Gareth McGlynn: Stewart Carroll, welcome back to the Preconstruction podcast.
Stewart Carroll: Gareth, it’s great to see you, my friend. It’s always a pleasure.
Gareth: Brilliant. Our big, big partner, Beck technology, of the podcast has been instrumental in the success of the podcast so far. So we're just catching up with you again, find out what you're up to. I believe you're just back from San Fran and I think was a peer review was it or a peer kind of or just getting together chatting?
Stewart: Yeah. So I've always been a big fan of not hitting every tree in the forest, so to speak. And I was fortunate enough to join a peer group. I don't know about 10 years ago, where I get an opportunity a couple times a year to go meet with other leaders of software companies and hear some of their war stories, learn from them vicariously, so to speak. So I was out on the West Coast, visiting some customers, and also hearing from other CEOs on what they're doing with their businesses, their different industries, but definitely facing a lot of the same challenges that I face it at Beck Tech. So, it was a great opportunity to learn.
Gareth: Brilliant. And one thing I see all the time for your content in your social media is your integrations with other tech companies. I mean, you're not afraid to sit down with people and go listen, what are you doing well, how can we help you, let's bring this this whole industry forward together.
Stewart: Yeah. I mean, I'm a firm believer that, you know, there's plenty of room in this industry to improve furloughs, delivering real estate, those providing tools to contractors. I don't think, you know, we're at that point where we need to keep what we do see [indiscernible]. I think, if we can help the industry, raise the bar, I think it's better for all. And, yeah, we very much believe in sharing our stories good and bad, and helping anybody that's interested in avoiding some of the pitfalls that we have, and if there's any successes that we can share with them that make them better and bring value to their customers in the industry, we're all about doing that. So yeah, very much a big, big believer in partnership.
Gareth: I love the confidence. I want to ask, you know, obviously, we're just past the halfway point, is there anything the second half of the year that you think the listeners can get involved, and they might find interesting, they can attend?
Stewart: Yeah, very much kind of along the same theme, actually of, you know, learning from others. We're very excited. We have our first industry-wide event. We call it Precon World. It's October the 13th and 14th. It's in Dallas. The big idea here is to build a community around preconstruction professionals. Let's get rid of the smoke and mirrors. Let's talk about reality. What are our teams, our companies facing? What are the challenges? What are the pitfalls that we run into, and as an industry, a group of, you know, professionals, let's solve some of these problems together. Obviously, everybody has unique differences. But I think there's a lot in common that we can learn from. So we're super excited about having, you know, Precon World in Dallas and we're excited as that eventually becomes the platform to help precon teams around the country, build local communities, regional communities, national communities, probably international communities that they can turn to, with questions as they're facing their day to day challenges within their business.
Gareth: I love that. I mean, there's nothing better. Everybody thinks that they're sitting in their own wee office in their own wee town, thinking, “Oh, my God. Am I the only person going through this?” And the chances are not only nationally, statewide, and internationally, the grid, even if you go to something that gets you hit it off with someone, you just hit it off personally, exactly. You can just bring them and go, “Listen, I'm having this absolute disaster.”
Stewart: I think as an industry, we kind of think, “Well, we got to keep our numbers close to your chest. And you know, what we do is our secret sauce.” I think there's an element of that. But if you really take a big step back, we're all working with the same subs. We're typically working with the same materials, the same supply chain challenges, the same, you know, economic forces that are going on around us. There's definitely opportunities to pull down those defenses. Let's share. We can we can raise the bar together. It always sort of blows my mind when I go to industry events that unfortunately, they're not direct. They're not raw kind of conversations and I think one of the things that we owe ourselves in this industry is to have really blunt direct conversations. I think it's the only way that we get better. So I'm excited to have people come in and share not just what's working, but I think what's not working. And I think through sharing what's not working, we can have some really healthy conversations, and some suggestions on things that could improve the industry as a whole.
Gareth: [Crosstalk] there's gonna be plenty to discuss in 2022 because there are some serious challenges.
Stewart: Couldn't agree more. We're excited about the opportunities as the second half of the year. It's perfect timing to have one.
