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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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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:

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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?

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

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00:23
Speaker 1
They have completely different needs.

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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.

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

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00:50
Speaker 3
So.

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00:50
Speaker 2
So.

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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?

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

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

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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02:49
Speaker 2
Shoot.

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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.

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03:30
Speaker 2
Sure.

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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.

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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.

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

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04:29
Speaker 2
Yeah.

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04:30
Speaker 3
Right.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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08:04
Speaker 2
So that's fair.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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15:53
Speaker 1
Things differently.

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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19:58
Speaker 1
Now.

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

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

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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.

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21:02
Speaker 1
You, you.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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23:16
Speaker 2
Right.

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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.

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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.

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24:04
Speaker 3
Hey.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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

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

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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.

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34:29
Speaker 1
Participation.

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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.

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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.

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35:59
Speaker 2
Right.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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36:33
Speaker 2
Stacy?

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36:33
Speaker 1
Any other.

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36:34
Speaker 3
That's it.

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36:36
Speaker 2
Awesome.

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36:38
Speaker 3
Yeah.

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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?

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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.

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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?

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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.

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37:49
Speaker 3
Thank you.

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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.

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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.

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38:32
Speaker 3
You too. Happy Thanksgiving.

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38:34
Speaker 2
We'll see.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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40:49
Speaker 3
Yes.

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

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40:52
Speaker 2
Well, good.

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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.

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41:23
Speaker 2
Slots open at this point.

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

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41:29
Speaker 2
Thanks.

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Guest: Eric Tievy

Topic: Innovative Client Management

Transcript:

Speaker 1: 00:00

Foreign huddle time. I'm psyched to be here with Stacy and Eric. We were just talking about the fact that this is episode 12. We've got what, Stacy? Three episodes before we go on vacation. Stacy and I are going on vacation.

Speaker 2: 00:18

We need a break. We have a lot of good stuff coming for the season two.

Speaker 3: 00:24

Are you guys going on vacation together?

Speaker 1: 00:26

Yeah. No. And unfortunately, vacation just means having to work in our regular jobs and not being able to play around and make our show. But we're going to take at least a couple of months. I think we're going to get back in action in April, but we're going to, we're going to take off. But Eric has been. You, you, you've been here for every single show, man. That's.

Speaker 3: 00:51

I am. Thank you. I'm a loyal supporter. It's been, it's been fantastic. The topicality has been over the top. Good. I'm hoping, hoping that this one measures up to the past performances. Everybody's been terrific.

Speaker 1: 01:04

I am confident that it will. I'm fired up to get into the discussion. So officially, welcome to the morning huddle here this morning. It is 8am Eastern for those of you who are joining us live. And if you're not joining us live, consider doing that on LinkedIn Live, if that's possible. If you're not, you know, in Hawaii and this would be happening at like 2 in the morning. So please, let's just take a moment. I want to introduce Eric tv. Eric is our guest today. Eric's with Sorensen Gross. He is here to talk with us about their unique take, his personal unique take on client management and what that means in the market. So thank you for joining us, Eric. Welcome.

Speaker 3: 01:53

Chad. Thanks so much for having me. It's really awesome to be able to give back. I've been in this industry now in the Washington, D.C. area now for, I hate to say it, but 30 years now. If I had hair, it would certainly be gray, but as you can see, it's long gone. I think this industry does it to me, but at the same time, it's awesome to be able to share some insights.

Speaker 1: 02:20

Thank you. Yeah, I like that. If I had hair, it would be gray. I noticed a lot more. My wife actually kindly noticed a lot more gray hair over here on this side over the holidays. I'm considering my options. Stacy, good to see you this morning. How are you today?

Speaker 2: 02:43

I'm doing great.

Speaker 1: 02:45

Awesome. What's I'm going to ask you what's going on in your world this week?

Speaker 2: 02:49

What's going on in my world. Lots of planning, working with some really great, amazing clients, and a lot of them are fans of the morning huddle, which is awesome.

Speaker 1: 03:00

That's great. Yeah, I'm always hesitant to, like, do I send out the invites to everybody or do I wait until somebody says I've heard about it? I don't know. I'm a bad advertiser. I'm going to have to over the break. We're gonna have to sort that out because I think there's a lot of people that I. That I hang out with that would probably like to be here, but that I haven't invited because it makes me feel weird. But anyway, as always, Stacy is going to be interacting and engaging with the audience during the course of our show today. So please ask questions, interact. Stacy will be collecting the coolest and most interesting questions to pose to us in the final 10 minutes of the show. So with that, Stacy, we'll see you with about 10 minutes left.

