this. If it's a new relationship or an existing relationship, it's. I think people just weren't thinking of it in these terms that it's. It's okay to have a conversation and get that. That accountant to open up a little bit, because there's a lot of value there for the people that specialize in this work. It's just a matter of. Sometimes you have to ask them to get the ball rolling a little bit.

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27:11
Speaker 1
That's all. Love it. Love it. Good stuff. All right, Stacy, we probably have a few questions before we have to jump off with Tim today.

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27:21
Speaker 3
Yeah. Eric just posed a question. What's the best way to find one of these unicorn CPAs that are willing to climb into your business with you and have these three things?

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27:32
Speaker 1
Yeah. Is there like a. Is there like a cpa, A unicorn CPA detector that we can.

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27:37
Speaker 2
Yeah, I love that I use that term unicorn a lot. So I love that. So I think that, you know, if you're not getting that from your existing accountant and you think they're. That that ability is in that person, you should ask them. It's like, okay, this is what I'm looking for this relationship to be. But you know what I had said, I think at the. Be sort of toward the beginning of the presentation here, you know, look for people that. I almost feel like when I was meeting with clients, it's almost like I'm. There's. There's an initial presentation. It's almost like I feel like I'm on a stage when I'm talking with people.

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28:11
Speaker 2
And so that makes me think, you know, anybody who's willing to do a formal presentation for your trade associations, that's someone that's used to sharing and is open, you know, that might be a way to look at it. You know, people that are actually pushing that thought leadership out there and doing presentations, that might be someone that. Again, I, I don't feel like I'm on a stage necessarily when I'm with clients, but I feel like I need to have my thoughts together to present ideas to them when, hey, Tim, what are you seeing out there? That market intelligence stuff. That's me being on when I'm with these people and then, you know, being engaged and dynamic. So that might be one way to find that person. You know, you know, I definitely, I, I.

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28:52
Speaker 2
Not to plug any specific trade organization, but you know, see, with this type of work, CFMA is a big one. Construction Financial Management association, national organization that has local chapters. There's a designation that I have called a ccifp, a Certified Construction Industry Financial Professional. I think that's a good way to find somebody too is focusing on that because there's continuing on top of taking an initial exam to get the certification, there's continuing education requirements that are specific to construction accounting that have to happen that you have to report every three years. So that's another piece of the puzzle too as you're trying to weed those out with looking for somebody that specializes. That's awesome.

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29:36
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's a. It's a good litmus test to check real capability set in the industry is if they have a ccifp. I think that's great. I. One of the things I want to piggyback on or build on that I think you hit the nail on the head with was just right at the very outset. Tell these people the criteria, whether it's your existing CPA or whether you're shopping for a cpa, tell them that this is a part of the criteria and that it's a part of the expectation and ask them to demonstrate to you how they have the ability to do that. If they, if they struggle and they're scrambling to try to figure out how to present it to you, they probably aren't strong doing that.

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30:21
Speaker 1
If, if they're able to give you example after story after story and you know, situations, then it really works. It makes me actually think of a long time general contractor client of mine that I remember it was probably 10 years ago or eight years ago. They said to, they conducted a search process and they told their cpa, we're looking for you to be strategic, specifically in the area of relationships. We're looking for a CPA who can make connections and introductions in the developer community. They hired one that said they could do that and a year later they did. They, they went through and they said, look, you didn't do that, you're fired. We're moving on to the next one. And they ended up finding a, a really strong long term partner that way. So that's the other aspect of it.

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31:08
Speaker 1
I know it's uncomfortable, but you have to be willing to make a change. Even though you totally like your accountant and they haven't done anything wrong. The question to your point, Tim, it's like there's a lot of qualified people and that's not going to necessarily be your barrier. It's, you're not going to necessarily struggle to find, you know, strong qualified accounting firms in construction. What you are going to struggle to find are people who are committed to providing this level of service.

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31:37
Speaker 2
Right? Yeah, it makes sense if you think about it that you know, one, when they come in, we have a specific assignment that we have to get through those formal financial statements and tax returns. So it's really easy to focus on the production side of things and getting those deliverables done. It's that extra part that I think just gets lost sometimes. But frankly that's the part, that's the fun part. The part I've realized it isn't doing the financial statements. I mean, I did that for a long time. Tax returns for a long time. The fun part is really building these relationships with people, getting to know them, taking them to lunch, you know, maybe you play golf with them, go to a ball game with them, spend time with these people so that you get the opportunity to really, you know, build that relationship.

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32:18
Speaker 2
And just understand who they are. And then when it is time and you're working your 80th hour of tax season and you have to work another two hours to get something done, there's a different feeling. If you care about that person and that relationships there, it's like, okay, I'm going to find a way to get this done because I know they need this and expect this from me.

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32:35
Speaker 1
I love it. I think that's right, Stacy. I think we could probably squeeze in.

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32:39
Speaker 3
One additional say, with that being said, can you share us or illustrate any ideal relationships or stories with any of your clients?

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32:49
Speaker 2
I, I think, you know, I, I, as I said, finding ways to put people together, that's the part that I've enjoyed. And a lot of, one of the things I'm known for, I guess, is building those relationships and, you know, finding opportunities to put this architect together with this general contractor or putting this engineering firm together with this art. An architect, you know, finding ways to make those connections. And, and the guilty pleasure of this is if I actually go to the lunch and you make the connection, I just sit there, Believe it or not, I talk all the time, but believe it or not, sometimes I actually just sit and listen. And that's again, part of me building my intelligence level and just understanding their industry even better. So that's where, you know, finding opportunities like that, like, that's the cool part.

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33:31
Speaker 2
If you know, the people, when people say thank you because you went out of your way to create business for them, you know, that was part. I wasn't expecting to happen on my CPA accountant journey, but that's been some of the best. Yes, I can save you money. I can help with strategy. We'll save you taxes. Will present things great for the bonding company and the bank for you, all those things, but that's, that should already be a given. What else can you really bring to the table? And really, that's the fun part where you really add value and make and people say thank you. That's been, that's been the best thing for me.

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34:02
Speaker 1
That's awesome.

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34:03
Speaker 2
I love it.

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34:03
Speaker 1
And I think it may be, if you're a professional service provider and you're watching or listening to this episode, one of the takeaways I would have, if I were you, would becoming fascinated by, excited by the idea of being more of a connector. I think to the extent that you do that, you have made yourself irreplaceable as a service provider. Assuming you're providing a really strong tax and financial statements, you know, service, then you have this differentiator that protects you long term. And I'll just quickly ask Tim, in your 25 years, when being a CPA, did you have a pretty good client retention rate? Yeah.

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35:00
Speaker 2
Yeah. I used to joke, I said to a client one time, how hard would it be for you to fire me? And he said it'd be next to impossible because I'd have to tell so many people because you're part of that network. So that's. So if the CPAs out there that are listening, it's like, that would. That'd be my one piece of advice here. It's good for retention here. If you find those extra things in the event something doesn't go right or there's a miscommunication of something, that capital that you're building up with that client, and this can be applicable to the bankers out there and illegal and any other professional service that's servicing the industry. You know, the whole point of this is we're building up capital, but mistakes do happen, and miscommunications do happen.

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35:38
Speaker 2
This is how you build up that capital with people to really, you know, build that relationship so that when those things happen, it can weather that storm that happens once in a while.

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35:47
Speaker 1
Yeah, of course. Yeah. Because we're human and service providers, and in a service business, things happen. So there's.

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35:53
Speaker 2
There's.

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35:53
Speaker 1
There's no doubt. Tim, this has been a lot of fun. Thank you so much for. For joining us for the morning huddle. Do you have any parting words?

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36:02
Speaker 2
No, I think. I think this was great. You know, I appreciate the opportunity to be on the podcast. A lot of great topics that you guys have going, and look forward to the next one. Absolutely.

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36:12
Speaker 1
Thanks. Please do. Yeah. Continue to. Continue to spread the word. Join us and we'll, you know, maybe. Maybe episode 84 will bring you back. Or episode 41. Right. Stacy's like, I can't believe we're gonna do more of it. We're going to do that many episodes. Yeah, it's freaking. Yeah, I know. It's all right. Thank you so much, Tim. Stacey, we have a little bit of cleanup to do. Let's talk about next week. So first things first.

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36:40
Speaker 2
Next.

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36:40
Speaker 1
Next week, you tell me Women in Construction Week is not next week. It's the following. Is that right?

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36:46
Speaker 3
Correct. So we're ahead of the head of the game, and we're going to be talking about workwear for women, shoes, clothes, and careers. We have Three guests on next week. So it's kind of like a panel lineup. I actually just bought Juno boots from one of our guests. I have not worn them yet. I'm going to test them out on Friday. I'm going out to a job site. So I'm excited for that. But her shoes are, they're beautiful. So we'll get to talk about all that fun stuff.

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37:17
Speaker 1
I'm psyched. I'll be. This will be a moment. I'm again, you know, we talk about it a lot, but there are these opportunities to learn that I feel so fortunate to have with all these guests that come on, we just get to ask them really cool questions. And I don't know if you notice, I, it's. I literally am filling up pages full of notes for me, you know, when I'm having these conversations. And I look forward to doing that again next week. A three person panel. Women in Construction to ring in Women in Construction Week. A little ahead of schedule, which will be great as always, I think. You know, guys, the mailing list, it continues to grow every week. Please share your email with Stacy H. Steeltocom.com and she will get you set up so that you're receiving a weekly email.

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38:07
Speaker 1
And it's very easy to register as well as follow up with the previous week's episode. If you didn't catch it live. You'll have all the links and all that type of stuff. We stream live on LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook, but we're also on Apple podcasts, Spotify and of course recorded on YouTube. I continue to hear from people who are listening to us driving down the road. That's how I take in my podcast. So as much as we wish you were here live, you know, please, if you're a listen and driving type of person and this time slot isn't perfect for you, make sure that you find that and tell a friend, please spread the word. We're trying to, we're trying to, you know, make the biggest possible impact in, you know, creating this platform for positive change in the building industry.

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38:56
Speaker 1
Stacy, are we ready to announce a certain. We can, yay, talk about it.

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39:02
Speaker 3
Nawic. So national association of Women in Construction. Chad is going to be. Well, Chad and I will be attending this spring forum. Do you have the date for that?

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39:14
Speaker 1
I do, yeah. It is May 5th and 6th. It's a two day event. May, Friday, May 5th and Saturday, May 6th.

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39:23
Speaker 3
So we're gonna do our first live podcast event with a panel there so we'll get more details of the time and when to tune in and all that fun stuff. But we're excited for that.

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39:35
Speaker 1
That should be sufficiently nerve wracking.

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39:37
Speaker 3
Yeah, we'll see how that goes with the noise and all that stuff.

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39:43
Speaker 1
Yeah, totally. But it's going to be, you know what I'm really excited about is to bring attention to NAWAK and to have an opportunity to learn more about what they're doing and spread the word there. I'm actually going to be giving a keynote presentation On Saturday the 6th, first thing in the morning. It's going to be about driving change from within your organization, regardless of your role in an organization and in doing so in a male dominated environment with some sort of, you know, advice for gaining buy in and traction on ideas. So I sincerely hope that if that is something of interest to you will sign up for the NAWIC conference which I believe is going to sell out.

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40:28
Speaker 1
I think they're going to have somewhere around 150 to 200 attendees and you know, early indications are that they will run out of those. So check out nawic. We'll have more information that we'll send out in the newsletter with register registration links and all that type of stuff to help them to spread their word and help our members to take up those seats before they go away. So. All right, that's it, Stacy. I'm gonna stop with the talking and we'll transition into next week. I can't wait to see everybody again soon. Stacey, anything to say before we part?

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41:02
Speaker 3
Nope. I'll see you guys all next week. Have a wonderful day.

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41:06
Speaker 2
Thanks.

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41:06
Speaker 1
See you too.

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Advances in construction materials and methods are allowing us to achieve amazing levels of sustainable building. Passive house design is one of the latest advances toward net zero and net positive buildings. In this episode, we’ll speak with Trey Farmer, architect and owner of a passive house himself! He’ll walk us through the passive house design approach and demonstrate how it is more attainable than we may realize for residential and commercial applications.

Transcript:

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00:11
Speaker 1
All right, it's morning huddle time. Good morning. I'm not saying it works. I wish you'd not speed Godspeed with all of that. I think that's really nice. You know, I'm not sure what kind of success you're gonna have with that today, because the world, my friend, has changed, Right?

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00:27
Speaker 2
A Latin American construction workers, they have different needs. They.

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00:32
Speaker 3
These awards have a huge, like, criteria that you have to fill out. And they usually have a community service or community relations portion, you know, the most productive with a high performance value. And, you know, sometimes it's 11 o' clock at night.

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00:50
Speaker 1
Funny, isn't? Yeah, not for me. Not for me. At 11 o', clock, I am guaranteed to be snoring. So, so foreign. Good morning. It is morning huddle time. We have Trey Farmer with us and of course, Stacy, my co host stadium. How are you today?

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01:14
Speaker 3
I'm a little depressed about the Eagles, you know, lost, but I will recover.

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01:20
Speaker 1
I am depressed for you. I know. I know how it feels to have your team lose in the championship game. Better than 30 other teams in the NFL, but not better than the one that was off. Man. That was. How about the holding call? Was it a call? Was it a hold or was it not a hold?

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01:42
Speaker 3
I don't know.

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01:43
Speaker 1
The player said it was a hold. He called himself out. He goes, it was a hold. It was. I, I didn't think it was a hold when it happened, but I respected the player afterwards in the locker room saying, like, no, no, I, I held him. I grabbed. That's what happened. So it was cool. But, you know, yeah, it's a, That's a tough one. I'm on this group text with a group of friends, all from Philadelphia, and yesterday it was like total crickets until about noon, and one guy just texted, and I'm talking like 15 people, and one guy just texted. I'm so depressed. Like, no motivation at all today, you know, kind of thing. And it is, it's.

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02:24
Speaker 2
It's.

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02:25
Speaker 1
It's tough, you know, it's hard to. Hey, next year. There's always next year. It's hard to rally it up.

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02:31
Speaker 3
Yeah.

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02:34
Speaker 1
Are you a football fan? Do you have, do you have a team?

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02:36
Speaker 2
I. I am a Patriots fan. So, you know, we've just.

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02:42
Speaker 1
Many years of relentless celebration followed by the inevitable, like, being okay as opposed to.

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02:48
Speaker 2
Yeah, well, it's, you know, like being from New England. Right. It was like were kind of on the other side of it with the Yankees for so long that then you know, it's kind of. It was good, but you could also empathize with the haters, so.

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03:01
Speaker 1
Totally. Yeah, totally. Like, yeah, I know what it feels like to feel like there's a team that just has an unfair advantage. Yeah. Yeah. Well, cool. So. So Trey joins us from Forgecraft Architecture in Texas in Austin, Texas. I've had the good fortune of having some exposure to their work in my work in Texas. And I, I haven't worked with Trey directly, but I was talking to one of his colleagues about interesting topics and he said, you know, what would be an interesting topic is passive house design. And I said, well, I don't know what that is, so you're going to have to tell me whether that's interesting or not.

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03:44
Speaker 1
And it turns out that Trey not only is Passive House certified and we'll get into what all that means, but also actually lives in a certified Passive house himself and can actually speak to it not just as a design professional, but can speak to it as a homeowner. And so Stacy asked this question right out of the gate, right? Like, is this only for houses? So, you know, we're going to get into that and many more questions. Stacy, I'm confident that the audience, through the course of our conversation, we'll have some interesting questions that pop up, as you always do. I'll leave you to stoke the interesting discussion and we'll bring you back here to get some, you know, audience questions before we wrap up.

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04:29
Speaker 3
All right, sounds good.

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04:30
Speaker 1
Thanks, Stacy. All right, so. So let's start from scratch. Assume our audience knows as much as I knew, which is absolutely nothing. Whenever we first talked. What is passive house design? Just a simple description.

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04:48
Speaker 2
Yeah, it is. So it's a third party certification and it's an above code building code, basically that's looking primarily at energy use. So it's basically the most aggressive above code building certification. So it's Passive House Institute. US is partnered with the US Department of Energy. So they're sort of like Energy Star zero, Energy ready, Home Net zero. And then Passive House is kind of the highest tier of energy efficiency. And so it, depending on your climate, it'll drop your energy bills by 40 to 80%. So the analogy we use a lot is a yeti. Yeti cooler. If you think about those old school coolers versus a yeti cooler, it's more insulation. The main thing though is that it's airtight. Like that airtightness really holds the energy really well. So you get a better building, it's more resilient.

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05:43
Speaker 2
When the power goes out, it'll hold your heat in the winter, hold your cool in the summer. And then also you're controlling where all of your fresh air is coming from in your house. So there's no leaks, nooks and crannies, no air sneaking in through the holes in the wall where the cockroaches live. It's all getting filtered through a port and mechanically brought in. So there's all these knock on benefits for health and, you know, no dust, no pests, all that sort of stuff. Really quiet. You know, we live pretty close to a highway and before we renovated, we could hear cars going over the expansion joints. We could hear trains whenever they went by and now nothing. Which is really great.

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06:20
Speaker 1
It is great. I live relatively close to a main road as well. And I'm. I was right after our conversation last week, I started like googling how do I go through a passive house renovation? Because just for the sound benefits I like, hey, you know, nice to save money too. But so okay, I've got, I'll start. I'm going to, I'm going to set you up with two questions relatively quickly. I can't decide which one I want to know. First one is what is the, I guess the what are the differences between net zero and passive house? And like, what are some things that make passive house design the most aggressive? What are the things that make it sor of, you know, unique?

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07:08
Speaker 1
And then, and then the second question right on the back of that is talk about, you know, just your application and where you are in the world and, you know, what the renovation actually consisted of. And then I'll take exhaustive notes and try to figure out a budget.

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07:27
Speaker 2
Perfect. Yeah. So you can have a net zero passive house. They're kind of, you know, net zero is like you use about the same amount of energy over the course of a year as you produce, usually with PV on a single family home. Anyway, passive house is probably the best way to get there. So the idea is you're pulling some of that money out of your PV or out of your utility bill and putting it into your mechanical system and your envelope. So more insulation, more better windows, more durable weather barrier, airtightness is probably the biggest lift, I guess, at least in our climate. And so the whole thing is cost optimized. Right. So it's like we don't want to throw so much insulation at your walls that you're getting these diminishing returns and just burning money. Right.

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08:19
Speaker 2
And also, you know, from an environmental standpoint, there's embodied energy insulation. And so we don't want to be trying to reduce our operational carbon. Right. The amount of, you know, fossil fuels getting burned to heat and cool your house by putting too much into your walls. It's all about kind of finding the sweet spot and trying to make a more sustainable house that's also healthier and lasts but, you know, does better in outages. So. So like, for our house, right. We're. We're in Austin, so relatively mild climate, you know, compared to the coasts and New England. So what that looked like for us, our walls are about double code. Our code minimum wall is an R13 wall. So that's a 2x4 with fiberglass batts here. So we have two by six walls and then we use the zip R6, which is.

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09:12
Speaker 2
So zip sheathing is pretty ubiquitous down here. It's like the sheathing with an integrated weather barrier, the green sheathing you see around a lot.

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09:19
Speaker 1
Yep.

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09:20
Speaker 2
And so they make a version of that has poly ISO on the backside of it. And you can get that in various thicknesses so you get your continuous insulation. But you only have to make one trip around the building. So we did that because it was like a little easier and more normal, you know, down here.

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09:37
Speaker 1
So this is. I'm going to pause here just for a second as I wrap my head around.

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09:39
Speaker 2
Yeah, the.

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09:41
Speaker 1
So. So this is an existing structure. It sounds like you're. You're, you know, pulling off the skin of the building to, you know, so that basically gets stripped down on both sides because you also have to go from 2 by 4 to 2 by 6. When you go to 2 by 6, you just fur out of 2 by 4 wall or do you literally, you know, replace all your studs?

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10:06
Speaker 2
We. So our house was 105 years old when we renovated it. And were intending to keep the two by four studs and do more. Do a thicker zip system, you know, thicker continuous insulation.

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10:20
Speaker 1
Okay, got it. So you would have just done it on the outside.

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10:23
Speaker 2
Yeah. And we looked at doing it on the inside and it was just, you know, very expensive and then. But our wall, it was like there were no jack studs, we had no headers. It was all balloon frame down below the floor. The floor was an inch and a half out of level. So we ended up redoing most of the framing. Like there's very little. It's a renovation, but there's very little of the existing wood that was in the house. You know, we thought were going to Be able to keep a lot more of it than we could. It's kind of like peeling away the onion and it's every layer you get to is rotten. So. So were lucky enough to be able to switch to two by six walls which is like, you know, gives us a little bit stouter frame.

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11:02
Speaker 1
Sure.

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11:02
Speaker 2
We didn't mind losing the X. We didn't mind losing the two inches of the interior, you know, footprint. And then were able to back off of that continuous insulation a little bit. Which also, you know, kind of saved us some money in our window detailing as well.

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11:16
Speaker 1
Okay, got it. So we've got the insulation. Now go to the windows. What did you do window wise?

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11:22
Speaker 2
So we used Marvin windows and they're triple pane. And we used a mix of. So were like the first shipment of Marvin Modern which is this line that they put out a couple years ago that are very sleek looking, high performing windows. And then we use some of their Fibrex windows, which is the ultimate. And then we use their wood clad windows because it's a historic preservation. So we tried to match the kind of historic facade with new triple pane casement windows but they have sort of a check rail on them so they look like double hung windows from the outside. We're in a protected historic neighborhood.

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12:03
Speaker 1
Got it.

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12:03
Speaker 2
So we wanted to kind of. So we, you know, redid the detailing, redid the brackets and the roof detailing and used siding that matched the profile and window casing and trim that match what was there before. But now they're new triple pane windows that look kind of like double hung unless you come up really close to them and inspect them.

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12:22
Speaker 1
Awesome. Awesome. All right, cool. Anything else that you did to finish yours?

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12:29
Speaker 2
I'd say so then. Yeah. So airtightness is a bit, you know, going for here code,irtightness is 5 air changes per hour. Right. So that's sort of the leakiness of your building. And we had to be at 0.5 so 10x code which is quite tight. And so when you get to that level of airtightness, then your mechanical system, you know, we have a ventilator. So we're constantly bringing fresh air in with an erv, which is basically a box that allows you to constantly bring fresh air and without paying the energy penalty. So it's like pushing stale air out and the heat and moisture energy kind of come to equilibrium in that box. So you're not basically. So it's. You're not paying the same energy penalty if you're just like Open a window for all day long.

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13:14
Speaker 3
All.

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13:14
Speaker 1
All in.

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13:15
Speaker 2
If.

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13:15
Speaker 1
Can I ask roughly budget wise, what this, you know, square footage and roughly what it costs.

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13:22
Speaker 2
So our house is 2100 square feet. And then I'm in a loft right now. So one of the things that's kind of cool is we moved the insulation from the ceiling up to the roo and we got a nice little bonus space. It's my office now, but we also were able to carve into that like in the kitchen. We can post some photos later, have this big, like sort of splayed light. Well, and then our bathrooms have some skylights. So you kind of steal back some of that space, which was just kind of dumb hot space with our AC in it. It's kind of crazy that we run our air conditioner through, you know, the hottest space that's even hotter than outside, you know, so.

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14:00
Speaker 2
So yeah, as far as price, you know, I think a typical, you know, like this was a custom home, right. So it's not the cheapest home you could possibly build. It wasn't, you know, ultra luxury either. But were able, we'd say probably like 5%, you know, somewhere in that like 5 to 8% range. Also, like, were learning a lot. We hustled a lot of materials from friends. So, you know, I think 5% is a good target. And what we're seeing in multifamily is you can actually get down to cost parity with this really, with passive house. Because, you know, as you think about like multifamily building a unit only, you know, might only have insulation on two sides right.

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14:44
Speaker 2
On the exterior walls, but then it's got all these shared walls and then there's this economy of scale, you know, in your, you're repeating everything so many times. So. Yeah. And then as the markets mature, you know, we see a lot more passive. House in Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, and then sort of like New York, Chicago, Philly are definitely like ahead of the adoption curve. We're still kind of new at it down here, so we're still learning, our trades are still learning, we're still getting our supply chains up and running. But what we've seen in those other markets is that the costs come down pretty quickly when people start doing it all over the place.

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15:21
Speaker 1
So now we're getting to that question, which is, you know, it's obviously not only for single family homes. Talk about some applications where this is, you know, currently working in the United States and elsewhere.

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15:33
Speaker 2
Yeah. So were talking before we jumped on the first Passive House certified hospital just finished its certification in Frankfurt, Germany. So I think that's about a 30 million euro project. Pretty cool though. You know, like it's a big benefit of this is the healthy air and the comfort and so having hospital is like probably the first place you'd think of. There's New York, there's some, you know, 40, 50 story condo and apartment buildings going up that are passive house certified. There's schools, museums, you know, it's really all, it runs the gamut, you know, single family homes. It kind of started with single family homes and then affordable housing and really like Europe, Pacific Northwest and the Northeast are where things have taken off over the last 10, 15 years.

