התמלול המלא של Ep. 63 - Your Percent Complete Is Wrong: What Prefab Did to the Trades

those systems 30, 40 years ago, 00:04:29.133 --> 00:04:31.588 we've compressed our spaces. 00:04:31.588 --> 00:04:36.157 So we're getting more like systems into a smaller space and they're more technical 00:04:36.377 --> 00:04:41.307 and that that is a lot of pressure on the folks doing the work whether that's 00:04:41.469 --> 00:04:45.277 electrical systems whether it's you know piping plumbing systems but we've. 00:04:46.074 --> 00:04:51.047 A lot of this are digitally controlled. There's a lot of increasing. 00:04:51.938 --> 00:04:55.979 You know, the brain of the building, the Siemens, and some of these control systems. 00:04:56.286 --> 00:05:00.097 All that has to be handled by the MEP contractors. And for the most part, 00:05:00.097 --> 00:05:05.147 we haven't changed our schedules. And in fact, schedules are probably even tighter than they were. 00:05:05.487 --> 00:05:09.437 So, and, you know, a lot of that is technology driven, not just software, 00:05:09.437 --> 00:05:13.627 but just building technology, whether that's new joining methods, 00:05:13.967 --> 00:05:19.127 new, the move towards variable refrigerant flow. 00:05:19.127 --> 00:05:24.397 These are just more technical systems that have to be, think about all the lighting 00:05:24.397 --> 00:05:28.177 requirements or the power requirements, low voltage. I mean, 00:05:28.177 --> 00:05:32.384 all of this has significantly increased the complexity of the buildings. 00:05:33.342 --> 00:05:38.657 And you've got at the end of the day pushing around submittals and specs on 00:05:38.657 --> 00:05:41.947 that stuff isn't really that big of you know the gc's life hasn't changed that 00:05:41.947 --> 00:05:45.767 much it's just the same stack of submittals and specs and and schedule management, 00:05:46.362 --> 00:05:49.677 but you'd go down a layer to the the subcontractors and they've really had to 00:05:49.677 --> 00:05:51.215 change to adopt all this new, 00:05:51.826 --> 00:05:56.992 technology and again by technology i don't just mean software i mean the building technology as well. 00:05:58.152 --> 00:06:02.217 That's such a good point i don't think we as much, I think from a complexity 00:06:02.217 --> 00:06:07.279 standpoint, you know, I've worked on some really large projects and from a GC seat, 00:06:07.934 --> 00:06:11.727 there's just, you think of complexity in terms of the additional layers of maybe 00:06:11.727 --> 00:06:13.531 digital paper that exist, 00:06:14.325 --> 00:06:19.235 but all of that complexity flows downhill and at some point leads to, 00:06:19.457 --> 00:06:23.781 to your point, someone putting that work in place and with expertise. 00:06:25.753 --> 00:06:29.467 And I think you're right, our systems, our processes, is our contract language 00:06:29.467 --> 00:06:30.827 hasn't really accounted for, 00:06:31.575 --> 00:06:36.938 for what that looks like and and with more and more of these projects requiring 00:06:37.293 --> 00:06:43.429 you know prefab and ic modular these trades are also taking on additional risk 00:06:43.870 --> 00:06:46.215 in in the design process right and so. 00:06:47.106 --> 00:06:51.726 I guess maybe just to kind of get me up to speed a little bit like when i think 00:06:51.726 --> 00:06:56.436 of some of these data centers that are that are getting put in place the the 00:06:56.436 --> 00:07:00.324 quantity of change i hear from the practitioners is crazy, right? 00:07:00.574 --> 00:07:06.046 I mean, even the MEP systems, the cooling systems that they're kind of planning 00:07:06.046 --> 00:07:08.946 and implementing or installing are assuming, 00:07:09.566 --> 00:07:14.876 additional kind of like cooling capacity so that they can account for different 00:07:14.876 --> 00:07:16.386 racking systems in the future, right? 00:07:16.386 --> 00:07:20.066 So, all right, spots a break. Lars, real quick, when was the last time you got 00:07:20.066 --> 00:07:24.535 a new set of drawings from an architect and they didn't cloud anything? 00:07:24.918 --> 00:07:29.864 Well, the one that cost me a couple hundred grand was back I think in 2017 so, 00:07:30.451 --> 00:07:34.616 yeah lesson learned there yeah so you know what I like about what Trunk Tools 00:07:34.616 --> 00:07:37.646 is building is they're looking at tools to, 00:07:38.246 --> 00:07:43.139 help kind of remove the mundane from the job site and you know I same as you 00:07:43.342 --> 00:07:47.356 every time there was a bulletin or an addendum I would go back to designers 00:07:47.356 --> 00:07:48.746 and ask them to at least highlight, 00:07:49.306 --> 00:07:52.506 or give me a cover letter on the changes and and that was always like pulling 00:07:52.506 --> 00:07:55.696 like teeth but but Trunk Tools is now automating that so So you get a bulletin 00:07:55.696 --> 00:07:59.813 come in, it automatically highlights the changes. You don't have to do a thing. 00:08:00.324 --> 00:08:03.566 Well, it's also hitting RFIs, right? It's also hitting submittals. 00:08:04.046 --> 00:08:08.149 And when we think about standardizing ops, right, and providing that, 00:08:08.671 --> 00:08:14.746 you know, sort of resource to those field operators, what I see it as, you know. 00:08:15.413 --> 00:08:20.096 It's sort of like this, like mentor within the company that structures, 00:08:20.096 --> 00:08:23.966 standardizes, keeps it moving in the right direction, looks out for risk. 00:08:25.006 --> 00:08:29.821 And just this last week, you know, I had a QC manager just pass along the submittal to an owner. 00:08:30.439 --> 00:08:33.154 Without doing a review because he was too busy and was wrong. 00:08:33.416 --> 00:08:38.588 And, you know, the classic owner statement is, did you even review this? Right. 00:08:39.181 --> 00:08:43.326 So this to me is carte blanche. We absolutely did. 00:08:43.697 --> 00:08:47.312 And think about getting that first pass before your, your, your, 00:08:47.312 --> 00:08:51.262 your, your, your field manager ever even

actually has to do the first pass. 00:08:51.262 --> 00:08:55.104 Someone's doing it for him. So to me, it's about speed. It increases accuracy 00:08:55.423 --> 00:08:57.716 and helps standardize ops out in the field. Right. 00:08:58.239 --> 00:09:01.502 Yeah. And this is the kind of AI that we've talked about on the podcast, 00:09:01.502 --> 00:09:05.452 really appreciating, right? Which is looking at ways to elevate the craftsman 00:09:05.812 --> 00:09:06.992 at the heart of project delivery. 00:09:07.332 --> 00:09:11.747 Give me time back so I can be out in the field managing risk, right? 00:09:12.272 --> 00:09:15.952 Yeah, 100%. So, all right. If you're a little curious, check it out, 00:09:15.952 --> 00:09:18.217 trunktools.com forward slash podcast. 00:09:18.803 --> 00:09:21.514 And if you mention construction conversations, you get a discount. 00:09:21.990 --> 00:09:26.274 Discount. Demos are free and you guys get a discount. So let's go. 00:09:27.412 --> 00:09:33.378 How have the trades responded to dealing with that increased kind of burden 00:09:33.500 --> 00:09:40.472 of risk associated with they're having to prefab stuff way ahead of maybe design in some cases? 00:09:41.150 --> 00:09:44.436 Yeah, kind of two things going on there. I'll break them apart. Yeah. 00:09:45.168 --> 00:09:54.419 You mentioned the cooling needs. So the big impact and the complexity change was when basically the. 00:09:55.440 --> 00:09:59.479 Particularly the AI chips crossed the threshold of being able to be air cooled, 00:10:00.032 --> 00:10:02.290 to where they had to be liquid cooled. 00:10:02.290 --> 00:10:08.960 And when you get to about 75 to 100 kilowatts per rack, you kind of get into 00:10:08.960 --> 00:10:14.450 this place where air is just, you just can't get the heat off the chips efficiently with air. 00:10:14.450 --> 00:10:19.680 So you have to do liquid cooled, which is this like the direct plate that sits 00:10:19.680 --> 00:10:21.543 right on the compute chips. 00:10:22.246 --> 00:10:27.440 And then you pump kind of coolant through those. So you're pulling the heat off right at the chip. 00:10:27.957 --> 00:10:34.080 That change happened starting around 2024, 2025, when we kind of crossed that 00:10:34.080 --> 00:10:37.657 threshold on the chip design, both on GPUs and TPUs. 00:10:38.360 --> 00:10:43.218 That forced a complete rethinking of data center design. 00:10:43.590 --> 00:10:47.110 And it also made it really hard to just go retrofit. You know, 00:10:47.110 --> 00:10:51.514 for years, we were just kind of upgrading server racks and existing hot cold aisle data centers. 