Speaker 2: 03:46

Okay, great. See ya.

Speaker 1: 03:47

Thank you. See ya. All right, Eric, let's get into this. You know, as we think about this idea of client management, I think one of the things that I was really interested by whenever we were talking about the possibility of having you join us is this idea of how many, you know, how do we think about everybody in our world as a client? And so for a little context, you're a general contractor. What does it mean to treat everyone like a client from your perspective?

Speaker 3: 04:27

Yeah. So, Chad, you know, that's something that we talked about is something that's really, really near and dear to my heart. And that is we always think of our clients as the folks that hire us, the folks that pay us to do work in whatever capacity that we do work. We think of our clients solely as the folks that pay our bills. And the reality is everybody that we interact with, everybody that provides an input to what we do, really are our clients. You know, at Sorensen Gross here, we think of four, four major clients. And the first one is the obvious one. They're the owners. They're the ones that hire us to construct the projects. But we also consider our, our AE partners. The folks that do the designs for, for the work there. They're our clients as well. They have a lot of say in who gets work. They have a lot of say in how our projects go. And for that reason, we treat them as partners and as our clients. We treat them as a client, our subcontractors. We're a general contractor, and at the moment, we self perform Nothing. We rely 100% on the subcontractor community to help us construct the projects. And like everybody else, and this is, you know, this is something we talked about. It's something that we sort of advertised on the moniker here. Everybody wakes up in the morning and has a decision as to whether they're going to work for somebody or not work for somebody. And that holds true for subcontractors. We have to answer the question to all of them is, why us? Why work for us? Why offer us work? Why help us as architects and engineers? Why help us to get more work? And so every day we wake up and we have to answer that question. And when it comes to subcontractors, again, they have a choice. The fourth client. I said there are four major clients. The fourth client is probably the most important of all of them, and it's probably the one that we overlook as clients the most. And that's our people. It's our internal clients. It's the folks that come to work. Our project managers, our superintendents, our support team. All right? All of those folks are our clients, just like our clients that we talk about proper. The folks that pay our bills. Our people wake up every day and they have a choice as to whether they want to continue to come to work for us. Okay? Just like you and I and everybody else in the industry right now. We get multiple calls a day from. From the headhunters that say, hey, I've got a better opportunity over here. Why don't you come and explore this? We've got to continue to answer the question for our people, why us? Why to continue to work for us?

Speaker 1: 07:20

Yeah, I love it. I think. So if we use that as kind of the bar that anybody that needs to choose us is our client, that really helps to reframe the topic of client management for the sake of our discussion today. So as we're thinking about the client, we're thinking about anyone who needs to choose us. And that includes in your list of four major clients, architects, engineers, owners, subcontractors, and employees. And if you're a sub, then your mix changes a little bit. But it's essentially the same concept, right? Maybe your suppliers can get tossed into that. So, all right, how do you do it? Right, so what are some of the. You know, when you think about this, there are books on, you know, hundreds of books, if not thousands written on the topic. When you really distill down your approach to making sure they choose us, how do you do it? What. What. What are the priorities for you? How do you Pull that off.

Speaker 3: 08:39

Sure. So you, Chad, you referenced lots of different books out there. I can't see what's on your shelf. I'm not sure if it's because I need a new prescription for my glasses or just the camera, but be that as it may, these are fake.

Speaker 1: 08:57

All right? Yeah, they're real.

Speaker 3: 08:59

So there's a book out there that, that it's. It's not unique to me or the Sorensen Gross. There's a lot of other kinds of companies out there that follow the same methodology, and that's Raving Fans. And Raving Fans does an excellent job of setting up the framework for what we're talking about today. And the real way to understand your clients and make sure that your clients remain your clients is to understand their needs. Okay. What's important to them, because what's important to them is going to be important, needs to be important to you in ensuring that they remain your clients. And the only way to understand what's important to them is to ask and to continue to ask and to continue to understand whether you're doing a good job in meeting those needs.

Speaker 1: 09:55

So treating someone like a client fundamentally equates to understanding what matters to them and delivering on that consistently.