Gareth: I think so. Yeah. So get give us-- anybody interested, where did they go to try and get on on this and get involved or get [crosstalk]--
Stewart: There's definitely a lot of social media posts going on right now. So check out LinkedIn, check our Facebook, check out Twitter, but also you can go directly to our website. We'll also follow up with you and we'll put it into the chat I'm sure. Anybody that's interested, please click on the link. And we'll, we'd love to see you in Dallas, the 13th and 14th of October
Gareth: Brilliant. And let's kind of continue that conversation through with the economic challenges that we've had throughout the year. I mean, meeting with your peer groups. Is everyone seeing the same things? I mean, obviously, there's no silver bullet to this at all. But are we seeing any solutions? Any--
Stewart: Yeah. It's kind of interesting. I think there's a lot of doom and gloom out there in the national press, about, you know, inflation specifically, but there's obviously a lot more to it with supply chain and, and things like that. However, I think within our industry, and I think this was the advice from the peer groups, it's important to understand the macro economic outlook, but it's also important to look at how your specific industry is faring and look for leading indicators within your industry. We are fortunate, and I'll be happy to share links if people are interested, to have some of those in construction. You know, the American Institute of Architecture AIA publishes its ABI, its Architectural Billings Index. And if you think about our delivery process design typically happens 9, 12, 18 months ahead of construction. It really gives you a crystal ball into what are architecture firms seeing in terms of pursuits, things that could turn into projects, what are they seeing in terms of awards, real money being awarded to architect to design future projects, and then actual billings. So things that are in design, and I get excited when I see the ABI above 50, which indicates that year over year, it's still more billings, more pursuits, more awards than prior years. And if you look year today, while it's slow in growth, it's still growth. So I think there is plenty of opportunities still out there for construction companies. I obviously validate that anecdotally with with customers whenever I go to visit. And I'm hearing the same thing. I also subscribe to there's an economist group called ITR Economics, and I followed them for 10, 12 years. They actually are pretty good about breaking the US economy down into different segments. One of the segments that they track is construction, and within construction, they have residential. Then they have about seven types of non residential construction, healthcare, mission critical, you know, multifamily office, etc, etc. And again, they're showing slowing growth. They're forecasting what they called a soft landing, meaning that we will not go into recession within construction. So those give me a lot of positive that we're not in the doom and gloom perhaps that we hear and see daily from the national press. And then the last thing that I'm still seeing and hearing that I also think is good, and this is actually true at the national level too, which is, you know, unemployment rates continue to drop. And if you think about the supply the real estate needed in our economy over the next 10 years, and the amount of manpower that is necessary to do that, we have a major challenge ahead of us. So I think the fact that the economy continues to grow and construction, even at declining rates for the next 12 months or so, well, that one will recover the fact that there's need for people, I think there's opportunities for technology and tools companies out there to really see tremendous growth over the next few years helping those companies navigate the headwinds. So, while nationally is doom and gloom, I don't think it's all doom and gloom and I think we've got a pretty nice outlook for construction and particularly my business when I when I look at how our customers currently impacted and how they potentially will be impacted over the next 12 months.
Gareth: Brilliant. I love that. And I will put links to all three or four of those companies, those websites and polls. And what I like as well is the ABA. Just as they’re going well and there's a small bit of growth but the people thing is really important because I think it's unsustainable to continue pumping out these projects four or five a week with the precon divisions and the estimating teams because they're getting to breaking point. It's just too much. So that slowdown, I'm sure, won't be welcomed through the business owners, but with the precon teams, they will be more than happy to take not the foot off the gas but get back to real, real looking at projects really in depth and be confident when they threw that bid out the door, that that bid is rock solid, whether it be the price fluctuations, or whatever it may be or the risk factor, they can sit back and go, “You know what? Instead of putting out five bids that are 80% complete, there's no three really solid good bids going on.”