00:10:52.030 --> 00:10:57.650 So the upgrades were more on the technology side than they were on the system 00:10:57.650 --> 00:10:58.996 side, the MEP system side. 00:10:59.670 --> 00:11:05.980 Now, you know, you can't stick those new latest Blackwell chips from NVIDIA 00:11:05.980 --> 00:11:10.577 into an old kind of CPU or hot cold aisle data center. 00:11:11.076 --> 00:11:14.008 So we've really had to rethink how we design these. 00:11:14.466 --> 00:11:19.511 And these are just starting to come online now. So this big design change happened a few years ago. 00:11:19.969 --> 00:11:23.944 This is why the piping industry is going crazy right now. If you think about 00:11:24.101 --> 00:11:26.951 what we're actually doing, we're building these big cooling loops. 00:11:27.750 --> 00:11:32.209 We are then taking those big cooling systems and getting them all the way down 00:11:32.209 --> 00:11:39.221 to like quarter-inch stainless piping that feeds these plates that sit on top of the chips. 00:11:39.703 --> 00:11:42.681 And then pulling that, you know, extracting the heat, pulling that back off. 00:11:43.087 --> 00:11:49.329 But that's a massive, complex, super intricate piping system that has completely 00:11:49.329 --> 00:11:51.639 changed the way we build data centers. 00:11:52.608 --> 00:11:55.759 And it's driving this huge boom in the piping industry right now, 00:11:56.379 --> 00:12:01.275 which is great if you're in the market. It's a boom that nobody's ever seen. 00:12:01.795 --> 00:12:07.589 But it's also forcing a lot of new technology, new quality control methods, 00:12:07.589 --> 00:12:13.689 new joining methods, new just records on how do we check every one of those welds? 00:12:13.689 --> 00:12:18.089 What are we doing for UTRT, non-destructive examination? 00:12:18.757 --> 00:12:22.929 There's a lot of new change to support this new technology and and that's one 00:12:22.929 --> 00:12:24.259 of those things where like oh you know, 00:12:25.119 --> 00:12:28.699 the MEP contractor oh it's just another data center what's the problem why is 00:12:28.719 --> 00:12:31.789 this so complicated that's a huge technical change we've kind of pushed down 00:12:31.789 --> 00:12:34.349 downstream right so so that's, 00:12:35.062 --> 00:12:39.979 another example of a big technical technical change in the way we build things 00:12:39.979 --> 00:12:42.975 that has to kind to get digested by the industry. 00:12:43.584 --> 00:12:50.239 You mentioned why prefab. Well, same reasons we use prefab for other. 00:12:52.139 --> 00:12:55.477 Some of the same reasons, some of the other reasons that we use prefab in other industries. 00:12:56.087 --> 00:13:00.849 Of course, we believe, and generally it's true, that you can get a higher level 00:13:00.849 --> 00:13:04.419 of quality in a shop environment than you can get in the field. 00:13:04.419 --> 00:13:09.319 So being able to do a weld in a positioner where you're always welding in a 00:13:09.319 --> 00:13:11.758 preferred position, not, you know, underneath the pipe. 00:13:12.194 --> 00:13:15.349 Those are the types of things you can do in a shop that are much harder to do 00:13:15.349 --> 00:13:19.129 in the field. So when you start thinking about quality, that's one of the big 00:13:19.129 --> 00:13:21.219 benefits to moving to fab. 00:13:21.701 --> 00:13:26.519 But

perhaps the more significant one for the data centers is if you look at 00:13:26.519 --> 00:13:29.513 where a lot of these are being built, they're in... 00:13:30.256 --> 00:13:36.451 Areas that are not super densely populated. So trying to get that many craft 00:13:36.451 --> 00:13:38.191 workers on site is not easy. 00:13:38.191 --> 00:13:43.051 So as a strategy to build these, you move some of that labor offsite. 00:13:43.051 --> 00:13:47.171 And in a lot of cases, it's even out of the state, out of the region where you 00:13:47.171 --> 00:13:53.471 can leverage empty fab capacity in a whole nother jurisdiction and in order 00:13:53.471 --> 00:13:56.311 to keep these data center construction going. 00:13:56.311 --> 00:13:59.301 And, you know, that's not just data center, by the way, either it's, 00:13:59.301 --> 00:14:02.471 it's pharmaceutical production right now. It's energy project production. 00:14:02.471 --> 00:14:03.916 It's, it's, it's things. 00:14:04.514 --> 00:14:07.211 It's all kind of this big MEP infrastructure we're building out, 00:14:07.211 --> 00:14:10.963 but that labor arbitrage has been a huge advantage where I can. 00:14:11.715 --> 00:14:16.475 Take, you know, what would be maybe millions of man hours of labor in one site 00:14:16.475 --> 00:14:20.785 and then kind of move that out across to different regions where we do have capacity. 00:14:20.785 --> 00:14:24.683 You know, you've got in some of the coast states right now, we're very slow, 00:14:25.356 --> 00:14:30.035 but we can use that labor capacity and that shop capacity to build fab and ship 00:14:30.035 --> 00:14:34.096 it into Reno or Abilene or. 00:14:34.935 --> 00:14:36.805 You know, data center alley in Virginia. 00:14:36.805 --> 00:14:40.783 So a lot of that's happening to arbitrage just the labor gas, 00:14:41.375 --> 00:14:43.195 which is good for the country, right? Because you can balance, 00:14:43.195 --> 00:14:47.675 you can keep a labor pool busy, whether or not you live in the exact right place 00:14:47.675 --> 00:14:48.718 for something to be involved. 00:14:49.228 --> 00:14:52.355 Sponsor break. If you spend any time running a project, you know, 00:14:52.355 --> 00:14:55.509 the answer is almost always sitting in the contract document somewhere. 00:14:56.066 --> 00:15:01.665 Catch is that it's almost never in one document. It's split across the contract, 00:15:01.665 --> 00:15:05.275 the specs, and some flow-down clause three layers deep that nobody connects 00:15:05.275 --> 00:15:07.055 until it's already cost money. 00:15:07.223 --> 00:15:11.125 That's the whole premise behind Document Crunch. That risk doesn't live inside 00:15:11.125 --> 00:15:13.868 any single document. It lives in the gaps between them. 00:15:14.054 --> 00:15:18.576 And most teams never look at all of them together until they're standing in a dispute. 00:15:19.266 --> 00:15:23.835 The average construction dispute in the U.S. now runs about $60 million, 00:15:24.475 --> 00:15:26.883 according to Arcadis. It's a lot of money. 00:15:27.283 --> 00:15:30.267 And the root cause they point to isn't fraud or bad intent. 00:15:30.551 --> 00:15:33.925 It's people not fully understanding what they agreed to. So Document Crunch 00:15:33.925 --> 00:15:35.973 builds a platform around closing that gap. 00:15:36.176 --> 00:15:41.790 Crunch AI reads the documents, surfaces the risks, and it cites the exact page and clause that's big. 00:15:42.138 --> 00:15:45.965 So you're not just taking its word for it. Project Assist lets your team act 00:15:45.965 --> 00:15:49.215 on it, ask questions across the entire project document set, 00:15:49.215 --> 00:15:53.591 hand draft your submitters, notices, and RFIs right from the chat window. 00:15:53.818 --> 00:15:57.805 And the whole thing runs on your own company standards. So the office and the 00:15:57.805 --> 00:16:00.000 field are working off the same playbook. 00:16:00.343 --> 00:16:04.615 For bid through closeout. No disconnects. It's live now across the U.S. 00:16:04.615 --> 00:16:10.245 And Canada. Go to documentcrunch.com forward slash construction conversations and book a demo. 00:16:11.539 --> 00:16:15.414 But then maybe walk me through, obviously, you talked through some of the pros. 00:16:15.414 --> 00:16:20.717 Some of the cons from the trade standpoint is just increased exposure to change, right? 00:16:21.697 --> 00:16:25.360 Yeah, I mean, you bid on one of these jobs with a new design. 00:16:28.309 --> 00:16:34.354 And one of the big challenges we're seeing right now is just schedule capacity and schedule planning. 00:16:34.354 --> 00:16:41.224 Because you're taking on lots of new types of work that very likely you don't 00:16:41.224 --> 00:16:44.394 have experience with because these designs are completely changed. 00:16:44.394 --> 00:16:47.842 So you talk about miles and welded stainless steel pipe. 00:16:48.424 --> 00:16:52.644 You're taking on a lot of risk by taking on that job. Now, you might have welded 00:16:52.644 --> 00:16:57.074 some stainless steel pipe before, but you may not have cut and welded thousands, 00:16:57.074 --> 00:17:01.283 and some of my customers, miles of stainless pipe. 00:17:02.836 --> 00:17:09.446 So it becomes a real budget, estimating, tracking, planning, 00:17:09.446 --> 00:17:14.966 scheduling problem of, and that's a lot of risk when, and a lot of these jobs are schedule driven. 00:17:14.966 --> 00:17:19.726 So, you know, you're kind of committing to delivering work at a certain, 00:17:19.726 --> 00:17:22.788 on a very kind of drumbeat type of schedule. 00:17:23.101 --> 00:17:26.346 It's a, it's a lot of operational challenge. 00:17:26.346 --> 00:17:30.676 And, and, you know, I like to talk about thinking this as a production system. 00:17:30.676 --> 00:17:36.096 You really need to understand the entire system you have under your purview 00:17:36.096 --> 00:17:37.736 as a contractor, subcontractor. 00:17:37.736 --> 00:17:42.406 So

