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Transcript:

Okay. We should be live. 

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Speaker 2

00:05

Yep. Good morning, everybody. 

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Speaker 1

00:07

Good morning. 

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Speaker 3

00:08

Good morning. 

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Speaker 1

00:09

Let's take a look and see if we are officially streaming to the. To the post here or to the event here. Want to make sure that's happening in the meantime. All right. Yes. Yes. It sure is wonderful. The tech worked. We did it. 

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Speaker 3

00:31

All right. 

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Speaker 1

00:32

I got to tell you, this is the easy part. It's all the stress leading up to the live stream that's the hard part. That as soon as the live stream is working, my mind just goes to its happy place, which is having fun conversations with cool people. Chris, Stacey and I are here in the metro Washington, D.C. Baltimore kind of realm. I know you mentioned that you're out in Park City. Where are you originally from? 

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Speaker 3

01:05

I'm originally from just outside of Cleveland, Ohio. Town suburb Hudson, Ohio. 

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Speaker 1

01:11

Cool. 

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Speaker 3

01:12

So just southeast of Cleveland a little bit. 

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Speaker 1

01:15

And did you. Did you live there? Like, how long ago did you make the move to Park City and from where in. 

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Speaker 3

01:22

Yeah, so interesting. Prior life. I was a college athlete and also a competitive skier, and I lived in Park City for a little while after school and was competitive, and then I moved back to the Cleveland area. So I originally moved out here in the mid-90s and then bugged the heck out of the ski CEO from my last company and moved back to Park City in 2007. In the fall of 2007. 

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Speaker 1

01:58

Right on. 

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Speaker 3

01:59

Yeah. 

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Speaker 1

01:59

So this is not. This is not like a. A Covid development like so many. 

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Speaker 3

02:04

Right. 

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Speaker 1

02:04

Like so many people who. Who have fled to. To remote work in beautiful areas. You've been. You've been working and living in this beautiful area for. For, you know, a decade and a half, and all combined two decades, it sounds like. 

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Speaker 3

02:18

Yeah, yeah. Was not a Covid move. And loved a mountain bike. Loved to ski and moved out here and then met a lot of people from both the east and west coast this last year and a half that are working remotely. A lot of folks from New York City and Chicago and the LA area seem to have migrated here. 

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Speaker 1

02:43

You gotta wonder how long that is all gonna last. And. And, you know, if there's. If there's ever gonna be a big migration back, you know, because they realize, you know, if the market doesn't allow for constant remote work. 

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Speaker 3

02:58

Yeah, yeah. It will be interesting to see, but I. I think some of them really like it, so we'll see how they're. If their companies can lure them back into their offices. 

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Speaker 1

03:08

Yeah, no kidding. Well, cool. We're coming right up on eight. There it is. 8:00 let's go ahead and get started with this second episode ever of the Morning Huddle. Today, we've got Chris Blyk joining us. But. But for. For now, I'm Chad Prinke alongside my partner and producer, Stacy Holsinger. Stacy, how are you today? 

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Speaker 3

03:32

Good. 

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Speaker 2

03:32

Good morning, everybody. 

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Speaker 1

03:34

Stacy, what's the best thing happening in your world this week? 

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Speaker 2

03:38

Just busy. I have, God, a ton of things to do, but nothing too crazy. Just work and kickboxing and, you know, nothing crazy. 

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Speaker 1

03:49

Just work in kickboxing. 

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Speaker 2

03:52

My boring life. 

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Speaker 1

03:53

That's awesome. We're gonna have to do a whole episode on your kickboxing. 

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Speaker 2

03:58

No, no. Thanks. 

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Speaker 1

04:01

As always for the audience joining us live. Please type in your questions throughout the show. All throughout the show, type in the questions. Get comfortable chatting with each other during the course of the conversation. If you guys have, you know, some, you know, if you're inspired by something, you want to grab that and run with it. That's what the chat channel is there for. Please, you know, engage in that, enjoy that and all the stuff that you type in the, you know, during the course of the show. Stacey will be back on with 10 minutes remaining, which is 8:20 Eastern Time here. And she'll help us to kind of go through those questions and, you know, prioritize the ones that were most common or the. Or the most interesting and what have you. 