Stewart: Yeah, I think there's a lot of truth to that, Gareth. I think the other thing that's interesting, I think there's plenty of opportunities our industry to look at. I'm gonna call them low value activities that might incite a few people. But, you know, we spent a lot of time on counting and measuring and formatting and you know, back and forth with emails and calls. I think there's just-- our industry is ripe for more efficient workflows. And I think, you know, little bit of pressure in the economy usually gets people thinking and put technology to one side, even if it's streamlining manual activities that we do. I think it's good for the industry. When you sort of rely on technology, I think technology can be the catalyst to change and I think there's plenty of opportunities for vendors like ourselves, to listen to our customers and try to put, you know, more effective solutions to help them do what they do even more efficiently. Ideally, they will be focusing more and more of their time exactly where you would or going on high value activities. Let's have more conversations with the subs. Let's benchmark against other projects. Let's creatively come up with solutions. I think a lot of our precon teams get into this world to solve problems. Unfortunately, because of the antiquated workflows, we've become bean counters. And I think there's tremendous opportunity to attract talent, keep talent, and really, you know, provide a an increased set of value to our customers, the building owners.
Gareth: Brilliant. And I think listening to you speak in various platforms lean estimating, it's about getting the people doing what they were born to do, and using the experience they've had over the last 15, 20 years and solving problems at the earliest stage.
Stewart: Yeah I'm a believer that people solve problems. Technology is there to act as a tool to help people do things. I think there's tremendous opportunities with tools, but I think at the end of the day, it's really, really smart people, and we have a ton of them, being in a position to solve bigger problems. And oftentimes, they don't get that opportunity because of the amount of time wasted on these other activities. So I think the opportunities are tremendous and I'm super excited about, you know, the transition we've seen. Because of COVID, coming out of COVID, I think a little bit of pressure in the market around pricing and competitiveness, it's going to be there. But it's a good thing and I think out of this, we have an opportunity to really take our industry to another level.
Gareth: Yeah. And the pressure, you actually bring it nicely onto the next thing, the pressure on the industry through COVID has also shown us that the hybrid, the ability to work from home or work from anywhere, essentially it works. It's it's achievable. Getting it right, I think we don't have it right, just yet. I think we're still working through the process and how it's going to look coming out the other end, but at least we're having a conversation around it both from an employer point of view and employee point of view. How do you see that kind of washing out?
Stewart: So, it's kind of interesting to me. You know, I've spoken to a lot of customers. I think our industry has this history of being very relationship oriented. If I see my employees and you know, seats and butts or butts in seats rather, actually prefer the first way around. I know that they're working and the challenge with hybrid or remote work is you don't see them in the same way. So I think there's an element of trust that is required in order to make it work. It's not easy. It's not for the faint of heart. However, if you can make it work and I think many construction companies did make it work through, you know, 2020 into 2021, I think you can position yourself attracting talent with a major competitive advantage. I feel like the evaluation and figuring out where activities can be done in a remote or hybrid environment should happen. We should challenge ourselves. We shouldn't go in with those preconceived notions that because we haven't done it for thousands of years, we shouldn't do it going forward. I think if you can figure out how to make it work, you'll attract the brightest and the best. You'll keep the brightest and the best. It requires a really strong culture of trust. I think we're in that world where our industry requires an element of trust. We were talking before we came on the podcast, about supply chain and working with subs and working with architects, and I think the only way you pull down traditional barriers is by building trust. And I think it starts at home. If you have a culture of trust where you trust your employees, you have to trust and verify. You know, it can't just be, you know, you do whatever you want, whenever you want, however you want. That doesn't lead to a successful business. But I think if you can build a culture of trust and verify, it doesn't just benefit your team. It benefits the entire supply chain. And I think the more that we can get people together, the more that we can collectively solve bigger problems, you may have a specific problem that somebody else downstream or somebody else upstream consult for you. And the only way you can do that is through trust, having those trusting conversations being vulnerable.
Gareth: Yeah. And I think as a construction owner, that trust can start somewhere. So it can start with the employee, the flexibility, and start with the architectural firm, you can start with a good partnership with the sub, and then once they realize that it works there, they can bring it to the owner.It just exactly starts in the middle and it just blossoms. And I think we're seeing that because some GCs are seeing it the easy way, so much seen it the hard way. They're not offering flexibility to the preconstruction and estimating departments.They're asking for it. They're not getting it and they're moving elsewhere. I think it's a necessity and I think the five days working from the office, working all the time from the office, it's going to be gone within the next six to 12 months.