Speaker 3: 10:12

That's it. It's not more complicated than that. You know, I'll give the example of subcontractors. And for those of you that I've worked with in the industry for a long time, you know that I have a background in estimating and purchasing. And probably 15 years ago, I wanted to ask that question, really wanted to understand from the subcontractor standpoint what makes a great general contractor. What makes a general contractor a preferred client to them surveyed over 200 subcontractors, and the answers converged on three things. And what I found is really, really, these. These answers do come in threes. They come in threes for all the other clients that we talked about earlier today as well. But for a subcontractor, it's pretty simple. One, they want a general contractor that pays the bills, pays the bills for the work performed on time and for the complete amount of the work performed. If we do that, we're all ready. We're already in very good graces. The second thing is get the change orders negotiated and paid for when the change order work is being performed. Okay? If we do that, we're already approaching rock star status. We do those two things consistently. All right? It's probably better than most in the industry. Payment is one of the toughest things to accomplish in a reasonable amount of time. And so again, do those two things. You're getting close to rockstar status now. You're really, you're really a lister rock star status. If you do the third thing, and it's the most basic and that is run an efficient job, okay? Run your schedule, manage your work proactively so that subcontractors can get in, make their, their, their productivity that they assumed in their estimate and get out and actually make some money on the job. And I used to joke with subcontractors that, that if the company that I am working for does those three things consistently and well, it doesn't matter. I'm the biggest. And I won't use the word that I used when we talked about this before, but the biggest, you know what, you're going to call me up and say, eric, I want more work and you may even send me a bottle of scotch for Christmas, right?

Speaker 1: 12:36

Yeah, that's exactly right. I think, you know, it's funny. Pay the bills in total, deal with change orders in real time. Don't string me out on change orders. And by the way, on that second point, every subcontractor client that I've ever worked with, I can really echo that second point is huge when it comes to maintaining long term trust. It's a really scary thing if you're a subcontractor performing work on a promise and feeling that you're getting more and more and more extended. And you know, it starts to, it starts to really create a leverage imbalance and put the general contractor in a position of power and make the subcontractor feel really scared and nervous. And that is not how you would ever treat a client. It's not how you would ever treat a client.

Speaker 3: 13:24

That's correct. And Chad, you really, really hit the next point on the head there, the nail on the head in that none of these, none of these hold water if there's not trust involved. You say that, you know, subcontractors are working on a promise. None of this matters if there is not a trust relationship. And that goes for, you know, any client that we talk about, whether it's our people, the architects, the owners, trust. Trust has to be the foundation of anything that we build upon.

Speaker 1: 14:01

Well, and if we're doing a good job as a general contractor, if you're doing a good job of the third point, running an efficient job, the other two become much more possible. Right? So if you're, if you're run, if your job's a mess, very difficult to get you to get Everybody paid on time. It's very difficult to handle. Right. If you can't track change orders effectively, if you're, if you're not doing a really good job of just running a good, efficient, you know, well organized project, those other two points become, you know, more painful. So it's, as a general contractor, I'd almost think about inverting it so saying we've got to focus on running an efficient job so that we can pay the bills on time and handle change orders in real time and not leave anybody hanging. But maybe I'm not a general contractor, so that's just my theory.

Speaker 3: 14:44

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 14:47

So, you know, is there, it's important to treat everybody like clients, Right. But at the same time.

Speaker 3: 14:58

You know.

Speaker 1: 14:59

It'S important not to be a doormat. And as a general contractor, you definitely can't be a doormat to your subcontractors, you know, nor your owners, quite frankly. So it, but is there such a thing as a client that is a bad client from your perspective?

Speaker 3: 15:17

Of course there is. And if we look at it from the, the global perspective that, that we talked about, and it's always a two way street, but we certainly think about it in terms of our team members, our employees, and when we have an employee that is not performing, I hate to use this term, it's harsh, we let them go. But we oftentimes have to fire our clients. And again, we think about it downstream, we have to fire an employer, we fire a subcontractor for not performing. But the reality is, if we think about it in terms of what we talked about earlier, that everybody are our clients, sometimes we have to fire our owners. We have to make a choice moving forward that our client is not somebody that we want to continue to work for because it's not good business. Because if we think about it in terms of the subcontractor, in the example that we used earlier, if you've got a general contractor that doesn't run an efficient job and you don't make money on their jobs, or you've got a general contractor that doesn't do a good job of getting you paid on time, or if they allow the change orders to build up until the end of the job, and then they look to take the owner, or the general contractor gives the subcontractor that 50% haircut on the change orders, they're not a good client. And sometimes you have to fire your clients. You have to say, you know what, it's not a good business proposition and I'm not going to work for you anymore. You can apply it to any of the above clients that we talked about earlier.