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16:31
Speaker 1
But that's awesome to hear that there are so many applications and I particularly like, as I think about comfort and you know, you think about, you know, health. There's the, to me, a really natural and relatively hot, relatively, you know, hot market in the US right now is senior living. Are senior living projects looking at this?

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16:59
Speaker 2
I would think so. We, we do a lot of like affordable and workforce housing. We did one senior living project maybe like five or six years ago, but it's not something that we're, our firm is focused on. I would be pretty surprised if there wasn't senior living. Looking at it, I know of a couple projects like in Maine and Massachusetts that are doing it. But yeah, totally makes a lot of sense. Senior living anything that's, especially with like legacy owners, you know, where if you've got like a senior living facility that's going to be owning it for 10 years, then you know, you're going to pay back the first cost and then after that it's all just gravy. You know, you're getting all of the health benefits and durability benefits and significantly reduced utility bills.

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17:44
Speaker 1
Yeah, it's, it does seem a no brainer particularly if you're getting close to cost parity in, you know, in the construction phase. That, that's usually the thing that causes everybody, you know, all the deals to break down this way is like, yeah, well be nice to do.

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18:00
Speaker 2
Yeah, exactly. You know, that's, we work with a lot of like supportive housing provider and so they're going to own the project for 50 or 100 years. So it's like why not get out in front of it? And you know, and it's also, it's starting to become code. A lot of areas are setting it up as a reach code. Massachusetts just set it up as a reach code for multifamily, where cities and municipalities can opt into it. And so I think there's five or six municipalities in Massachusetts that are going to start requiring it for anything over six units, which is pretty exciting. So then that'll help that cost curve come down, too.

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18:38
Speaker 1
Yeah, it does. I mean, there's always the initial pushback and frustration and, you know, I'm sure plenty of contractors and plenty of developers are, you know, will be throwing their hands up. But, but as you, if it really fundamentally does, you know, bring the cost curve, you know, if the cost is close.

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19:01
Speaker 2
Yeah.

‍ ‍

19:01
Speaker 1
Unless you're literally building to sell, you're going to benefit from it if you're the owner.

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19:08
Speaker 2
Right. And then there's code is there also to help the end user and protect people and things like that. So it's, I mean, the ROI question is like, it makes sense, Right. As a first thing to think about, but it really is, you know, it's just the first cost of the building. And what about the overall cost of the building over 50 or 100 years is going to be in use? And then that's not even considering, like, the health costs of, you know, childhood asthma and things like that, you know?

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19:37
Speaker 1
Yeah, if we're going to put dollars on something like that.

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19:41
Speaker 2
Right, exactly.

‍ ‍

19:42
Speaker 1
Which does have a financial aspect, but it's also bigger than that. What would you pay to keep your kids, you know, healthy?

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19:47
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, exactly. What's the, what's the return on investment on granite countertops versus your kids?

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19:55
Speaker 1
I have a formula. I'll run past you.

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19:59
Speaker 2
We'll figure it out.

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20:04
Speaker 1
So how do contractors react to this type of building standard and how does this actually impact. The majority of our audience are contractors, general contractors, specialty contractors. How do they react to this type of standard and, you know, how can they help or hurt?

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20:24
Speaker 2
Yeah, I think it runs the gamut. You know, like, some contractors are really excited about this and will jump at the chance to get involved. You know, like early adopters or people really trying to, like, push the boundaries of what they're doing and then some, you know, we get a lot of groaning as well. So, you know, it kind of similar to how our firm had worked with you on these projects in Houston was like, we want to create a, like a team that's collaborating around the project. So, like, everybody's involved. You know, if it becomes antagonistic thing where it's like we're forcing this down the contractors throw, then that's not going to work.

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21:03
Speaker 3
Right?

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21:03
Speaker 2
It's not going to be a successful thing. We all need to be on the same page about it. We all need to want to be doing it for the same reasons. And sometimes that means educating contractor, sometimes that means incentivizing the contractor. Sometimes that means working with a different contractor. You know, really, we want to. We want to work with contractors who want to work on the project and are excited about this kind of like, you know, pushing things forward or whatever you call it.

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21:30
Speaker 1
Yeah, it's a mindset. It's a mindset. And I. And you know, as I think about it's this case for all. I don't care what standard we're building to or what code we're building to. It's always the case that your specialty contractors need to become good partners for each other out in the field, thinking about the guy that comes before him and the guy that comes after him and taking care of each other through the course of it. But when you're building to this type of standard, especially when it's new, what are the things that contractors would do that, you know, maybe it's cutting corners, but how does a contractor accidentally, or maybe not so accidentally undermine, you know, hitting this type of standard?

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22:16
Speaker 2
Yeah, I mean, airtightness is really the tricky one, especially in our market where, like, our existing codes are pretty loose. And so it's not really. There's not a lot of, you know, buffers. Like, there aren't requirements around airtightness testing necessarily that are getting followed. And then just the code minimum is pretty loose. You know, adding more insulation, that's in your spec, that's very easy to price. Right. It's easy to detail. That's kind of, you know, no biggie. The mechanical system, same thing, right. Like, it might cost a little bit more, but the mechanical engineer is kind of dealing with the design and the installer is able to, you know, handle the install and execute. Airtightness is tricky because it's like there's so many trades, right?

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23:02
Speaker 2
You've got your electrician, your plumber, your H Vac guy, you know, random, you know, subs who are coming out. And so it's like you've gotta that and that's where it really is on the contractor and where it's tricky and where I have a lot of empathy for the GC because this is a thing where they're. They're already having to, you know, kind of babysit a lot, right? And like, you know, keep an eye on everybody and make sure Everything's happening the way it should be and the way it's drawn and working well. And now they also have to make sure that nobody's poking any holes in the building without air sealing it or that they're. You know, it's like when you're running electrical conduit, you know, it's one whole, one thing, right. With, with air sealing.

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23:45
Speaker 2
Because if you bundle all your conduit, put it through one big hole, it's really hard to air seal that. But if you just poke one wire through, you can seal it really well. So just like some different ways of thinking about stuff, some different ways of training. It's really about communication at the fundamental level. Like, like the doing is not too tricky. It's the communicating and making sure everybody's on the same page and everybody understands why we're doing this.

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24:09
Speaker 1
Yeah. As the designer on the project, are you actually out there doing any training, you know, helping, or are you training the GC how to train or how does that work?

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24:18
Speaker 2
Yeah, we do especially on like the single family stuff. We're a little more involved, you know, on the ground, like with our house, I mean part like as our house too. But we really wanted it to be a kind of like open source case study. Right. Like were have the opportunity to do this thing that was a little new. We were working with a builder who has a friend and who was really into it. And so we hosted, I don't know, probably like 15 sort of open houses where we had Huber come and do a zip install showing how to air seal and detail around windows. We had Marvin do a install. We did a bunch of blower door tests.

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24:55
Speaker 2
We rented a fog machine from Rock and Roll Rentals and filled the house up with smoke and then positively pressurized it so you could see where all the air leakage was because there was smoke pouring out.

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25:04
Speaker 1
Oh, that's fascinating.

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25:05
Speaker 2
It's really fun. And just like bought a lot of beer and barbecue and invited everybody we knew over to see it. So trying to show that it wasn't, it's not too weird or too crazy. But yeah, again, like a lot of collaboration with our builder and with our trades, which was really, it's really fun. You know, as long as everybody is like into it and on the same page, it's like, it's super rewarding for me because I learned a ton from the trades and our GC about how the things are actually getting installed, the sequencing and that helps me be a better designer. And then that all kind of comes full circle.

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25:42
Speaker 1
Yeah, that makes total sense. I think so Brought in Stacy. I know we have some questions that we want to get to, but I just want to say before we do that I think you've done a really great job of taking this thing that like a lot of these things, Trey, it's like it's new. It feels a little green or annoying to some people. Right. Like, you know, like if you're not on the, if you're not like thinking sustainably, it can sound just sort of like, oh God, you know, like we're doing more. Yeah, but I think you've done a really nice job of making it easy to understand. And, and like you said, like, you know, making it not weird or scary. You know, like it's. This is not that strange.

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26:34
Speaker 2
It's.

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26:34
Speaker 1
There are just a handful of things that we're doing here to focus on. I love the yeti cooler analogy. Air tightness and recognizing that if we can focus on that, we can dramatically reduce our energy consumption, which has just that. Who doesn't win? Aside from utility companies when we do that? You know, that's a, you know.

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26:57
Speaker 2
They, they win too though, because it's. Then the house kind of acts as a battery and so they're not their peak. You know, it's really expensive for them to have this like really variable load. And so we can kind of squish those peaks with more of these buildings because you can pre cool them or preheat them and then at those times when they'd have to.

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27:14
Speaker 1
Great point.

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27:14
Speaker 2
Plants that are super expensive. So we see a lot of utilities buying in or some utilities. Some utilities that are a little more forward thinking than others. But yeah, we love it. Our firm is now only doing passive houses for custom homes and we're using it as kind of a sandbox. Those have a little bit more customization and wiggle room, but we can learn a lot from them. And then we can track those lessons learned up to our multifamily and commercial projects and see, okay, we know we can do this easily. We know it's not going to cost a lot. Let's track that up and start getting contractor buy in on the bigger stuff.

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27:46
Speaker 1
I can't, I can't wait to start seeing it on some of the bigger stuff that I'm involved in. And you know, if anybody's watching, thinking about, you know, a strong multifamily quality architect, that's the space that I've worked with these guys I've Never personally experienced a more participatory and, you know, stronger partnering mindset from an architect. Just really going out of their way to make it easy for construction to occur and, you know, communicating openly and often. So they're a great pick if anybody's looking for one. So, Stacy, what do we have for questions? I want to try to get at least a couple in here before we wrap up.

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28:33
Speaker 3
Sure. Dennis has a great question. How does the design work with the new Covid Air requirements? Most builds are going to more air movement and air changes.

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28:46
Speaker 2
Yeah. And Chad, thank you so much. I was getting goosebumps there. You know, we really strive for that and try to. And we've loved working with you and your team and that the whole idea of, you know, like a high trust relationship and everybody being in it for the project has really changed how we think about it, so.

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29:03
Speaker 1
Oh, thanks, man. That's great to hear.

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29:05
Speaker 2
Appreciate your work. Yeah. So it's essentially like it's perfect with COVID requirements because we know how much we're ventilating. You know, most homes don't actually bring in fresh air. They're just. The analogy I've heard is kind of when you flush a toilet and the water just swirls around. Right. So. So we're actually bringing in fresh air 24 7, meeting our ASHRAE 622 requirements, filtering all that air with. We have a MERV 16 filter box and then MERV 13 filters on our dehumidifier and our ERV. So you're catching all those virus particulate and controlling your fresh air. So your CO2 stays down, you're breathing well, you're sleeping well. So it really pairs well with all the COVID error requirements.

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29:55
Speaker 3
Thank you. So what is Source zero? How can you explain that?

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30:01
Speaker 2
So Source zero is kind of an add on to the Passive House certification where. So we're doing an energy model, like a 3D, you know, pretty robust energy model that Phius, the Passive House Institute US is vetting through many rounds of review. And within that energy model, if you have more production than use, then you know, and then you execute that in the actual project. Then you get this Source zero tag. So it's basically saying that the project. And so that's. Sorry, it produces as much as your house. And then there's a. Essentially depending on your utility, there's a metric for like how much transmission loss you're getting. So that's why it's Source zero instead of site zero. That makes sense.

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30:47
Speaker 1
Got it. Got It, I think, you know, I'm glad that there are people like you and obviously, I'm sure lots of colleagues out there who are, you know, really working to take these, you know, high minded concepts about reducing our carbon footprint and creating more sustainability and you know, reducing overall energy consumption and really turning them into practical application and asking yourself, how do we get it to actually happen? And, and I love hearing that as a firm you're only doing this type of design. And, and you know, that's awesome. I mean that's, you know, with single family. I heard that part of it too. But with single family, this is the only type of, you know, custom single family design that you're doing.

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31:40
Speaker 1
And I, I think, you know, that's how you know that there is momentum behind a thing and that the thing isn't so pie sky, you know, cost prohibitive, painful that it won't ever get legs. So I'm sure there are hurdles. I'm sure there are going to be still projects for which this doesn't make sense and where, you know, people push pause and say, yeah, we're not going to be shooting for passive house certification here. It just doesn't make sense for, but if overall it moves the needle in the right direction, I think that's, you know, that's when again, it's a win for everybody.

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32:21
Speaker 2
Yeah, for us it was like, you know, we did a handful of them and having lived in one. And then Scott, one of the founders of our firm, lives in a very close to passive house home that he built from his family. And it's just like, okay, this is, there's no other way to do this. It's just got to be our best practice. And so if we just plant a flag then we're, you know, we're hoping that people will come to us who want to do this and really, you know, it's like the energy, we kind of came at it from the energy efficiency and the sustainability side, but after having lived in them and feeling like the health benefits and the comfort benefits, like, that's really where it's at.

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32:58
Speaker 2
You know, I think we do it for these reasons, regardless of the other stuff.

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33:03
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, no, that, and that was, that's exactly what I said. You know, it's like to everybody's benefit, probably most of all to the occupants of the space, which is, that's how, you know, it's a really, you know, it's not just to meet some code requirement, you know, goal there's, it's just fundamentally better. So it's great stuff. Last question. Do you do. Where will you take on projects? Are you only designing in Texas?

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33:30
Speaker 2
No, we do. We do work all over the country. We're primarily in Texas, Austin, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio. But we have done projects in California and Pennsylvania, Colorado, New England. So we'll go anywhere. We love it. I mean, it's all, it's a new challenge everywhere. Working in new climate, new space, and that's the fun thing for us. And then I saw the tax credit question in the chat. So with the Inflation Reduction act, you get tax credits now for Energy Star and Zero Energy Ready Home. So it's, you know, the Zero Energy home is a higher tier. So if you certify with Passive House Institute us, that's safe harbor for both of those. So you automatically get Zero Energy Ready Home, epa, Indoor Air Quality plus and watersense certifications when you certify with vs. Nice.

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34:23
Speaker 2
So you're, you can get those tax credits which can really add up, especially in a multifamily or a common lot. Right. Like $5,000 a unit can. Can add up.

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34:31
Speaker 1
That adds up fast. No doubt. That's. That's great to know. Very cool. All right, good. Stacy, anything else on your mind?

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34:39
Speaker 3
I was just curious, do you have any videos you could share? I'd love to include like a visual for our follow up email to our viewers.

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34:48
Speaker 2
Sure, yeah, we can, I'm sure we can dig something up.

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34:51
Speaker 1
All right, awesome. Yeah, send it. Maybe post it in the chat here even and you know, send it to Stacy. That way, you know, regardless whether you're so. You know what though? Darn it. People need to be on our mailing list, so please email us to be added to our weekly mailing list. Email Stacy H. Steeltocom.com and we'll get that stuff over to you. The tray shares.

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35:18
Speaker 2
Awesome. Yeah, we did a few videos with the build show during construction that I can share. Was pretty fun.

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35:24
Speaker 3
Awesome.

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35:25
Speaker 2
Nice.

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35:26
Speaker 1
All right, cool. Any parting comments, Trey, before we wrap it up?

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35:30
Speaker 2
No, just thank you guys for doing this and for having these conversations. I've really enjoyed getting into your podcast over the last couple months. And also, you know, big shout out to Chad if anyone's doing a multi family project, bring him in on the team. Been a huge asset to us.

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35:47
Speaker 1
They are not my customer and I'm not paying. Trey. It's. I don't know, I don't know what else. I was brought in by the developer and you know, I've been pretty hard on their guys, but they're, I mean, really, I'm hard on everybody on the project. But, but the project is this team is that we're working on together is really clicking. And, and it's anyway, lots of.

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36:08
Speaker 2
Thank you.

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36:08
Speaker 1
I appreciate that. Clearly I don't know how to take a compliment. I'll. Trey, we'll have to catch up again soon. I'll be, I'll be in touch next time I run down to Austin.

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36:21
Speaker 2
Way great. Appreciate it and be fun. Take care.

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36:26
Speaker 1
All right, Stacy, let's do a little housekeeping and talk about next week. So next week, same time, same channel for episode number 41 with Tim Klimchock. Tim is a, I don't know, maybe 25 year or 30 year accountant. He was a partner at an accounting firm for many of those years. Fantastic book of business, all serving the AEC community. And he recently left and started a really his own little consulting gig helping to work, you know, just on the consulting end of getting contracting companies, financial houses in order, which has been, I work with Tim on some of my client engagements. He's doing an awesome job and I really wanted to pull him into this discussion. He's going to talk about the type of relationship that the contractor should strive to have with their accounting firms.

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37:25
Speaker 1
And I think there's an opportunity in there to, for business owners, for CFOs and controllers as well as our, you know, obviously anybody else in our regular audience to learn. But this might be one where you drag somebody in the CFO suite or you know, the controller suite into this show and have them listen in because, you know, Tim built an amazing book of business really based on the principles he's going to share with us, which is going to be cool. So, so there's that for next week. Obviously we're always asking you to join our mailing list and be sure to catch us on all of our platforms, obviously live on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, but then be sure to check out our recorded shows on Apple podcasts, Spotify and YouTube. Every week we get those uploaded right away.

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38:16
Speaker 1
So if you missed the show, you will catch it later on same day. Stacy, anything else that I'm forgetting from a housekeeping standpoint?

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38:25
Speaker 3
I don't know if we can announce it yet, but we will be attending one A conference soon live. So maybe next week we can see if we can get permission for that announcement, I think.

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38:40
Speaker 1
Yeah. Okay, we'll wait till next week. We'll wait till next week. But, yeah, we are gonna do our first roadshow. We're gonna we're gonna be live at a conference this May in the D.C. area. And we look forward to that experience and getting it under our belt and then maybe kind of making a thing of it, doing it on a regular basis and checking out where some of the coolest conversations are happening in the industry and going and joining those conferences for a live show. So I look forward to that. That's a great point, Stacy. And we'll have more to share as those details become formal. So. Awesome. Anything else?

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39:15
Speaker 3
That's it. Have a great day.

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39:17
Speaker 1
Have a great day. We'll talk to everybody soon. Please tune in next week.

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39:22
Speaker 3
See y.

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There’s a demand for qualified leaders in the construction industry, and our guest for this episode has dedicated herself to meeting that demand by unleashing the potential of women in leadership positions. Mentors guide up-and-coming professionals, using their experience to help develop a (usually younger) mentee. Sponsors, on the other hand, advocate on behalf of their mentees and help them advance in their careers by being proactive with those in positions of power. In this episode, we learn how to be an effective sponsor for up-and-coming leaders in the construction industry to help eliminate the leadership shortage.

Transcript:

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00:08
Speaker 1
All right, it's morning huddle time. Good morning. I'm not saying it works. I wish you, Godspeed with all of that. I think that's really nice. You know, I'm not sure what kind of success you're gonna have with that today, because the world, my friend, has changed. Right? Latin American construction workers, they have different needs.

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00:28
Speaker 2
They have completely different.

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00:30
Speaker 3
These awards have a huge, like, criteria that you have to fill out. And they usually have a community service or community relations portion, you know, the.

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00:40
Speaker 2
Most productive with a high performance value. And, you know, sometimes it's 11 o' clock at night.

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00:48
Speaker 1
Funny, isn't? Yeah, not for me.

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00:51
Speaker 2
Not for me.

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00:52
Speaker 1
At 11 o', clock, I am guaranteed to be snoring. So foreign. Good morning. It's morning huddle time. We're here for season four. I am psyched. We've got three months of amazing guests that Stacy helped us to hook up with I. Her, I guess just her charm. She's. She's incredible at getting people to agree to come hang out with us. It's so wonderful that we have today Andrea Jansen, who's joining us from Ambition Theory. And Andrea, how are you today?

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01:30
Speaker 2
Oh, I am fantastic. Thank you so much for inviting me onto the morning huddle.

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01:35
Speaker 1
Yeah, we are so glad to have you. You're very welcome. And Stacy, how are you?

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01:40
Speaker 3
I'm doing great. I'm really excited about today's topic. I'm super passionate about mentorship and sponsorship, and I can't wait to hear what you have to say, especially, you know, people first joining the industry and navigating that in their careers and all that stuff and how they can get help and guidance throughout their careers.

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01:59
Speaker 2
So it's going to be great.

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02:01
Speaker 1
Agreed. I'm fired up. I'm also, I'm sitting here thinking, like, I can't believe that it's been already nine or ten weeks or something like that since were last on. Usually we take 8 off, but this time I think we took 9 or 10 off. And I was really getting used to having nothing going on Tuesday mornings. So. But no, I'm, so I'm. I'm really excited to be back in action. This feels more normal to me to have this going on every week. So Stacy is, as always, going to lead the conversation on the live chat. For those of you who are joining us live, if you are not joining us live. Thank you. Think about joining us live next time if you're in a position to do so. It's 9:00am Eastern here on LinkedIn Live. And then, of course, we're getting Stacy.

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02:55
Speaker 1
We have so many people downloading on Apple and Spotify now. I keep watching those statistics. They're going through the roof. It's really exciting to watch people joining us that way. But I do miss having so many people joining us in person. I want, I want more people in person.

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03:11
Speaker 2
Yeah, definitely.

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03:12
Speaker 1
You know, it's, it brings a lot to the Q and A. But look forward to the Q and A here in, you know, 20 minutes or so. And I'm going to jump right in with Andrea if that's good with you. Stacy, we'll see you in a bit.

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03:24
Speaker 2
Sounds good.

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03:25
Speaker 1
See you. Thanks. All right, Andrea, let's get to the business of talking about sponsorship and mentorship and what it's all about. And I think I'm, you know, embarrassed to admit that, you know, it wasn't until we had you, Stacy said, you know, hey, we've got Andrea joining us for this that I started looking into this and thought, oh, man, I wasn't really sure of the difference myself. So tell us a little bit about what mentorship is, what sponsorship is, how they really differ.

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03:52
Speaker 2
So don't feel bad about not knowing the difference. Most people don't know the difference. And actually, most people use the word mentorship to describe both mentorship and sponsorship. So we don't really say the word sponsorship out loud, and we don't necessarily need to. And I'll explain the difference. And I want to say thank you for inviting me to talk about this topic because this is my absolute favorite topic to teach about. And it's the topic if people, if women in the construction industry or companies that want to get more women into leadership positions, if they implement one thing, this is the thing that's going to get them the results the fastest. So I'm so excited to talk about this today.

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04:32
Speaker 2
So I don't know about you, but for my whole career, ever since I was probably a teenager, people said you need to find a mentor if you want to be successful. And so I did, like most people, and I spent hours just talking to people about what it takes to be successful, how they became successful. And to be honest, after a while, I was kind of like hitting my head against the wall because it wasn't working. And really, there's this interesting unconscious bias that shows up on how men and women are mentored. And it's different. And I'll explain the difference. So mentorship is really about getting advice. So say you're that, you know, that junior person. You're up and coming. You're like, I want to get to that next level. You go find that mentor.

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05:15
Speaker 2
So that's either a senior person in your company or in the industry. They don't need to be in your company. You meet them, they, you know, will share stories, they'll maybe tell, give you some advice, drop some names of who you should talk to about the thing that you want to learn. And then you go back to your desk or your office or your job site and you're like, okay, I'm all inspired. I'm going to do this. I'm going to invest in myself. And you're like, okay, I read the book, I heard the story. You know what? If I call that person that you mentioned, they're not going to recognize the number. They're going to think it's spam. So they're not going to pick up. You know, same thing with the email.

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05:51
Speaker 2
They're not going to reply because they have no idea who I am. So at the end of the day, it's up to you, the mentee, to implement, you know, what you've learned. The onus to take action is on you, the junior person.

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06:04
Speaker 1
So that's a slow go. I mean, it's, and it's very daunting. And to your point, you are met with a lot of resistance. And, you know, even if you do have the courage to do that outreach, which is by itself a mountain, the amount of obstacles that are thrown in your way, precisely because to your point, it's very difficult to get somebody to pay attention to you when you don't come in with some sort of, you know, some sort of support.

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06:36
Speaker 2
Yeah, exactly. And so sponsorship, on the other hand, is where you're that junior person. You want to learn that thing, you ask the senior person. And I'll give the example of business development, because that's a key skill that people need to learn in the construction industry. You need to understand how does the business of construction work. That's usually a skill that you need to get to that next level of leadership. So I'll give you an example of a sponsorship situation. So you go to that senior person, you're like, I want to learn how to. How the business works. And that senior person is like, you know what? I have a meeting with the VP of Sales and Business development tomorrow. Why don't you come along with me? So you, as that junior person, you get that exposure. You get to meet that vp.