Stewart: Well, you must be seeing it with with new candidates. I would imagine if a company offers it as a competitive advantage. The candidate looks at that as a big benefit.
Gareth: Yeah, yeah. We did a poll recently. I think it was 2,600 estimators all over the US. We gave them four options: Working from home flexibility, increase in salary, technology, and the other one was I can't remember what it was like overwhelmingly 56% was it was flexibility and working from home. And it wasn't working from home a hundred percent. It was the flexibility of dropping your kid off to their softball game. Just being more understanding. One day working from home, doing your, as you say, the data entry, the preconstruction short note, the preconstruction historical data, whatever it may be, because these tasks can-- once you're organized, and your time management is organized, you can do when you're in the office for those 8, 9, or 10 hours. You can do the high hitting war room, design, value engineering, the problem solving that you should be doing, and you can do the rest. And that could be just building relationships with the sub. You can do that from home.
Stewart: Yeah, I agree. I mean, it's funny a lot of what the pushback that I hear is things like, you know, I hear well, our team requires a lot of face time for team bonding and mentoring and training. I hear, you know, worries about culture. I'll share with you and you can share these as you want, Gareth. One of the speakers at my peer group meeting last week was talking about, there's a lot of false stereotypes out there and a lot of false information around like you have to be in person to build culture. You have to spend time, and you have to have face time, and you have to have an honest and open conversations. You have to be vulnerable. That's all true, but to be in the same physical location as somebody else to build a strong culture is not proven out in all of the data. So I almost feel like we have, again, we have these false stereotypes or false notions in our head of what will work, what won't work, and we shut it down. And I think that being open, being vulnerable, being willing to try new things is a mindset. And I think, if you can make it work the world is yours in the future because you'll be able to, I genuinely mean this, be more efficient. You'll have more loyal employees, your consultants, subcontractors, your architecture owners will love you because you have this mindset of focusing on the problem and being open and transparent about the challenges with solving the problem.
Gareth: Brilliant. But it's so when you meet an owner of a GC, you speak to them and you say, “Listen, I'm looking to build a precon team in these four or five locations throughout the states.” You get a feel for the behavior for what they want to bring, what they're offering right now and you just go, “This is a breath of fresh air.” It really is. And you just partner with them and there's loads of companies. I have calls all the time where I just say that upfront, and honestly, “I can't work with you until you change these three things.” And it's generally around flexibility, technology, and salary bonds. And I say, “Listen, I would love to help you. But until you change those three things, I would literally be spinning my wheels, it just cannot happen.” And then and again, people do business with people, you know, and it's [indiscernible] I talked to them all the time about middle management. It's so important, the C-Suite, the president can have all the greatest ideas in the world but if you haven't got middle management in those various states, running good offices, and doing the right things, doing the right behaviors, having the right characteristics, it won't happen. So I love-- and it just gives me a good fuzzy feeling for the future of the industry because I see it more and more. I just see it evolve and there's more trust we talked about. There's more flexibility and people are more-- there’s more empathy.
Stewart: I couldn't agree more. It's funny too when, you know, going back to where we started with, you know, our challenges around workforce, we don't just need to keep the people that are here. We need to attract talent, and bring people from other industries into construction. And then when you think about problems, there aren't many more complicated problems than the problems that our construction teams are trying to solve. It just needs to get positioned correctly and then, as you said, to have the flexibility in technology that other industries have to do the job. I mean, there's nothing more embarrassing than giving a recent construction grad, construction management grad a set of digital crayons, and go now trace over the top of this drawing. I mean, it's something you know, a sixth grader can do. I feel like, as I said, the industry is ripe for this and I think being open and willing to explore, even if it's not everything that other industries are doing. Open up your mind and look for one or two things that you can build around, and then start to build a culture that enables you to make these kinds of changes. And before you know it, you will be on that leading edge, not the bleeding edge, but the leading edge of what can be done inside design construction.