Speaker 1: 17:08

Right. And you mentioned this term earlier and then you also use this term two way street. And it made me think of what you said earlier, which is partner. And I really do believe that the most effective way for us to think about any client relationship is as a partnership.

Speaker 3: 17:32

Absolutely. It's understanding. It's a two way street. And it's understanding the basic needs of each other and making sure that they deliver. I told you that subcontractors want three things. General contractors want three things from subcontractors as well. You know, we want folks that support us on bid day, help us win work. Okay. We want subcontractors that help us provide value add propositions to our clients so that our clients in turn give us more work. And we want subcontractors that perform out in the field. We want them just to do what we hire them to do to, to get their materials purchased and deliver them on time and to put the work in place in the amount of time that we allowed for in the schedule and help us to be, to perform and make our money as well.

Speaker 1: 18:25

All of us have free choice.

Speaker 3: 18:29

That's it. That's it. We wake up every day and we have a choice with our clients and our clients in turn have a choice with us. And we all have to answer that question every day. Why us?

Speaker 1: 18:41

That's right. We have to choose the people we're working for. We have to choose the people who are working for us and vice versa. And if you're an employee and you're currently working inside an organization, one of the things that, I don't know we've seen, I don't know the hard numbers, but I know it's in the millions and I believe in the tens of millions across all the labor market, you know, labor segments. But certainly in the building industry, it's, it's been rampant where over the past 18 months we've experienced what, what's, you know, been come to be known as is the great reshuffle. It started with the great resignation and, and now everybody's moving, you know, essential. It's fascinating staying in the same role, but moving from one company to the next. And I think a part of what's happened is that they've realized that their freedom of choice employees realized their freedom of choice has expanded. They've got more options than ever. And all of a sudden they're looking at the equation of being in their current employer and saying, I Can't answer why I'm here in a way that makes me satisfied. What do you think is happening there?

Speaker 3: 20:05

So what's happened is that folks, needs have changed. Obviously, the situation that has been brought on by Covid, where folks have been working remotely and thus their family situations have also changed. And so they've started to refocus on what's important to them. And we talked earlier about the fact that we need to continue to ask what's important. If we truly ask folks and listen to them as to what's become important to them, it's changed. Okay? Suddenly, flexibility has skyrocketed up the chart as far as importance in their work situation. And if we're listening to them and understanding what their primary needs are, we've got to adapt and we've got to adjust, and we've got to make sure that we're addressing those needs. You know, Chad, we talked about it before, and if you look online, people don't leave because of money. Okay? People don't leave because somebody offered them another 5,000 bucks to come work somewhere. People leave because their needs are not getting met. And those needs are things like professional development. It's company culture, and it's a. And it's appreciation. Those are the three big things that impact folks. And I sort of put that. That flexibility that we talked about earlier under the. Under the company culture. It's sort of a subset of that.

Speaker 1: 21:49

Yeah, it's. It's fascinating to me when. When I'm. I'm watching, you know, employees entertain offers from other companies, and they eventually just kind of get, you know, they've been ignoring the recruiter for four years, but they've gotten so many calls, and to your point that there's some need that is not being met that makes them say, you know what, what the hell, I'll hear you out. What do you got? And as they hear that person out, they start to compare what they have with what they're being offered. The next thing you know, they walk in, you know, after, you know, I'm sure lots of thinking and conversations with their loved ones. They come walking in and they say to their boss, I'm out, you know, giving you my two weeks notice. And it's then, right, it's then that the company starts saying, well, what do you need? How can we keep you? What do we need? And that is precisely the opposite of how you need to be thinking. And I think this is what you're saying, how you need to be thinking about understanding your employees needs, adjusting to Your employees, needs. We need to be talking to our employees openly, regularly, all of our clients, Right back to this concept of clients need to be talking to all of our clients openly, regularly about how we're performing in relation to their needs. And are there any new needs, is there anything that's being unmet? How can we make sure that we constantly stay in alignment so that we're delivering on your expectations and we're servicing you effectively as a client? That's the, that's what has to be done to keep people. So by the time you get that two week notice, it's too late, you know?