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07:18
Speaker 2
You get to learn about that thing. You need to learn directly from that senior person. Then they get to know you. You start to build that relationship and that person knows. This person wants to, you know, learn this skill. They want to get to the next level, they're motivated. And then typically in a sponsoring relationship, it's like, okay, you know what, in two weeks, I am pitching a new client. Come along, protege. That's what we use to describe that junior person in this relationship. Come along. And you know What? I'm presenting 20 slides. You take the first five. I'll be here. I can step in if you screw it up. But. But we'll do this together. And really, it's that onus to take action is on both people.

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07:59
Speaker 2
And if you think about who's going to progress faster, is it the person that's preparing and reading all the books or the person that's kind of thrown in with that person to guide them and learning it as they go?

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08:12
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think there's no substitute for experience and Trial by Fire, you know, and all those types. I mean, I think it's a good combination. I'd also recommend reading the books, but I agree that certainly getting the hands on experience is going to advance you faster. And so I want to bring this back to the thought of unconscious bias and how the experience differs between men and women. And you know, these aren't just your opinions. These are. This comes from data. I know that you're a data collector. It's a part of what ambition theory does. So tell me, what's the difference between men's experience and women's experience in this and point to that data.

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09:10
Speaker 2
Yeah, so that's a great question. So typically women are mentored. So women are given advice, prepared to the opport, prepared for that opportunity. And men are typically sponsored. And again, like I want to reiterate, this isn't my opinion. This is based on years of research. And the cool thing is we are. And this happens in every industry. It's not just construction. We're actually gathering more data right now so that we can actually quantify this experience for women specifically working in the construction industry. So we will have that in a couple of weeks. But that's typically how it plays out in the unconscious bias. And it's one thing I do want to say is people never do this on purpose. They don't even realize they're teaching. They're treating men and women differently. And it's actually out of really good intentions.

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09:56
Speaker 2
So for women it's the unconscious bias is I want her to be successful, I want her to do really well. I want to support her and I want to make sure that she's ready for when that opportunity arises so that she knocks it out of the park so that she does a really great job. So that's kind of the intention around it. Whereas for men it's typically about like, you know what, let's throw them in. They can figure it out as they go. And the key to doing that, like it's great to take those risks because you need to take risks to grow. But the benefit of having that sponsor is that they have skin in the game too. So if something goes completely wrong when you're taking that risk, they are in it with you.

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10:39
Speaker 2
So they can guide you to, they can help you pick up the pieces. If something goes wrong, they can help you navigate the politics of it. You have that person with you. Whereas in a mentoring relationship, if you're taking that big risk and it goes really wrong, the mentor is not, they don't have skin in the game. If they gave you that advice, you did. It completely did not go well. Nothing happens to the mentor. And the opposite is also true. If they give you some amazing advice and you follow it and it's a great, like you deliver really well, the mentor is not in it with you, so they don't get the credit either.

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11:16
Speaker 1
Wow, wow, wow. So something just happened in my brain as you were talking through that and that I, something kind of clicked in. Is that it actually through what you said is, you know, it's good intentions. It's this real desire to help this woman to be successful. But maybe this almost treating that woman with kid gloves instead of throwing them right into the, to the mix. Almost like being overprotective of the women that you're trying to help is actually hurting them. You know, you're by trying to protect them from failure, you're keeping them from being. And I can, this all makes sense because I can totally socially. Right. It's, it is ingrained. Speaking as, you know, a middle aged guy. Right.

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12:10
Speaker 1
I, I would say it has been ingrained as a Gen Xer growing up for sure that like, you know, I was definitely to be more deferential toward women. I was taught, I was taught to like open the door for women and be nice to women and you know, women, you have to treat women special and extra nice, you know, and things along those lines. And so psychologically I could totally see how we are. When I say we, I mean people who look like me, people we are failing to challenge or failing to throw people to throw women right in the fire. Like, and again, if I thought of a, of a male, right. Of a guy, my. A younger male, I'd be like, yeah, throw them into the fire. What the hell, See what happens.

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13:03
Speaker 1
And, and that is actually a strategic advantage for that person. That is fascinating. But then it's also sponsoring. So talk about being a good sponsor for a minute. Like, how do I. You talk about having your skin in the game. How do I, how do It in a. In the most supportive way possible where they're really set up for success.

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13:23
Speaker 2
So before I answer that question, I just want to go back to this epiphany that I just watched you have, which is pretty awesome. But when another thing, the. It's not just like men are kind of like being protected above women and preparing the women. It's really, it doesn't matter if you're a man or woman that is sponsoring or it's really. The behavior is on who that junior person is. So women will prepare other women too. And that is something like, I find myself getting stuck in these mentoring conversations and I'm like, you know what? Like, we know. And I'm going to segue this to like, how you actually shift the mindset to that opportunity. So because women do the same thing, it's not men versus women. It's just like you said, how we're socialized, right. And it's just, it's nobody's fault.

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14:10
Speaker 2
It just is. And once you know that is just the society and the culture that we're in, you can move forward. So how to be a good sponsor is. It's really about. The first thing is actually slowing down a little bit because the key about sponsors. Spot the difference between sponsorship and mentorship. You can give advice all day long, but you as that senior person that sponsor or that men, if you're a mentor, you can give advice all day long. But there's no skin in the game, right? Like, nothing's going to happen to you if you give that bad advice. And if you give. If somebody isn't really that. That great because you're aligning your reputation with theirs. So the first step is slow down, get to know the person and ask yourself the question, like, am I comfortable aligning my reputation with theirs?

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14:59
Speaker 2
And so understanding, like, ask a lot of questions like, what are their goals? Almost like, take A step back, do a bird's eye view. Like, what are they good at their job? Like, what are people saying about them? Like, what is their reputation? Because you want to just gather a little bit of information and ask yourself, like, am I comfortable aligning my reputation with theirs? And it doesn't have to take a long time. It can happen really quickly. Like, you just, you want to connect with us, that person and really kind of make that decision. Are we going to go for this together? And you don't explicitly usually ask it. It's like it's kind of this dance of human behavior. You're kind of. So if you're looking for that sponsor, that's what you do.

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15:39
Speaker 2
If you're that protege who's looking for that person, that can open the door for you. It's about pausing for a second and maybe thinking, it's not maybe about me. Actually get curious about them. Think about, like, what are their goals? Try to figure out what they are trying to achieve and think about, like, the kind of value that you can bring to them. And really, you need to actually prove yourself that, like, you know what, I have a good reputation. Like, if you create this opportunity for me, I'm not going to screw it up. Like, I'm going to deliver. Because if you go down in a sponsored relationship, both people go down. But if you're like extremely successful, both people get the credit for that. So slowing down is the first thing.

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16:22
Speaker 2
The second thing is really about shifting, like, not getting caught in the advice trap. Because we as humans, we love talking about ourselves too, right? So yeah, because we're all like, everybody's going to get stuck into this bias, right? So that junior person is going to come and say, please tell me all the advice, tell me all the stories. They're going to ask you for it. So you have to recognize this. Be like, you know what, Like, I could tell you a short story. But then shift your thinking to like, what opportunities do I have access to that I could bring this person along? And it could be as simple as, like, you know what, I'm going to a conference next week. Usually only the senior leaders go to the conference.

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17:05
Speaker 2
I will buy an extra ticket and bring this person along to the conference. And that them getting that exposure to the industry, the connections, you can, they can say hi, they can meet other people. That is going to teach them a lot than any, you know, advice that you're going to get them. So it could be simple. Things like that could be bringing them along to that meeting. It could be Making an introduction, it could be talking about them when they're not there. So if you think about like the decisions of like how people get promoted, like how do companies decide who gets promoted? Those conversations are happening when you, as the person who wants to get promoted are not in the room. And often it's like two levels above you that are making that decision.

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17:53
Speaker 2
So your boss may not necessarily be in that room and might be at that higher level. So having those people that can influence at that level, that's another thing that a sponsor can do. And when one place where people get really stuck is as the junior person, you're like, how do I add value to this senior executives world? Right. It's like how I don't. I'm junior in my career. I don't know a lot. The really interesting thing, especially in construction and especially if you're in a bigger company, if you think about it, executives and senior leaders, they can't know what is going on site at every project or even if you're in the office, they can't have their hands in everything.

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18:35
Speaker 2
But what you can do is you can be there, eyes and ears on the ground, so you can be looking at like what is happening here. And you can kind of tell them the things that are not in the formal reporting, the formal weekly reports, all of the things that get documented. There's all these other stuff going on. Like maybe there's a, you know, the client's a little bit mad, so you can tell, you can share that information and that's really helpful for that executive. So kind of recognizing as that junior person, you do really bring a lot of value. And as that senior person, having relationships with people that are junior to you, it gives you access to so much more information. So it really is a win when this is working properly, it's a win for everybody.

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19:18
Speaker 2
And it doesn't actually take a lot of time.

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19:22
Speaker 1
I really love this concept as a. On both ends of it. Right. I have mentors in my life who, if I think about it through a different lens, I'm sure have sponsored me.

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19:35
Speaker 2
Yeah.

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19:36
Speaker 1
And, and I have people in my life that I have that I've definite. I am like Mr. Advice. So I'm like, oh, no, you know that. But, but I see exactly what you mean. And I, I would really have to kind of, you know, think through each of those relationships. I'm sure I've been sponsoring some and I can think of some instances in particular that I've been sponsoring. But I've always done that thoughtlessly. And I'm sure my biases have been at work.

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20:11
Speaker 1
So I want to bring that back just one last time here with the idea that, you know, when we have to recognize that we have biases, one of the biases that we are likely to have, regardless of who you are, which I thought was really useful to think about as well, is that we've, we may have been socialized to not throw, you know, I don't know, to not. To not challenge women to the extent that they could or should be challenged and to maybe not sponsor and instead just get in the advice trap with these women that we're hoping to help be successful in general. I, I know this was probably a question you've answered a thousand times, and I want to be clear. I'm not, I am the choir here, right? Like, I'm not opposed to that.

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21:05
Speaker 1
But I have to ask the question regardless. Why should we have a vested interest in helping to elevate women in the construction industry? Aside from just in the spirit of equity, in the spirit of, you know, doing the right thing. What, what, why should we really want to do this?

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21:26
Speaker 3
Yeah.

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21:26
Speaker 2
So 100% agree. Because what we, what I found, what I've observed is that the, oh, it's the right thing to do. It's not a strong enough motivation. Right. Because it's going to take resources, it's going to take time and like, is there going to be a return on this?

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21:40
Speaker 1
Exactly. When the chips are down?

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21:43
Speaker 2
Right. And the thing about construction, it is a for profit industry. Right. It's not, it's not nonprofit. So we really need to think about, like, what is the business case for this? And it's a really interesting time in the industry because I think most people here are probably feeling the talent shortage. And the reality is right now, if you think like 10, 20 years down the road, there's going to, we're going to be in cases. And I've heard companies say that they're actually in this situation right now. They're like, we pitch for this job. Like, I kind of hope we don't get it because we actually, I'm not sure if we're going to be able to staff it. Like, there's that kind of tension, that kind of stress happening right now. And if you think about it, there's like, we need to recruit, right?

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22:29
Speaker 2
We need more people to come into this industry to deliver all of this work because it's a great business. The work is there, but there's not Enough people to do the work. And that's the place where some companies are at today. And probably in a couple of years more people are going to feel this pain. So I think if you can think about it that way, as this is a way to actually get more labor into the industry, more people leaning. So that's one piece. The second piece is this unique skill set that women bring to the table.

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23:00
Speaker 2
And this I'll try to, I'll do this really quickly, but there's been research that shows like when men are more transactional leaders, so that transactional is more that top down approach, like I'm the boss and I tell you what to do, I delegate the projects and that men veer more towards that side of the spectrum. Women are more transformational, so they are more collaborative. It's about setting that vision, helping people see their strengths, helping them rise to the challenge. So the research says men are more generally transactional, women more transformational. And we've no and I saw you nod. So in the construction industry, more of the leadership, even training, more of the skills that are rewarded are on that side of the spectrum. Spectrum. But with the younger generation, doesn't matter what gender they are.

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23:45
Speaker 2
Whenever you ask the younger generation, it's like, what do you care about? They're like, I want a sense of purpose, I want to grow, I want to contribute. And if you think about what kind of leader are they going to respond to, as the research says, like they respond better to that transformational leader. So having women in the industry, having women in leadership roles, it's just a great way to inspire that younger generation, help them see that sense of purpose. And women can do that naturally. So having more women, that's another reason why, where women can bring that value because it really helps with retention and getting the most out of your employees. Sold.

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24:20
Speaker 1
I agree, totally agree. So I mean, you don't have to convince. I am 100% there with you. I see it in my work as a consultant. One of my primary goals when there are all male leadership teams is to proactively explore opportunities for creating diversity on that team. Because they get better, they get smarter, and you know, if it's a good leadership team, they learn from each other and they adopt some of those characteristics that they see working. So when that woman who it becomes, you know, an executive in that business demonstrates this totally different, just natural take on leadership, it's contagious and that's a really powerful thing. So all right, I'm Going to pull Stacy into the conversation, get some Q and a going here before we wrap. Fantastic discussion, Andrea.

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25:22
Speaker 1
I'm sure the audience has some questions that you can add value to.

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25:28
Speaker 3
Yeah. First off, did you want to share any specific stories of, you know, advocating for people or. I think there was one. A client that you worked with 10 years ago.

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25:43
Speaker 1
Oh, you're talking to me.

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25:45
Speaker 3
Was, was that your story?

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25:47
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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25:49
Speaker 2
For Chad to share this sponsorship story you told me.

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25:53
Speaker 1
I, I, I admitted to Andrew yesterday. I'll do it briefly. I admitted to Andrea yesterday as we did a little prep conversation for this. I was like, you know, I, I, I want to be a sponsor. I enjoy helping people to reach the next rung in their career. I also have to balance that with a bit of a, and I think I'm not alone, but a bit of like a, what I call a hero complex, which is not something that I love about my personality. But, but is there, where there's this sort of desire to, to not just make the impact, but to, you know, just make sure that everybody knows I kind of made the impact, you know, like, that kind of thing. And, and I want to feel really good about myself.

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26:34
Speaker 1
And I think it's important that when we do this stuff that we, that we aren't embarrassed by the fact that. I think Andrea said it beautifully yesterday, was that, you know, I get something from that too. You know, I'm helping to elevate somebody, so it's not just me. Like, look at me being a great helper. You know, I want to publish how much I donated, you know, like, or whatever else. All these, it's all baggage I have in my brain, by the way. It's nobody else's problem but mine. But, but, you know, I think when we help, we, it's okay to win while we help. Right. Because you said it really well today is that we both share in that credit.

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27:15
Speaker 1
So when I sponsor somebody, when I put my social capital on the line and sponsor somebody who wins and becomes wildly successful, we're both winners in that story.

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27:27
Speaker 2
And in your story, Chad, the best part about it is, like, you help this person get into an executive leadership role and just calling you out, you own a consulting business, so having part of my job really benefits you. Just, there was a lot in it for you in this situation. Totally was a true win. Because honestly, if that person did a bad job, like, the whole company is going down. Right?

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27:51
Speaker 1
That's right.

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27:52
Speaker 2
They're like, okay, we did this because.

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27:54
Speaker 1
No, I saw this person and I was like, this person will be fantastic. They happen to be a woman. This is a win, you know? Yeah. So there's risk too.

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28:04
Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah.

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28:06
Speaker 3
So how often do you think you should be meeting with your sponsor?

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28:12
Speaker 2
Oh, that is a great question. So a lot of companies, a lot of organizations have formal mentorship programs where it's like, we have a contract, we have goals, there's a schedule of how often we meet. And it's very time consuming, especially because a lot of these programs are for women. Like, they pair a junior woman with a senior level woman. And if you think about that woman, there's not that many. Like, she's got to do her job. She's got to, like, overcome all these obstacles. And she's got a me for coffee like, every month with someone, it's a lot of time. The reality of sponsorship, it can be so fast. You actually don't have to meet a lot. And that is the key about, like, really understanding what are their goals, what are my goals, how can I build that trust?

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28:55
Speaker 2
And when you have that trust there, like, it goes really fast. You don't have to meet with them. Like, you don't need to be sitting there talking about advice. It's just kind of like keeping them in the loop a little bit. I'll give you an example, literally, of, like, people sponsor me all the time. So I'll give you an example. I did a speaking engagement a couple months ago, met someone, attended in the audience, they reached out. Later, we had a conversation on Zoom. So I'm thinking about, like, the speaking agent was an hour. We had a 30 minute Zoom call. Then I got an email last week from conference organizer that they are, you know, on the board of this organization asking if I can come and do a talk for them.

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29:38
Speaker 2
And if you think about, like that time, like, that person put their reputation on the line for me when they were making that recommendation. But the amount of time we met was very short. But because we kind of like, in that conversation got to know each other, we built that trust and we realized, like, we're in it together. Right? Like, I have to rise to the challenge and kind of connect with this organization, deliver something to them, and it's that way. So it's really. I love the sponsorship model because it is a lot less time consuming, but it's really about that trust and that mutual relationship and knowing that, like, I can call this person if things are kind of going, you know, this comfort, something's not feeling great.

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30:22
Speaker 2
I can go back and call my person and we're going to figure it out together because there's that mutual benefit. So that's what I love about the relationship.

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30:31
Speaker 3
So leading off of that, like, the comfortability. So I act as a sponsor a lot to younger generations, high school to college level. And I notice, I don't know if they're intimidated or like you were saying, it's early in their career, so they don't know how to open up and ask questions, or maybe they don't even know what to ask. How do you get the younger generation to open up? Because once you know you're building your relationship with your sponsor, obviously 10 years, 15 years into it, you will call the sponsor for help and you have that relationship. Whereas when you're first starting out with your sponsor, you don't have that relationship yet. So you might feel a little uncomfortable. But how do you kind of pull that out?

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31:19
Speaker 2
I think sometimes it's going back to simple things, like, can you connect on another level? Like, oh, do you like their shirt? Like, compliment them on their shirt? And like, just start the conversation that way. Because you'd be amazed by when you can be authentic with someone, when you could kind of, like, take the walls down, how you can connect and how that relationship evolves and where that kind of those things come out. I think it's like sometimes letting go of this, like, here's the five steps, and just being authentic and really building that human connection with them.

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31:52
Speaker 3
So just getting a little bit more personal instead of focusing on the career part of it.

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31:58
Speaker 2
Okay. Yeah.

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32:01
Speaker 3
Okay. And then lastly, question about. I wanted to talk about the survey that you had coming up. I know a lot of women in the industry, or just the industry in general, have issues with competing with other industries and being flexible and offering those type of opportunities. So you had some type of survey to come? That's coming up and feel free to share.

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32:24
Speaker 2
Yeah, we are doing a survey. We partnered with the national center for Construction Education and Research to do a survey. We're going deep on sponsorship. So this is for women only, so please fill it out. If you're here, we'd love to include your opinion. It closes on February 13th. And then the second piece that has come up through a lot of our clients and just engagement with the industry. Is this question about flexibility because of the talent shortage? If you look at the landscape, there's so many flexible work options available, and construction has been a little bit late to the game on figuring that out. And the reality is like you are building something. So a lot of them, you have to physically be there. And I don't know if anyone's cracked that nut yet.

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33:07
Speaker 2
So we have a second piece of the survey where we're getting really curious about flexibility and what could that possibly look like in the construction industry. So, please.

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33:19
Speaker 1
Yeah, I spent a lot of time. So one of the things that I've been doing just in the past year has been really surprising. I spent a lot of time doing these studies inside companies, just inside the business about sort of stress management. And, you know, there are common set of common threads that are constantly the source of high stress. Lack of flexibility in the construction industry is, you know, and some companies are losing relatively substantial people out of the industry because they're just saying, you know, we. And, and again, it's the balance of women doing that to men is much higher. Women. And so we. It is, we've. It would be unbelievable to get to some solution for that works for everybody.

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34:10
Speaker 2
Yeah. And so we will be releasing the results of this in a report. We'll have some live events that will be. That you can come to that are free during Women in Construction Week. So that's the. In March, the week of International Women's Day.

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34:22
Speaker 1
Beautiful, wonderful stuff. Thank you so much. This has been a fantastic conversation. Certainly enlightening for me, which I always love, are I feel like I learn way more from these things than any other learning activity I do. And Andrea, you've been a wealth of information. So thank you so much for coming on and being with us this morning. Anything to say before parting ways?

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34:55
Speaker 2
No, I just want to say thank you for having me. Thank you for everyone in the audience for being curious and open. And I want to just encourage you to lean into that curiosity and keep staying open to new ideas.

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35:07
Speaker 3
And how can people get in contact with you if they.

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35:10
Speaker 2
So they can find us. We have a podcast so you can listen to our podcast. It's called Ambition Theory, Women in Construction. You can go to our website, ambition theory.com you can connect with ambition theory on LinkedIn. You connect with me, Andrea Jansen on LinkedIn. So I'd love to say hi and connect with you.

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35:28
Speaker 3
Great. Thank you so much.

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35:30
Speaker 1
Yeah, Andrea, thank you. All right, Stacy, let's wrap up and talk a little bit about next week. So first things first, I just like to remind people that we stream live on LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook on Tuesdays at 9am Eastern. But be sure to check us out on recorded shows if those times that time doesn't work for you. If you want to go back and binge on all the previous episodes, the easiest places to do that are Apple Podcast, Spotify and then YouTube. Also email us to be added to our weekly mailing list. Stacy h.steeltoe com.com Stacy will get you hooked up so that way you're not reliant on just that LinkedIn invite. But you can expect an email every week that comes across with some cool content recording from last week and a link to sign up for the next one live.

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36:22
Speaker 1
If that's something you'd like to do next week, we have a friend of mine, Trey Farmer, who is an architect down in Texas and has a fantastic conversation planned around passive house design, which is really the latest in, you know, design standards to meet net zero and even net positive buildings. That'll be a really technical discussion but also one that anybody can follow along with. He's, he really has a great way of bringing concepts down to earth. So with all of that in terms of preparation, Stacy, is there anything I've missed? Is there anything you want to hit on? Do you have a tip for us? Do you have a, do you have a steel toe communication?

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37:05
Speaker 3
I completely do not have a tip today.

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37:09
Speaker 1
Tip number one, have a tip. It's, it's all good.

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37:14
Speaker 3
Yeah, I'll be sure next week.

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37:16
Speaker 1
Is there anything that I've missed, Stacy?

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37:20
Speaker 3
No, I think that's it. It's just like you said. If you're not on the email list, please send me an email and we'll get that out to you. We do a recap too so we try to keep our shows short and sweet. We know you guys are busy so if you can't watch the show we at least do a little write up recap in the email.

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37:39
Speaker 1
So awesome. Which we so we will see you all next week 9am and we'll do so for the next 11 weeks hereafter. We look forward to seeing you soon. Thanks everybody.

‍ ‍

When most small to midsized construction companies think about Human Resources, they think of employee handbooks, PTO policies, and managing employee files. When people like Kathy Humm think of HR, they think about how investing in human capital becomes a strategic advantage for a business.

In this episode, we hear about how leading construction companies leverage their HR departments to become better places to work, minimize legal exposure, and increase productivity. Kathy has valuable experience from her time as the HR Director for Harkins Builders for 9 years before starting her new business, NTP HR.

Transcript:

‍ ‍

00:01
Speaker 1
All right, it's morning huddle time. Good morning. I'm not saying it works. I wish you Godspeed with all of that. I think that's really nice. You know, I'm not sure what kind of success you're gonna have with that today because the world, my friend, has changed. Right. A lot of American construction workers, they have different needs.

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00:21
Speaker 2
They have completely different needs.

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00:23
Speaker 3
These awards have a huge, like, criteria that you have to fill out and they usually have a community service portion, you know, the most productive with a high performance value. And you know, sometimes it's 11 o' clock at night.

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00:41
Speaker 1
Funny, isn't that? Yeah, not for me.

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00:44
Speaker 2
Not for me.

‍ ‍

00:45
Speaker 1
At 11 o' clock, I am guaranteed to be snoring.

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00:48
Speaker 3
So.

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00:48
Speaker 1
So. Good morning. It's morning huddle time. I'm Chad Prinke alongside my co host and producer, Stacey Holzinger. Stacey, how are you this morning?

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01:06
Speaker 3
I'm doing great. How are you guys doing?

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01:10
Speaker 2
Doing great.

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01:12
Speaker 1
For me, it's all good. Yeah, we made it through a Thanksgiving. Like everybody, oh my God, I shouldn't even say this out loud. Everybody was sick and I somehow dodged it. Everybody's better and I'm not sick and I don't know, but I'm pretty sure I'm invincible. Folks, I think I made it. I believe it. Yeah. Though I don't know, Thursday to Tuesday, the incubation period is probably not totally over. There's probably, you know, there's some, you know, doctor somewhere like, oh no, he's got symptoms, I can see it. But anyway, so we have our guest and both of our friends, Stacy, Kathy Hum, here with us today. Kathy, thank you so much for joining us this morning. Kathy owns Notice to Proceed hr.