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Speaker 1

04:46

So, Stacey, we'll see you again with about 10 minutes to go. Cool. 

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Speaker 2

04:50

All right, sounds good. 

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Speaker 3

04:51

See ya. 

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Speaker 1

04:53

All right, so, Chris, let's jump into it. Our guest today is Chris Blyk. He is with Pivot Workforce. And welcome to the morning huddle. It's good seeing you. 

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Speaker 3

05:04

Thank you very much for having me pumped to be on show number two. 

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Speaker 1

05:09

We're really psyched to have you. Thank you. So tell us a little bit about your background, Chris. Tell us your story a little bit. 

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Speaker 3

05:19

Okay, well, my story, I grew up in a construction family, specifically in excavating just outside of Cleveland, Ohio. I think like a lot of people that I hear that are in the industry and I grew up in it. The last place they thought they'd end up was back in the industry, but grew up running excavators and bulldozers. And I wasn't quite as talented as my older brothers brother. And after school, you know, like everybody else, I dabbled in real estate a little bit, started looking around and I found a construction staffing startup back in 1993, and I have been in the construction staffing side of the business since Then and frankly love it and just like everybody else, get a little obsessed with it. 

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Speaker 1

06:14

Awesome. Awesome. So tell us, how did you end up starting Pivot workforce? This is a new company, right? This is months old, just like mine. 

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Speaker 3

06:24

Yeah, yeah. So like I said, I work for one of the largest or the largest construction staffing firms in the United States or North America for almost 27 years and decided basically from a startup through a couple of private equity acquisitions and left in June of 2020 and have spent the rest of that time, the last 15 months, putting pivot together. After a lot of collaboration with people in the industry, both contractors and even some of the software providers in the industry really started to understand when asking questions about workforce demand, kind of this new niche with construction technology and also some of the more direct hire positions, that's where Pivot came from. 

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Speaker 3

07:23

Probably spent, I don't know, six months, eight months talking to, whether it was virtually or actually in person, meetings when we could do it, contractors on the MEP side about new workforce demand, and then, like I said, also some of the large software providers. 

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Speaker 1

07:43

So you were listening to the market and the market said construction technology and you got sort of inspired to launch into this space because you were paying attention to what the market was telling you. 

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Speaker 3

08:02

Yeah, the conversations. And frankly, I looked at other forms of staffing. I had a couple of people approach me in a couple of different niches, it, healthcare. And then like I said, you know, construction is my passion. I love it. And after talking to more and more folks as to where the industry was headed with prefab and the manufactured process and that workforce demand that was there, we decided to explore this and have dove in with both, both feet and are chasing after that and learning more and more like everybody else because it is developing rather quickly. 

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Speaker 1

08:44

Wow. So, so tell us a little bit about Pivot. What do you do and what do you not do? What are, what are? You know, draw some of those lines for us just so that as we have our discussion today about emerg technology roles, everybody can have some context for exactly what it is that you do and don't do. 

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Speaker 3

09:04

Yeah. So we basically focus from field supervision up into some of the C suite positions. So we do project managers, project engineers, senior project managers, and then we also are doing some like C level hiring for HR directors in some of those positions. And then we also are in the context space. So on the design side, you know, the bim, some data engineers, data analytics, cybersecurity has become a big one as far as the Conversation that's been around for a while. But yeah, we do not. We're not in the skilled trade space, but we're basically everything else but skilled trades. 

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Speaker 1

09:56

Awesome. Got it. So you're not doing the skilled trades, but you're doing all the other sort of management roles. Field management, internal management, executive leadership, and then the technology stuff. So let's stay focus on the technology angle for the remainder of this conversation. Well, I don't know, we'll see where the heck it goes. But what are some of the fastest emerging construction technology roles? What are you seeing, you know, happening around the industry? And maybe it's inside construction companies, maybe it's, you know, around construction companies. I don't know. You, you paint the picture for us. 