everything from BIM to fab to logistics, material handling, 00:17:42.406 --> 00:17:46.506 there's a lot assembly steps that you probably didn't think about before if 00:17:46.506 --> 00:17:48.416 you haven't been doing multi-trade modular. 00:17:48.416 --> 00:17:53.971 So your non-job site work really stretches out. 00:17:54.348 --> 00:18:00.336 And that part is critical. you have to get that right. So being able to do a 00:18:00.336 --> 00:18:02.936 pullback schedule all the way up to when do I need to buy material? 00:18:02.936 --> 00:18:07.096 When do I have the material cut? How do I schedule enough QAQC to make sure 00:18:07.096 --> 00:18:08.029 these things pass through? 00:18:08.575 --> 00:18:12.035 What are my processes if there is an issue, a defect in a weld? 00:18:13.576 --> 00:18:17.056 There's just a lot of kind of process operational work to be done. 00:18:17.056 --> 00:18:20.616 And that isn't no fault of any trade contractor, but, 00:18:21.289 --> 00:18:26.176 there's not a lot of learning and experience with this kind of if you want to 00:18:26.176 --> 00:18:30.417 call it industrialized construction but so it's pretty interesting to watch this right now, 00:18:31.000 --> 00:18:34.806 well and what you just described is a manufacturing process right like i think 00:18:34.806 --> 00:18:39.076 you know i was a lci member for many years and this was kind of the dream right 00:18:39.076 --> 00:18:43.296 it was like hey let's let's create a manufacturing hub out of a out of a job 00:18:43.296 --> 00:18:45.636 site and obviously it seems like, 00:18:46.089 --> 00:18:50.977 we've done that with only a component of of the whole ecosystem of the site 00:18:51.395 --> 00:18:54.806 and that's now okay we've created some friction from that. 00:18:54.806 --> 00:18:57.975 So maybe, you know, continuing on the story. So, 00:18:58.702 --> 00:19:03.946 trades taking on additional kind of change risk what was the friction they were 00:19:03.946 --> 00:19:08.949 experiencing as they were going through this process as, 00:19:09.506 --> 00:19:14.236 design teams owners made changes along the way and now that this is past tense 00:19:14.236 --> 00:19:16.276 this is happening live so yeah, 00:19:16.896 --> 00:19:20.574 yeah yeah you know what am i early on in my career he. 00:19:22.087 --> 00:19:27.666 Did a lot of work and just kind of construction innovation mapping out he kind 00:19:27.666 --> 00:19:32.286 of stakeholders and you know i went through the value stream mapping jake yes 00:19:32.286 --> 00:19:33.716 exactly value stream mapping, 00:19:34.620 --> 00:19:39.136 i did this great kind of design session it was like a three month kind of like 00:19:39.136 --> 00:19:42.856 problem finding where you mapped out the entire workflow i mean all the way 00:19:42.856 --> 00:19:49.052 up into to urban kind of planning building codes city officials, 00:19:49.636 --> 00:19:52.526 design architect engineer we kind of mapped out the whole thing and tried to 00:19:52.526 --> 00:19:54.548 try to find problems through the system and, 00:19:55.181 --> 00:19:57.256 you know one of the The consistent themes is, 00:19:57.776 --> 00:20:00.043 as you start getting downstream in the workflow is, oh, 00:20:00.669 --> 00:20:03.496 if we just got the, if the designs are right, if the drawings are better, 00:20:03.496 --> 00:20:06.306 if the engineers did a better job, we wouldn't have any of these problems. 00:20:06.306 --> 00:20:08.986 You know, we could just build, we could just get the drawings and we build them. 00:20:08.986 --> 00:20:10.799 It's all, it's an engineering problem, right? 00:20:11.304 --> 00:20:15.136 And then, but by doing this dual stakeholder mapping, then you, 00:20:15.136 --> 00:20:17.649 well, then you go back up to the engineers. You're like engineers. Well, yeah. 00:20:18.672 --> 00:20:21.872 Because you would hear that from contractors, right? Oh, if the engineers said 00:20:21.872 --> 00:20:24.352 better job, this is the problem. 00:20:24.352 --> 00:20:26.972 So, but when you really map this out, then you go to the engineers and you're 00:20:26.972 --> 00:20:29.002 like, Hey, what's going on here? 00:20:29.002 --> 00:20:32.482 And they're like, well, listen, the owners paid us to do, you know, 00:20:32.482 --> 00:20:35.864 X percent design, knowing that there's going to be changes. And, 00:20:36.182 --> 00:20:38.212 you know, this is, this is all we're contractually delivered. 00:20:38.212 --> 00:20:40.972 We're doing exactly what we were asked to do. So it's not our fault. 00:20:40.972 --> 00:20:42.275 You're like, okay, well, what's going on here? 00:20:42.687 --> 00:20:45.892 Then you go back up to the owners and you say, Hey, listen, downstream, 00:20:45.892 --> 00:20:51.142 your project is a big disaster because, you know, there's all this on semi-complete 00:20:51.142 --> 00:20:52.592 design and variability and all this. 00:20:52.592 --> 00:20:56.422 And the, probably the biggest kind of aha moment I had, I was, 00:20:56.422 --> 00:21:01.522 I was working for a big mechanical contractor on pharmaceutical production. 00:21:01.522 --> 00:21:05.772 And I sat with the construction team for one of these big pharmas and I'm kind 00:21:05.772 --> 00:21:06.742 of talking to the same thing. 00:21:06.742 --> 00:21:10.322 I'm like, man, this job's a mess because, you know, we start, 00:21:10.322 --> 00:21:13.172 we start fabbing all this stuff and then you guys change and, 00:21:13.172 --> 00:21:15.602 you know, what's going on and the, and the engineers They're like, 00:21:15.602 --> 00:21:18.419 hey, it's whatever the pharma wants they get. 00:21:19.002 --> 00:21:23.072 So I sat with him and I'm like, this is crazy. How do we fix this? 00:21:23.072 --> 00:21:25.133 He's like, Jake, I don't think you get it. 00:21:25.745 --> 00:21:28.352 Who do you think is paying the bills for this? This is a big pharma production 00:21:28.352 --> 00:21:31.352 facility, right? Who do you think is

paying the bills? We are. 00:21:32.238 --> 00:21:36.441 If the FDA approves a 1% improvement. 00:21:38.246 --> 00:21:44.972 In process change or efficacy of a drug or we get something approve at the last 00:21:44.972 --> 00:21:49.902 minute if i'm 98 done with this building and i get that approval i'm going to 00:21:49.902 --> 00:21:51.248 come back and change the whole thing, 00:21:52.264 --> 00:21:56.743 That's you as a subcontractor, you need, you want to be my best friend. 00:21:56.743 --> 00:22:01.593 You welcome those changes and you'd be the most adaptive and receptive. 00:22:01.947 --> 00:22:05.633 Stop beating on us to have a consistent design and hold everything perfect. 00:22:06.109 --> 00:22:09.433 That's not how this works. I'm the owner. I pay the bills. We are built. 00:22:09.433 --> 00:22:10.695 We're running a business. 00:22:11.363 --> 00:22:16.173 This drug facility is part of our business and it needs to be as good as possible. 00:22:16.173 --> 00:22:18.873 If I get a change approved through the FDA at the last second, 00:22:19.867 --> 00:22:22.967 I'm going to rebuild the whole thing. You guys are going to redesign the whole thing. I'll pay for it. 00:22:23.437 --> 00:22:26.773 We just need to have a good relationship so you guys can adapt to those changes. 00:22:26.773 --> 00:22:30.903 And for me, Steven, that was such like, oh my God, I've been thinking about 00:22:30.903 --> 00:22:33.928 this wrong the whole time. Like that owner's totally right. 00:22:34.558 --> 00:22:39.603 And I think you can bring that story home for anybody who's like built a kitchen 00:22:39.603 --> 00:22:42.434 or something like that, right? You like, you design your kitchen. 00:22:43.218 --> 00:22:47.833 The tile starts going in or the backsplash or whatever. And then you come down, 00:22:47.833 --> 00:22:49.214 Like, oh my God, this looks terrible. 00:22:49.790 --> 00:22:53.373 I don't care if you're 98% done. If you don't want to live with that backsplash, 00:22:53.373 --> 00:22:54.813 you rip it out and you redo it, right? 