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01:59
Speaker 1
She just started that business literally months ago after spending years and years in the construction industry working for a wonderful, well respected general contractor in the D.C. baltimore area. And, and I was just noticing like recognizing as were getting started, Kathy, Stacy and myself, all three of us have started our own businesses just in the past couple of years. Go us. That's exciting. So congratulations Kathy. How so far, how's it going?

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02:36
Speaker 2
It's going fantastic. As you mentioned, I've spent over 15 years in the HR space. Nine of the last years that I spend in HR were with Harkins Builders. So built their HR department and decided to break off and start my own consulting. And my goal is to transform the construction space HR from transactional to strategic. So it's been great. I have a tremendous network through Associated Builders and Contractors and from Greater Baltimore to Washington, D.C. and. And it's been fantastic.

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03:21
Speaker 1
Well, you're doing work for me, with me right now for a client, for a shared client, where we're working together and doing a fantastic job so far. So thank you for. For the work that you're doing there. And, you know, I think as a new business owner, it is the scariest thing is, am I going to have any clients? And you've been able to solve that problem very quickly through your network, and I'm very excited for you. So that's. It's a nice place to start from, Kathy.

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03:53
Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

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03:56
Speaker 3
So many small subs, you know, need your help, too. We were just talking about, you know, same thing with marketing and hr. A lot of people are multitasking in smaller organizations when there's a level of expertise that's really needed. So you'll be able to help a lot of people.

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04:17
Speaker 2
Yeah. And what I found is that as companies grow, you know, they're just getting by with the transactional HR component, which is, you know, payroll and benefits administration, and then they grow even larger and they realize, okay, I need to recruit top talent, but my retention is low, you know, so you have to come up with some sort of strategy on how are you going to recruit those people and how are you going to retain them, and what does that look like?

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04:50
Speaker 1
Yeah. So. So let's. Let's make this transition into today's topic, clearly, which is we're going to talk about what the mission of your organization, what the mission of your company exists to. To accomplish, which is making that transformation from H in HR from transactional to strategic. Stacy, I'm gonna, you know, obviously put you in the spot that you're. That you're always in each week, which is creating great conversation with all of our audience members who are joining us live. We'll bring you back here with a few minutes left to. To cover the audience questions. Good.

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05:30
Speaker 3
Yep.

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05:30
Speaker 1
See, in a bit, Kathy, you started down that path of describing what transactional HR looks like. And what I picked up from that was sort of. I don't. Maybe compliance items, payroll items, things. Things that are really keeping the ship afloat. Give us, if you wouldn't mind, just sort of the comprehensive list or the best off the top of your head of what transactional HR is. What do you mean exactly when you say transactional hr?

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06:02
Speaker 2
So you're absolutely right. It includes payroll, it includes benefits, administration, any type of, you know, new hire termination, all of those critical transactional duties that a company needs to do. And I mean really the list goes on employee relations, if somebody has an issue or if they have a question and the employees are our customers. So we have to, you know, spend a lot of time and respond promptly to what their needs are, which is important. That's absolutely important.

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06:41
Speaker 1
Well, and that's exactly what I was going to say. What I don't hear you advocating for in any way is saying let's get rid of that stuff. Right. It's now have to occur. It's just that there needs to be a level of HR thinking that's happening at a different level than the day to day critical functions that need to occur to keep the, you know, the ship afloat. Let's now put some definition around what strategic HR looks like. What are some of the things that fall into that bucket? What strategic hr.

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07:15
Speaker 2
So strategic HR is being more forward thinking, not just putting out the fires today, but focusing on what is my 1-3-5-year plan. And you have to have buy in from the executive team. The HR business goals have to align with the strategic goal. So for example, if a business wants to double in size in the next three years, we what's the recruiting strategy to do that? Where are you going to get those candidates? You know, do you have a, you know, a diversity goal that you want to achieve? So how does that tie into your recruiting strategy as well? And I, it's all about being forward thinking and having that buy in from the executive team to be able to think outside of the box and really help that organization grow.

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08:11
Speaker 1
So, so if I can just solidify this recruiting can fall into either a transactional or a strategic bucket. But transactional recruiting looks like post the ad, call the headhunter. It's, it's reaction to we need a pm. We need to bring in somebody in this key position and our HR department reacts. Posts the ad calls a headhunter or any other number of just in time things designed to create a result. Not bad things, but things that are less effective perhaps than they would be if they were a part of a broader plan. So talk to me about what strategic recruiting just as an example might look like in comparison to the two, you know, to the, you know, post the ad, call the headhunter.

‍ ‍

09:14
Speaker 2
Sure. And those things like you mentioned Chad, are really important. But let's break this down a little bit. Is your job description from the 1920s or do you even have a job description?

‍ ‍

09:26
Speaker 1
Are we scrapping together a job description Last minute. I can't just, I can't tell you how I've seen people who are like, I don't know, Chad, do you have a job description? Something that we can help me with that? Yeah, totally.

‍ ‍

09:38
Speaker 2
But, but more specifically about the job description, are you talking about the challenges that this position will focus on? Are you speaking to the candidate? Are you talking about your culture when you write that job description and what it's like a day in the life at X Company? Then you take that a step further and do you have an employee referral plan within your organization? And have you coached your employees with an elevator pitch on how to recruit top talent? You know, you could be at a.

‍ ‍

10:12
Speaker 1
One thing to say, hey, we'll give you 500 bucks if you bring somebody in. It's another thing to give the tools to be successful in doing that.

‍ ‍

10:20
Speaker 2
You could be at a wedding, you could be in the grocery store and you get exceptional service from the, the person at the register and you think, wow, they have the skill sets, the essential skill sets that might be able to fit in our company. We can teach them the technical skills. Then you have to take it even a step further. And where are you going to find these candidates? Are you just parking your posting on LinkedIn and that's it. You have to build some sort of strategy around where we got most of our candidates. Do you typically hire from universities, community colleges, trade schools in construction? The Votech programs at high school are a great, you know, starting point to hire entry level people within the construction space.

‍ ‍

11:13
Speaker 2
And is your company the go to company in those programs that when they think about okay, we want to start placing our students, are they calling you? Are you the first one they're calling? Which means your recruiting strategy is you have to get in the classroom and you have to be present and you have to, you know, do the upfront work to get on that list and be the first go to caller.

‍ ‍

11:36
Speaker 1
Like so many things in life and business, what I'm hearing you say is it's all about making the investments in these areas that have long term benefits. That if I start laying down lines, if I start creating funnels at vocational schools, if I start laying down funnels in community college programs, I'm not going to have a bunch of candidates tomorrow. But what I will have done is help to Solidify my pipeline 3 years, 5 years, 10 years down the line. And that's strategic. And that's, that's exactly what you're talking about is, you know, hey, if you're today, if you're transactional, so be it. You might need to post that ad, you might need to call that headhunter. But today I want you to also make investments that will help you to be more strategic in the future.

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12:32
Speaker 1
It will help you in the future to have a much more effective strategy. And we're just talking about recruiting, not to mention all the other things that could fit into the hr which I look forward to potentially getting to with you today though time is so limited and there's so much to. So I want to ask what are some of the biggest mistakes that contractors are making as it relates to their HR departments? Whether it's general contractors or specialty contractors, what are the biggest mistakes they're making in relation to their HR department?

‍ ‍

13:10
Speaker 2
I would say the investment in hr. You have to invest in HR for it to be successful. So that's number one. And what I mean by that is you have to put the right person in the seat on the bus or develop that team that has both a transactional mindset as well as a strategic mindset. Because the duties are still the duties but you need to be forward thinking in an HR department and an HR role. So I would say the investment in hr. I would also say that HR needs to have a seat at the table. And what I mean by that is the executive team needs to include HR because let's face it, our most valuable asset in the construction space anywhere are our people.

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14:07
Speaker 2
And if we don't have good talent, satisfied employees, we're not going to be the best that we can be in whatever we do. So who has the better pulse, the best pulse on our people? It's the HR department. They, they absolutely have a pulse on the people. And so HR needs to have a seat at the table.

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14:31
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's so the first, the foundational aspect of that I'm hearing from you is really treating HR not as an afterthought, treating hr. Making the appropriate investment in HR leadership is maybe what I'm, is what I'm hearing you say. Does that sound right?

‍ ‍

14:57
Speaker 2
100%. But here's also something about that HR.

‍ ‍

15:05
Speaker 1
People.

‍ ‍

15:07
Speaker 2
That, that lead the department, that work in the department, they have to be able to speak the executive language. They have to be able to sit in those executive meetings. And the two biggest things that executives are focused on are the cost and the risk. And if you can't speak in business language and take the empathy and the touchy feely part of hr, which is important out of that discussion, that's where HR people tend to have trouble in those meetings. You have to be brief, you have to be concise, you have to be prepared, you have to have solutions. Don't come to them with a problem, come to them with solutions. And you have to know your data analytics and be able to present that information so that you're touching on the cost and the risk. That's what they want to hear.

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16:14
Speaker 1
Yeah, it's a two way street. You can't. First, first things first. The executive team has to welcome the HR leadership as an equal, as an equal voice at the table, as somebody that's really going to have impact, that they're going to consider their perspectives. Yeah. The other portion of that equation is HR people need to speak exact. They need to, they need to actually be prepared at that level. And playing at that level requires, you know, bridging the gap between these touchy feely topics like employee satisfaction and tying it to metrics, tying it to measurables, tying those touchy feely topics to real. Measurable business outcomes, costs, risks, returns on investment.

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17:12
Speaker 2
So even speaking about employee satisfaction, you can go into an executive meeting and say, our employees aren't satisfied. What does that mean? Right. What is tell me more? Or you can go in and after you've done, you know, year after year employee satisfaction surveys using the G12, the Gallup 12 questions, which are very simple, you can go in and say, I just want to let you know, this year our Gallup 12 survey, Employee Satisfaction Survey, dipped from 4.8 out of 5 to 4.3. And here are the categories that they dipped in. And here are those scores. And so we really need to focus and unravel this. And I've done a little research and this is what I've discovered. Two very different. You know, you go in and you say, we've got problems. Well, there's no solution there.

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18:14
Speaker 1
Right. Give me hard data and tell me why I should care.

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18:18
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah.

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18:19
Speaker 1
It's, it's a, you know, if somebody comes in and has the ability to say, this is a leading indicator that statistically, if we're not above this threshold, we're going to have retention rate issues, we're going to experience attrition. The cost per new hire is X. Right. Here's what it costs when we have a fail within our first three years. If we have to replace somebody, I mean. Yeah. And I can think about the differences. I spend a lot of time in my work with the HR professionals within my Clients, businesses. And there's a massive difference between the quality of conversation that we're able to have in one instance and the other. And without question, there's a connection on who's invited to the table. Yeah. Now at the same time I'm sitting here like, I'm sorry, I'm like thinking about chicken or the egg.

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19:17
Speaker 1
Like, am I a part of this problem? Do I need to make sure that. And I'm sure I am to some extent. And that's, and so it's a valuable discussion to be having with you.

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19:28
Speaker 2
So, but to be honest, where you excel is the strategic plan and the vision of organizations. And that's where it starts. And time and time again, when I ask companies, do you have a strategic plan? Well, kind of sorta or not really. Because the reason I ask that is because when I'm looking at hr, from soup to nuts, the recruiting business plan has to align with the strategic plan. It gives us direction as an HR team.

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20:06
Speaker 1
Yeah, I totally agree. Without one, you can't really have the other. And I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to be a very strategic and capable HR professional operating inside a business that doesn't know where the hell it's going. That's got to be excruciating. So you can't have one without the other. I think that's an interesting thought. So let's talk straight talk here for a minute about something that I, I can't help. I, I, I'm really, I'm trying to solve this problem in my mind for the average or sort of typical sized contractor out there that does not have unlimited budget. This is an overhead hire. Right. We can't job cost this higher. If we're, if we're going to hire HR people, we've got to be able to really justify what we're doing here.

‍ ‍

21:04
Speaker 1
At what point do we need to make sure we have an HR person in place? Is there an employee count? Is there a revenue size? Is there, are there any rules of thumb for the point at which I need to be fully prepared to be past the transactional HR and have really HR leadership inside my business?

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21:23
Speaker 2
From my perspective, because I'm very strategic, that has to be out of the gate when you're considering starting a business. You know, think proactively. Okay. I may not need somebody right this minute, but who is that person going to be that's going to handle all the transactional and help me grow? Because you want them as a partner, but if you don't have that person in play. By the time you have 50 employees, it's time.

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21:59
Speaker 1
Okay, that's fair. And I, and now I'm, I can get that perspective. When you first started, I was like, oh, man. So, so it's going to be, I'm going to have, my first hire is going to be an HR person. We have to install metals or, you know, whatever our job is. What you're saying isn't that it's from the start you need to have this seed mindset. Yes. Which is I need to be. And perhaps, man, I don't know if you'll like what I'm about to say, but perhaps you can be strategic about HR in your business without having an HR professional leading that.

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22:38
Speaker 1
In other words, my job can be business owner or I can have vice president of operations, but if they have at least for some period of time in the business the ability to think strategically about HR issues, that could be sufficient. I don't necessarily have to go out and hire an HR professional, but what I'm hearing you say is once you reach maybe that 50 employee mark, it's a, it's time for you to have an HR professional.

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23:03
Speaker 2
Well, and Chad, I would argue, I would counter your point there with, you know, there comes a time where the HR responsibilities pull that CEO, that president, vice president, away from what they do best and helping develop and grow the organization. So there is a point that you need to offload those duties and find somebody who is equally as strategic to be a partner to be able to help the organization grow.

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23:49
Speaker 1
That's a really great point. I love that. And I can't agree with you more that there does reach almost in every business that I've ever come across a point, whether it's HR or sales or marketing or operations for that matter, where there's, there are people who are really in this lane who are carrying this added responsibility that it reaches a certain point where this responsibility isn't getting as much of their attention as it needs. This responsibility isn't getting as much responsive attention as it needs. And ultimately it's time to hand one off. And this is your primary responsibility. So it's time to hand this one off. That makes a lot of sense. That's helpful. And if you're an audience member, you're watching this. Consider, are you there? Have you reached that point where you have been handling the recruiting? Because, man, you love it.

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24:48
Speaker 1
You really enjoy being out in the Field with people. And you're the vice president of operations for a 75 employee company and you're heading up the internship program and you're heading up the employee, all these different types of things. But you're also the vice president of operations.

‍ ‍

25:05
Speaker 2
Right, Right.

‍ ‍

25:06
Speaker 1
It's a lot.

‍ ‍

25:07
Speaker 2
And there's a lot of nuances to all of the HR functionalities. There's just so much involved that, I mean, you take recruiting, we talked about that earlier. You know, from scheduling the interview to ordering the background check to this, that the other. There's all of that behind the scenes. That certainly needs to happen.

‍ ‍

25:29
Speaker 1
And it's time consuming. It's got to happen. So. All right, I'm going to bring Stacy back. There's one thing while I bring Stacy back that I want to just toss on the table with you is that I personally have always felt that one of the most essential functions of a strong human resources department is enabling employee development and training throughout the organization. And I'd like for you to describe, well, first off, if you agree, and second off, what an organization that wants to be a great employee development organization, they want to be awesome at training and developing their people. What role should HR be playing in that environment and what role should others be playing? Because I'll tell you, one of the things I hear a lot is like, well, I don't know, training hr. Are you on that?

‍ ‍

26:22
Speaker 1
And I always, I'm like, that's not fair. That's not quite right. You can't just lay training at HR's feet and walk out. So what's your take? Am I, am I wrong or.

‍ ‍

26:34
Speaker 2
Training is a part of an HR function. And I would say that anything from leadership development, management, essential skills, those kinds of things are led by the HR team. Now when you get into technical skill sets in the construction space, HR people don't know the technical, you know, how to's part of the job. What HR's role in that particular situation would be that they're facilitating the training. They're finding the technical trainer, whether it's in house or outside of the organization to have those training sessions. And they're making it. So HR absolutely plays a role in training. I would also say that companies need to have career paths. They need to spell that out because the younger generation coming into the workforce, they want to know, if I get hired here, what's my next step and what's my next step?

‍ ‍

27:45
Speaker 2
And you know, I want to see the three to five year plan for me. So it's really important for companies not only to have a really good job description but also paint the picture of if you start here, and these are the training things and certifications that you need to acquire over the next X months year, what have you. This is your projection and that's super important.

‍ ‍

28:13
Speaker 1
I love it. I love it. That seems fair to me. And it seems like there's an internal customer that obviously that HR is serving. But there also needs to be an investment from department leadership alongside HR to make this be successful. So HR not only needs to service its internal customer, but it also needs people to be bought into servicing the internal customer that's inside their department sense. In other words, it needs to have the buy in and support of everyone else so that everyone isn't just pointing the finger at HR and saying, I don't know, we're supposed to have a training program, hr, are you on that? But instead they're building it together. We are already up on time. I'm the worst. But we're going to go a little late. Stacy, what do we have in terms of questions?

‍ ‍

29:18
Speaker 3
We have a great question from Ralph. So how do you make training and employee growth a priority throughout your organization? Allow time away from projects for employee growth? I think that's a big concern for a lot of companies because they don't want to take people off the projects because they have to meet these deadlines and these schedules. But it is important for employee growth.

‍ ‍

29:43
Speaker 2
So.

‍ ‍

29:43
Speaker 3
So what are your thoughts on that?

‍ ‍

29:47
Speaker 2
Well, with any function of HR and this particular question relates to training, there has to be accountability from the top and there has to be buy in from the top. So how do they treat learning and development? And if they have buy into it, then you can formulate as an HR team what that looks like. Dollars to spend for your department for each of your, you know, team members for training, going away to conferences, taking time away from the job, maybe recruiting and hiring more people so that you have that backfill for you to take that time off. A lot of companies are also moving to sabbaticals in construction. It's a very challenging industry and it's high stress, high energy.

‍ ‍

30:45
Speaker 2
So a lot of companies are going to take some sabbatical time after a three, five year period so that they can recharge and train and develop.

‍ ‍

30:57
Speaker 3
Definitely when you were talking earlier about training and things like that, I, when I worked with Shapiro and Duncan, I worked very closely with the HR department and I think marketing also usually ties in as a support system to HR and trying to simplify the message, trying to get forms return that you need, whether it's health benefit forms, meeting deadlines, event planning, employee morale type things. So if you do have marketing support, include them into the HR conversation because they can help you out a lot when it comes to communicating these crucial messages, whether it's safety or HR or health benefits or anything like that, to get that information out and get it returned. It was always kind of a struggle, but we worked together pretty good doing that.

‍ ‍

31:59
Speaker 2
I would 100% agree both for your internal messaging and your external messaging, because you have to paint the story of the culture externally to attract candidates, but internally, all of that messaging around open enrollment, recruiting, employee referral program training and development, compliance. Why we have to do things that we have to do because the federal government and state legislation, you know, are putting, you know, bills in place that we have to comply with.

‍ ‍

32:30
Speaker 3
Yeah. And how can companies better enable a shift to becoming more strategic if they don't have unlimited overhead budgets?

‍ ‍

32:42
Speaker 2
It starts with investing in automation. We have tremendous systems that can do a lot of the transactional duties and it starts there and it will free up that one person team, two person team to be able to spend time planning and being more strategic.

‍ ‍

33:07
Speaker 3
Nice.

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33:08
Speaker 1
That's awesome. I think there's a real hesitance for companies to purchase software that they don't know that. How do I put this? Contractors don't love, don't like purchasing software that doesn't specifically tie into operations or the technical aspect of the work. Right. And I mean with automation, can you give us a sense of the return on investment that you would get for, you know, I don't know. That may be difficult for you to come up with out of thin air, but for X dollars invested, what are we, what are we saving when we bring in the right hr? Automation.

‍ ‍

33:56
Speaker 2
So on the front end you'd have an applicant tracking system which can give you those, the data analytics. As far as the candidates that are applying, who you're hiring, all of that data is critical to the ROI and understanding. You know, is this worth the investment? And then, you know, certainly you have your benefits tracking in there. You have your open enrollment and you have capabilities depending on the system with learning and development and then compliance. I can give you an example of the Affordable Care act requires at a certain number of employees requires you to do reporting. And at my previous employer, we paid over four thousand dollars for that reporting. If you have an app, if you have a, an HR system and you're automated, you can Pull that data out of the system and it saves you.

‍ ‍

34:56
Speaker 2
In that case, it would have saved us $4,000.

‍ ‍

35:00
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Got it. I see where you're going with it. And I, you know, I'm assuming that if I were an audience member and I had questions about even any aspect of what we've talked about today, that these are all things you'd be, you know, totally comfortable having a conversation with somebody about if they wanted to reach out.

‍ ‍

35:21
Speaker 2
Absolutely.

‍ ‍

35:22
Speaker 1
If they wanted to reach out to you, where would they get you? Should they reach out via LinkedIn?

‍ ‍

35:27
Speaker 2
Ntphr.com cool. And my email is Kathy Humtphr, LinkedIn. Be happy to talk through any of your HR needs. I do an assessment from soup to nuts, no cost to the company to give you an idea of where you are and where you'd like to be. And then we go from there.

‍ ‍

35:54
Speaker 1
Awesome. Nice.

‍ ‍

35:56
Speaker 3
Thanks for joining us.

‍ ‍

35:57
Speaker 2
Yeah, thank you.

‍ ‍

36:00
Speaker 1
I really enjoy this conversation. Kathy and I have been particularly recently talking a lot, and I still feel like I have a lot to say to you. So. And I love listening to your perspectives on things. You're, you're a great, fun educator. I don't know if that's something you're aware of, but you are, you're very good at it.

‍ ‍

36:21
Speaker 2
Well, thank you.

‍ ‍

36:22
Speaker 1
Yeah, thank you. Very good. So. All right, Kathy, thanks again. Stacy, let's do a little housekeeping to wrap up the last show of three.

‍ ‍

36:34
Speaker 3
Yep.

‍ ‍

36:37
Speaker 1
So, so we are up in the air on exactly when we're coming back, the exact day I. Oh, wait, no, that's not true. We nailed it.

‍ ‍

36:46
Speaker 3
January 31st.

‍ ‍

36:48
Speaker 1
January 31st. This literally just happened over the past week. So we are, our first show back will be January 31st. We'll be running for 12 weeks, pretty much consecutively. Consecutively thereafter, unless there's some holiday that we haven't accounted for and we are looking for guests. So please reach out to Stacy if you or somebody you know should be on our show. And the best way to do that, to reach out to Stacy is right here. Stacey H. Steeltoe.com.com. You can reach out to me as well, but I'll just forward it to Stacy. He handles all the, she handles all the booking. So I'm not qualified to handle that particular aspect of what we do. Stacy, do you have a steel toe? Communications tip of the week.

‍ ‍

37:34
Speaker 3
I just want to remind everybody today that it is giving Tuesday. Make sure that you're supporting your local construction nonprofits that are doing all the hard work to recruit people into this industry to help get people or help get you employees. If you're not donating with money, try donating with your time or just spread the word by sharing the organizations and their messages and what they represent. Please do that today.

‍ ‍

38:08
Speaker 1
Awesome. Thank you, Stacy. So I'll take one moment and just say this, which is the past few years have been extremely busy for most people in the construction industry. Now, depending on if you've been doing commercial interiors exclusively, you might be angry to hear me say that. Or if you've been doing hotels exclusively, there was a pretty tough time during that period, but by and large the industry has been really thriving. There are some very valid indicators that we are heading into a less vibrant time. We're heading into a time where business will be less plentiful and your strategy for your business is going to be that much more important. I've been speaking with a lot of people recently about designing their strategic plan so that their business is more recession resilient or recession proof.

‍ ‍

39:14
Speaker 1
If that's a conversation that you want to have with me, you can reach out to me directly through LinkedIn or via that email. I've been giving a lot of talks on it. I've been giving lots of keynotes on it. So if there's anybody that wants to have that discussion, please do reach out. Best of luck everybody as we enter into the New Year. Happy holidays and all the best from us at the Morning Huddle. Stacy, any final words?

‍ ‍

39:40
Speaker 3
Happy holidays and I look forward to the break, recharging and bringing some new awesome topics and guests for next season.

‍ ‍

39:50
Speaker 1
Same here. We'll see you in 2023.

‍ ‍

39:52
Speaker 3
See ya.

‍ ‍

39:53
Speaker 1
Bye. Bye.

‍ ‍

Real estate developers drive a staggering amount of construction in the US today, and like all construction project owners, they have unique needs. Whether you are a design firm, general contractor, or specialty contractor, some or even most of your projects have a developer as your ultimate customer.

In this episode, we hear from a VP of Construction for an affordable housing developer, but Meade Rhoads has been on both sides of the table and brings a well-rounded perspective to the discussion. Join us to improve your understanding of developers as a customer and how you can improve your strategy for winning more developer-driven projects and building lasting partnerships regardless of your role in the industry.

Transcript:

‍ ‍

00:03
Speaker 1
All right, it's morning huddle time. Good morning. I'm not saying it works. I wish you God speed. Godspeed with all of that. I think that's really nice. You know, I'm not sure what kind of success you're going to have with that today because the world, my friend, has changed. Right?