Speaker 3: 23:38

Correct. You know, I say that at that point in time, the toothpaste is out of the tube, it's very difficult to put it back in. And if we sort of follow again what we were talking about earlier, that trust is broken when you jump through hoops. When that team member comes and tells you they're giving their notice and you jump through hoops to try to retain them, that trust is broken. The team members looking at you and saying, why didn't you do this earlier? And the point that we have to get across today is we need to listen to them and understand what their needs are earlier and make sure that they feel like their needs are being met consistently.

Speaker 1: 24:23

I love it. I wanted to bring Stacy into the mix here. I know we've had some good communication happening live. For those who are joining us via the chat channel. Stacy, what kind of questions do we have from the audience that we could toss at?

Speaker 3: 24:39

Eric?

Speaker 2: 24:40

Yeah, feel free to pop in your questions here. But we do have two for Mark Jury. So one is, let's push this up a level, Eric. How do you vet the owners who work, whose work you pursue? The general contractor can strive to do all of the right things, but the owner can never make it. But the owner can make it impossible to get there.

Speaker 3: 25:03

So I think what I, what I'm hearing from Mark is how do we, how do we evaluate our clients maybe for the first time and you know, just like you can apply it to any situation that we talked about, you've got to do as much homework as you possibly can on them to understand. You can find out from other folks in the industry how do these folks treat their, their contractors. You can, you can talk to architects and engineers and understand their perspective on a particular client.

Speaker 1: 25:39

But I'm hearing you say, I'm hearing you say you're doing a background check.

Speaker 3: 25:42

Yeah, that's exactly correct. It's no different. Again, if we apply all the Concepts that we talked about today, that everyone is a client. And it's no different than if you're applying for a job as an individual. You want to know as much about that employer as you possibly can before you make that, that career decision. And so again, if you take it up to the, to the owner level, we do evaluate our clients. We want to know, you know, how do they pay their bills, what are their payments, how are they on change orders. We want to know, you know, what their contract looks like and if it's a tough and or reasonable or unreasonable contract. We want to do as much research as possible so that we can make a good business decision for our company.

Speaker 2: 26:31

Good. And off of that. So how, how often do you suggest that we survey our clients, our employees, architects, engineers, everyone, subcontractors that we're working with and when's the best time to do that?

Speaker 3: 26:47

So the first thing to do is to establish with your clients that you're going to do it and certainly with, with a new client, introduce it right out of the chute. Okay. Let them know, walk through it with them that you're going to be doing these surveys because their needs are important and we want to know on a regular basis how we're doing. And so once you get on a job, you know, within the first 30 to 60 days, survey and find out how we doing. And the same, the same holds true for a subcontract. The same holds true for team members. You bring a new team member on board, check in with them, you know, set it at 60 days. You know, it's often folks check in at 90 days to do a 90 day evaluation. Make sure it's a 360 degree evaluation. Make sure you get the feedback from them as well.

Speaker 1: 27:45

Great.

Speaker 2: 27:47

So for the clients, when you're talking about your projects, do you suggest that the project, project manager reach out or who would have that role in being charge of getting that feedback once you're on board with the project?

Speaker 3: 28:03

So we often talk about relationships. It's really about relationships as well. And it's a matter of ownership of that relationship. And it's different for every company and their structure and how they deal with the relationships. You know, typically a project executive will have a relationship with the officer of the, of the client and perhaps the project manager has a counterpart. That's day to day. And so both of them are responsible for introducing the concept to their respective counterparts.

Speaker 2: 28:42

Okay, great. Then we have one more question. Sorry, Chad, go ahead.

Speaker 1: 28:46

No, I was just going to comment briefly on the. You Know, frequency of survey, how do we, how do you gather the survey? One of the things that I've noticed in working with clients to implement this type of, you know, method is that when you just ask people, how you doing? You tend to get, you know, all good. Yeah, no, we're good. If we had problem, we'd let, you know, you know, kind of answers. It's not to say, don't miss the opportunity to just ask, how we doing? I'm not saying, you know, don't, don't do that. But the more organized and you know, thoroughly you've considered the questions that you want to ask and the more targeted those questions are, where you're actually maybe forcing people to rank, forcing people to rate, forcing, you know, those different types of things. Personal provide much better insight than just the general blanket. How we doing?