00:22:54.813 --> 00:22:59.588 And so this idea that drawings are going to be perfect, BIM's going to be perfect, 00:23:00.163 --> 00:23:02.593 you know, we're going to have a locked in design and schedule we're all going 00:23:02.593 --> 00:23:06.493 to stick to is just not true. I mean, owners, it's exactly right. 00:23:06.873 --> 00:23:10.843 Who's paying the bill gets to change their mind. That's part of the deal. 00:23:11.545 --> 00:23:17.473 Man, Jake, that's like a real rethink. And that's really helpful. 00:23:17.473 --> 00:23:20.452 Like, I wish I would have actually had this conversation when I was a PM. 00:23:20.841 --> 00:23:24.653 I mean, it does go back to, it's like the who moved my cheese kind of concept 00:23:24.653 --> 00:23:28.573 of change, which is it's change is constant and embrace it. And how do you build 00:23:28.573 --> 00:23:33.037 the right systems around it to adapt and manage it effectively? 00:23:33.338 --> 00:23:35.095 So that's really helpful. 00:23:35.426 --> 00:23:39.413 When you think about change management and getting good at that and building 00:23:39.413 --> 00:23:45.892 tech to allow trades to be that, which is this kind of force to manage change, 00:23:46.542 --> 00:23:50.442 how much of that has led to Stratus or is that kind of the thesis? 00:23:51.171 --> 00:23:58.293 It's certainly a big component. So one of the big things that we bring to a 00:23:58.293 --> 00:24:02.637 company that isn't using Stratus is just visibility into where things are at. 00:24:03.025 --> 00:24:08.063 And that pushes all the way back up into the model layer so you can see statuses 00:24:08.063 --> 00:24:09.161 and then all the way down. 00:24:09.701 --> 00:24:14.738 And one of the things we're trying to mitigate here is when you do start a larger 00:24:15.063 --> 00:24:20.853 prefab operation as part of your delivery method, it kind of elongates your risk. 00:24:21.333 --> 00:24:28.047 So you've got more work in progress than is traditionally measured on it. 00:24:28.153 --> 00:24:30.973 So how did we used to measure work in progress? We go walk the job, 00:24:30.973 --> 00:24:34.479 we kind of walk around and look up in the ceiling and see what's installed, right? 00:24:35.181 --> 00:24:40.443 When you think about the total work, let's say that that conduit rack is a hundred 00:24:40.443 --> 00:24:42.883 hours of, you know, estimated work. 00:24:43.499 --> 00:24:46.053 When you do a bunch of prefab, you're actually taking, you know, 00:24:46.053 --> 00:24:49.739 maybe 60, 70 of those hours and putting them offsite. 00:24:50.580 --> 00:24:54.446 So if you think about kind of earning value on that rack, you might, 00:24:55.050 --> 00:24:59.363 before that thing even gets to the site, you might have 70% work in progress 00:24:59.363 --> 00:25:02.613 done. And you just, you can never see that if you're just doing this site walk 00:25:02.613 --> 00:25:04.234 and saying, is it there or is it not? 00:25:04.588 --> 00:25:09.203 So even though it's not in the ceiling, you might have 70 hours burned on that 00:25:09.203 --> 00:25:12.430 rack already, getting it fabbed and shipped and delivered and ready to go. 00:25:12.877 --> 00:25:17.306 The work on site might be the last, you know, just pop it up into the hangers and you're done. 00:25:17.914 --> 00:25:21.623 And so that, you know, extend that across all the trades, whether it's piping, 00:25:21.623 --> 00:25:26.833 sheet metal, the time now horizon, you've got that conduit rack all the way 00:25:26.833 --> 00:25:30.509 back three months ago, you might've started working on that in your shop. 00:25:31.748 --> 00:25:37.403 All of that is risk for the subcontractor. And if you're working in a contract 00:25:37.403 --> 00:25:42.403 structure or with the general contractor, that it's only measuring percent complete 00:25:42.403 --> 00:25:44.501 by walking the site and looking at what's up in the air.

00:25:45.189 --> 00:25:50.933 The lack of visibility to how much work is happening in other locations, it's a real challenge. 00:25:51.273 --> 00:25:55.103 And it's a cash flow challenge. It's a change order challenge if things are 00:25:55.103 --> 00:25:58.233 moved. Well, hey, what do you mean we can't do a change order on this floor? 00:25:58.233 --> 00:25:59.139 There's no work in there. 00:25:59.754 --> 00:26:02.673 Well, as a subcontractor, you might have that thing completely fabbed out, 00:26:03.113 --> 00:26:07.883 ready to get installed. So what we try to do with Stratus is give complete visibility 00:26:07.883 --> 00:26:09.947 into that entire journey. 00:26:10.452 --> 00:26:16.583 Every piece of pipe, where is it at in its journey from a design element all 00:26:16.583 --> 00:26:17.986 the way to an installed element? 00:26:19.153 --> 00:26:23.063 Is it cut? Did we procure it? Is it cut? Do we weld it? 00:26:23.063 --> 00:26:27.738 Is that we passed the point of no return on like re re changing the, 00:26:28.110 --> 00:26:30.205 the, the joining method at the type of pipe or something, 00:26:30.780 --> 00:26:35.433 you know, knowing where that entire area or entire project is, 00:26:35.833 --> 00:26:39.903 is very valuable to multiple stakeholders, not just the subcontractor, 00:26:39.903 --> 00:26:43.643 but imagine you're in that owner change meeting and they, you know, 00:26:43.643 --> 00:26:45.483 they tell you, Hey, great news. 00:26:45.483 --> 00:26:47.953 We're gonna, you know, we're gonna cut back our scope on the mechanical room. 00:26:47.953 --> 00:26:51.885 We're gonna pull these like six, six things out. Cause we don't need as much cooling load. 00:26:52.800 --> 00:26:59.021 Being able to say, no problem, owner, no problem, engineer, but here's exactly where we're at on that. 00:26:59.661 --> 00:27:05.601 We've got 700 hours committed to it. All right, here's my log into the software 00:27:05.601 --> 00:27:08.344 and look, log into Stratus. You can see exactly where everything's at. 00:27:08.961 --> 00:27:12.781 No problem. Here's a very fair change order, a very fair, you know, 00:27:12.781 --> 00:27:16.321 ask for that work. And when that's done right, it's kind of magical because 00:27:16.321 --> 00:27:18.961 you cut out all, are they overbilling me? Are they, you know, 00:27:18.961 --> 00:27:20.699 are they change ordering me for work they never did? 00:27:21.145 --> 00:27:24.991 So, you know, we love to see it. There's a lot of our customers who actually 00:27:24.991 --> 00:27:31.091 have GCs, owners, CMs logged into Stratus, limited login, right? 00:27:31.091 --> 00:27:32.668 You can kind of control what they could see. 00:27:32.912 --> 00:27:35.821 But the thing everybody gives access to is just the status reporting. 00:27:35.821 --> 00:27:42.411 So you can, it kind of removes that distrust when we are going through change 00:27:42.411 --> 00:27:45.501 management or we are wondering, are we on schedule? 00:27:45.501

--> 00:27:49.761 And, you know, the traditional method to be like, yeah, walking the job site 00:27:49.761 --> 00:27:52.741 and just looking around to get a few percent complete. They just don't work 00:27:52.741 --> 00:27:54.205 when we have a big fab operation. 00:27:55.035 --> 00:27:59.651 Well, and if I think back to my own past, I think much of the friction in those 00:27:59.651 --> 00:28:02.088 change conversations really comes from, 00:28:02.558 --> 00:28:05.591 you know, there were some owner's reps and there were some owners that were 00:28:05.591 --> 00:28:09.553 unreasonable, but most of the time it's frustration with the lack of information 00:28:09.739 --> 00:28:14.851 available or the time to get information around the impacts of a change, right? 00:28:14.851 --> 00:28:18.651 Oh you want that okay give me two weeks and maybe we'll collect pricing and 00:28:18.651 --> 00:28:24.421 so being able to have dynamic insight into the impact of potential change because 00:28:24.421 --> 00:28:27.683 that's often what it starts is like okay let's let's talk about what's, 00:28:28.205 --> 00:28:32.907 what's it going to tail to make this change and and if you don't have that information 00:28:33.285 --> 00:28:36.245 then you know the speed of intel really can hit you, 00:28:37.034 --> 00:28:42.027 it's not a change yeah it's i mean it's also just regular work percent complete, 00:28:42.485 --> 00:28:44.186 you know so if you think about progress billing. 00:28:45.846 --> 00:28:48.913 And again, as you've got this long prefab operation, it's just knowing what 00:28:48.913 --> 00:28:52.973 percent complete you are in a very quantitative, very transparent way. 00:28:52.973 --> 00:28:56.973 So people aren't questioning overbilling strategies. You know, 00:28:56.973 --> 00:29:00.550 you can just say, hey, look, here's exactly. Did we agree that at 20 percent, 00:29:01.080 --> 00:29:05.532 that when all the pipes cut, we agree that's a 20 percent complete? Yes. Good. OK, great. 00:29:05.881 --> 00:29:08.609 Now I'll give you a report every week that shows you exactly. 00:29:08.783 --> 00:29:12.993 So you kind of go through the stages of your fab process and then you can create 00:29:12.993 --> 00:29:17.553 a very objective report that gives you kind of percent complete for every piece 00:29:17.553 --> 00:29:19.319 of material that goes into the job so, 00:29:19.997 --> 00:29:25.303 is this changing contract terms gc to trade like gc to owner like, 00:29:26.003 --> 00:29:30.303 is this making its way through the ecosystem of kind of how we talk about commercial 00:29:30.303 --> 00:29:35.473 terms yeah absolutely if you look at the the really big fabricators that's a 00:29:35.543 --> 00:29:40.878 it's a completely different thought process and how to get paid for that work and not everybody, 00:29:41.844 --> 00:29:45.423 realizes that right away but i'll tell you when you got to go buy a whole bunch 00:29:45.423 --> 00:29:49.583 of material for prefab