Gareth: And you must see it, especially in the last three, four years, you must have seen, I mean, you've been in the industry for since the beginning and of preconstruction technology, you must be getting really excited of what's happened over the last three years at least.
Stewart: Yeah, I mean, I was-- funny, I've been in the industry a long time. I probably had an afro or something. [Crosstalk] [inaudible].
Gareth: I want to see that.
Stewart: Yeah, but I thought even want to go into the industry as a young guy, you know. The industry is ripe for change, but things in our industry take time and I feel like the, you know, the timing, the opportunity, the choices are right here, right now and I get excited. I also get excited to see companies both big and small, that have sort of taken those leaps of faith and have benefited enormously. You know, I don't think you can't push people off a cliff. They need to be calculated investments of time and process change in technology. I get really excited when you see a 20 something that has come into our industry that would never have come in otherwise and they look at the world through a completely different lens, and they augment that, you know. A person who has been in the industry for 34 years, and you get the best of both worlds. You you understand the pitfalls, but you also get the creativity and the dynamicism of people that wouldn't have ended up in our industry. So yeah, I've seen a lot of movement in our space in the last three or four years. And I think it's just the start. I wish it happened 20, 25 years ago when I first got into it, but I'm super excited it's happening and it’s in the second half of my career that I get to see it.
Gareth: Absolutely. And one thing you kind of touched on and I know you're a big believer on this mentorship programs and mentoring people, how does it work within Beck Tech because again you guys are a technology company, but you're so closely aligned with construction? What can we learn from you guys?
Stewart: I think there's a lot of mutual learning. I don’t-- either way it's just us, and I [indiscernible] anybody less than this and feel like, you know, we got it down because we don't? No, of course, however, I think there's a lot that we do around our culture that I think blends itself to, you know, between hybrid just a minute ago, hybrid work environment, embracing technology. A lot of people outside don't think technology companies using technology. We have the same reluctance to change as everybody else. I think it's in our culture, though, where we weekly, daily, monthly, embrace change, and we make calculated investments in time. So back to where you you started with with the mentoring, we limit the number of direct reports that we have to manage. We very much believe that if you get beyond five to one, you're not spending enough time with each of those employees on a daily or weekly cadence reviewing what they did, how they did it, giving them an opportunity to talk about where they want to go in their career, giving them advice around where they want to go in their career. So we limit it five to one. The other thing we do, anybody that manages has a requirement every week that they do at one hour minimum, one to one with each of their direct reports. You can sort of think of it as there's three sections to the one-to-ones. There's any issues that the employee wants to bring up and discuss with the manager, those can be across the board. They can be small, they can be big. So you know, it is the employees meeting and the employee should have time to bring whatever issues that they want to the table. The second is a human-to-human conversation. How's your sister doing? She was sick last week? Is she better? You know, I think it's very hard in life to draw hard lines between work and life, they ebb and they flow. Building a trusting relationship where you genuinely care about your employees, I think is really, really key to creating this open, innovative environment. Innovation is inherently-- you're going to fail sometimes, probably more often than you succeed. The fact that you you're vulnerable, that you care that you show that, gives people a platform to try things that they otherwise wouldn't. So I think that's the second element in the one-to-one. And then third one is, this is a journey, you know? It's not a what are you doing tomorrow, what are you doing the following day, what do you do. Where do you want to be in your career? What's your big driving reason behind doing what you do and how do you want to leave a legacy for our industry, for your family, for yourself? So, understanding that, I think, week to week and putting a plan in place to help people get there, it's interesting, Gareth. So we've had employees that have said, they want to end up in a place that isn't Beck Tech. And that takes again, a lot of trust, a lot of, you know, I don't know the right word, but the the ability to, you know, just be vulnerable is the word. [Crosstalk] [inaudible]
Gareth: Yeah, and be comfortable, be comfortable. I mean, to be able to bring that up with your bosses, that's incredible.