‍ ‍

00:19
Speaker 2
A lot of American construction workers, they have different needs.

‍ ‍

00:23
Speaker 1
They have completely different needs.

‍ ‍

00:25
Speaker 3
These awards have a huge, like, criteria that you have to fill out and they usually community service or community relations portion, you know, the most productive with a high performance value. And, you know, sometimes it's 11 o' clock at night.

‍ ‍

00:43
Speaker 1
Funny, isn't? Yeah, not for me. Not for me. At 11 o', clock, I am guaranteed to be snoring.

‍ ‍

00:50
Speaker 3
So.

‍ ‍

00:50
Speaker 2
So.

‍ ‍

01:00
Speaker 1
Good morning. It's morning time. I'm Chad Prinke here with my co host and producer, Stacy Holzinger. Stacy, how are you today?

‍ ‍

01:09
Speaker 3
I'm doing great. How are you guys?

‍ ‍

01:13
Speaker 1
So far, so good. So far so good.

‍ ‍

01:15
Speaker 2
It's.

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01:15
Speaker 1
We're inches away from Thanksgiving. Our house is teetering on the edge of sickness, and we're hoping to be able to actually see family. So that's what's going on in my world. We have today, we have a good friend and guest, Mead Rhodes, who's with us from the NHP Foundation. He heads up construction for the NHP foundation, which is an affordable housing developer and an operator of affordable housing properties. Mead, thank you so much for joining us today.

‍ ‍

01:48
Speaker 2
How are you doing? Just fine. Glad to be here. Look forward to this chat.

‍ ‍

01:54
Speaker 1
Yeah, same. What's, what's exciting in your house heading toward Thanksgiving?

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02:00
Speaker 2
We're headed down to Pinehurst. It's typical plan, right? We head down there, meet some family down there, look forward to it. One of my favorite holidays. Right? Just a lot of food. Too much food.

‍ ‍

02:17
Speaker 1
Yeah, it's the best. An entire holiday that is actually geared around the idea of giving thanks. I think is. Gratitude is such a valuable thing. It's. I think if we can all stay there and not get into politics, then we will have a good holiday, I think, in our house. Stacy, what's. What's going on in your world heading into Thanksgiving? Oh, Stacy, we're not hearing you.

‍ ‍

02:49
Speaker 2
Shoot.

‍ ‍

02:51
Speaker 1
Stacy, with the technical difficulty. Oh, no, it's all good. It's all good. She'll get it straight. I'm confident. I do know that Stacy has not had Thanksgiving dinner with her extended family for three years due to the flu. Every time she's had, you know, Thanksgiving in the past three years and this year, their fingers crossed, gonna actually make it to a Turkey Day dinner. I'm hoping, I'm hoping for Stacy that turns out again. I'm sure she'll be joining us back. She just had some sort of glitch, but me, let's jump into it. So the purpose.

‍ ‍

03:30
Speaker 2
Sure.

‍ ‍

03:31
Speaker 1
The focus of today's conversation. And, and I, I've actually talked to a handful of people leading up to this that are really excited about this conversation to actually talk to a developer or somebody on the developer side of the multifamily building community about what matters from a developer's perspective. And I think you actually bring a unique combination to the table, both as a developer and as a construction guy. So let's start with your story.

‍ ‍

04:04
Speaker 2
Sure, sure. So I was that kid who used to stand on the corner watching the backhoe. Right. So even at an early age I was interested in it. And, and then in college, I got a real estate license when I was a sophomore and spent the summers on the business end of a hammer. Right. So I, in the summertime I was banging nails.

‍ ‍

04:28
Speaker 1
We have that in common. Yep.

‍ ‍

04:29
Speaker 2
Yeah.

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04:30
Speaker 3
Right.

‍ ‍

04:30
Speaker 1
All through high school and college.

‍ ‍

04:31
Speaker 2
Yep. Well, I haven't gotten too far away from it because I'm on a farm. I don't know whether you know it, but I live on a farm and so I still the business end of a hammer every now and again. So. Yeah. But, but anyway, in terms of my career, I started in property management and I, I've come to believe that they're some of the hardest working folks in the real estate industry. They're just, they're, they have to push rents with the tenants and then at the same time not spend any money with the owners. Right. So it's just you kind of caught in the middle in the balancing act. It's. Yeah, it sure is. Takes a little bit of another go between and then, let's see. So I figured out that was just some kind of all kinds of hard work.

‍ ‍

05:20
Speaker 2
And so I ended up going back and getting an MBA up in D.C. at GW and then got into asset management and property management at a REIT in Richmond. And we bought a lot of properties and left there and got into residential development with a regional development, regional developer in and around DC and spent. Worked on both ends of the spectrum. So I worked on the tax credit end. Right. But then on the other end of the spectrum, we also did luxury apartments and so and not so much in the middle and then got into commercial development, mixed use development, was a partner, a development partner in Northern Virginia. We did mixed use, commercial, residential and then, and now I'm on traction side and I'm, I work at NHP. We do mostly tax credit work predominantly.

‍ ‍

06:31
Speaker 2
We've got 190 million in work under construction, under active construction now. And let's see what else. I'm a licensed contractor and I already said that I've got a broker's license.

‍ ‍

06:47
Speaker 1
That's awesome. I mean it's an extremely varied career, really comprehensive experience surrounding professional real estate organizations. And the construction end is where you started, it's where you even are today, but inside of a development firm. So I think what you stand to bring to our audience and what I'm hoping that we can get into is helping us to put ourselves in the shoes of the developer community. And I think before I start asking you those questions and putting you on the spot to be a representative from the development community, I'll also say that it's possible that some of the stuff that you personally do or believe in may be somewhat different than what are the norms in the industry.

‍ ‍

07:49
Speaker 1
And I think it's throughout the course of the conversation valuable to kind of differentiate between those two periodically where you might say hey, this is what's normal, this is what I've seen, it's not what I do. And then, you know, vice versa along the way.

‍ ‍

08:04
Speaker 2
So that's fair.

‍ ‍

08:06
Speaker 1
I think at the core of people's desire to understand when I say people, I'm just going to go ahead and say general contractors and subcontractors have a deep desire to understand why developers procurement processes appear to work the way they do. So let's start if you would, in your shoes as a developer, what has been your experience with a typical procurement process for the general contractor?

‍ ‍

08:45
Speaker 2
Sure. So let's see. I've never, I've never had the luxury of working on a product where we had 100% complete plans and were putting them out to bid and you know, the RFP bid, you know all. I think the only people that are really able to do that are schools and the government.

‍ ‍

09:14
Speaker 1
People building that stuff might argue that even then, even though. Okay, yeah, but no, but I, I'm hearing you loud and clear and there is something really, there is something really, I don't know common about that in multifamily. Whether it's affordable or whether it's market rate doesn't really matter. That that seems to be a trend. I hear that almost all the time. So, so as for starters, you're saying we're starting off with incomplete plans, we're going through procurement and we're starting off.

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09:46
Speaker 2
With incomplete plans and running full tilt. So I've been in two worlds, right? We talked about the market rate world that I've been in and I'm currently in the tax credit world. And in both worlds we often, and I can't think of an instance when we haven't had a GC in the mix early on. Right. And there is a tremendous amount of value that a really good GC brings to the table.

‍ ‍

10:26
Speaker 1
How do you select? So if I'm hearing you right. Yeah. I didn't hear you say multiple GCs. I heard you say GC involved, AGC involved early on. How do you determine which GC to involve in that early stage? Are you, are you creating some sort of competitive process between GCs early?

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10:55
Speaker 2
It's not competitive. I mean it's competitive in the sense that we may talk to a couple GCs about a project, but it's not competitive in terms of like I just. It, it's what we look for is somebody who's got availability, who's got capacity, who can add value. We're about to get into a discussion about a three legged stool, I think. Right. At some point. So the three legged stool being the owner, the architect and the GC and assembling a team that can work at a high performance level.

‍ ‍

11:44
Speaker 1
And so I think what I'm hearing you say is that it's the competition, if you will, at that early phase is really about finding the right fit. It's not about. That's exactly a pricing exercise at that phase for you, right?

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12:04
Speaker 2
That's. Yes. And that's one of the conversations that happens very early on. Like we've got these schematics and we're trying to figure what it's going to cost to build. But we're, but you're looking for somebody who can come in and help with estimating and, and then make decisions around more efficient structures and substitutions and maybe even bring subcontractors or at least have good dialogue with subcontractors about concepts that are being pushed around and alternates that are available. And so there's definitely a value add with a good gc, the design process.

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12:56
Speaker 1
So does that general contractor at that time know that they've been selected? And is there a way for them to not to lose that at that phase in the game, you know, is it, is it a given that they're definitely going to be your partner through the course of the project if they've been brought in at that phase of the game? Like so to rephrase, do they know that they're the guy or they're the company and is that a given?

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13:27
Speaker 2
Yeah. So in my experience, yes is the answer. I mean we select some, we select somebody and they participate in the design, the refinement of the design and they're actively engaged in pricing and there's a target like we know what we want to spend. And so managing the design process so that we end up with a construction number that works is important. And so it just doesn't work to have multiple people, you know, having multiple discussions. You. Part of it is getting a contractor who's invested in the process.

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14:17
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. I as. So I have to say it. I'll be on a soapbox for roughly 30 seconds. Time me. I'm sorry. But one of the things I see that drives me crazy are situations in which developers create a competitive budgeting process on extremely early stage plans.

‍ ‍

14:45
Speaker 2
Yes.

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14:46
Speaker 1
And make their general contractor selection based on the lowest budget from the gc. At a phase in which there's so much ambiguity and so many questions about how plans can be interpreted and what they're begging for, literally begging for in that instance, is for general contractors to interpret the plans in the least expensive way.

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15:15
Speaker 2
Yeah, that's exactly.

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15:16
Speaker 1
Which may or may not be constructible, which may or may not meet design intent. Which may or may. Right. Like all those things are up in the air. And the earliest phase of the general contractor developer partnership is forged in lies, which is a terrible way to start a relationship. It's just a terrible way to start. And it's in there constantly digging out of it. I lay that responsibility directly at the feet of the developer. Creating a procurement process that is inherently flawed.

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15:51
Speaker 2
Well, even worse than that.

‍ ‍

15:53
Speaker 1
Things differently.

‍ ‍

15:54
Speaker 2
Yeah, even worse than that is not communicating that's what's going on. And have. Having multiple conversations with contractors. Right. And, and, and that inevitably they're talking to the same subs. And it always gets at and back and you do nothing but undermining, you know, what you're, what you're trying to do, which is to build a great high performance team to get this job done. So totally.

‍ ‍

16:19
Speaker 1
And by the way, word, we haven't even started construction. We're about to get married for about 24 months.

‍ ‍

16:24
Speaker 2
That's right. Right.

‍ ‍

16:26
Speaker 1
And imagine starting off, you know, marriage knowing that your spouse just cheated on you. You know, that's the way it feels for, that's exactly for both parties, I think. And again, the person driving the bus there is the developer. They have to take more, a more responsible approach to procurement. It really sounds like you and NHP are. I applaud you for that. Let's. I want to go to this idea of the three legged stool. I want to go in particular, I want to talk about the role that you want to see your contractor partner play with your architect partner. Describe maybe what a healthy dynamic looks like there. Because the way that you're doing this, with that early involvement, they really do need to be partners. What does a good partnership look like there?

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17:19
Speaker 2
So I think the best projects are projects where you've got the three legged stool. Right. So going back to that analogy, you've got the. An owner and an architect or design team and a contractor who are all high performance individuals and companies. Right. Just operating at a high level. And the goal should be to assemble a team that outperforms. And if things are done correctly and the process is good, then the outcome will be good. And the outcome, the good outcome will involve a higher level of design efficiency and quality plans, better costing because the GC actually understands, because he's been involved in the dialogue, understands what the design intent is and can help provide clarity to the subs as they're pricing things.

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18:30
Speaker 2
And then the owner is really is the conductor and should be the one assembling this team and setting the bar and making sure that the plans are tight and that the GC is, is, you know, pricing things appropriately and if the process really works, the outcome is a fairly high level of trust with a fairly high level, you know, group of individuals.

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19:03
Speaker 1
I think it's that term that you just tossed out at the end, trust is something that I, it's a topic I'm obsessed with. It's something that I spend a lot of time researching and exploring and trying to create on the teams that I work with. In your experience, what are the high trust behaviors that you see from general contractors that when they do these things, it cements that trust that you have for them as an owner?

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19:53
Speaker 2
God, that's a hard question.

‍ ‍

19:58
Speaker 1
Now.

‍ ‍

19:58
Speaker 2
So I think it may be easier.

‍ ‍

20:00
Speaker 1
To focus on the things that cause you to lose trust.

‍ ‍

20:04
Speaker 2
Yeah, that's, that's Maybe the. Yeah, but I, I like to think about the glass being half full. But it's a hard question because it's just, it's those behaviors that. So what is it? It's, it's perseverance, it's thoroughness, it's thoughtfulness, it's honesty. It's, you know, it's having the hard discussions before you're married, not after you're married. It's. Yeah, it's, it's taking responsibility, the things that you should be responsible for. But then if somebody stumbles, you know, one of the three legged, going back to the stool. If, if you've.

‍ ‍

21:02
Speaker 1
You, you.

‍ ‍

21:02
Speaker 2
Can still have a project that is successful, right? If you, if, if you have two really strong legs of the stool, it's awfully hard to stand one leg for 18 months. But, but if you, if somebody stumbles. We had it. We had a situation where we had an architect who ended up having some health issues and just evaporated. Right. But the project, the process and the project continued. Right. And, and then they were able to rejoin. And having two really strong players who could step in and carry the project makes a difference. And so, you know, high trust, I mean, it's all those things.

‍ ‍

21:51
Speaker 1
Love it. I love it. I think the, If I could share one thing that I, I share frequently when it comes to high trust behavior, it is to call out, call yourself out proactively for the errors, minor mistakes, accidents and things that you're trying to do to repair and put those things on the table and share your action plans for recovery. If anybody ever gets caught having made a mistake, the extent to which that damages trust is so much worse. And in fact, if you lead off by saying, hey, Meade, we just identified an issue that we had in pre con, we're going to own it. It's not your problem. But I wanted you to know that we have a bust. We're going to figure that out and try to create a solution with these three trades to see if we can recover it.

‍ ‍

23:07
Speaker 1
I'm bringing that to your attention just so that, you know, we're trying to figure out a collaborative solution that doesn't in any way change your expectations for the product.

‍ ‍

23:16
Speaker 2
Right.

‍ ‍

23:18
Speaker 1
It may even motivate you as an owner in that situation to say, really appreciate you sharing that with me, Chad. Just tell me what the damage is. We'll work through it together. Maybe it's something we can pull out of contingency, you know, or something along those lines. And we can work on that.

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23:33
Speaker 2
To do that, there has to be some level of self awareness and it just, it's, that's, it's beautiful. It happens and it elevates the whole team.

‍ ‍

23:45
Speaker 1
So yeah, I, I, I, I warned you when were preparing for this that this time would fly. And here we are at 9:25 almost already. I'm gonna pull Stacy in because I know that we've had a ton of questions rolling through our chat this morning.

‍ ‍

24:04
Speaker 3
Hey.

‍ ‍

24:06
Speaker 1
So glad to know everything's okay. In my brain. Your house was like hit by a missile and I was really worried and, but now here you are, you're back in your city.

‍ ‍

24:14
Speaker 3
I'm back. Lots of great questions. Let's start off. How do you see the multifamily residential industry pivoting in response to the rising cost of money, inflation and materials and increased cost of labor?

‍ ‍

24:31
Speaker 2
Holy smokes. So everybody's scrambling to the answer, right? Trying to figure out how to make it work. And so the opportunity is to sit down, take a closer look at these projects, you know, figure out how you can skinny them up and, and make the scope work. And, but it's hard. I mean, it's, it's hard. Yeah.

‍ ‍

25:03
Speaker 1
Are you, are you seeing, and you know, if you can't answer, it's okay, but are you seeing tax credit deals, futures being thrown into question right now? And are any tax credit deals stopping making sense in our current cost to build environment?

‍ ‍

25:24
Speaker 2
We haven't had any that operated. They just get a little bit harder. And so I don't know whether that, I can't speak for others. Right. For us, we haven't had any that have evaporated. We just, that's great to hear. You just dig a little harder. And you know, there's such, there's.

‍ ‍

25:45
Speaker 1
There'S such an incredible unmet need, undermet need, I should say, for affordable housing in the country, in this country. It makes me feel really good to hear you say that your tax credit deals haven't evaporated. I'm sorry they're getting harder, but that it is nice to hear that they're not going away. That would be, that would be a tragic situation for large population. So thank you.

‍ ‍

26:08
Speaker 3
Have you, were just talking about off site construction in our last episode, but have you explored off site manufacturing of modular units at all?

‍ ‍

26:18
Speaker 2
Okay, so we've looked at this and it's Hard with tax credits. They're front loaded. They take, they take dollars up front and we've just not been able to figure out how to make them work. And really the benefit is the quality. You just get higher quality product. But it's, the design is more complicated. It's six dimensional instead, you know, four dimensions. Right. The walls, you get the floors and you got to make verticals all work. And it, so that just, that's a degree of design that in the affordable world, as fast as we're moving, we haven't been able to get to. And then the footing of the funds is another computation that just, we haven't been able to figure out.

‍ ‍

27:10
Speaker 3
Are you moving towards integrated project delivery?

‍ ‍

27:15
Speaker 1
Yeah. This is an interesting question. I think about, you know, as you were describing the way that you like to operate, Mead, this idea of pulling in your architect and general contractor partners early, selecting people based off of their fit, not necessarily their price, and then conducting that exercise. There are formal contracting methods, you know, integrated project delivery being one of them, where, you know, you're pulling everybody together based on those themes, not just the general contractor, but most if not all of your specialty contractors, and really pulling everyone in for essentially a collective design build effort in which they're financially tied to project performance metrics and everybody's operating in an open book. Is that a topic that has entered the mainstream at all in affordable housing in nhp in your world? Where do you stand with that stuff?

‍ ‍

28:11
Speaker 2
Gosh, we definitely try to make sure that our design team is fully integrated and we focus on the coordination of how the architects work with MEPs. And oftentimes you get disconnects in the fans. And so we focus on making sure that process is tight. We focus on bringing the contractor into the process. Right. So that, so that they're involved in the process. But that's, I mean, today that's where our focus is and you know, wish I had a better answer.

‍ ‍

28:53
Speaker 1
Yeah, I think it's that I would, I love integrated project delivery as a concept and I love it in practice. In some really specific examples that I've had the ability to go through. Very, very cool. I think the learning curve is something that is intimidating to a lot of folks and if I can, I'll editorialize again yet again, maybe like for the 12th time today. Sorry about that. But the, the reality is that for owners, the willingness of the MEP trades, for example, to provide free design assist as a part of the process has removed a lot of the necessity to look into ways to make that happen. If I have a good GC partner who's got a good MEP partner that they feel, you know, confident in the process, everybody's.

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29:55
Speaker 1
That the GC is not charging you for any additional design assist on the upfront collaborating with the Arc deck, I'm assuming. And you know, same goes with the trade contractors. So I think that's a part of the reality is if, if we want to, if they truly want to change the way that happens in the market, they've got to stop offering the service for free. They've got to start saying this is how this ought to work. And, and developers will. Developers are just doing there. I think they're just buying the way that everybody else is telling them to buy. It's like you're bringing your service to me in this way. So anyway, I'll shut up. Stacy, More questions.

‍ ‍

30:36
Speaker 3
From Casey. So I know there's a lot of issues with subs getting paid on time. Do you think prepayment for change orders is possible?

‍ ‍

30:47
Speaker 2
Not, not in the world that I operate in today. And oftentimes the lenders and funders actually require reviewing change orders and yeah, not in the tax credit world. Not anytime soon anyway.

‍ ‍

31:07
Speaker 1
So I think if I can expand on that question. Ike also tosses in this note where he's asking is, can you suggest any strategies for subcontractors to avoid having to finance change orders? Is there any. Is there anything? Because, I mean, you get it. I know, I know you understand that if you were a trade contractor working in tax credit affordable housing deals, what strategies would you be thinking about to protect your cash position and make sure that you weren't floating in financing change orders?

‍ ‍

31:42
Speaker 2
Wow. I haven't thought about it from that perspective and I, I just, I'm focused on getting them funded, you know, and getting things funded and getting the approvals and I just haven't flipped it around to think about it. I don't have answer today. Not in the world I'm operating in today.

‍ ‍

32:05
Speaker 1
Yeah, I don't think there's a very elegant one in any case, I will share that one. One select strategy I've seen work, it's very back of the envelope, but it's still. It goes to trust is if you're a specialty contractor and you know that you're going to struggle to float some particular change order, preemptively going to the general contractor and talking about anything they can do to help you to absorb that. And I've, and I've worked with, I've had the good fortune to work with several general contractors that understand where their subs are coming from and will go ahead and cut them loose on that portion and float it themselves. But it just, it's hard, it's hard accounting and there's no elegant solution to it. It's nothing that I've seen.

‍ ‍

32:52
Speaker 2
Yeah. I just had a conversation yesterday with it with the GC and the conversation was we've done this, we've done 13 draws and. It's been 44 days. What it's been taken to get on this project, to get it done. And if we're not able to fix it, at least we can communicate about what it is and manage expectations so that people know what to expect. That's, it's just a, you know, having the hard con is what it is and you know, we just need to plan it accordingly. Awesome.

‍ ‍

33:40
Speaker 1
All right, Stacy, what else?

‍ ‍

33:44
Speaker 3
Just a couple more comments here from Paul and Jeff. Paul was just saying the federal mandates reporting, labor rates, insurance, except etc on the government's money is a huge issue. I don't know if you have any comment on that.

‍ ‍

33:58
Speaker 2
Can you say that? Can, can you?

‍ ‍

34:00
Speaker 3
Sure. Paul said the federal mandates reporting, labor rates, insurance. Oh, government's money is a huge issue.

‍ ‍

34:12
Speaker 2
Yes, yes. And, and it's a challenge for the developer. Right. Because make commitments on these projects, on these funded projects that we're going to make and have certain participation.

‍ ‍

34:29
Speaker 1
Participation.

‍ ‍

34:30
Speaker 2
Yeah, I just, it wasn't working. Right. And, and so we make participation requirements or promises and we really, I mean it's the Fed. Right. That's around. I mean we need to make them and we need to report them accurately. And so tracking that stuff is important, really important.

‍ ‍

34:55
Speaker 1
The, the best thing that a trade contractor can do, I think is to be bulletproof on their reporting requirements on a, on a, you know, tax credit job. You're going to have all these reporting requirements and also collaborating with your fellow specialty contractors to make sure everybody is also going to be successful. Because if, and I think maybe what Paul's alluding to, particularly as it relates to change ordered payment delays, is that one trade, if one sub doesn't have their stuff together and it can hold up the payment of a whole change order, not because anybody's trying to be a jerk, but because literally there's federal requirements that they will not release the money is not going to be cut loose and. Exactly.

‍ ‍

35:59
Speaker 2
Right.

‍ ‍

35:59
Speaker 1
You might have, you know, the electrical might be, you know, being held hostage by the concrete sub because the concrete sub isn't tight on their requirements.

‍ ‍

36:15
Speaker 2
And then the, and the gcs just need to step in and help with the paperwork. Get it done. Right. Whatever it takes.

‍ ‍

36:22
Speaker 1
And whatever it takes. I know it's tough. Paul's like, yep, that's what we're doing. I'm sure. So we're good. What else do we have?

‍ ‍

36:33
Speaker 2
Stacy?

‍ ‍

36:33
Speaker 1
Any other.

‍ ‍

36:34
Speaker 3
That's it.

‍ ‍

36:36
Speaker 2
Awesome.

‍ ‍

36:38
Speaker 3
Yeah.

‍ ‍

36:38
Speaker 1
Great conversation. I'm thrilled to see all the communication that came in through the audience. If people wanted to follow up with you separately, Mead, what would they do? Would they just connect with you on LinkedIn and reach out to you through that channel? Is that okay?

‍ ‍

36:58
Speaker 2
That would be fun. Sure. That would be fun. And I'm glad to help any way I can. You know, if we're asking questions, we must be trying to get, you know, improve and get better and with our understanding and all that. So, yeah, we'd be glad to help in any way we can.

‍ ‍

37:16
Speaker 1
That's great. Thanks so much, Mead. Yeah, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Is there anything that you want to say in parting?

‍ ‍

37:31
Speaker 2
I wish I had some, something profound to opera right now. I've tried to lay it there, you know, I've tried to lay it bare and just shoot straight. So, you know, I'm glad to have had the opportunity. It's nice to chat with you this morning.

‍ ‍

37:49
Speaker 3
Thank you.

‍ ‍

37:50
Speaker 1
Likewise. Likewise. I think, I think you did a great job being just who you are and sharing with us exactly how you approach the world as one person with your immense background. I think it's a great example of, for our audience what people in your shoes care about. So thank you for sharing that and I hope that you'll join us again at some point in the future.