and you can't install it for three four or five months, 00:29:50.191 --> 00:29:53.903 that's the type of stuff you got to have buttoned up and and because otherwise 00:29:53.903 --> 00:30:00.919 you've got a huge cash outlay that it you know it's it extends your receivables significantly so yeah. 00:30:02.242 --> 00:30:07.285 Does Stratus stand for, like Greek, for productivity or something? 00:30:07.285 --> 00:30:10.655 Or was there a name tie-in between Stratus and what it does? 00:30:10.655 --> 00:30:12.935 That sounds pretty good. Yeah, we can go with that. Right. 00:30:18.755 --> 00:30:22.426 All right. You heard it here first, the true definition of Stratus. 00:30:22.821 --> 00:30:24.708 Yeah, exactly. Lock it in. 00:30:25.555 --> 00:30:28.842 Marketing department. Update. update. 00:30:30.478 --> 00:30:34.295 Now, we've talked about Stratus as, you know, if you think about Stratus as 00:30:34.295 --> 00:30:36.355 like a layer around the earth, right? 00:30:36.695 --> 00:30:39.772 Stratus is a layer that sits across that entire workflow. 00:30:41.075 --> 00:30:46.125 It really is kind of the oxygen. In this case, it's kind of the data connectivity 00:30:46.125 --> 00:30:47.875 that makes that workflow work. 00:30:47.875 --> 00:30:52.817 So we think about Stratus as like a layer that sits over that entire, 00:30:53.369 --> 00:30:58.315 delivery workflow all the way from design into field install testing balance 00:30:58.315 --> 00:31:04.015 sign off so that is kind of the analogy for stratus nice um yeah, 00:31:05.375 --> 00:31:11.415 either one pick your poison you know the idea of accurate plan percent, 00:31:11.955 --> 00:31:16.545 is really interesting and you know there's a big focus on you know from all 00:31:16.545 --> 00:31:21.253 the different reality capture systems to get better at progress tracking So, 00:31:22.219 --> 00:31:28.472 does i don't know the platform well enough but from either like a current platform 00:31:28.792 --> 00:31:34.522 feature set standpoint or or roadmap how do you get a really good plan percent complete accuracy. 00:31:35.875 --> 00:31:42.232 Yeah i think everything we do in stratus is broken down by kind of key steps 00:31:42.232 --> 00:31:46.858 we call them statuses but key statuses of of material so if you think about, 00:31:47.323 --> 00:31:49.752 a duct that's going to start off As a flat sheet, 00:31:50.312 --> 00:31:53.862 of metal, we're going to form that into our duct sections. 00:31:53.862 --> 00:31:57.754 We're going to put connectors on them in the shop, ship them to the field. 00:31:58.335 --> 00:32:01.032 And then we have to connect them together in the field, right? 00:32:01.032 --> 00:32:03.777 And there might be some additional fireproofing, insulation, that type of thing. 00:32:04.150 --> 00:32:09.802 Each one of those steps along the way requires labor and ultimately kind of 00:32:09.802 --> 00:32:13.780 burns down your percent complete. So as you've completed each of those statuses,

00:32:14.348 --> 00:32:17.297 and this is where some of the just the pure visual. 00:32:18.184 --> 00:32:21.516 You know, sidewalk stuff is a little difficult to get the percent complete. 00:32:21.799 --> 00:32:24.829 You know, you might hang a bunch of duct in the air and you see it on a camera 00:32:24.829 --> 00:32:26.961 and it looks good. And you say, okay, that's done. 00:32:27.564 --> 00:32:32.679 Where 50% of the work is the joining, you know, insulation, fire, 00:32:32.679 --> 00:32:34.795 if you've got to do seismic. 00:32:35.166 --> 00:32:38.009 So you might see the duct there and think that it's good. You might say, 00:32:38.009 --> 00:32:42.068 hey, we're done on that floor where you've only got some percent of the work done. 00:32:42.573 --> 00:32:47.739 So with Stratus, we really try to put those assignments in place. 00:32:47.739 --> 00:32:50.579 When we finish this, what percent complete are we? 00:32:50.919 --> 00:32:54.589 So just because it's in the air, you might still only be 80% complete with your 00:32:54.589 --> 00:32:58.941 job. You might still have a bunch of labor to go join things together. 00:32:59.231 --> 00:33:02.899 You know, pipe's another great one where you're, you actually have to go weld 00:33:02.899 --> 00:33:05.139 the pipe. That's a lot of labor. So you might see the pipe in the air, 00:33:05.479 --> 00:33:07.412 but if you don't look carefully, it hasn't been welded. 00:33:07.718 --> 00:33:10.569 Conduit's the same thing. You see the conduit. Great. Did we pull wire? 00:33:10.569 --> 00:33:14.969 Because that's, you know, a lot of times that's way more labor intensive than 00:33:14.969 --> 00:33:18.649 seeing the conduit. So that's where we actually break these down into discrete 00:33:18.649 --> 00:33:21.130 statuses. We assign percent complete by status. 00:33:21.751 --> 00:33:25.080 The way we handle this is we give the field form an easy way, 00:33:25.330 --> 00:33:27.843 kind of an online offline model view to tap. 00:33:28.522 --> 00:33:32.862 Components scan qr codes there's different ways you can kind of select what 00:33:32.862 --> 00:33:39.505 you're looking at pick areas pick systems pick rooms and then assign the status of where that's at so, 00:33:40.125 --> 00:33:44.302 do i have all the wire pulled boom that's a status update what does that mean 00:33:44.302 --> 00:33:48.632 percent complete you assign that based on your your estimate breakdown so i 00:33:48.632 --> 00:33:51.122 do think there's a lot of value in. 00:33:52.067 --> 00:33:56.422 Some of the automated kind of ai site walk percent complete estimates it's certainly 00:33:56.422 --> 00:33:59.617 better than nothing it's certainly better than static pictures, 00:34:00.266 --> 00:34:03.773 but i think when you really get down to like a billing accuracy, 00:34:04.366 --> 00:34:08.512 you need to understand it's more than just is it there or is it not it's much 00:34:08.512 --> 00:34:11.882 more gets down to the discrete steps that have to be, 00:34:12.362 --> 00:34:16.742 completed for each well and you've kind of given it an intricate language which 00:34:16.742 --> 00:34:19.782 is important and i think that's one of the things that's lacking in the progress 00:34:19.782 --> 00:34:24.444 tracking category is you know we can talk about a frame wall, 00:34:24.981 --> 00:34:28.962 we can talk about draw there's just larger components that we can speak to, 00:34:28.962 --> 00:34:33.851 but we can't always speak about the intricacies or handoffs between them very well or accurately. 00:34:34.683 --> 00:34:37.442 So, you know, going back to maybe earlier in the conversation, 00:34:37.442 --> 00:34:42.502 we talked about just the increased complexity, the increased size of project delivery. 00:34:43.440 --> 00:34:44.732 And we have this tendency in 00:34:44.732 --> 00:34:50.266 our industry to give each kind of potential silver bullet like its moment. 00:34:50.655 --> 00:34:55.472 And then, you know, we're now talking about, you know, AI and all these different 00:34:55.472 --> 00:35:02.124 elements but bim had its moment right in theory and and it's kind of over by by some estimation, 00:35:02.935 --> 00:35:06.452 even though it's it's maybe serving as a as a foundational layer for some of 00:35:06.452 --> 00:35:11.915 this how are the trades from what you're seeing dealing with increased complexity, 00:35:12.548 --> 00:35:14.888 without the model being the foundation. 00:35:17.141 --> 00:35:20.851 I think at the trade level, I don't think BIM is over. In a lot of ways, 00:35:20.851 --> 00:35:22.471 I think we're just getting started. 