Stewart: I think we have this mindset of like, my responsibility as a manager is to prepare you for the next step in your journey. But I can't prepare you for that if I don't know where you ultimately want to be. So whether it's here or somewhere else, I want to do as right by you as humanly possible. And I'm a believer that if I do right by you, you're going to do right by me. And I'll get 110% of your time while you're here. And if that's a week, a year, five years, 10 years, that's great. But my bigger responsibility is to that employee’s long term goal. So we very much believe in mentoring our employees, coaching our employees. And we think all of that leads to a culture where you have high energy, you're passionate, you're willing to innovate, to challenge the status quo, and you care deeply about everybody around you. So for us those three things that we [crosstalk] [inaudible]--
Gareth: I love that last part, I mean, you think about it, right? So as you say, there’s no point in keeping someone that can add more value to somewhere else within the industry, even though it was outside of your company. That, in itself, is just doing so much for the industry because so many people when they hear someone wants to leave, they go, “Ah no. I've just got to keep them at all costs.” But at all costs is the detriment to the whole industry. Not only that, but your own company. And that exactly, it comes back to happy employees, and there's no point keeping someone if they're not happy, and finding to what makes them happy. You just got to ask the question, and they've got to be comfortable enough in that culture to answer the question honestly.
Stewart: But also think it changes your mindset around like what you do and how you do it like the keys back to construction. We rely a lot on senior people and what they have in their head. When that person leaves the organization, that information goes with them. I think capturing the information so it becomes, you know, company specific knowledge as opposed to individual knowledge, I think there are ways to do that. I think there's documented best practices, there's mentoring, there's coaching, there’s using technology and storing data and databases and things like that. And I think that whole mindset of that is not about keeping this one employee doing what they're doing. It's about their journey. I think it just re frames the whole view of what we do as a business and it impacts what we do for technology, it impacts everything that we do, our processes, our onboarding, or outboarding. I think if there was one thing I would encourage construction companies to do, precon teams specifically to do is just take a big step back every once in a while from your preconceived notions of how things have been done, and challenge yourselves on could they be done differently? And if they were done differently, what would be the benefit of doing that? So, that’s where we started. Why get excited about Precon World? If we can do that once, twice, three, four times a year, it's better than what we're doing today, which is just go go, go, go go.
Gareth: I'm looking forward to this Precon World, I tell you. And so, are you telling me that you haven't developed a program that can download the brain of a 35-year-old industry veteran? That would be nice.
Stewart: I don't think we're gonna get there. But what we believe is that if we can capture all the data that goes into a lot of the deliverables, and we can serve that data up in different way, we're not there yet but we're starting to see a lot more machine learning in AI. It's not a silver bullet. It's not intended to remove humans, it's intended to create tools for humans to spend human time on human strengths, which is solving problems.
Gareth: Making an estimator a preconstruction manager’s job more enjoyable. Let's be honest because as much as we all love administrative work, and the mundane tasks that we have to do every day, I wouldn't mind not doing them for a while. You know what I mean, being able to just sit back and take all the information in, but to be able to give me thoughts on it and solve problems that way.
Stewart: That goes back to my point earlier why most people get into the industry because they love solving problems and as kids, you know, we all have those Legos and, you know, in England and Ireland, there was Meccano or, you know, Erector sets here. I think a lot of us are problem solvers and I think I think focusing on problems and proactively solving problems is a benefit for the people in the industry. It's a huge benefit. If we can get the industry there for the owners, the building owners were focused on better as opposed to the cheapest or the quickest, or, you know, some of those measures that really may not long term be the right measures of best trades.
Gareth: But it's difficult to do that. It's hard decisions. Hard decisions have to be made and sometimes saying no. Unbelievable amounts of innovative information, their knowledge, Stewart, I really appreciate that. And again, we can find more of that and Precon World. Am I right in saying 13th to 14th in Dallas? I'm going to put the links down below to the three or four different ABI, unemployment rates, ITR. All the links will be below in the show notes. And I, for one, will be at a Precon World so I'm looking forward to seeing you there.
Stewart: I love it. I look forward to seeing you and I look forward to seeing lots of friendly faces ready and willing to explore some really healthy, real conversations.
Gareth: Good man. Thank you very much, dude.
Stewart: All right, man. Thank you, Gareth.
[End]