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Speaker 3

10:33

Yeah, so there I, there's kind of a few different bucks to that. On the AEC side and the MEP side, you know, you have your, the design piece. So bim, virtual design, even some of the CAD that's still being used then a lot of the industry is moving towards this data driven approach per se. So you have again, on the AEC side you have data engineers, data analytics, computational engineers. Drones are becoming a much bigger piece of the construction community, so to speak, both in renewables and the regular construction. And like I said, cybersecurity. On the tech side there's been, I think it's since 2016 or 17, there's been over $12 billion of investment in technology that just this year to date, $2.1 billion from venture capital. It's 3,500 startups in the construction space. On the tech side, 3,500, yeah. 

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Speaker 3

11:53

So there's been a lot of investment and there's a lot of innovation going on there. So from the tech or software providers, you're seeing software engineers, DevOps, cybersecurity is another one. And then there's the client integration piece. With all this technology, they need people to be able to service a client and do the integrations for the technology that the client or contractors are buying. Then there's an interesting one, the client service side. You're seeing more and more. Some of these software companies are reaching out. I actually saw an advertisement last night looking for example, estimators to sell their software and be the link between them and a contractor because they understand the construction side. So that's, you know, they're looking for people with previous experience in the industry. 

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Speaker 1

12:47

That's the last thing our contractor watchers want to hear. Is that right? Like, hey, your people could leave construction and go to Technology. But I think, you know, one of the other things that really struck me in our conversations leading up today was the idea that, you know, the enhanced role that a technology background is playing in your everyday construction positions. Right. So, so that now there's a project manager. But if the project manager has X and Y qualifications or technological technology capabilities, they become considerably more appealing. What, what have you seen there? 

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Speaker 3

13:33

Yeah, so you see both sides of it. For example, senior project managers need to understand some of the different software programs to help manage the job, run the job. They have to be to collaborate with everybody. A lot of the, most of this is going to cloud based technology. And then the other side of it, to your point about the tech companies stealing an already depleted workforce from construction, in some cases it's actually lengthening a career for you know, say an estimator that was getting ready, he's burned out, he's getting ready to retire from the industry. It's giving him another option or her another option to keep going and move into a different space in the industry and keep working in the industry as opposed to retiring. 

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Speaker 1

14:26

Yeah, it's a really good point. I think that you know, working in a company that is supporting the industry, adding value to the industry is certainly better than losing them to like the financial sector or something like that. 

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Speaker 3

14:42

Yeah. The challenge with the construction tech stack, if you will, is even some of these, the higher end tech positions, they still need to understand that the contractor's world, the built world and finding those people is a big challenge. 

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Speaker 1

15:00

So what do you think? You mentioned all this investment, $2.1 billion this year alone, which is amazing. What do you think that's about? Why is it, why is there so much money pouring into produce technology for the construction industry? 

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Speaker 3

15:23

Yeah, I think there's a couple of things. I think the first thing that comes to mind is innovation. Construction is measured very much on productivity and the more that tech can help enhance that productivity and bring automation to the industry, that is one of the big drivers. So there's a big opportunity there. And obviously the venture capitalists are seeing that with all the different tech startups and frankly, you know, going, talking about the skilled trades a little bit, you know, as people, I think I saw a stat that 53% of the industry is going to retire by 2036. We're not replacing the skilled trades fast enough. This has been a couple of decades of a conversation. So bringing this automation and manufactured environment to construction will help with that. It's not going to solve the problem, but it will Help. 

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Speaker 3

16:22

So I think a lot of it is around innovation, safety, productivity, and there's a big opportunity there. And obviously the tech companies are seeing it. 

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Speaker 1

16:33

You mentioned productivity and obviously I think all those buckets, safety obviously also chief among them. But when I think about productivity and construction, I think about. It was a 2018 McKinsey & Co. Study that was produced that identified that the construction industry is just about as productive today as it was in 1974. 