00:35:22.971 --> 00:35:28.031 If you think about BIM in a couple different phases or purposes in construction, 00:35:28.431 --> 00:35:30.829 one purpose could be design intent, 00:35:31.456 --> 00:35:36.021 rendering, communicating to like an architectural communication tool. 00:35:36.021 --> 00:35:42.184 Hey, do we want it to look this way? Is this the lighting and just basic architectural design? 00:35:43.131 --> 00:35:48.101 The second piece could be engineering intent so and this is where we start getting 00:35:48.101 --> 00:35:50.373 into systems like do we want. 00:35:51.411 --> 00:35:55.560 Do these pumps connect to these chillers or this that's the way our electrical distribution works, 00:35:56.211 --> 00:35:59.721 and you know these are phases we've gone through and and i think we're pretty 00:35:59.721 --> 00:36:05.671 well baked on that the third phase and by the way that would include coordination 00:36:05.671 --> 00:36:09.568 as well did we kind of get get things in the right places, 00:36:10.251 --> 00:36:14.701 but it doesn't get down to fabrication level bin which is where we're in a lot 00:36:14.701 --> 00:36:20.962 of areas we're still just scratching the surface here but this is actually putting 00:36:21.189 --> 00:36:24.213 content in the model that's fabrication ready. 00:36:25.037 --> 00:36:29.331 And that this is a big

phase that i think not everybody has visibility into 00:36:29.331 --> 00:36:34.291 but there's a lot of work from kind of the coordination piece then finally into 00:36:34.651 --> 00:36:37.101 a model that could be fabricated. 00:36:37.786 --> 00:36:42.131 What that means is that all joining methods are defined, all tolerances are 00:36:42.131 --> 00:36:48.561 defined, every system is defined, not only clash-free and according to spec, 00:36:48.561 --> 00:36:52.554 but also in accordance with the way I'm going to fabricate this in the shop. 00:36:53.080 --> 00:36:57.678 So where am I going to put my brakes in these systems? What types of tools are in my shop? 00:36:58.073 --> 00:37:04.766 Do I have automated lasers that require certain types of joining methods or materials? 00:37:05.132 --> 00:37:07.007 Do I have capacity on... 00:37:07.696 --> 00:37:12.621 The fabrication chunks that how big they can be you know am i on 40-foot trailers 00:37:12.621 --> 00:37:17.114 am i in box trucks do i have to get up a buck hoist do i have a crane capacity 00:37:17.473 --> 00:37:19.391 are there overhead bridge capacities 00:37:19.391 --> 00:37:22.042 where i'm transporting like all the logistics come into this that. 00:37:23.168 --> 00:37:27.567 Is the kind of the phase of bim we're just really starting to get better at 00:37:27.794 --> 00:37:32.041 and again for a lot of contractors they're not even there yet so i think this 00:37:32.041 --> 00:37:37.541 concept that we're you know bim is in the past i think we're actually just starting to leverage a, 00:37:38.301 --> 00:37:41.287 BIM as a fabrication model, as a fabrication plan. 00:37:41.866 --> 00:37:46.301 And a lot of that was the reason why this is new is I would say 10 years ago 00:37:46.301 --> 00:37:51.931 before Autodesk updated some of the MEP capacity in Revit, you couldn't even do any of this. 00:37:51.931 --> 00:37:58.901 So being able to use fabrication content in Revit was a big leap, improving, 00:37:59.406 --> 00:38:05.091 flat patterns, improving the way that all the MEP systems, basically electrical, 00:38:05.091 --> 00:38:08.364 mechanical, you know, sheet metal, plumbing, piping are able to be modeled, 00:38:08.811 --> 00:38:11.719 we actually now can start getting fabrication level BIM. 00:38:12.230 --> 00:38:15.941 And this unlocks a whole digital workflow downstream. But yeah, 00:38:16.401 --> 00:38:21.791 I would challenge a comment that, you know, BIM is yesterday and now it's AI or something like that. 00:38:21.791 --> 00:38:25.131 I think we're just starting to get to this fabrication level BIM. 00:38:25.131 --> 00:38:33.914 And that is unlocking a tremendous amount of basically fabrication in MEP contractors right now. Yeah. 00:38:34.668 --> 00:38:39.701 Yeah, I think you framed that really well. And I think model-based planning, 00:38:40.182 --> 00:38:45.099 really is foundational to a lot of kind of all of these different endeavors 00:38:45.099 --> 00:38:49.644 and initiatives. I think there's too much complexity at this point. 00:38:50.809 --> 00:38:53.229 And it solves kind of two big problems, I was just going to say. 00:38:53.229 --> 00:38:57.129 There's like the labor challenge, but then there's the kind of loss of expertise 00:38:57.129 --> 00:38:58.647 and knowledge in the industry, right? 00:38:59.227 --> 00:39:06.495 And the model as a visual representation of the physical is a potential forum 00:39:06.617 --> 00:39:09.489 that can begin to address both of those, right? 00:39:09.489 --> 00:39:15.599 You can bake additional kind of planning upstream and then also at an element 00:39:15.599 --> 00:39:20.403 level, you can embed different constructability and means of methods potentially. 00:39:20.676 --> 00:39:22.685 So I think you framed that well. 00:39:23.889 --> 00:39:28.489 How do you think is, like what does the future of Stratus look like Yeah, 00:39:28.489 --> 00:39:32.399 as you, I mean, I like your kind of description of Stratus, which is like this 00:39:32.399 --> 00:39:35.729 like layer of visibility that you add. 00:39:36.129 --> 00:39:40.019 If you take that thesis, there's a lot of different other problems to fix at 00:39:40.019 --> 00:39:41.969 the job level and in the industry level. 00:39:42.769 --> 00:39:47.279 Where else do you think you want to, obviously your MVP is huge. 00:39:47.279 --> 00:39:51.129 You could do this and just continue to grow there forever. Do you take it to other trades? 00:39:52.469 --> 00:39:57.799 Where does your head go? We definitely have a lot of work in front of us on 00:39:57.799 --> 00:40:01.379 the MEP trades before we start getting distracted beyond that. 00:40:01.379 --> 00:40:06.739 And so we're very focused on MEP and we will continue to be number one in the 00:40:06.739 --> 00:40:09.430 way we built the business, the type of people that work here, 00:40:10.063 --> 00:40:11.809 our knowledge of these flows. 00:40:12.872 --> 00:40:16.309 I think we benefit greatly by being hyper-focused on MEP. 00:40:16.309 --> 00:40:20.789 We've got a lot of people that work at our company that worked at MEP contractors. 00:40:20.789 --> 00:40:24.089 So when you're onboarding with Stratus, you're going to have a sheet metal worker 00:40:24.389 --> 00:40:27.409 or a pipe fitter that's going to actually help you with your implementation 00:40:27.409 --> 00:40:32.237 who's done this work before. So that's been key to keeping our focus and our expertise. 00:40:32.931 --> 00:40:38.172 As far as where we're going, I think there's a lot of opportunity across this 00:40:38.172 --> 00:40:46.072 workflow to continue to build out feature sets that further enable digitization. 00:40:46.072 --> 00:40:51.472 And the way I think about our product roadmap is even in our most implemented 00:40:51.892 --> 00:40:54.736 customers, where you see Stratus kind of through the entire workflow, 00:40:55.276 --> 00:40:59.333 if you go walk those shops or sit in the PM's office or walk the

field, 00:40:59.728 --> 00:41:06.812 you still see a lot of paper-based input, a lot of kind of manual data entry for adjacent systems. 00:41:06.812 --> 00:41:10.932 And for me, all of those are kind of roadmap items for Stratus. 00:41:10.932 --> 00:41:16.082 So we have a great digital end-to-end workflow, but there's a lot of pieces 00:41:16.082 --> 00:41:19.109 that sit, QAQC records is a great one. 00:41:19.498 --> 00:41:23.692 Some of the scheduling planning, those are all pieces that, you know, 00:41:23.692 --> 00:41:27.622 I think we'll have long roadmaps ahead of us to continue to optimize for the 00:41:27.622 --> 00:41:28.732 way these contractors work. 00:41:28.732 --> 00:41:33.372 So our goal, just like that example I gave you of stakeholder mapping across 00:41:33.372 --> 00:41:36.304 all the industries, it's kind of the same thing at the MEP level. 00:41:36.750 --> 00:41:41.102 Who's all the stakeholders, quality control, shipping and logistics, 00:41:41.102 --> 00:41:44.827 PMs, the accounting, billing. 00:41:45.576 --> 00:41:49.992 Each of those stakeholders can benefit from Stratus, and we have a lot of roadmap 00:41:49.992 --> 00:41:51.799 to go as we keep building this thing out. 00:41:53.199 --> 00:41:56.747 You know, one thing that I've seen in this current kind of growth period for 00:41:56.747 --> 00:42:04.097 industry is more, there's a larger spectrum of contractors being engaged on 00:42:04.097 --> 00:42:05.537 really large projects, right? 