Robert: Welcome everybody. Contech Exec back here again. I'm your host, Robert Zimmerman. Today I've got my friend from ENR Future Tech and Zachary Construction, Rachel Ferreira. Is that that's right, isn't it? Ferrera. I'm getting it right this time. I think I blundered it the last time, but I try to make you know
Rachael Ferrera: I don't remember. No big deal.
Robert: Okay, well I'm doing the best I can over here, you know. And of course we got Sadie in the background. everybody's been noticing Sadie here lately. She gets closer and closer to the microphone. I think she's gonna take over at some point. but anyway, Rachel, what is going on at Zachary Construction? excited to hear about it. You said you had some good news, so I'm I'm gonna let you run with it.
Rachael Ferrera: So it was announced last Monday. This is it towards the end of August. But z we are partnered with Bedrock Robotics and that announcement's been out for a long time. But we're one of three contractors that has deployed autonomous excavators, truly autonomous excavators out on our job sites. And we have one on a data center project. Yeah,
Robert: really? wow.
Rachael Ferrera: so that's very, very exciting. it's something that is kind of additive right now. It's the it's not the finish line. A lot of people may think like, okay, we checked a box and we're moving on. It's like, no, this is this is the beginning of the autonomy. It's still developing
Robert: Yeah.
Rachael Ferrera: and growing. but it it's very exciting to to reach this milestone with them and in good company with Sunt Construction and Champion Site Prep, which is land development in the in the Austin area or site work in the Austin area. So really excited
Robert: Get you.
Rachael Ferrera: to be be working with them and just reach out milestone.
Robert: Yeah. Okay, lots of questions on on kind of this part. you mentioned the fact again it's the kind of first run. This is just the start, right? And a lot of people will say like they're never gonna buy the first run product because, you know, they're they're gonna end up with the with the lemon or whatever.
Rachael Ferrera: Mm-hmm.
Robert: but you gotta go through the growing pains. You somebody's gotta be first through the door. you know, Steve Jones says everybody wants to be first to be third and I'm like, Well somebody's still gotta be first
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah.
Robert: How does that feel right now? I mean, w what do you are you you know, I mean it's a great success, but now the really the hard work starts, right?
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah, it's I mean, you have to you have to innovate with them, right? We all bring to the table our different skills and expertise. So they bring this amazing autonomy resume with their years of work at Waymo or in Uber, and we bring the construction expertise. So they're not gonna build an asilo and it's not something we could build. We don't have the expertise to build that type of technology either. So that's what a good partnership looks like where you work in conjunction and It's not just executives, it's not just equipment operators, it's people throughout our whole organization that are providing input to their team to solve problems, not just okay, we can't get enough people into seats or we want analytics and data and information from the the data that's collected by the equipment. It's it's solving lots of pain points.
Robert: Mm-hmm.
Rachael Ferrera: and it's the collaboration with them is it's very, very exciting because if you don't contribute as as the industry, right, if we don't contribute to the technology being built, then often it's not really built for the industry. you know, they're gonna have tons of expertise on their team, but they're not gonna have a lot of people from industry on their team. They have some, but
Robert: Mm-hmm.
Rachael Ferrera: they're they're focused on the tech, right? And we need to bring the industry expertise to the table.
Robert: Yeah, I think that's a great point. Y you gotta work with people that are specialists on these things, right? you're never gonna put the tool belt on and do the house by yourself kind of thing. So you gotta work with the specialists and you gotta take their input and they're gonna take yours and so kinda you know what you're saying, you've got a nice synergistic relationship with these folks. Everybody's going really well. Kind of first week in here, let me ask you Are you getting some what's the what's the initial feedback from I'll say the field first. What's the initial feedback?
Rachael Ferrera: Okay. So the initial feedback, which this was expected, is that's not as fast as a human. And and it's not gonna be. Again, it's it's it's not there. It's where you have to they've done all the safety testing and that those are very big hurdles to surpass in order to actually be able to deploy autonomously. And then once you deploy autonomously, then you can go ahead and improve on the production and it's just gonna get better and better and I imagine at some point it's gonna surpass human capacity. not only in like if you're comparing a human working for ten hours and a machine working for ten hours, but it doesn't need restroom breaks. It doesn't have a fight with its spouse in the morning that maybe sets their day off right and they don't show up fully present to work like
Robert: Well that never happens. Come on.
Rachael Ferrera: So it doesn't have sick days. there's still maintenance of equipment. That's no different whether human or you know, autonomous
Robert: Yeah, right.
Rachael Ferrera: operations are going on. But it it's going to provide us more capacity at the end of the day. so initial feedback in the field is, well that's not as fast as I thought it was gonna be. It's that yes, and that that's not the the line that we just crossed,
Robert: Right. It's not the point.
Rachael Ferrera: right? The line we just crossed was, okay, we have autonomous. Now let's get to that human production rate and faster. So
Robert: Okay, so let's talk about that. Because, you know, one of the things that I'm a huge proponent of, one is a lot of planning, you know, like, you know, you need to put in the planning time if you're gonna have a successful output. You know. My dad was always famous for saying, you know, poor planning prevents piss poor perfor performance. You know. And so I grew up with that. And then the next part of it was you have to measure it to know where you started from. Okay. So Kinda walk me through kind of how you're gonna measure these next kind of milestones to know if, you know, this is better than the human or it ex far exceeds what the humans can do. Kind of can you walk me through that a little bit?