‍ ‍

38:21
Speaker 2
Thank you so much. It's. It's always nice to chat with you, Stacy. Take it easy. Hope things, Hope things stay well, you know, for Thanksgiving.

‍ ‍

38:32
Speaker 3
You too. Happy Thanksgiving.

‍ ‍

38:34
Speaker 2
We'll see.

‍ ‍

38:35
Speaker 1
All right, Stacy, we have a little housekeeping to do here. Let's, let's talk about where things stand at this point. We've got one episode left in season three, which is episode number 38 with Kathy Hum, who is going to be joining us to talk about creating a strategic HR department as opposed to just a tactical one. And I think that a fascinating conversation for business owners, for people in the HR world. Maybe there are some frustrated HR folks who are trying to get things to change in their company and they. This would be useful to, to check out. So look forward to that. Stacy, do we have a Steeltoe Communications marketing tip heading into Thanksgiving week?

‍ ‍

39:30
Speaker 3
Yeah, for, I guess, Thanksgiving week to be grateful. Just a reminder to, you know, think about your internal marketing and recognize your employees. And we always say in the construction industry, the detail or the devil's in the details. Right. So when you're telling someone, just don't say you're doing a great job. Actually put some thought into giving them a nice compliment and being grateful for what they do. That's it.

‍ ‍

40:00
Speaker 1
I love that. That's a great. It's a great idea. I recently. Oh, you know what? I won't even say where I was, but I, I was checking out at a store and I saw something that I thought the, that three women on my team would really enjoy and ran over and picked those things up for them for Thanksgiving. Just thought, you know, people used to.

‍ ‍

40:24
Speaker 3
Do that all the time. Like, you know, my dad was always great with that, like recognizing people in his organization. And I feel like we lost a lot of the years. So.

‍ ‍

40:35
Speaker 1
Yeah, I, I'm trying to. I'm a terrible gift giver. I might be the worst. Just ask my wife. It's like, bad. But I'm trying to. It's not about the gift. Right. It's just about thinking about.

‍ ‍

40:49
Speaker 3
Yes.

‍ ‍

40:50
Speaker 1
Thinking about others. So at any rate.

‍ ‍

40:52
Speaker 2
Well, good.

‍ ‍

40:53
Speaker 1
I can't wait to see you again next week. I hope that this week ahead is a wonderful one for you and for all of our audience. And if anybody that you know should be involved in season four, we're going to be starting up over the winter. We'll be starting up after the new year. And we would love to fill out the schedule with folks that, you know, I think we have eight out of our 12 guests identified. So we do have at least four.

‍ ‍

41:23
Speaker 2
Slots open at this point.

‍ ‍

41:25
Speaker 3
Okay. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. See you.

‍ ‍

41:29
Speaker 2
Thanks.

‍ ‍

Lean stands for reducing inefficiencies and removing waste wherever Lean principles are applied. Lean has been a buzzword around the construction industry for decades, and while some segments of the industry have fully embraced it, others have only a vague sense of what Lean is all about. Regardless of where you fall on that spectrum, this episode will invite you into the discussion in an approachable way.

Tom Hughes is a Lean practitioner who came up as a mechanical contractor, and his experience with Lean practices has led to outstanding results. He'll share stories to help us see how and why we can use Lean principles in practical ways to create better project outcomes.

We've had on a few guests with leading views about integrating more manufacturing practices with construction. It seems like a relatively new trend to most, but to people like our guest Gerry McCaughey, offsite construction is how things have been for a long time.

Gerry has been building offsite for over 30 years between Europe and the US, and he joins the show to tell us why any other method is a mistake. Join us to hear from a true veteran in a construction space that is gaining traction.

Transcript:

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00:01
Speaker 1
All right, morning huddle time.

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00:02
Speaker 2
Good morning.

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00:03
Speaker 1
I'm not saying it works. I wish you Godspeed with all of that. I think that's really nice. You know, I'm not sure what kind of success you're gonna have with that today because the world, my friend, has changed. Right.

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00:17
Speaker 2
A lot of American construction workers, they have different needs. They have completely different needs.

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00:22
Speaker 3
These awards have a huge like, criteria that you have to fill out. And they usually have a community service or community.

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00:32
Speaker 2
You know, the most productive.

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00:34
Speaker 3
With a high performance value. And you know, sometimes it's 11 o' clock at night.

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00:40
Speaker 1
Funny, isn't that? Yeah, not for me.

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00:43
Speaker 3
Not for me.

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00:44
Speaker 1
At 11 o' clock, I am guaranteed to be snoring.

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00:47
Speaker 2
So.

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00:48
Speaker 3
So.

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00:57
Speaker 1
Good morning. Morning huddle time. I'm Chad Prinkley here with Stacy Holzinger and our guest, Jerry McCaughey with Off Site tech. Jerry, thank you so much for joining us this morning.

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01:09
Speaker 2
Thank you very much. Although when you said the morning huddle, I didn't realize that you meant this early in the morning. Right.

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01:15
Speaker 1
So when we invited Jerry, we said, hey, it starts at nine. He said, perfect. And we said on the east coast. And he was already signed up. There was no kicking out.

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01:25
Speaker 2
Early start this morning, boys. Early smart. I already start.

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01:28
Speaker 1
You're joining us from California by way of Ireland.

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01:32
Speaker 2
That is correct. Well, and it's raining outside in California, which they told me it never rains in Southern California, but not today.

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01:40
Speaker 1
Feels like. Yeah, so it's, it's election day here in the, you know, November 8th. My kids schools are closed. I never had off when I was a kid either. During election Day, my kids can't vote. So I'm not sure why they're off. But you know, it's, hey, get out and vote if you haven't done it already. If you're watching us live, make sure that you get out and vote. Use, use the opportunity to do that. So today we're going to be having a conversation about the, you know, about off site construction.

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02:22
Speaker 1
We're going to be having a, you know, we've had that conversation, I think in two different ways as I look at past episodes and in both of those conversations, really interesting, but in both those conversations were talking about it really from the standpoint of people who aren't, haven't done it, you know, personally and lived in it over the course of time. There were some, you know, people who've been consulting in it, some people who are, you know, in their engineers or think, you know, who are trying to influence more off site construction. But Jerry's lived it and not just recently. Jerry's lived it over the long haul. And that's something that I really want to hear from Jerry about is not only, you know, offsite construction. Okay, we've heard it, we've been talking about it. It's a pretty hot topic right now.

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03:20
Speaker 1
But, but you've got a long history with this. Not just like, you know, trying it in the past 10 years. What's it like, you know, to really run an offsite construction based company? And so that's going to be the nature of our conversation. Stacey, make sure that we get really cool questions from the audience and we'll bring you back here toward the end of the show. Good?

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03:45
Speaker 3
Yep, sounds good.

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03:46
Speaker 1
See you in a bit. So. So Jerry, I want to start off by just kind of hearing your story. We say you're in California now by way of Ireland, but kind of weave it together for us. What, what's the, what's your story in the construction industry?

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04:01
Speaker 2
Well, I mean, you're right. I mean my history in off site construction spans close on 40 years. But my family's involvement in offsite construction literally goes back 60 years. So when people talk about it here, they sort of not talk about, but when people get the impression that it's something that's relatively new, it's far from it, especially on the other side of the world. But there's an interesting story about the connects up the dots between Ireland, the United States and my involvement in offsite construction, which was that my dad was originally a carpenter. And back in the late 50s he left Ireland to emigrate to the US took a boat from Cork and ended up in New York. And that's where he first discovered homes built, you know, houses being built out of wood frame.

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04:49
Speaker 2
Because in those days everything in Ireland was built out of concrete blocks one block on top of another. But he was a carpenter primarily. He was actually a roofer and a finished carpenter. That's what he did. So he goes to America and he discovers these guys building homes out of wood. And as a carpenter, he thought, oh, this is a great idea. And so a couple of years later he emigrated back to Ireland and decided this is what he wanted to do. But it never dawned on him when he went back to stick frame, although that's what he learned. Now don't ask me why I never asked him.

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05:24
Speaker 2
He passed away two years ago why that was the reason Maybe it was the weather, but I think it was more to do with the cultural upbringing of a European is that you would automatically think that if you're going to manufacture or build anything, you'll try and do it indoors under factory controlled conditions. So when he went back, he literally rented a small building and started making wall panels and plywood gusseted roof trusses and designing homes, little single story buildings and going out at the weekend with his brothers and his friends and erecting these. And that effectively became Ireland's and pretty much Ireland and the UK's first off site construction company. And that went on to become very successful in his time.

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06:09
Speaker 2
By 1985 I think he was the largest because he sort of, when you say started a company at that point in time he really started an industry and so other people entered it. And by 1985 he was doing relatively well. I think he had three or four hundred employees and he was the largest offset manufacturer in Britain and Ireland. And I was in college at that point in time doing a marketing degree and I had to write various different reports to get my degree. And I picked the off site industry not because of any particular interest in it, but because, hey, my dad worked on it and I knew you could access the information relatively easy, right? And so I wrote a number of these reports.

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06:53
Speaker 2
I wrote my first report in 1982 and when I went to University College Dublin, I wrote a report which was basically how to set up a international B or an Irish based international off site construction company is as strange as that sounds, and handed it in, got my degree. Apparently I got first in the class for that report, but I mean I had access to colossal amount of information. I went off at that point in time to live in California after I graduated. And unknown to me, my dad was, and I spent a couple of years here. My dad sold out of his business in Ireland and he had been out of it for a couple of years and I think he got bored.

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07:37
Speaker 2
And one day I got a phone call from him saying, would you remember that report you wrote when you were in college about building an international offset company out of Ireland? Did you believe it? And I can remember saying to my dad, I can't barely remember writing the report, let alone what was in it. I was more interested in chasing girls around California at that point in time than remembering what I'd written in college. And anyway, he said, I'm going to send it to you. So he sent it to me and he said, you read it and if you think it's true, Come back here. Those exact words were, put your money where your mouth is and let's have a go at this. And three months later, I got on a plane on December 8, December 9, 1989, and flew back to Ireland.

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08:19
Speaker 2
And myself and my brother and my dad and another guy by the Name of Jim McBride set up a small company in Monaghan town, which is 6,000 population, 6,000 people in 80 miles north of Dublin. We set up a company called Century Homes out of a building that was 5,000 square feet and proud to say 15 years later, that was the largest offset company in Europe. And we had five factories, three in Ireland, two in the uk. We were shipping as far away as Japan and we had 650 to 700 employees. And we had done the world's first six story wood frame building. We had done the UK's first zero carbon, not zero net energy, way past that, we did zero carbon. So we basically pushed the limits of engineering and we pushed the limits of thermal performance in buildings.

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09:04
Speaker 2
And that sort of took up to 2005. And in 2005 we sold that business to Kingspan, which is a large buildings material company based out of Ireland. And I stayed on a CEO in that till 2008 and then I moved to the US and that point in time, 2008, the world was in free fall, the financial markets were in crisis and basically the housing market was in devastation. And housing had gone from 2.2 million at its peak at that point in time down to about 550,000. But I kept looking at how Americans were building homes basically the same way as my dad had seen it pretty much 40, 50, 60 years ago and going, this is crazy, there has to be a better not, there has to be a better way. There is a better way.

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09:52
Speaker 2
And then waited for the market to turn around. And when the market turned around and went out and pulled together a team of people that had worked with in Ireland before and set up a company in California called Entecra. And we raised 45 million from Louisiana Pacific and set that business up and then got it up to a significant scale. And I mean I've been traveling up and down from Northern California, Southern California for five, six years, said, no, it's time for me to step back from that role. And then now, I then went into consultancy, basically helping, because now I think we help to light the fire under people to look at offsite as being a serious alternative to traditional construction methods.

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10:33
Speaker 2
And now I'm helping companies to transition to the offsite Industry, but not in the, not on answer is not in the sense of the way people here think of component manufacturers. My, that's never been my view of life. Off site companies and component manufacturers are two different entities. And also in that sense, I'm also pretty much at the technological side of things. I like to push technology and that's the way I've always done it. So everything that we do is digital and it's a high tech on the manufacturer from the manufacturing perspective. So that sort of brought us up to today. So that's how I got here. I love it.

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11:09
Speaker 1
That's great. That's, it's a fascinating, impressive story and I think it's got to be loaded with lessons and that's what. Oh, God.

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11:25
Speaker 2
Right.

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11:26
Speaker 1
An immense amount of lessons.

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11:27
Speaker 2
Right.

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11:28
Speaker 1
And so I think I want to explore one thing briefly before we get into lessons, and that is you talked about not being a component manufacturer in our very first conversation several months back. What really jumped out to. One of the things that jumped out to me in that discussion was that you were sort of saying, you know, look, there are a lot of people who claim to be doing off site and they're not really, they're just bringing one piece to the table and that might be a good choice for their little piece of the puzzle, but it's not actually correct, you know, solving the, the problems that true off site can solve. So talk a little bit about, you know, the differentiation.

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12:15
Speaker 2
Yeah, this is an important point because it actually does go to why off site, as a European understands off site, why it hasn't taken off up to now to the extent that it has in say, other parts of the world. But there is. So when I let me just start again, clearly says a component manufacturing company is not an off site company. That's absolutely. And actually by definition just anybody there go on Google the word component and you'll see that it's an element, a part of something. But on the other hand, off site is a system by definition. A component is part of a system, but the system is a totality of it. I mean, and as you know, Aristotle said 3,000 years ago, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. And that's the problem. That's not to criticize component manufacturers.

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13:13
Speaker 2
That's their business. The problem that I have with it is when they go around masquerading as if they are an off site company. They're not, but they do a service for People who want that particular service. But true, offsite is technologically driven. It's a holistic view of the building where you take full responsibility of the building and that includes getting invol with the concrete slab, getting involved with the plumbers, with the electricians, with all the trades. You're effectively trying to coordinate because you're trying to coordinate with everybody that actually touches off or connects us to that connects to that frame with. Your objective is to make that building help that building. And it's not so not one component of it. The whole building get built as efficiently as possible. And so the key words in off site construction are process improvement and process optimization.

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14:04
Speaker 2
And that really does involve a granular level of input into the totality of the building, not one item. So what you have with component manufacturers or with framers who use component manufacturers going around and they buy the wall panels off this guy and they might buy the floor, either the floor trusses or the I joists off another guy and then maybe the roof trusses off somebody else if they happen to get them cheaper. So it's all about driving down the cost. And in the process of doing that, they end up with these bits and parts that have not come from one supplier, where one supplier has total responsibility for focusing on the total efficiency of the building.

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14:46
Speaker 2
And I mean, I'd take far greater amount of time to explain this in detail, but if you looked at an offset company and you looked at the technology that's employed, and the fact that a good starting point is I would look and say if you don't start with a full 3D model of the whole building, then you're not an off site company. Because what you do with that is we take the drawings in and assume that the drawings are incorrect, that the building has been designed wrong, and we go back to first principles and start to rebuild it with the whole purpose of process optimization and process improvement. And then only after we've done that do we start to look at the elements. But then when we start to look at those elements, I mean it's a total view of the building.

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15:29
Speaker 2
And again, when it comes to component manufacturers, Chad, one important point I want to say is that there's a lot of guys in the United States. I mean, I get this thing said back to me, oh, I've used wall panels before and they don't work. And I really want, I mean my head starts to explode when I hear that. I mean, I really, I mean I want to grab them and shake them and go like, what the heck has that got to do with me? What is a wall panel got to do with what I'm talking about? Because it's nothing to do with it. Because using a wall panel on a job, substituting a wall panel for six framing walls, all really means is that you're running fast to stand still.

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16:05
Speaker 2
Because what happens when you get to your floor and you're back to loose joisting again? Loose joisting it again. Whereas true offset companies would prefabricate the walls, the floors, on the roof or the roof. If the roof's a flat roof, they'll use trusses. If it's, if it's a regular picture, but it's a totality. Prefabricated stairs, everything's been designed to fit and to work as fast as possible to get that building up. And so when people talk about components and they say, oh, that proves offsite doesn't work. It doesn't, it bears no relationship, no relation to it. It's like going out to buy the engine of a car and then sitting in your front yard saying, like, I can't get the car to go. Yeah, because you don't have the rest of it. You know, it's not, there's off site is a complete solution.

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16:47
Speaker 2
It's not a part solution.

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16:50
Speaker 1
How many, how many companies in the US Right now? And you may not have this data, but you know, if you, if you don't wonder if you have a guess, but how many companies in the US Right now do you think fit the definition? You've laid it out?

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17:05
Speaker 2
Yeah. Less than 10. Wow. Less than 10. I have done that analysis myself.

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17:12
Speaker 1
And so you mentioned that you're consulting right now. Right. You're, you're helping companies to make the transition. So what's first off? What's motivating people to want to make the move?

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17:29
Speaker 2
Well, I think at the, I mean, there's probably been a lot of false starts in the United States over the last 30, 40, 50 years. You hear this. Well, you'll hear people say, oh, it was tried before and it didn't work. But again, it was tried when with components, they're misunderstanding what they're saying. But this time it is different. And I think this time it's the labor issue that's the primary driver this time. Because I think previous times, the way the US residential housing industry has worked up to now is you needed to build more houses. You just brought more people across the border. Sure. Simple as that. I mean, even let's call a spade. That's how it worked.

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18:12
Speaker 2
And in many cases a lot of those people were undocumented and maybe not have been treated all that well and they were willing to work for, for very low wages and. But that's how it was done.

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18:21
Speaker 1
Yeah. And that's, and depending on what era we're talking about, depends on what border and from where.

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18:29
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, that's correct.

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18:30
Speaker 1
I mean we've been doing it forever.

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18:31
Speaker 2
Yeah, the Irish were part of that too.

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18:33
Speaker 1
That's exactly right.

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18:34
Speaker 2
They were coming over and doing, and I'm talking about as early, like as late as the 1980s and coming over and doing it. So. But that's the way.

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18:43
Speaker 1
Canadians are coming over and doing it. I mean it's.

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18:45
Speaker 2
Yeah, that's the way it has been done. But I think the realization is now occurring that's no longer really possible and it's not going to happen. So you're now looking at, I think current estimates are that there's a 400,000 thousand person shortage in the construction industry of people. So there's 400 more thousand more jobs than there are people available. Then add to that the rate of attrition is for every one person who joins the industry, five are leaving. Right. So when you put those two things together and people think there's a labor crisis, there isn't. This is only the beginning. Literally, this is only the beginning. If were to fast forward 10 years from now, this problem is going to be an awful lot greater than it is currently.

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19:35
Speaker 2
And I think some of the more far seeing companies are actually starting to see that and say we need to prepare for this. I mean I am and I am working for numbers of companies who actually that's what they're doing. They're saying we've got to take a longer view of this. This is not going away. And even if it was going away, you have to overlay the other fact on this is, and if you look at the last McKinsey report on the U.S. residential construction industry, over the last 60 years, U.S. residential construction productivity has been flat at best to declining at worst. Now that's a shocking indictment of an industry.

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20:14
Speaker 2
When you think of the technology that has been brought into existence in the last 60 years and you think of the productivity gains that have, say occurred in agriculture which is up 1,750%, or manufacturing which is up 400% and construction is flat to Negative. And then people wonder why there's a housing affordability issue and why there's a housing crisis in terms of a shortage. The answers are clearly there. If you're not increasing your productivity in the 21st century and you're not using technology, then costs are going to increase. The number of homes getting built is not going to match the demand, and people are not going to be able for them. And you end up then with a social crisis that will occur, which you could argue we probably are seeing that with all the homelessness in the, That.

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21:40
Speaker 3
It.

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21:56
Speaker 2
Okay, I believe we lost. Chad. I'll ask that question that somebody's asked there about do we see multifamily as being the biggest opportunity to grow off site? And I would say absolutely. I mean, I think it's the biggest opportunity, but it's not the only opportunity. But I think it's the biggest opportunity because it's the easiest one to. Not that the economics don't work on single family and in hospitality and other types of construction, but in multifamily, it's very easy to make the, it's very easy to prove the economics behind off site construction. Particularly when you look at that, you can, on average, you can take the framing time down by over 50%. I would actually say that when it's properly organized, you can actually reduce the framing time by about 66% back. Chad.

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22:54
Speaker 1
Oh, my Lord. My power got knocked out. We had a big gust and all of a sudden I heard sirens outside. I don't know what happened, but guessing that there was some issue that affected my whole area. I apologize for that. If there was anybody that I'm confident could carry the conversation, it's an Irishman. Jerry.

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23:15
Speaker 2
I was trying to, there, Chad. I was trying to, I was trying.

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23:17
Speaker 1
To go on and do it for you to help.

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23:21
Speaker 3
I was struggling.

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23:22
Speaker 1
I'm sorry. Yeah. Hey, you know what? I can't believe it hasn't happened before now.

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23:28
Speaker 2
It would happen with me. Yeah.

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23:30
Speaker 1
Gary, I appreciate your, your, your help moving us through it. So, so here's the biggest question. I'm sorry to interrupt you. I, I want to, but I, I, I, if you've already gotten to it, skip it. But the biggest question that I have is what is the, the mindset shift and the real business challenges? What are those two things that we really have to confront if we're making the jump from running a more traditional, you know, building company to an off site company?

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24:02
Speaker 2
Well, it depends. I Mean, are you asking me from the perspective of the builder who's going to use the system or are you asking me from the perspective of somebody who wants to set up an off site company to manufacture and provide the off site solution?

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24:16
Speaker 1
See, you know what, you should talk about that to our group.

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24:20
Speaker 2
Right.

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24:21
Speaker 1
Just by itself. So the builder is the, in this case, the, you know, general contractor, if you will, that's driving the project. The off site construction company is going to be the system manufacturer.

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24:36
Speaker 2
Correct.

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24:37
Speaker 1
That does the entire structure is what you're saying?

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24:39
Speaker 2
Yes, yes.

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24:40
Speaker 1
So start with the, start with a builder. What's the biggest shift the building.

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24:45
Speaker 2
Okay, great question. The biggest mindset shift is to get the builder to understand that first cost is not irrelevant. But I don't know if you're familiar with, there's a gentleman there over in the east coast called Scott cdam, he runs a company called True North Consulting. And Scott's an absolute expert in this whole area. But Scott has a great expression that says if you only ever look at first cost, you'll never know your total cost. And one of the problems that, that you face with production homebuilders in particular is the fact that they only ever look at first cost. And the way they're set up is only ever to look at first cost.

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25:26
Speaker 2
So if you put a buyer in that role and that person is out to decide, you know, the various different products that they're going to buy to build that particular home, they're basically, they're motivated, they're incentivized to buy whatever widget they use at a half a cent cheaper this year than they bought it last year. That's their drive, that's their motivation, but they really don't have an incentive to look at, well, maybe it's going to cost me a cent more to actually install that. Because they're only incentivized to look at the first cost of what is the purchase of that particular item. And this is where with off site construction it comes into.

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26:00
Speaker 2
There's a bit, there's a bit of an issue because if you take it that cycle time on a job site is a critical element and there's a value associated with time. And we've all grown up being told time is money. So it's been in us from our little kids, your parents tell you time is money. Yet when it comes to looking at the value of cycle time reduction on a job site, the buyer who's not incentivized to look at it. So I'm not Saying it's their fault, the buyer does not consider cycle time or the cost of it. And in most cases, when you ask that buyer, what is the value, what is every day on site costing your company, they can't tell you. How can you make a purchase decision if you don't know what every day on site is costing you?

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26:54
Speaker 2
So in other words, if the focus from a builder was on reducing cycle time, that was their primary objective, as opposed to let me reduce the cost of the item, because you can actually have the opposite around. You can reduce the cost of the item and increase the cycle time because it takes longer to install, but you bought it cheaper, whereas it should be. You need to look at it holistically and say, if my objective was to increase, was to decrease cycle time, how much is every day on site going to save me in terms of costs? And that's where offset.

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27:24
Speaker 2
So if you go along and you're an offset company and you say it's going to cost $40,000 to frame that particular building, stick framing it, but it's going to cost $42,000 to frame it from off site and say, oh no, I'm not going to use the off site solution, it's $2,000 more expensive. But if the off site solution is saving you 10, 12 days on site, what are those 1012 days worth? I mean, are they worth $200 a day, $500 a day, $600 a day, what are they worth? They don't know. So but by anybody's estimate, and we've done a lot of research on this, even in the relatively lower cost areas, you're looking at around between 4 and $500 per day of site cost each day. So if you take it that you save 10 days, there's $4,000 there alone.

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28:15
Speaker 2
So it means that $2,000 that they're saying are more expensive, you are actually $2,000 cheaper than it. But the buyer doesn't care because the buyer is not incentivized to look at that. The buyers just said, no, you've got a quote at first cost is 42,000 versus first cost at 40,000. Buy the 40,000. It actually costs the builder money. So there's a problem in a mindset change that needs to occur. The first thing builders should do is make sure that every single one of their buyers understands what the cost of a day on site is worth. And then what they should do is make sure that they involve their operations team on the purchase decision when it comes to framing. Not Just the buyer.