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Speaker 3

16:58

Right. 

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Speaker 1

16:59

Something along those lines. And I think there's a bunch of reasons for that we won't get into during this show, but I think tech companies are recognizing a massive upside in terms of elevating productivity. Right. Compared with other sectors of the economy, it's dramatically less productive and has not grown nearly on the same stride as, say, manufacturing, let alone know technology as a market sector. So, so I think it's not a surprise. It'll be really interesting to see what starts to happen in the next three to five years, five to 10 years, as a result of these massive investments from technology and whether the lagging technology, you know, construction industry, that sort of old school, you know, we, we do things the way we do things, you know, kind of mentality, see how that impacts it. 

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Speaker 1

18:05

Because at the end of the day, construction folks aren't going to change just to change. 

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Speaker 3

18:09

Right. 

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Speaker 1

18:09

They're only making a change if they can point at real meaningful improvement. 

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Speaker 3

18:15

Yeah. What you see from a lot of the tech companies, because there's, they're all over the place, they typically solve a single problem, whether it's contracts or, you know, just getting all the data scrubbed and making sure that everything makes sense. But they still, you know, a building still needs to get built physically. So I think that, you know, the challenge is getting the minds that are behind the contractors and the tech industry to work together. And they're different. Right. It's, I think it's 41% of our workforce now are millennials, and I think it's 5% are Gen Z right now. And then by 2025, Gen Z will be about a quarter of the workforce. So there's a big transition going on there. 

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Speaker 3

19:07

And it'll be interesting to see how the two worlds come together because that is one of the attraction points for the new workforce is having contractors that are innovative, that are diverse. So it's a big challenge for the industry and frankly for a lot of this workforce, you know, we're competing with Amazon, Apple, Google for this talent. So it's going to force us to, you know, be innovative and look at the way we're doing things on all levels. 

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Speaker 1

19:37

Let's. I'm going to jump right on that question because you get a chance to talk to obviously the companies that are interested in hiring new talent, but also I can't even imagine how many candidates you and your team get a chance to interface with. It probably gives you a fantastic perspective on what they care about. So you talk about the, you know, sort of, and I don't care what generation they're in. What are candidates asking for when you're in those discussions or your team's in those discussions with potential, you know, candidates for your clients? What are, what are they looking for in the companies that they would come and join you talk about the vert, like diversity. Is that really a topic that is coming up regularly with a candidate? 

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Speaker 3

20:24

Yes, particularly actually with Gen Z. There's a couple of different studies that are out there and that is they want to work for diverse companies because of, you know, what comes from that is innovation and different trains of thought. And there's a massive opportunity, you know, for the industry as we talk about losing, you know, 53% of our workforce in the next 15 or 16 years. Getting into a more diverse workforce is one way to backfill that and also bring innovation with it. But they, yeah, they do have those questions. They're big on company culture. You know, it's not all about money, but, you know, that being said, I think wages are up 7,7% in the industry and so money is a factor. But they're looking for culture. 

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Speaker 3

21:19

They're looking at benefits and not just the standard benefits, but they're looking for, you know, like mental health benefits. They're looking for PTO that they don't, you know, they don't have to wait three years to have two weeks of vacation. So they are looking at things differently. 

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Speaker 1

21:38

Yes, there's a higher, and I've read this and seen, you know, anecdotally seen this watch, you know, read studies about it, all that type of stuff, but there is, there really is, it sounds like, you know, from your experience a higher value being placed on quality of life issues on companies that are thinking about the whole person that they're hiring and not just the, you know, I guess the employee aspect of the person. 

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Speaker 3

22:11

Yeah, you know, they look for a lot of the same things we all have, but they are, you know, the me time is a real thing. They also are looking for career paths. What does it look like as they come into a company, as they move through the company, have other people in the company followed a career path. I was listening to another interview the other day, and it's a big, very large mechanical contractor, I think, with 40 people in their design department, and now they have eight remotely. So that remote workforce is a, it's a thing. It's a real challenge for our industry because again, the thing, you know, buildings get built in the field, so the collaboration needs to happen. 