Speaker 3: 29:46

That's an excellent point. How we're doing is not going to elicit the feedback that you really need. If you ask subcontractors, again, ask them what's important, we know what's important. If you ask them, how we doing on payment? Are you feeling good about payment? How are we doing on change orders? How are we doing on the job site with respect to schedule? How are we doing as far as the site logistics? If we really drill down into what's important, we'll get much better feedback.

Speaker 2: 30:22

I like it. So be more specific when you're asking questions. The last question we have is how do we get owners to change their low bid mindset?

Speaker 3: 30:36

So the, you know, that's a, not all owners have that low bid mindset. Let's, let's understand that. And right now we're seeing a shift in a really positive direction in the marketplace. Right now we're seeing a lot of the traditional low bid clients, the jurisdictional clients, shifting over to a best value because they're understanding the benefits, they're understanding the quality of the projects that they get in a low bid environment versus a best value environment. And so, you know, without calling too many names out, but there are several jurisdictions in Virginia and in the last five years have switched over to the best value, the CM at risk type procurements. And I think they're seeing a tremendous increase in both the quality of their projects as well as the final price of their projects.

Speaker 1: 31:30

Yeah. And just because you. So just for the audience that's checking this out, they're like, well, I know some CM at risk jobs that aren't best value. Yep, those exist too. So just because it's CM at risk doesn't Mean it's going to be best value procurement. But the. If you have a mentality of best value procurement that is one of the project delivery methods or contracting methods that will enable you to do that.

Speaker 3: 31:53

Sure. Sure enough we sort of put a bow on it and finish where we started. We all wake up in the morning with choices and we can choose to pursue those low bid projects or we can choose to not pursue them. And if they're not good business propositions for them, we have to make that decision to not pursue them.

Speaker 1: 32:18

Agreed. I love it. You know, one of the things that, as I think about my biggest takeaways from this conversation, Eric, I love the idea of taking the time to understand what matters to your client, being committed to delivering on that and then constantly checking in, regularly checking in on your performance in that area and also probably checking in on that list. Has anything changed with your, with your needs and your values and so, so it, you know, crystallizing that. One of the things that I'm planning to do and to also recommend to companies as a result of this is that when you're starting in a relationship of any kind, right. If they answer, if they have to answer the question why us? Right. When you're starting a relationship of any kind with that start by establishing the criteria for their, for meeting their needs.

Speaker 3: 33:20

Absolutely. Absolutely understand what's important.

Speaker 1: 33:24

Yeah, I love it. It really lays the groundwork for everything else that has to follow. This has been a fantastic conversation and, and you know, yet yet another in a long line of conversations that, that are, you know, have me wondering if we should be going longer than 30 minutes. But I love leaving people wanting more and, and so, you know, Eric, we'll, we'll circle back at some point in the future, I'm certain and, and you know, look forward to continuing to build our personal relationship and you know, want to give you an opportunity to say a last word here to the, to the group if you have anything for the audience before we go.

Speaker 3: 33:59

No, you know what, it's just really a thank you to, to you and Stacy for the opportunity to share and maybe give back a little bit and also as well and congrats to you guys for putting on one heck of a great, great series. This has been phenomenal. I told you before we went live, I'm a weekly listener. I haven't missed one yet and gonna try like hell and not miss them in the future. This has been fantastic.

Speaker 2: 34:24

Thank you. Appreciate that.

Speaker 1: 34:26

Thanks so much Stacey. Anything before we go?

Speaker 2: 34:30

I'll do a wrap up post of anybody who has missed anything. And then we'll get this episode posted on YouTube. And the only thing I want to say is we only have three episodes left for this season, so we're going to pull our listeners and ask you guys some questions because we want to keep improving for season two. So look out for that.

Speaker 1: 34:52

Yeah. Love it. Agreed. I would echo that. And you know, if there's somebody who wants to give back like Eric just did today and like so many of our guests have done up into this port point and and would be willing to commit the half an hour to this conversation, about a half an hour of conversation leading up to it. And you have a compelling story to tell. You're somebody that wants to create positive change in the building industry. We'd love to talk to you about potentially joining our lineup for season two, season three, and who knows beyond. Right. So thanks so much. Keep spreading the word. Look forward to seeing everybody soon.

Speaker 2: 35:31

See ya. Bye.

Speaker 3: 35:32

Bye. Awesome.