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah, I mean it's just gonna be looking at i are you is it capable of moving the same amount of dirt that a human can move in a day.
Robert: Yeah.
Rachael Ferrera: Right now right now we're using it to load dirt on a site job, load it into an articulated dump truck. So that's what it's doing. And yep. It's
Robert: That's all we're done. Okay.
Rachael Ferrera: it's it's a it's a very large job. We're it's one point two million yards of dirt.
Robert: Yeah, it's a lot of
Rachael Ferrera: And that's just phase one of the project and there's multiple phases. So yeah, it's it's a lot of dirt to move. So we have the capacity to have several spreads on our team that are human, all human, and we have one autonomous spread and that's we'll we'll see what it does. but
Robert: Okay. So when you say spread, is that multiple vehicles you've got three or four trucks in that autonomous rotation?
Rachael Ferrera: Yes. Like we have no no, we have sorry, we have one autonomous excavator, but we have
Robert: Okay.
Rachael Ferrera: s multiple excavators, otherwise like several fronts moving dirt. and a fleet a truck.
Robert: Sure. Okay. So you're actually able to compare you yeah, you can really compare kind of what these folks are doing over here to what the autonomous group is kind of doing and you really've got some kind of side by side metrics in the same environment.
Rachael Ferrera: Yep. Yeah, for sure. Cause we're you know, we'll know trucking wise, what trucks went how much dirt we moved with the trucks going to the humans versus how much dirt we moved with the trucks going to the autonomous excavator, so
Robert: So who do you think the safety people are more worried about, the humans or the autonomous vehicles?
Rachael Ferrera: you know what's funny is I think just because of newness, people are gonna be worried about autonomous vehicles. but if you look today, I don't I don't remember the number. I'm probably gonna be off by magnitude, whether it's three hundred million miles or whatever it is that's been operated by Waymo's,
Robert: I'm not gonna hold you two. Yeah. Yeah.
Rachael Ferrera: there's never been a fatality caused by a Waymo.
Robert: Yeah.
Rachael Ferrera: So and that's that's the same safety culture that this team has. So at the end of the day I think it will be a safer environment, but it's new, it's different. People have to learn how to engage and interact if that's gonna be any different with the equipment.
Robert: Mm.
Rachael Ferrera: Again, we're in a development stage, which is different than a full blown deployed, you know, stage that will be in the future. So people might be more afraid of it today, but I I think that's just the newness. It's different.
Robert: But you are you're using this tech on a job that's producing revenue. I mean, that's really not a pilot, right? That's a this kinda needs to work. Or did you kinda maybe factor that into the bid like, hey, by the way, we're gonna be rolling out autonomous on this job.
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah, I don't know that when we bid the job we knew we were gonna be putting an autonomous excavator on it. So we bid it with just humans. This is kind of just icing on the cake.
Robert: That's not well, I mean, that's a risk in itself, quite honestly. And it's and I get you know, kudos to you for, you know, having it having the confidence in the team. Kudos to the team for, you know, putting it all together and being ready for something like this. Again, this is something that I fairly unprecedented, right? are you guys the only ones doing this stuff right now, First Autonomous? Are you do we know any of those statistics?
Rachael Ferrera: so with the the big announcement, the media announcement that came out last Monday, so it's us, Sun Construction and Champion Site Prep. So all three of us all have autonomous excavators deployed on projects. And actually we were we were last to the party. it was not not by choice, just by contractual delays and whatnot to get actually get on site and get deployed. not with not with bedrock, just all the things that happen with these huge hyperscale projects, but
Robert: Right. Yeah, there's a lot going on there. Yeah. I get
Rachael Ferrera: yes, there is, there is. So anyway, the the other teams have been using them longer and I think actually might have more than one excavator. We literally, I mean this is we we barely squeaked by and our team and their team were phenomenal. there were l I had literally hundreds of phone calls, text messages, meetings, emails in the last couple of weeks before that announcement to just to make it happen. so
Robert: Right. that was gonna be my next question was like how did that, you know, work together? I mean, obviously they've been using doing it, and they kinda p pulled you along a little bit. That's nice.
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah, it it it I mean it was getting the project team, the regional operations team, the contractor that we're working for, the owner, all of the site safety, getting the right people deployed, the it it was it there's a ton of logistics in it and that's I'm kind of a checkbox and get get stuff done, girl. So that's I it was it was a good project for me to work on. but it just it took a lot of orchestration. So major props to both my field team that were just amazing and receptive and and they've got a project where they they're working long days, six days a week, and they managed to support this initiative as well so that Zachary could be a part of it because it's something that we want to be a part of things that are changing industry for the better. And we really feel like this is gonna be a game changer within construction.
Robert: Yeah. You know, I would ask, is it changing any bids yet? But we're still pretty new into the whole
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah.