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Speaker 3

22:56

But were even seeing with some of the senior project manager positions, not necessarily a remote, but a hybrid situation where they don't have to be on site all the time. And when you talk to clients about that, they, you know, it's a real challenge for them to wrap their head around doing something like that. 

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Speaker 1

23:15

So we just have a minute or so before we shift gears into taking questions from the audience. I would go ahead and prompt the audience. I don't know what kind of questions have come in, but please, if you've been holding off on sending those in now, go ahead and fire in a few so that we can address your specific questions and thoughts while we have Chris this morning. One question that I have is when you. Let's fast forward five years. What is a position that is currently not the norm for a contractor to have, you know, on staff that you think we are going to see more construction companies, more contractors have as kind of a normal role inside their company? 

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Speaker 3

24:12

Yeah, that's a great question. I would say this because everybody's trying to wrap their arms around data and understanding, you know, how things are happening and being able to take that to their client, to their owner. I think, you know, data and data analysis, data engineers, data scientists. I didn't even know what one of those were until three years ago. And being able to take real information and, you know, one of the challenges, I think, is, you know, what is the information a client or a contractor really deems as important and what isn't. But then also being able to go to, you know, say they built, you know, a commercial building and they're in a, they're bidding for another one. Being able to take that data and show an owner, hey, here's what it's going to look. 

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Speaker 3

25:13

Here's what your mechanical is going to look like on this site. Here's a similar site, this is what it looked like. So I think everything revolving around data is going to be important because whether it's even on the HR side looking at data, who's applying for jobs, what posts are attracting People who wants to come to work for your company. I think that the data is going to win from that perspective because you can pull real information out of it. 

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Speaker 1

25:43

And talk about things that can really contribute to enhanced productivity. If these construction companies are able to start capturing and doing something with this data that they monitor, they're going to be able to actually make business decisions to drive productivity. I love it. So we have 10 minutes, a little less than that remaining. And I'm sure we have some questions in from the audience for you. So I am going to pull Stacy back up for us. Stacy, there we are. 

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Speaker 2

26:20

We don't have any questions yet, but I have some questions for you. 

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Speaker 3

26:24

Yeah, hit it. 

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Speaker 2

26:24

You could answer. So you were talking about all these tech startups and I was wondering, like, the only one that I can think of is Interplay and they do 3D simulations to help, you know, train people in H Vac and plumbing virtually. And their whole goal, I believe, is to try to get people trained quickly within like three weeks or something like that, as opposed to going to an apprenticeship program. So I was wondering if you could throw out some names of any tech startup companies that you know that we could just, you know, check out and look into. 

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Speaker 3

27:05

A company called Join is. Is one of them. There's a, there's a couple of companies. You know, there's two really big companies that are buying up other tech startups. Company called Labor Chart Workforce Management Platform. But I believe they were just bought by Procore. There are, you know, some fascinating ones on the human resource side, a company called Paradox. They're, they're four years old. They're using some AI to help track who's applying for jobs. And they're using bots to, when somebody goes to apply online, they're using those, using bots to chat with people to get information and ask questions. And you wouldn't know that you're actually talking to a bot when you start asking questions about wages and benefits and where the jobs are and stuff like that. But yeah, there's a multitude of them out there in different spaces. 

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Speaker 2

28:15

Thanks for those examples. 

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Speaker 1

28:17

Yeah, that's awesome. Now I've got a bunch of research to do and I sincerely hope you're a shareholder and all of those Right. 

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Speaker 3

28:28

Just here at the moment. Right. 

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Speaker 2

28:31

I also wanted to ask, I know, me and you had conversations before, but just to tell the audience, kind of share some stories about how competitive it really is out there. So, you know, if you have a PM and you think that they're A great candidate and they get the job offer and then another company comes in and snatches them. Like, what does that look like? 