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29:00
Speaker 2
Because in many cases the buyer has never actually even worked on a job site, but the operations people are doing it every single day. The other thing that they don't even consider in first cost versus total cost is if you look at the amount of dumpsters that are on a site with off site construction, you're gonna, you're gonna at least save two dumpsters on that job site. So there's a whole load of other things that just don't get included in the cost. So it's back to this thing of you need to look at total cost, but everything here is set up for first cost. And I think that is of a reflection on the fact that everything was basically set up for sick framing in the first place. So it was never really a consideration.

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29:39
Speaker 2
But if you're looking at maximum efficiency, you should be actually using cycle time reduction as being one of the qualitative decisions that you look at when you're quality of the items that you look at when you're making a purchase decision with regard to framing. So that's one part of it that's.

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29:58
Speaker 1
A major mindset shift and it's not complicated, but definitely shifting the focus from first cost total cost.

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30:08
Speaker 2
Yeah. Let me give you an example. I mean, somebody asked me questions in. These are multifamily distance. So I'm going to give you a real world situation. Now it's multi family because it's easier to shorten this. But it's, this is, these are real numbers from a real builder on a real job site that has been completed. So we price the job, a multi family job of 270 units in Northern California. And the stick framer who had framed for this developer previously on his previous multifamily development came in at $100,000 cheaper than the off site solution. Okay. So the developer said, listen guys, I love the technology, I love what you're doing. I love the fact that you're 3D modeling this. I love that I can see the problems.

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30:55
Speaker 2
I love the fact that there's going to be reduced waste on site and there's going to reduce manpower on site. Just, I love the whole concept. But you're $100,000 more expensive. Yeah, I just, I can't go there. And went back to this discussion of first cost versus total cost. So we asked them. Now this was again the difference of the attitude of the person you're talking to because I mean, I love this expression that an Irish newspaper says that you Know, before you make up your mind, open it. So you know, come into an, come into the discussion with an open mind. So the builder said, or the developer said, we said to him, so how long is it going to take your stick framer to frame this?

‍ ‍

31:31
Speaker 2
So he went off and he got the framer to give him a commitment as to how long it was going to take, which was 46 weeks. And we said, okay, our view is we can do this in 14. That's 46 weeks versus 14. Then we said to him, how much is that reduction worth to you? I said, because if we're going to talk about this, we need to know this. And he went off again and he came back. It was about 10 days later he came back and he said, and I think it was actually more than this, but this is what he said. He came back and said he reckons that there's $600,000 of savings if he can bring that job in 14 weeks as opposed to 46.

‍ ‍

32:14
Speaker 2
So we put a proposal to him which was, tell you what, if you award us the job and we bring it in 14 weeks, let's split the $600,000, you keep $300,000 of the savings and you write us a check for $300,000, which means you're going to pay us $200,000 more than we had originally bid. But you're up $300,000.

‍ ‍

32:36
Speaker 1
So just like your dad asked you to do back in the 80s, you put your money where the money.

‍ ‍

32:41
Speaker 2
Right? Yeah. So the developer agreed and the developer wrote the check. Fact, not made up fact.

‍ ‍

32:53
Speaker 1
Bet you never writes that check again.

‍ ‍

32:55
Speaker 2
Well, actually. So the second part of that project, which was 170 units was awarded and it was never competitively bid, right?

‍ ‍

33:05
Speaker 1
Yeah. Well, because the proof.

‍ ‍

33:10
Speaker 2
That is the proof was there. He did not need any more than that. Right. So that's what I mean about cycle time and understanding and being opening your mind to understandings. In many ways, the way things are priced and the way construction operates in the United States is at such a simplistic level. I mean, yeah, oh yeah, give me the price for that widget and then nobody considers anything else. Why are the operations people not involved in that decision making process? Do you think, do you think that the buyer knows better than the guys who actually operate on the job site of what really goes on and what the real costs are? Because at the end of the day they know about all the extra over costs that have to occur. They know about the injuries that occur in the site.

‍ ‍

33:54
Speaker 2
They know about the delays that occur in the site. They know about the quality issues, that delay in the site.

‍ ‍

33:59
Speaker 1
Absolutely.

‍ ‍

34:00
Speaker 2
The buyer doesn't. But, but that buyer is getting that, getting the right to make the final decision on what actually happens. But again, it starts with the fact that if you don't know what your daily cost is on site, you can't make an informed purchase decision. That's a fact. That's a simple economic fact. I mean, if you explain that to a four year old, they'll get it. They will, they will get it.

‍ ‍

34:28
Speaker 1
I'm gonna go bring you a three year old. You think it'll work on the third hour? All right, so. So because of time here, and I want to make sure that we hit on some of the stuff that the audience may be coming up with. Stacy, what questions do you have that we can funnel to Jerry before we have to jump?

‍ ‍

34:51
Speaker 3
All right, let's start with Bill Wilson. He has two questions for you. I think you were answering the first one when we got cut off here, to reiterate. So he said, do you see multifamily construction as the biggest opportunity to grow off site?

‍ ‍

35:08
Speaker 2
Any other markets, it is the lowest hanging fruit. And because again, that example that I gave you of that particular development developer, because I think especially specialist multifamily developers, they actually do understand the time value of money. There is a major distinction between production home builders, even the production home builders who do multifamily, and dedicated multifamily developers. Dedicated multifamily developers really know the time value of money. And so they are, they're a better target market initially. But also I think that multifamily itself, by its nature and regardless of who you're selling it to, it's. They, it's much clearer where the benefits are. But the benefits are equally. The benefits are clear with single family, but with multifamily, because you get such large buildings, you can see the speed and the benefit and the cleanliness on the site.

‍ ‍

35:59
Speaker 2
Much easier than you can with maybe with single family.

‍ ‍

36:02
Speaker 3
But.

‍ ‍

36:03
Speaker 2
So yes, the answer is multifamily is definitely an easier target.

‍ ‍

36:06
Speaker 3
Okay, and then how does the design community embrace this off site construction?

‍ ‍

36:13
Speaker 2
Remarkably well. I mean, there was a lot of talk at the very beginning when we came into this market that, oh, the architects and the engineers won't buy into this. That's actually not been the case. In fact, I'd go as far as to say is that again, I'm speaking more now from Northern California, some of the largest architectural companies in Businesses in Northern California are fully embracing this and actually are now sitting down with their clients in advance and actually saying to them, do you think that you might be using offset? And are actually contacting the offset companies and looking for insights and in advance of them completing the design.

‍ ‍

36:49
Speaker 2
So I think there's a much more willingness among the architectural and design community to look at new ways of doing this because in many ways the off site company is a, which is a facilitator or an additional arm for that, for the, for the design community because they work together. But the off site company does an awful lot of work that maybe would not have done until later that maybe the design community would have had to suck up. But when you bring in the offset company into it, they do it for them and particularly down to 3D modeling the building. So I think there's a lot of opportunity there. And actually we've certainly had very positive interactions with the design community. So it hasn't been a pushback, it has been the other way around.

‍ ‍

37:39
Speaker 3
Nice. Mark asked, what do you think about transforming high school tech school construction malls into off site construction manufacturing facilities?

‍ ‍

37:52
Speaker 2
I love this question. I mean, I think this is where there's a lot of, where there's a lot of misunderstanding but a lot of opportunity. And I'll say you hear at the moment lots of discussions about our reasons given for the fact that the reason why we don't have more young people coming into the construction industry is because we don't have shop classes in schools anymore. Right. I want to say quite clearly that is false. The reason why we don't have shop classes is because young people don't want to go to them. The reason why we don't have people in the construction is not because there aren't shop classes, it's because they don't want to come into the industry. And there's more and more research and proof of that in existence. So people saying that don't know what they're talking about.

‍ ‍

38:44
Speaker 2
The reflection of the fact that there's no tech schools is because people don't want to go to them. Because if you look at a young person coming out of school now and they figure that they're getting paid 15, 16, 70, 18, $90 an hour on a job site and they can go and work in an air conditioned building for Amazon, that's where they're going. And they can get to push buttons on computers and so forth and so on. That's where they're going and they can go to the same location rather than have to drive around all different places knowing where their next job is. That's why they're going there. If you want to bring young people into the construction industry, then you need to modernize the construction industry. Bring it into the 21st century.

‍ ‍

39:23
Speaker 2
I mean, I put a post up yesterday said we're now, the world is now in the fourth industrial revolution. That's a fact that's been agreed by the World Economic Forum. We're now in the fourth industrial revolution. Stick framing is still in the first industrial. It actually has even been through, it hasn't even been through the first industrial revolution. And you're looking at kids that are using iPads in one hand and an iPhone in the other coming home and watching flat screen TVs, going into their high tech cars, so forth and so on. And then you want them to go onto a job site and do stuff that hasn't changed in 200 years. In reality, in their heads they're going, how does this even, how do I even relate to this?

‍ ‍

40:09
Speaker 2
So, you know, if you want to attract, think about this, think about your own kids. If you want to attract young people into the construction industry, then you need to modernize the construction industry. It's, I mean it's, this is, it's not rocket science. Every single other thing that we have used or buy or produce or touch is, has dramatically changed because of technology in the last 10 years. And yet we want young people, and I keep emphasizing the word young people, to go onto a job site to basically say technology doesn't exist. Yeah, it doesn't make sense. So training people and that question, that person's question, I think that's so true. Start moving it towards technology and construction. Let's move it forward. Let's increase the productivity of the industry through the use of modern technology.

‍ ‍

41:08
Speaker 2
That's what every other developed nation, by the way, on the planet is doing. That is what every other, like I'm going off on a trip that's been organized now by various different US government departments in December to the UK to look at the technology that's being applied there and at the training programs that are being put in place to actually bring the industry into the 21st century. That's what we need to do. Stop resisting change. That's what young people want. They want to do things in a modern way, the things that they can relate to.

‍ ‍

41:44
Speaker 3
So to piggyback off what you're just saying. And Sean made a comment about, he's seeing a lot of the drywall companies move to this type of model. Is there other trades that you see are on the forefront like electrical, mechanical, that are really trying to embrace this over other terms?

‍ ‍

42:03
Speaker 2
Yes. And there are lots of technologies out there that are being designed for those industries. I mean, whether it's. I mean if you even take the modular industry and you look at the way they do their wiring and the wiring looms that are now available. I mean there's technology moving on to improve wiring. You look at even from H VAC systems. There's technology has been improved there. You look at the plumbers now using 3D modeling of the plumbing systems before they ever go into the building and then been able to prefabricate many of those items before they ever go out to the job site. There's a whole load of things that are actually out there and some very good companies are actually trying to push that thing forward and hopefully they will benefit in the long run because they're pioneering the way.

‍ ‍

42:47
Speaker 2
But the problem is you have so much resistance from other people who still, you know that expression that says the seven most dangerous words in the English language are that's the way we've always done it. Where do you hear that most? The construction industry. That's the way we've always done it. So. But there are opportunities there and there are companies who are actually certainly starting to push that envelope.

‍ ‍

43:07
Speaker 1
I'll say one quick thing on this. Where I've been, it seems to me that to reach the maximum value off site across different systems manufacturers.

‍ ‍

43:25
Speaker 2
Right.

‍ ‍

43:25
Speaker 1
Not just component manufacturers, but different systems manufacturers. There, there has got to be. Soon as you talk about H Vac, you talk about plumbing, you talk about the other folks that have opportunities to. To be doing this type off site construction. Seems to me the maximum value is going to be those entities working together off site and finding ways to, you know, eliminate the possibility of rework.

‍ ‍

43:59
Speaker 2
You touch on another very important point. Chad is as crazy as this sounds, the lowest level of digitization in any industry in the United States is in the construction industry.

‍ ‍

44:10
Speaker 1
Yeah.

‍ ‍

44:11
Speaker 2
Which is probably the one you would think would have the most.

‍ ‍

44:15
Speaker 1
But it has the, has one of the greatest needs for it.

‍ ‍

44:17
Speaker 2
This is correct. But now just to take your point, you said is, can you imagine now if everybody was digitized and was actually properly using technology that's out there so that you could actually coordinate in advance with the plumber, the electrician, the hitch fact, the off site company that everybody was actually using the same model and could interact with each other before you ever got to the job site to figure out how much money you would save. Yeah. How much more efficiency you would have. I mean, it's a very simple thing to do, but nobody does it. Nobody. I mean, try getting drawings from a, from the average plumber electrician in advance of them. Going on the job site is what's going to happen. Can't get them, don't.

‍ ‍

44:58
Speaker 1
I, I, and man, I would love to continue this conversation. We're Now a full 15 minutes past and I, so I should, I should draw it to a close. But I want to say that I think I'm hopeful coming away from this conversation. And I'm hopeful because I, I think what you have shared with us today is a story that to some extent is kind of, you know, if you build it, you know, they will come in, you know, type of thing. So, so if you're someone right now that is, you know, doesn't, I mean, there, I'm sure, limitations. Right.

‍ ‍

45:34
Speaker 1
But if you're running a construction company today and you have your, you're in a space that has the potential to, to have an off site system, to manufacture an off site system, there's evidence that the market has a willingness to take this on. And if you have the proof that in your ability to beat traditional methods of manufacturing and installation, then you, I mean, that's, you'll not only benefit from, you know, being on the leading edge of it, but you'll, you know, help to usher in, you know, positive change, which is, you know, Jerry, the decision you've made, right. Which is to be in this role now of coaching and leading other companies into embracing this change.

‍ ‍

46:30
Speaker 1
So I've got to ask you if people want to contact you and if somebody's, you know, watching or listening to this, if somebody wants to contact you and get help, how do they do that?

‍ ‍

46:41
Speaker 2
Well, they can get me on my office, on my website, offsitetech.com or it's very easy. Just email. It's very easy. My email is just Jerry with a.

‍ ‍

46:48
Speaker 1
G@Offsitetech.Com it's just T E K. Correct.

‍ ‍

46:54
Speaker 2
Yeah, TK that's correct. But I also want to say, Chad, I think there's an important point. I'm not, and you said this at the very beginning, but I said I'm not speaking from a point of, it's hypothetical. Right. I've been at this. All of my life, my family has built successful offset companies. I can give you a list offset companies around Europe that are doing this. And I've been doing this for 30, 40, 50 years. This works. You just have to approach it the correct way.

‍ ‍

47:29
Speaker 1
Love it. All right, thank you so much for joining us, Jerry. I'm sorry for the mishap in the middle of the show, but it's. I. I was amazed to come back and find that you were still here and that everything was still rolling. Hanging my head.

‍ ‍

47:46
Speaker 2
Maybe. Maybe I missed my. Maybe I missed my calling in life. Maybe I should be a. A podcast host or something.

‍ ‍

47:52
Speaker 1
Well, you are a hell of a storyteller, my friend.

‍ ‍

47:55
Speaker 3
Yeah.

‍ ‍

47:55
Speaker 1
And, you know, it's been. It's been a lot of fun having.

‍ ‍

47:59
Speaker 2
Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Even though you got me up in, you know, the middle of the night, but I returned the favor. Someday I'll have one.

‍ ‍

48:07
Speaker 1
I look forward to it. Yeah, I look forward to it. Yeah, you'll have me on at midnight Eastern.

‍ ‍

48:12
Speaker 3
Yeah.

‍ ‍

48:14
Speaker 1
Jerry, thank you so much. Stacy, let's wrap up a couple loose ends here.

‍ ‍

48:17
Speaker 2
So.

‍ ‍

48:19
Speaker 1
So next week we have our 36th episode, and we've got Tom Hughes coming on who's going to be talking about practical applications of lean in construction, which is probably something that, you know, Jerry could talk about as well, you know, in. In taking Apple, you know, concepts from the manufacturing, you know, space and applying it to the construction space. Although I think Jerry would argue that construction is by definition, manufacturing, which I think is, you know, a really, a valid way of thinking. So I look forward to that. Stacy, do you have a marketing tip of the week for us from Steeltoe Communications?

‍ ‍

49:02
Speaker 3
Yeah. So real quick, when you're doing your marketing, try to think about your customer and their pain points and use the word you or your instead of me and I. And we'll keep it short because this was a long episode. Great episode.

‍ ‍

49:18
Speaker 2
It was. Yeah.

‍ ‍

49:20
Speaker 1
Thank you. That's. It's. Customers care about them, not you. Yeah, I think. I think that's right. People like to hear about themselves, so. So good advice. All right, folks, as always, we thank you for joining us. Please spread the word, do us a favor, and just this week, try to find somebody that you know and tell them about the morning huddle and encourage them to check it out, whether that's live or whether it's however you get your podcasts or on YouTube, however you want to engage. And then lastly, if you or anybody that you know is creating positive change in the construction industry. Please join us. Be a part of our platform and spread the word.

‍ ‍

50:01
Speaker 2
Thank you.

‍ ‍

50:01
Speaker 3
Have a great day.

‍ ‍

50:03
Speaker 1
Thanks. ACU too.

‍ ‍

Most people don't associate the construction industry with human trafficking, but it is happening on a large scale worldwide. In this show, we learn what human trafficking really is and how we can play a role in snuffing it out.

Meg Hughey and Miranda Nehrig from Freedom Network USA are on the front lines of the issue, working to educate owners and employees on how to spot and resolve the issue.

Transcript:

‍ ‍

00:01
Speaker 1
All right, it's morning huddle time. Good morning. I'm not saying it works. I wish you God speed. Godspeed with all of that. I think that's really nice. You know, I'm not sure what kind of success you're gonna have with that today because the world, my friend, has changed. Right. A lot of American construction workers, they have different needs.

‍ ‍

00:21
Speaker 2
They have completely different needs.

‍ ‍

00:22
Speaker 3
These awards have a huge, like, criteria that you have to fill out. And they usually have a community service.

‍ ‍

00:29
Speaker 2
Or community, you know, the most productive with a high performance value. And, you know, sometimes it's 11 o' clock at night.

‍ ‍

00:40
Speaker 1
Funny, isn't that? Yeah, not. Not for me.

‍ ‍

00:43
Speaker 2
Not for me.

‍ ‍

00:44
Speaker 1
At 11 o', clock, I am guaranteed to be snoring, so.

‍ ‍

00:48
Speaker 3
So.

‍ ‍

00:57
Speaker 1
It's morning huddle time. Good morning. I'm Chad Prinke. I'm here with Miranda Narig and Meg Huey, our two guests today. Miranda and Meg, thank you so much for joining. How are you two today?

‍ ‍

01:09
Speaker 2
Excellent, excellent. Thank you, Chad.

‍ ‍

01:11
Speaker 4
Doing great.

‍ ‍

01:13
Speaker 1
Yeah. All right. Where are you two in the world? Where are you located? That's always one of my favorite questions to get rolling and just. And then, like, the classic, how's the weather? Where are you, Miranda?

‍ ‍

01:25
Speaker 2
So I am indianapolis, Indiana, and the weather currently is a bit gray and rainy. So I think that's the. The trend as we're entering November.

‍ ‍

01:38
Speaker 1
Indy. So we're on the. You're. You're Eastern time, though, right? In Indy?

‍ ‍

01:41
Speaker 4
Yes.

‍ ‍

01:42
Speaker 2
Although Indiana does that weird thing where, like, part of Indiana and like, in the region is on Central Time, as is like, a very small section of the Southern state. So where I am on Eastern time. But depending on where you're at in the state, it can change a little bit.

‍ ‍

02:00
Speaker 1
Learning new things every day. I didn't realize there was a little part of India. Is it the part right by Chicago that stays on Chicago?

‍ ‍

02:07
Speaker 2
Claimed it, yeah. It's. It's on Central. And then like, the southern tip is just a little bit closer to the Illinois side of life. So they are also on Central Time.

‍ ‍

02:20
Speaker 1
Right on. And Meg, where are you in the world?

‍ ‍

02:22
Speaker 4
I am in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which is also on Eastern time.

‍ ‍

02:26
Speaker 1
No, I thought that was firmly in Central time.

‍ ‍

02:29
Speaker 4
No, I am Eastern time, which is really weird. I am halfway between Detroit and Chicago. Almost exactly. So that's kind of cool. It's really easy to take little, like, weekend trips to either place. And it's also really rainy and gray here. So I turned my heat on today, which I was not Excited to do, but here we are.

‍ ‍

02:49
Speaker 1
Yeah, it's always that. It's like when you admit defeat and winter is showing up and you're like, here we go. Yeah, I know. I fight it. I was in my brother's house this weekend. It was like, 61 degrees, and were gritting our teeth like, we're not doing it. His wife came in and clicked on the heat, and he was like, all right, well, we lost.

‍ ‍

03:08
Speaker 2
We have accepted the loss in this moment.

‍ ‍

03:11
Speaker 1
Yep. We're just not gonna make it. Well, awesome. I see that Stacy has just joined. Stacy, I'm going to bring you on. Is that okay? Right here. There she is.

‍ ‍

03:20
Speaker 3
Good morning, everyone. Good morning.

‍ ‍

03:25
Speaker 1
Stacy. Any exciting stories about why you're a couple minutes behind today?

‍ ‍

03:29
Speaker 3
No, not exciting computer stuff.

‍ ‍

03:33
Speaker 1
Boring stories where I'm angry and I'm behind. Yeah, I know. I know that. I know the drill. Well, welcome, everyone's Halloween. Hello. Oh, my God. My kids. My kids brought home. I think everybody, like, weighed their candy. It was. It was. It was like, three pounds of candy. A child. It was. It's too much candy. We're gonna donate it to, like, kids who need candy. I don't. I think that's the wrong thing. I think we should donate other things. I think from what. From what I understand, though, the school is collecting the candy and sending it to, I think, troops who don't get Halloween. Yeah, right. Because what are you gonna do? They're already kind of in costume. No, I'm joking. That's not true. All right, good. Let's move. Let's move.

‍ ‍

04:17
Speaker 1
So today's topic, we're going to talk about human trafficking, which is something that I didn't think I'd be talking about in relation to the construction industry. If you'd asked me two years ago, I'd have said, huh? But over the past couple of years, I've been learning a lot and getting exposed to some really interesting studies and actually had the opportunity to see Meg present in a. I think, a webinar about a year ago. Meg with the associate. I'm sorry, the American Subcontractors association of Metro. Time.

‍ ‍

04:50
Speaker 4
Makes no sense at this point, Chad. So.

‍ ‍

04:54
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, in the. In the virtual world. But that really opened my eyes to some things. So human trafficking is a thing in the construction industry. It's not only a thing that we all know exists. And when we think about human trafficking, our minds don't naturally. I think, you know, the general population, if you will. Our minds don't naturally go to construction, but it's there. And so what I want to do is invite Miranda and Meg to help us to understand what this is, what it looks like, what we can do about it in, in the day to day for our audience, which is made up of people who work in and who serve the construction industry.

‍ ‍

05:35
Speaker 1
So Stacy, as always, make sure that we get that audience question factor rolled in so that we've got some good stuff to bring to Miranda and Meg here toward the end. But I am going to ask Miranda and Meg to start off by just describing what Freedom Network USA is all about. So whoever wants to take that.

‍ ‍

05:55
Speaker 2
Absolutely. So Freedom Network USA is a national coalition that provides a space for service providers, legal entities, individuals to come together and have a space to share resources and to have an idea or a finger on the pulse of what's happening across the nation when it comes to services for survivors of both sex and labor trafficking. So that's the majority of the organization. And then we do have subsections within our organization. A housing team, there's a general training team, there's a team that focuses on membership. So they help organize all of the organizations and individuals who want to become a part of the coalition. And then there is our survivor reentry project, which is what I coordinate.

‍ ‍

06:53
Speaker 2
So I am a staff attorney with Freedom Network USA and I not only represent my own clients here in the state of Indiana, but I also coordinate cases nationally for survivors who are seeking criminal record relief that is tied to their trafficking experience.

‍ ‍

07:13
Speaker 1
Wow.

‍ ‍

07:14
Speaker 2
Yeah. So some big stuff. Meg, is there anything you want to add in that little.

‍ ‍

07:19
Speaker 4
Oh, you did such a great job. I'll tell you what my role is just context, but so I'm a resource specialist at Freedom Network, which basically means that I help to create all of our webinars and trainings and deliver those trainings and then also help to create a lot of the content see on our website. So we do have a really, I'm really pleased with it. It's a free kind of website, resource hub. So you can go to our website and there's like fact sheets, toolkits, case studies, things like that to just sort of help service professionals like learn more about human trafficking, learn how to work with survivors of human trafficking. So I help create a lot of those sort of behind the scenes materials as well.

‍ ‍

08:04
Speaker 1
Awesome. So, so if I can restate what I think I understand just for confirmation or correction, it would be that you are a network of providers. You're that what Freedom Network USA is all about kind of creating a network across the USA for survivors to tap into all to various types of resources they may need. So you exist for the benefit of the survivors of human trafficking? Yeah. Yep, yep. All right. All right, cool. And it just to give us a little bit of a sense of like, sort of size and scope. Are you in all states? Where are you? And, and what, what's the, you know, I don't know, the footprint look like today?