00:42:05.537 --> 00:42:09.037 You used to have a certain tier of contractor that could really handle some 00:42:09.037 --> 00:42:11.050 of these big, complex projects. 00:42:11.155 --> 00:42:15.280 And now we're just being forced that, you know, more folks are getting involved. 00:42:15.966 --> 00:42:22.909 Are you, for maybe the MEP, M, or E kind of trade that's listening here, 00:42:23.957 --> 00:42:28.917 is part of the Stratus approach some level of light BIM enablement? 00:42:28.917 --> 00:42:34.237 Like, hey, this sounds really interesting. How do I mature into what's being described? 00:42:34.657 --> 00:42:37.960 Or what would you say to that trade? How do they grow into this? 00:42:38.837 --> 00:42:42.057 I actually think it's more fabrication enablement at the moment. 00:42:42.737 --> 00:42:46.427 And we're seeing some awesome networks being built. In fact, 00:42:46.427 --> 00:42:50.487 we've done a lot of work in Stratus to make this easier, but where a group of 00:42:50.487 --> 00:42:55.645 Stratus customers will take on a job and use our platform to manage the fabrication. 00:42:56.028 --> 00:42:59.093 Again, we've got visibility, we've got statusing, we've got work assignment. 00:42:59.717 --> 00:43:04.557 They use Stratus to pull together three or four different companies' fab operations 00:43:04.557 --> 00:43:05.837 and deliver a job together. 00:43:06.257 --> 00:43:09.597 There's a big job going on right now. I think we've got eight Stratus customers 00:43:09.597 --> 00:43:14.447 all just on the piping side doing work on it, all using Stratus to coordinate 00:43:14.447 --> 00:43:16.119 and break that job apart. Yeah. 00:43:16.944 --> 00:43:21.965 Even though you may not have been like the prime owner of the kind of the BIM 00:43:21.965 --> 00:43:29.035 and the original design, you can participate in these jobs as a smaller specialty contractor. 00:43:29.035 --> 00:43:34.765 Maybe you're really good at high purity work or you're really good at carbon, 00:43:34.765 --> 00:43:37.046 you know, just big butt weld carbon steel. 00:43:37.546 --> 00:43:41.935 So you can kind of build a network of fabricators through Stratus and then deliver 00:43:41.935 --> 00:43:44.285 that job together. And that's been really cool to see. 00:43:44.645 --> 00:43:49.425 It's been, this kind of network is growing fast. We've got hundreds of companies 00:43:49.425 --> 00:43:53.181 on Stratus now. So being able to, for these folks to kind of get together, 00:43:53.985 --> 00:43:57.725 win a job and then use Stratus to deliver together is something we've definitely 00:43:57.725 --> 00:43:59.624 leaned into from our product standpoint. 00:44:00.360 --> 00:44:03.445 So what would you say to the GCPM? 00:44:04.232 --> 00:44:08.545 And this is essentially me like i was you know i my background wasn't engineering 00:44:08.545 --> 00:44:15.371 uh it was business econ and and so when i got into construction as a project engineer, 00:44:15.993 --> 00:44:19.635 all of construction was a little bit of a black box and then you kind of learn 00:44:19.635 --> 00:44:24.184 okay corn shell makes a bit more sense and then mep was like oh i don't know that. 00:44:25.199 --> 00:44:30.805 And and so i i focused on trying to to you know get better and more knowledgeable 00:44:30.805 --> 00:44:32.744 about the different systems. 00:44:33.174 --> 00:44:37.418 But I do think there's a tendency on the GCPM side to just be like, 00:44:37.720 --> 00:44:39.699 I'm just going to write the contract. 00:44:40.018 --> 00:44:43.065 I'm going to submit their RFIs. I'm going to make sure their submittals are 00:44:43.065 --> 00:44:45.134 approved and then I'm going to try and stay out of their way. 00:44:46.507 --> 00:44:53.008 What would you say to those folks who are thinking about or adhering this with Stratus? 00:44:53.153 --> 00:44:57.774 And how much should a GCPM know about MEP? 00:44:59.045 --> 00:45:03.149 This, to me, goes back to what's the actual work we're doing here. 00:45:04.185 --> 00:45:10.045 Is the work submittals and RFIs or is the work getting material in place at the right schedule? 00:45:10.405 --> 00:45:13.438 And I think unless you're passionate, 00:45:15.505 --> 00:45:19.275 especially as a GC, you're really passionate about that process, 00:45:19.275 --> 00:45:24.345 the work interface, what are we doing here? Are we setting switchgear or are 00:45:24.345 --> 00:45:29.225 we submitting these RFIs and switchgear? No, the work is getting the

switchgear in place. Okay. 00:45:29.585 --> 00:45:35.235 If we embrace that, how do we as a GC think about enabling the work? 00:45:35.235 --> 00:45:40.156 And this is where you get into trade stacking, crane schedules. 00:45:41.605 --> 00:45:46.185 Just thinking about pre-constructed, prefabability or pre-construction. 00:45:46.525 --> 00:45:50.725 How are we going to, are we going to have a point in our job where the size 00:45:50.725 --> 00:45:52.117 of prefab needs to change? Okay. 00:45:52.843 --> 00:45:55.299 Let's get ahead of that. Let's talk to our trade partners and say, 00:45:55.299 --> 00:45:58.559 okay, look, it's going to get cold. We got to shut down this. 00:45:58.939 --> 00:46:02.449 I worked on a job where we lost access to a whole project one day and nobody 00:46:02.449 --> 00:46:05.556 knew because they had to seal it up to do some temperature control. 00:46:06.479 --> 00:46:09.239 Nobody knew about that. And it completely changed all of our fab. 00:46:09.559 --> 00:46:13.642 And those are the types of things, if you're not really thinking about the work, 00:46:13.932 --> 00:46:15.987 getting close to what needs to happen, 00:46:16.678 --> 00:46:21.559 you're going to make decisions that are paper-based, that are not reality-based. 00:46:21.559 --> 00:46:26.339 And, you know, I don't care what job you're in. If you're not insanely curious 00:46:26.339 --> 00:46:31.299 about the actual output, I think you're not going to deliver much value. 00:46:31.819 --> 00:46:36.458 And unfortunately, I think it's really easy today to get into construction management, 00:46:36.985 --> 00:46:43.039 and sit behind a screen and keyboard and actually never be engaged with the work itself. 00:46:43.359 --> 00:46:46.642 And because that's where we're going to get if we want to talk about efficiency 00:46:47.072 --> 00:46:53.039 that's where it's going to happen it's going to happen yeah planning coordinating systems, 00:46:53.859 --> 00:46:57.619 you know what happens actually on the job site interface is where you're going 00:46:57.619 --> 00:47:01.309 to make or break the job it's not going to be in a better submitter yeah that's 00:47:01.309 --> 00:47:05.899 that's absolutely spot on and i think there's you know in, 00:47:06.739 --> 00:47:12.149 with a pm there's so many things to focus on and and i think what i what i noticed 00:47:12.149 --> 00:47:17.839 is the folks who are good at staying on the critical path were much more successful and so, 00:47:18.519 --> 00:47:21.809 some of that's inherent some of that's learned i had a really good mentor who 00:47:21.809 --> 00:47:25.409 could have taught me that early and and kind of the risk signals to really focus 00:47:25.409 --> 00:47:31.859 on but i think you're the the idea of start with the end in mind what are we trying to do. 00:47:32.819 --> 00:47:36.699 And you could do that for anything you can do okay i'm managing the mechanical contract? 00:47:36.699 --> 00:47:39.239 What is the milestone that we're working towards right now? Okay, 00:47:39.599 --> 00:47:40.875 that's what we're trying to put in place. 00:47:41.165 --> 00:47:45.269 Let's map that backwards, submittals, logistics planning, all those things, 00:47:46.005 --> 00:47:50.957 I think that's a good thing to keep top of mind to try and stay beyond the task 00:47:50.957 --> 00:47:53.987 list because if you just focus on what's on your to-do list or what's in your 00:47:53.987 --> 00:47:59.014 email inbox, you'll never really make an impact that the site really needs you to make. 00:48:00.492 --> 00:48:06.077 And by doing that, there's a lot of mindless decisions that get made that really 00:48:06.077 --> 00:48:07.417 screw up the upstream work. 00:48:08.517 --> 00:48:13.457 A great one is joining methods on different materials, whether that's pipe or conduit or whatever. 00:48:13.777 --> 00:48:18.217 There's efficient joining methods that can really enable prefabrication. 