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Speaker 3

28:56

Yeah. So one way I'll address it is addressing the great resignation that everybody keeps hearing about. So I would call it more the great transition because the numbers are, I think in the first five months of this year, 17 million people moved to different roles. They didn't leave the workforce, but they left their existing role. It was pre Covid, it was 2.5 million people a month had moved and the first five months of this year was 3.4 million a month were changing jobs. So the competitiveness in the market, you don't have days, you have hours to make decisions on people. 

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Speaker 3

29:48

You know, we see people that are, you know, looking at project manager jobs, senior project manager jobs, and you know, whether they move, you know, we have a client that needs them, they interview them, they like them, their current employer offers them more money to stay. But then client number three or company number three offers them a, you know, 10k sign on bonus and you know, three weeks of vacation out of the gate and they end up over there. So it's, we've seen a lot of very quick decisions and I think that's the big challenge for, you know, contractors on their side are making decisions on some very important roles and they should take their time. But you know, quick decisions and really getting through the interview process is important. 

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Speaker 2

30:43

Yeah. 

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Speaker 1

30:44

Awesome. 

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Speaker 2

30:45

And finally one more question. Do you have any resume tips for people that are looking for new roles in the construction industry and how that's changed because many of us have stayed with company long term, but maybe we're looking for a new opportunity. But it's been so long since we have updated our resume and so much has changed. So what do you suggest there or even researching companies? 

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Speaker 3

31:12

Yeah, I think that what we see typically and is what, you know, people that haven't updated their resume for a long time, but also, you know, the different types of, you know, for example software they have used, integrations, they have done some real detail, you know, on the operations side, you know, being detailed about what type of projects you have been involved in and really updating it consistently is probably the most important part. And nobody likes doing resumes but you know, we'll get resumes for a fantastic candidate. For example, a project manager that is, has worked in the pharma space, which is obviously crazy right now and they'll have three bullets under their last job. 

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Speaker 3

32:05

So really getting some detail in there and what your experience is and how many people you manage on site and the different operating systems you use is important. 

S

Speaker 1

32:17

Chris, fundamentally, just. This should probably be a 10 second answer, but fundamentally, are you seeing companies actually take steps to offer what candidates are looking for? 

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Speaker 3

32:33

Some, yes. I think that's, you know, we're seeing, you know, a few different things happen. Some are being very innovative and I think frankly, the industry gets a little bit of a bad rap because I think we have some of the most innovative companies in any environment in the construction industry. Some are slow to adapt. We have an old school mentality in some. Understandably, some of these companies have been around a long time, but we are seeing companies look at benefits, looking at hybrid versus remote working through that because it is being asked for. But yeah, were seeing some move. 

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Speaker 1

33:13

That's awesome. That's great to hear. All right, so that's just about our 30 minutes. And just like a strong contractor on the morning huddle, we finish on time. So if you're passionate about the industry and you have a message that our audience should hear, please contact us in with your interest in joining as a guest. You can contact me or Stacy directly right here on LinkedIn or email or whatever you like. Next week we've got Brett Harton, who is the vice president of construction at Folger Pratt. That's going to be a fantastic conversation where we're talking about, from a general contractor's perspective, the steps that Brett and his team take to treat subcontractors like partners. Please join us live every Tuesday at 8am Eastern. 

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Speaker 1

34:02

And if you can't join live, check out the recording on our yout Channel, which I think is coming, Stacy, or whatever app you use for your podcast, which I think is coming down the line. So we're pretty excited about that. But. But Chris, thank you so much for joining. Any final words before we sign off? 

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Speaker 3

34:21

No, I appreciate y'all having me. It was fun. A little early out here, but it's okay. And yeah, love to do it again sometime. 

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Speaker 1

34:31

We'd love to have you. It sounds great. Stacy, any final word? 

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Speaker 2

34:34

Nope. I think this was a great conversation. Hopefully people can take something that they learned today. And I look forward to next week too. 

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Speaker 1

34:44

Same. Sounds good. See you guys. 

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Speaker 2

34:46

All right, see you guys.