‍ ‍

08:51
Speaker 2
So we have over 90 members, I want to say, and that includes organizations and individuals. From my understanding, as of right now, we're in most of the continental usa. I can't speak to our territories or to Alaska and Hawaii, but on, at least within the continental usa, we are. We have someone present in about every state.

‍ ‍

09:20
Speaker 3
Yeah.

‍ ‍

09:21
Speaker 2
And I think I answered all the questions.

‍ ‍

09:23
Speaker 1
That's good.

‍ ‍

09:25
Speaker 4
Great.

‍ ‍

09:25
Speaker 2
We did it. Congratulations.

‍ ‍

09:27
Speaker 1
There's that moment where you wonder, like, am I done? Yeah, you?

‍ ‍

09:30
Speaker 3
Yeah.

‍ ‍

09:31
Speaker 2
Did I touch on all of the questions?

‍ ‍

09:35
Speaker 1
It was perfect. No changes. All right, so that's. That, that's really good context for who you are and what you do. What. So, so what is human trafficking? You know, provide that definition for the group and then. Yeah, just in its purest form. And then maybe what we can do is talk about how that specifically manifests in the construction industry.

‍ ‍

10:01
Speaker 4
Yeah. So Miranda, do you want to, since you're an attorney, talk about the legal definition? And then I can kind of talk a little bit more about how that manifests in the trafficking or in the construction industry, not the trafficking industry.

‍ ‍

10:14
Speaker 2
Absolutely. So I will read verbatim the federal law for human trafficking. So federal law defines a severe form of trafficking in persons as. And then there are two definitions. Right. So there's sex trafficking, which is the recruitment, harboring, transportation provision, obtaining, patronizing, or soliciting of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act, which is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age. So basically with either. Well, let me finish labor trafficking and then I'll break it down a little bit more. So with labor trafficking, it is again the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt, bondage, or slavery.

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11:14
Speaker 2
So really the elements you need are the force, fraud, or coercion to get a benefit is the simplest breakdown. You, the person who is doing the trafficking has used illicit form in order to make another person serve them in some way, whether it be for labor services or commercial sex act.

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11:37
Speaker 1
Yep. Okay. And so, Meg, bring this home for our audience, which is, as I mentioned, you're right, made up of pretty much just folks in and around the construction industry.

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11:52
Speaker 4
Yeah. So what we're really tending to see in the construction industry is labor trafficking manifesting. So essentially somebody being forced to perform some type of work, in this case, some type of construction work. Oftentimes we're seeing, you know, folks from other countries who may be undocumented, folks who may have been smuggled into the country being forced to do construction work. Sometimes they may not be, you know, getting the. The full wage that they were promised. Sometimes they may be working very dangerous jobs without proper safety equipment or without access to medical care if something happens. Sometimes we've seen folks being kind of forced to live one particular site altogether without the ability to leave. There's just always some type of fraud happening or force happening or coercion happening.

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12:46
Speaker 4
So again, we may see that as something called debt bondage, where somebody believes that they owe some type of debt to the folks that they're working for and they have to work till it's paid off. We sometimes see folks having, you know, their documents taken by the people in charge and telling them they have to work for, you know, their documents to be returned to them. Things like that. Where we're seeing that a lot of the time undocumented folks are being trafficked in the construction industry because it may be easier to employ them because you don't have to jump through all the hoops of legal employment. Employment.

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13:24
Speaker 4
And it also may be easier to exploit them simply because they either do not know their rights in the United States or they are fearful of law enforcement because they don't have that documentation that might protect them in the country. So that's a very quick breakdown of some things we've seen manifesting in the construction industry, but certainly not a full list or breakdown.

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13:47
Speaker 1
Fantastic. I mean, not fantastic, but a really good description. Right. And. And so help me or help our audience to understand. Well, first off, this isn't just in the construction industry. Right. This is in terms of. If we, as we focus on labor trafficking, it's not just in the construction industry. Where else would we see this?

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14:09
Speaker 4
Yeah, so really we can see this anywhere that people are and that jobs exist, essentially. So there is a huge kind of scope of where labor trafficking can happen anywhere from domestic work within someone's house to you know, obviously the construction industry to every industry in between, essentially anywhere that people work and there's the ability to exploit them, we can see labor trafficking happen. I don't know if you want to add anything to that, too, Miranda, of anything you've seen.

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14:40
Speaker 2
Yeah, I was just going to say that, like, some. Some big things to think about are where you might. There's not as much regulation in terms of the labor force, so the restaurant industry, construction, obviously, as we're here, and then the domestic labor side of things, because you can. You need a big workforce.

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15:04
Speaker 4
Right?

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15:04
Speaker 2
Or like the hotel industry, you need a big workforce in order to get things done. And in order to do that, you sometimes use under the table means.

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15:15
Speaker 4
Right.

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15:15
Speaker 2
In order to pay like, or make sure that you're getting access to the laborers. Another would be our. Our farm, our farming industry. Agricultural industries, where again, you need a big workforce and you might. You might need it seasonally or you just. You by any means necessary, you are trying to get the work done and there's very little oversight, which makes it easier to exploit and then take advantage of the folks.

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15:47
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah, okay, that makes sense. So that it paints a good picture. Unregulated labor force, large numbers of people needed. And, man, I have so many feelings about this topic. And. But one of the things that I really want to make sure that the two of you have the opportunity to talk about to our audience because is. Is that how do we spot it? How do we identify it when it's going on? And. And then ultimately, what do we do about it? But let's. Let's start. Let's start with how do we spot it? What does it look like when it's going on? And I'll. I'll do you the.

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16:32
Speaker 1
Because when were talking about this in preparation, the two of you were like, it's super important that we have a disclaimer on the front side of this that what we don't want to be doing is going and sort of imagining into creation, you know, trafficking. Where trafficking isn't occurring. There's, there's, you know, trafficking is a very specific and narrow definition that we've gone through. And we don't want to go around sort of, you know, as amateur detectives and go creating drama where it doesn't exist. So a lot of people may be voluntarily selecting into, you know, lines of work, types of work, types of living circumstances and things like that just, you know, it ain't our business what they're choosing to do, but there are people who need help. And. And so I don't know if I did your disclaimer for you.

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17:27
Speaker 1
Feel free to build on that disclaimer. But I want to. I want to make sure that we. That we hit that clearly before we start talking about how to. How to identify it, how to spot it.

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17:35
Speaker 2
Can I hop up real quick, Meg?

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17:36
Speaker 4
Sorry.

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17:37
Speaker 1
Here comes the lawyer.

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17:38
Speaker 2
Yeah. No, well, yeah, no, of course. I mean, if my job is. I am who I am, Chad. Okay.

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17:45
Speaker 4
All right.

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17:45
Speaker 2
So, excellent disclaimer. The only things I wanted to just add. Add on in terms of. So when we're being careful about not conflating trafficking with something else. So a big one would be smuggling. These are. They're not the same. Smuggling is a voluntary agreement for someone to be moved across the border illegally. And once the border is crossed, relationship is done. And the person being moved is not necessarily forced to do anything. Smuggling, not trafficking. And I think that there is that misconception that trafficking is taken. Right. And we all are, Liam Neeson, with a certain set of skills, trying to save our daughters. That is. That is not what we're talking about.

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18:34
Speaker 1
Right.

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18:35
Speaker 2
That is, you know, I just. Very important also from, you know, well, from a sex trafficking side of things. You know, sex trafficking is not inherently a commercial sex act between two consenting adults, but under federal law, any person that is under 18 is inherently. Is automatically being trafficked because you. You can. You can't consent to sex before the age of 18.

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19:01
Speaker 1
Yeah. As it relates to sex trafficking, that makes a ton. I could be like, I'm consenting, and they'd be like, you're 17, you can't.

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19:07
Speaker 2
And the only reason I highlight that is because, you know, Freedom Network does do a lot of policy advocacy as well. And we believe in, you know, supporting adults who are making their own consenting choices. And so the conflation of sex work into trafficking automatically is. Is not our game. So that's the only thing I wanted to put on. The disclaimer was wonderful. Excellent work, Meg. Anything?

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19:38
Speaker 4
Yeah, no, I think that's. That was all really great. Chad and Miranda, how do we spot it? Yeah, so there's. There's some things that we've kind of seen across the board happening in a lot of trafficking cases. There's some things that may happen in some cases, some that may not happen in certain cases. We often will see things mimicking a lot of, you know, similar signs to things like sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse as well. So there's many kind of interconnected crimes who all may have sort of similar, you know, red flags, for lack of a better term, that stick out. So, you know, if you spot something like this, it may be worth looking into, even if it doesn't, you know, manifest as trafficking.

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20:26
Speaker 4
But some things that are more specifically, often trafficking related are things like people not having access to their own legal documents, particularly if they are folks who are undocumented. If they have any piece of identification, if that is held from them and they're not able to kind of prove who they are, that's often a sign that something's not right. Because of course you're not going to be able to do anything else if you don't have your identity. Right. We also see oftentimes like if people similar to other crimes that I just mentioned, people having unexplained injuries. So in the context of the construction industry, that may be people having injuries like concussions, foot crushing injuries, broken bones that haven't been treated, things that really should have been prevented by proper safety equipment.

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21:17
Speaker 4
They may not have access to those things either because they are treated as sort of a disposable piece of property, essentially. They may not have access to go to health care because of course, either they don't have insurance or the person or industry trafficking them doesn't want them to go to health care because they don't want to be found out. We also, a huge thing that we often see in labor trafficking in particular, again, is people not getting paid at all. Maybe they're getting paid for far less than they were promised. Maybe they're expecting to do one job when they sign a contract or they agree to do a job and it turns into something totally different from the scope of work that they had planned on doing.

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22:04
Speaker 4
That's something that we also kind of classically see happening in labor trafficking that either confiscation of money or not paying people is really to kind of keep people being trafficked, right? Like if you again, don't have access to your money, don't have access to documents, there's no way that you're going to be able to escape that situation, provide for yourself or your family, do something else, get your own place to live, things like that.

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22:31
Speaker 4
Again, those kind of control tactics are really something that we're seeing often in labor trafficking, as well as fear being instilled in folks, particularly those folks who are immigrant workers or undocumented immigrant workers, being told that the police are going to be called on them if they don't comply with what the trafficker wants or that they're going to be deported or that their family is going to be harmed back in their home country if they do not do what the trafficker wants? Again, you know, American citizens can also be trafficked in the construction industry as well. But again, we more commonly are seeing our undocumented folks and our folks who have other vulnerabilities being our trafficking survivors.

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23:13
Speaker 1
Yep, that's an extremely useful description. And as I, as you describe it, I can picture it. I'm betting that there are people in our audience who are picking, you know, who actually have that picture in their mind right now, maybe have even helped someone like that to navigate a situation like this. So that begs the question, what do we do? What do we do when that happens? When we, when we identify those red flags, what should we do? Especially when we're not in a position to fix it ourselves? Right. Was it that the person doesn't, they're not our employer or our employee. We can't just be like, oh, I'm sorry, I'm going to stop doing that to you. Right. What do you do, you know, if you're just a do gooder, Right. A person who's trying to do good.

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23:57
Speaker 2
So I think that first and foremost is knowing not only like some of the red flags that Meg mentioned, but also an important element here throughout is safety for yourself and safety for these workers who you think might be experiencing this victimization.

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24:16
Speaker 4
Right.

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24:17
Speaker 2
And so that I, my recommendation would be if, you know, if you're able to have a conversation and ask some open ended questions, like if you're getting the sense of, if you see someone who's injured or if you see someone, like if you're seeing a group of laborers being brought to the work site and then being taken away from the work site together, and there's very little freedom in their movement, you can ask some open end questions about, you know, how their day to day is going, how you know what their experience is and you know, what their expectation of the job was versus what they're doing on the site. And that can give you some ideas about what their experience is. I think another important element here is to know your rights as the employee and their rights.

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25:13
Speaker 4
Right.

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25:13
Speaker 2
So I'm not saying you have to memorize every single legal remedy, every single right, but having a basic understanding of your rights as an employee or an independent contractor laborer on a site allows you to know what the rights of those around you are and you can communicate those rights to your fellow laborers. Because we all should know what our rights are as the people who are working on the job site and if you know the local legal services that are available to you. So indiana, for example, we have a legal services agency called Indiana Legal Services and they have a specific subsection that focuses on connecting with non citizen immigrant workers and making sure that they know their rights.

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26:05
Speaker 2
And if they feel their rights have been violated, they have the contact information for the legal services so that they can see what remedies are available to them. And so if you have an idea or if you are seeing a group of folks who you think are being trafficked or exploited, you can provide that information to them in a safe manner and allow them to make those decisions for themselves. Because I'm sorry, I'm just going to.

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26:36
Speaker 1
Say on a big commercial job site, right, there's opportunities here so the general contractor can posters, they can put up, you know, information, you know, and with numbers and resources and specific people, potentially even on the job site that you can go and talk to if this type of thing is happening. I could also see the general contractor being in a position to put on a, you know, a, every three months put on a 30 minute quick seminar on the job site where all the, everybody who gets, you know, on the job site can go and sit there and you know, you might see some people's eyes in the audience saying, you know, this is me. I really, I could use help. I've been in this situation. So, so I think these are some really tangible steps that we could be taking.

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27:34
Speaker 1
And I think what I'm hearing both of you say is it's all about empowering these people. It's about empowering survivors with information and resources. But maybe stopping short of like overstepping and you know, taking control of the situation oneself. You know, we kind of have to provide people with the resources but not, I don't know, pull them out of those situations, if that makes sense, if that.

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27:59
Speaker 1
And I, I'm just putting, it's a delicate situation because we're talking about humans with agency and you know, they have decisions about how they want to handle things and even if they are being trafficked, they may not want you to handle, you may be putting them in danger, you know, you may not want to handle it, you know, drop in as Liam Neeson, so to speak, and start, you know, sorting things out, you know, that may be the wrong thing for their family.

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28:29
Speaker 2
You know, at it as A community is that it's. It's not our inherently our duty to save. It is our duty to empower one another, and we empower each other with not only education, but with that provision of available resources for folks to make informed decisions.

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28:47
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's. That's extremely. It's helpful for me to bear in mind as I. Because I totally am like a fixer and I would. I would definitely overstep without that in mind. So that's. That's very useful. Okay. Stacy, questions?

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29:03
Speaker 3
Yeah, you're talking about all these resources. Maybe, like seminars, toolbox talks. Where can we find these resources?

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29:11
Speaker 2
So. Oh, I'm sorry, Meg, you are the reason. You are the resource expert. I was gonna. My. My first step would be. So obviously, you know, we're. We're in different parts of the country, knowing what legal, like, legal services are available in the specific region and connecting with someone in that office to ask if they have these of trainings, I think is a first step. Meg might know more.

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29:39
Speaker 4
That's fine. And I think that's true, like, depending on your area. It's also really helpful to connect with folks in your area who are doing the work, just so that it can be very specific to you. But we do also have on our website, freedomnetworkusa.org we have a list of our members, so you can see kind of who across the country is a member of freedomnetworkusa.org and that may be a really useful way to like, come up with who is in your community that you can reach out to. Also, we do have a bunch of free trainings, fact sheets, toolkits, things like that. Right. On our website, as well as direct contact to us and all of our colleagues who may be able to also, like, point you in the correct direction.

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30:23
Speaker 4
We're also able to do kind of tailored trainings, depending on your needs and on your wants and, you know, the specific things that you are seeing as well. So you can also feel free to reach out to us, and we can either provide those things for you or connect you to the folks who may be the best fit for you and what you're looking for.

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30:43
Speaker 3
Great, thank you. And then I guess just a last question is how do we prevent this from happening, you know, from the start? I know it's a tough one.

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30:55
Speaker 2
It is a tough one. And Chad, in our discussion yesterday, that. That was, you know, one of the questions, right, of how do we. How do we prevent and stop trafficking? And people ask me this a lot as an attorney who works in this area. And my answer is always the same and isn't inherently one that is satisfying because it's paying, it's really participating in community in a way that eliminates these vulnerabilities.

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31:25
Speaker 4
Right.

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31:26
Speaker 2
So believing and advocating for policy changes that change how non citizen workers are provided the documents and safety they're needed to stay here and work and not be vulnerable to exploitation is a big one. Right. Specifically in labor trafficking and the basic necessities of housing, food and health care, those are the things that people need and are exploited the most for folks who are trafficked. And so I know it's the desire to perhaps volunteer and have that immediate gratification of connecting with someone who's experiencing this is like what we want, but really it's addressing those vulnerabilities as a whole, as a system that will eliminate the vulnerabilities that lead to trafficking on every level.

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32:34
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, I think so. We are in, we have a black market for labor in this country.

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32:44
Speaker 4
Absolutely.

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32:45
Speaker 1
And, and it's born of combination of supply and demand where we have a need clearly for this labor force. And, and there's a desire of this labor force to leave their home countries and to come here to service that need. And unfortunately we have an immigration system that is not workable when it comes to adequately meeting the demand for and adequately meeting the needs and the desires of the people who are looking to leave their home countries and come here. And so anytime there is a black market, anytime there's a black market, other crime will thrive. I see this all the time when I turn on that, like, you know, for me, find me where crime is happening and I will show you where other layers of crime are happening.

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33:52
Speaker 1
And, and the fact is that if you are an employer that, you know, is already breaking the law by, you know, employing tons of illegal. Right. Undocumented people. Right. Tons of. If that's already against the law, the line between breaking the next law and the next law law, it's flimsy and certainly not all of these employers are that way. But, but enough are. And, and so at the end of the day, you can be angry all you want about people pouring over the borders, right? You could be angry about our loose borders and people getting like you could, that can upset you. But you know what? Inhumanity is never okay. I don't care, you know, at the end. So, so either pack them up, ship them back or start treating Them like humans, because they are only one of those two things is okay.

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34:52
Speaker 1
And, and I think if we packed them up and shipped them back, our entire economy would collapse because we clearly have a desperate need for these people. So what we really need to do, I think when you ask that question, Stacy, we really need to do is we need to make. We need. We need to make massive overhauls where immigration policies that, that eliminate black markets for labor and acknowledge. Possible to have a black acknowledge that.

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35:17
Speaker 2
We'Re inherently dependent on the workforce. Like, I mean, I think that's the reality. And for, I guess a more tangible result also would be education, educating yourself and those around you about, again, those remedies and your rights, because these.

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35:36
Speaker 4
Are rights that are.

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35:36
Speaker 1
Are.

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35:39
Speaker 2
Available to all of us as laborers. Right. And so new to empower others. And, and like Chad's saying, it's just really acknowledging the basic humanity of everyone around you.

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35:52
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah.

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35:54
Speaker 3
Can we get Kaylee's question real quick? Because I think it's a good one. She was just asking is there any reporting processes or, you know, if there's a way to anonymously report? You know, when you see this kind of thing, where do you. How. How does that work?

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36:10
Speaker 2
There is the National Trafficking Hotline. That is typically where. Where I would direct folks. Okay, were you going to say something? No, that's.

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36:21
Speaker 4
That's exactly what I would say. Basically, you know, we would not recommend as Freedom Network, like doing direct reports necessarily to law enforcement or like that, only because that could really endanger people who may already be in dangerous situations, particularly if they are undocumented or they have another vulnerability there. So, absolutely, I would say you can feel free to report that to the National Human Trafficking Hotline as just a way for people to know that something's going on. Just as a side note, with the Human Trafficking Hotline, those are just reported cases, not substantiated cases, that are necessarily things that have actually been found to be trafficking. So whenever you view, like, stats on human trafficking, like, keep that in mind, those are just things that people think they've seen but have not necessarily come to fruition or have.

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37:19
Speaker 4
Have not necessarily actually been trafficking, just may have had some of the signs or symptoms of it. But reporting there's a really great start because it lets folks know that there's something going on in a particular area. I would also identify, like, within your workplace, if there's somebody in a position of authority who feels like there's someone trustworthy that you can talk to, I would not out the specific person that you think may be trafficked or experiencing vulnerabilities, again, because that may be dangerous for them, but just if there is somebody that you feel is a safe person for you to share, that you think that something might be going on your work site or workplace, that may also be another way for someone else to also kind of examine the culture and what's going on in your workplace.

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38:07
Speaker 1
Okay, great.

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38:08
Speaker 3
Thank you.

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38:10
Speaker 1
Miranda, Meg, thank you so much for coming on and helping us through this topic. I know this is, you know, something that, as I started off saying, it's probably not front and center on people's minds in the construction industry on a daily basis. Particular, particularly our viewers, not really thinking about it on a daily basis. But hopefully as you hit the job site this afternoon, you know, later on this morning and this afternoon, you start to take a look around, you'll have a different set of eyes on and, you know, you'll play a role in, you know, empowering people to help themselves out of these types of situations. So thank you both. Any parting words? Miranda, Matt.

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38:54
Speaker 2
I mean, just thank you very much for the opportunity to be here and talk on, to speak on this topic. I think it's really important and you know, as I've said, I'll say it again, education is really key to most of this and this is where we start, right? With these, with this dialogue, with this conversation.

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39:13
Speaker 1
So thank you.

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39:14
Speaker 4
I just want to echo that. Thank you so much for having us today. Thanks for giving us this opportunity to talk to folks. And I would say if anyone who's attended today learned something, share that with the people that you work with. Just like Miranda said, I think education is the way to shift perspectives and also kind of move the anti trafficking movement itself along. So please share that information with folks. The, the best way for people to know that they have rights and to know that you know, something is wrong is to talk about it. So please feel free to share anything you learn today with those that you work with or those at home too.

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39:52
Speaker 1
Hear, hear. Thank you. See you both. Appreciate it. Come back soon. Take care. All right, Stacy, let's talk about next week. You know, man, that's such an interesting topic. I gotta tell you. That one get, that one gets to me. There's something. So many of the people that are in the workforce were smuggled. So many of the people are smuggled, owe money to somebody.

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40:16
Speaker 3
Yeah, we're really not talking a lot about that topic like Just the past year it's been popping up so.

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40:23
Speaker 1
Well, it's popping up because of the wage theft laws and how things are starting to finally impact the larger companies that are upstream, that are responsible for hiring all the, you know, I mean, where it's really funneling from isn't the brand name general contractor, the brand name subcontractor that, you know, specialty contractor that, you know, where it's coming from is from the under, you know, the shadow labor brokers that, you know, are basically, you know, feeding the, you know, fueling the workforce. But, but maybe not always doing so in a humane way. So not only from a wage theft standpoint, but from just the way you're treating people standpoint. It gets me. Sorry, this one bothers me. So what we're talking about next week, we've got Jerry McCaughey who's coming on to talk about running an off site construction company.

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41:26
Speaker 1
So Jerry is, he's been running off site construction companies for decades and doing so mostly in Europe, came over to the United States, I don't know, something like 20 years ago or 15 years ago, started his own business here doing the same thing. That's really become a norm over there. And, and what I love about it is that we're going to be talking about, you know, things that we have hit on before like prefab and off site and you know, all that. But, but we're going to be talking about it really through the eyes and experience of somebody who does it all the time and not just somebody who is an evangelist for it, but somebody who's like, this is how you have to be set up to do it. These are the things that you need, these are the things that you don't.

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42:10
Speaker 1
These are the expenses that you're going to have. And this is how I've had success running my business. Jerry's going to be a really interesting conversation, so I look forward to that. Stacy, do we have a Steel Toe Communications marketing tip of the week?

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42:23
Speaker 3
We don't have a marketing tip of the week, but I did want to make announcement that I've had a lot of people recently reach out to me indicating they just needed help setting up or optimizing their LinkedIn profiles. So I will be hosting a seminar this spring and I don't have the date yet, but I'm hoping March. So just if you're interested in that or you need A one one. Just send me an email and I can, you know, look over what you have in, give you some advice on how to amp things up and you know, make sure you're more visible on LinkedIn.

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43:00
Speaker 1
I love it. I. Yet another thing I may take you up on, Stacy. So it's just. I appreciate you, I really do. I think that's, I think that's great. So as always, please email Stacy direct to be added to our weekly mailing list. You can obviously just direct message either one of us and we'll make that happen. But, but just know that if you send it to me, I'll be sending it to Stacy because she's the one who puts together our newsletter. Our newsletter comes out once a week. It's really specific. I think it's very useful. Every time I see it, I think, you know, this is, it's like anti spam. It's very good. And, and so, you know, thank you, Stacy, for keeping that running. And please do folks jump in on that.

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43:42
Speaker 1
We have just the month of November until the end of this season. So that means we've got four episodes left. Each one is going to be a blast. Please join us through the end of November. But also if you know anybody that should be talking to us in this forum and sharing what they're doing to create positive change in the building industry, please pass their information along for our next season. Stacy, anything else before we jump?

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44:07
Speaker 3
No. Have a great rest of your week and I'll see you next Tuesday.

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44:11
Speaker 4
Bye.

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44:11
Speaker 1
See you next Tuesday.

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