00:48:18.217 --> 00:48:22.517 And, you know, think about like a press fitting versus a braze connection that 00:48:22.517 --> 00:48:26.412 can completely change the way you can deliver that work. 00:48:27.056 --> 00:48:30.087 But on a spec or in a cemental, it just might say one thing and everybody's 00:48:30.087 --> 00:48:34.317 like, oh, well, you know, reject, that's not in the spec without actually getting 00:48:34.317 --> 00:48:36.377 engaged and saying, okay, what are we trying to achieve here? 00:48:36.377 --> 00:48:39.297 Oh, we want to get these big rocks fabricated. We want to be able to slap them 00:48:39.297 --> 00:48:42.537 in place and not have to get up there and braze every connection. 00:48:42.537 --> 00:48:45.317 The only way we can do that is press fittings. Let's go, let's go back and think 00:48:45.317 --> 00:48:50.417 about, should this be a, if that's the work, how do we work that? 00:48:50.417 --> 00:48:54.667 How do we push that back upstream and, and, and see if we can agree as a design 00:48:54.667 --> 00:49:01.249 team to achieve that rather than just like rubber stamping yes or no on, on, on Smithers. 00:49:01.754 --> 00:49:05.437 And I'm speaking from firsthand experience on some super frustrating projects 00:49:05.437 --> 00:49:12.057 where there just wasn't enough care, enough curiosity about how work was going to get done that, 00:49:13.057 --> 00:49:15.407 you know, we really, in the end, kind of screwed over the owners at the end 00:49:15.407 --> 00:49:19.167 of the day, because, you know, we didn't, we didn't work as a construction team 00:49:19.167 --> 00:49:22.015 to think about the work. Yeah. 00:49:23.577 --> 00:49:28.154 So you're the CEO of a tech company. Obviously, you have subject matter expertise. 00:49:28.154 --> 00:49:30.549 You've got some domain expertise. 00:49:31.824 --> 00:49:36.257 How much of that, that kind of ethos of starting with the end in mind, 00:49:36.774 --> 00:49:39.973 like there's a Japanese concept of like getting into the

details, 00:49:40.724 --> 00:49:44.368 how much of that is kind of embedded in the culture at Stratus? All of it. 00:49:46.313 --> 00:49:51.384 Now, our number one core value is built with our customers. 00:49:51.684 --> 00:49:57.004 And what that means is being deeply embedded with the work. 00:49:57.726 --> 00:50:02.584 If you think about end users of Stratus, they're welders, they're pipe fitters, 00:50:02.584 --> 00:50:04.802 they're electricians, they're sheet metal workers. 00:50:05.442 --> 00:50:10.164 I always tell our team, it's not, if we were building a dog food app or something, 00:50:10.164 --> 00:50:13.144 you could probably put your head in the mind of a dog food owner and be like, 00:50:13.144 --> 00:50:16.304 okay, this is probably the buttons that should be there and how this little thing should work. 00:50:16.304 --> 00:50:20.905 And you can kind of imagine what that looks like. Like, it's very hard for anybody 00:50:21.096 --> 00:50:27.024 to know what a sheet metal worker's steps are from coming off a coil line to 00:50:27.024 --> 00:50:28.054 banging up square ducks. 00:50:28.054 --> 00:50:33.104 And that's the curiosity, the intensity that we drive through the whole business 00:50:33.104 --> 00:50:37.904 by being on site, sitting with the end users, thinking about the workflows. 00:50:38.224 --> 00:50:42.354 We try to get every single new employee in a fab shop within the first 30 days 00:50:42.354 --> 00:50:47.504 and multiple with like in the first 90 days, really at the work interface where 00:50:47.504 --> 00:50:49.694 the product's being used, where the value's being created. 00:50:49.694 --> 00:50:54.134 And, you know, whether you're an engineer or a finance person or a product manager 00:50:54.134 --> 00:50:58.200 or a salesperson, all the same, it is our core value network. 00:50:58.415 --> 00:51:00.145 It's what makes us successful. 00:51:01.253 --> 00:51:05.678 That's very cool. We're running out of time. I want to be respectful of your time. 00:51:06.718 --> 00:51:10.888 Jake, if you were to think back to your career, what is one thing that you wish 00:51:10.888 --> 00:51:14.424 you could tell young Jake kind of coming up as an up-and-comer? 00:51:14.900 --> 00:51:17.536 How would you go back, and what's the advice you'd pass on? 00:51:18.382 --> 00:51:24.958 Yeah, there's very, very little traditional career path in anything I've done. It's. 00:51:27.018 --> 00:51:28.120 Kind of been a lot of... 00:51:29.279 --> 00:51:34.692 A lot of really, for me, super interesting, various types of, 00:51:34.692 --> 00:51:37.212 I've been in the construction industry the whole time. So there's probably two 00:51:37.212 --> 00:51:39.936 common threads. One is construction, one is technology. 00:51:40.377 --> 00:51:43.518 So all the different roles have included those two concepts. 00:51:43.657 --> 00:51:49.642 But I actually think it is that broadness that helps, you know, 00:51:49.642 --> 00:51:53.372 kind of see around quarters today of having spent time and working in construction 00:51:53.372 --> 00:51:57.927 and other cultures and other corporate, you know, corporate 100s startups. 00:51:58.992 --> 00:52:03.112 It's that broadness of experience, I think, is what has really helped me. 00:52:03.552 --> 00:52:08.939 And yeah, I went and worked for a contractor as well, just to get back close to the work interface. 00:52:09.421 --> 00:52:13.582 So I think advice to young Jake would have been, I probably couldn't even been 00:52:13.582 --> 00:52:16.652 more broad and more, you know, push myself even wider. 00:52:16.652 --> 00:52:21.882 But I actually think it's the breadth that has allowed me to go have depth. 00:52:21.882 --> 00:52:28.092 And, um, and I think that's for, especially today for young kids, the being, 00:52:28.632 --> 00:52:32.342 able to have kind of a systems thinking approach to things, you, 00:52:32.342 --> 00:52:37.302 you get that by exposing yourself to more systems, not just going deep in one system. 00:52:37.302 --> 00:52:41.472 And to me, those, those are skill sets that are hyper valuable right now. 00:52:41.472 --> 00:52:48.112 And, and, you know, 20 years in one company is, to me, I wouldn't even hire 00:52:48.112 --> 00:52:49.740 that person at the moment. Yeah. 00:52:51.212 --> 00:52:55.792 I need to see that you're dynamic and you can learn and relearn. 00:52:55.792 --> 00:52:58.592 And one way you see that is if somebody has been successful in multiple, 00:52:58.592 --> 00:53:01.322 multiple different angles of, you know, of, of, of the business. 00:53:01.322 --> 00:53:04.549 So go wide would be my advice. 00:53:05.973 --> 00:53:09.996 Which is fascinating because it is kind of counter to what the advice has been 00:53:09.996 --> 00:53:14.796 in the last maybe 25, 50 years, right? Which is like, hey, let's all become 00:53:14.796 --> 00:53:16.730 specialists in this globalized economy. 00:53:17.194 --> 00:53:22.816 And I think we're getting at this point where intelligence is somewhat commoditized. 00:53:22.816 --> 00:53:27.416 And so that specialist is not so valuable. It's the person who can kind of think 00:53:27.416 --> 00:53:30.063 beyond where to point the specialist, right? 00:53:30.817 --> 00:53:34.585 And i think if i look back to my career it's just there's a similar, 00:53:35.223 --> 00:53:40.286 commonality where it's you know there was a pm stint i went into construction 00:53:40.286 --> 00:53:45.206 tech and did customer success i went outside the industry was working as a data 00:53:45.206 --> 00:53:47.376 as a service company ran r&d, 00:53:48.267 --> 00:53:54.306 and so yeah i i think to your point it is go get experiences and i think the 00:53:54.306 --> 00:53:58.242 thing that i take away from your story too is there's obviously breadth, 00:53:59.836 --> 00:54:04.336 but at breadth you had real intellectual curiosity which made you go deep in 00:54:04.336 --> 00:54:09.773 each of those experiences and we have real learnings from each experience which I think is also key. 00:54:10.536 --> 00:54:17.556 Yeah you have to be insanely curious in any role I believe I think that's the 00:54:17.556 --> 00:54:19.100 easiest key to success is. 00:54:20.696 --> 00:54:26.521 One ask one more why ask one more question spend a learn more time trying to figure out the why and, 00:54:27.434 --> 00:54:31.184 you know what you find by doing that is there's there's always people willing 00:54:31.475 --> 00:54:35.816 to teach you just have to be express the curiosity and and yeah. 00:54:37.476 --> 00:54:43.356 I i will continue to be curious and i'm sure you will too steven well you nailed 00:54:43.356 --> 00:54:47.452 it well jake thanks for your time man appreciate you coming on appreciate the conversation.