Robert: thing. but obvious as plans as you move forward, they're probably gonna use your data, to then, you know, kinda monitor. You know, what what kind of savings is in this? What are we what's our return on all this work?
Rachael Ferrera: yeah. I mean we're gonna wanna see an ROI for sure, right?
Robert: Right.
Rachael Ferrera: I think people look at it from different lenses. So some people are gonna look at it from look at all of the hyperscale, just hyperscale construction that's slotted to happen here in the next few years.
Robert: A lot of announcements.
Rachael Ferrera: Yes. So if you just look at that and then look at yeah.
Robert: Just in Texas.
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah, just in Texas, true. Thanks Elon. but But if you just look at that and then you look at all the conversations that have been happening for years now about the shortage of workers within the construction industry, the statistic that I think it's forty percent of craft labor are supposed to retire within the next five years.
Robert: Yeah, I've heard several different things. I've
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah.
Robert: heard the statistic that I heard early on was for every seven that retire, one will be available to replace them. Lately I've heard it's f one in five. And so I don't know if the if it's that just numbers getting better because the awareness about craft labor is becoming more prominent. I mean, kids are finding out a little bit now that maybe that college education may not be a a great idea and so they're turning to the trades. I don't know, maybe that's working.
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah. I I just saw one of my friends from church, you know, they're posting the beginning of the school year pictures and kids say like what they want to be when they grow up. And they were actually doing one of those signs for their senior in high school and he had on there that he wanted to be an electrician. I was like, Yes, that's awesome. that that excites me, right? The young young folks
Robert: Yeah, I mean
Rachael Ferrera: are looking at the trades.
Robert: well, I mean Meta is Meta has its own program that they've rolled out. Google has its own program that they're rolled out. And from what I can tell from what I've heard, and I could be rumors, so don't you know hold me to this, but what I've heard is that's no strings attached. It's like you go take their program, maybe go work on their job. If you don't like it, you can skate, but they're paying good money to train you how to work on their data centers.
Rachael Ferrera: That's awesome.
Robert: yeah. I and I'm like, really? Because normally so I came up through the carpenters union. I'm not electrician, yeah, but the carpenter's union, but normally you get trained in the hall, you stay with the union, and you go back to the hall when you're out of a job. You know, that kind of thing. but it's it's kind of not that way. It's a little bit a different approach. So I I think it's I think it's interesting. But
Rachael Ferrera: Yes.
Robert: have you found and this is something I was gonna ask you, like the operators, Is there a shortage of operators? Is there a shortage of people in those seats that you that you know, that this is really filling a void for?
Rachael Ferrera: You know, for us right now, it's not that we haven't been able to hire people. but I will say, and this is not necessarily like Zachary's experience, but something that I've talked to many GCs about. I talked I leading innovation for Zachary, I like to talk to the folks that are in the same position I'm in at different companies and love that collaborative network. And a l a lot of the consensus is you can get people in seats but they don't have the skills that my operators have that have been with us thirty, forty years. Which is to be expected, right? But then the other side of that is well, ten years in they also don't have the skills I thought they'd have ten years in.
Robert: Mm.
Rachael Ferrera: and so I don't know if that's a culture thing, whatever. I mean we we We're happy with the operators that we have. We just don't if we were to go the we're on a growth trajectory right now at Zachary, we're growing, which is great. It's the plan and we're executing on it. So that's always exciting. but as we continue to grow, I don't know that we're gonna be able to hire at the rate that we're wanting to grow. And the other thing we're seeing is for these, you know, these all these hyperscale projects, the critical infrastructure projects. are all located typically in a pretty remote location. So you're not necessarily hiring in that space. And you're gonna have to bring people in and pay per diem and whatnot to bring people in. And it is actually a bit of a struggle to get folks. because it is a to me it's an an employee's market and not necessarily an employer's market. Like if you wanted to get hired, you could go get hired, right? So if you don't want to move to some remote site and work 12 hour shifts and have a double shift project and be away from your family. Yeah. For eight, 10,
Robert: Mm and accommodations.
Rachael Ferrera: 12 months, then you don't have to. And so we're we're trying to plan ahead for those type of circumstances. Or maybe it's an opportunity where you have a day shift that works a day shift and maybe you have an autonomous evening shift where you can't hire, right? You use that same piece of equipment with a human during the day and autonomy at night.
Robert: So I was thinking about that too. So i I could say that we could go on a long time on this because I I love this topic because we stop and think about it. One of the things in kind of lean construction and when you're trying to kind of develop a a flow, right? I mean you got one operator over here doing a certain amount of of work. He's really, really good. You know, I got another operator, maybe not so much experience, a little slower, right? Those same trucks maybe can't service it's there's a there's a r you're right, there's a there's a flow that has to go. We don't want this truck that's sitting here with the excavator moving, dumping, you know, into we don't want him sitting there too long. We want him, you know, pulling right up, you know.
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah, you don't want an excavator sitting idle and you don't want a truck sitting idle.
Robert: Right. So the idea is that continuous movement. It's the flow
Rachael Ferrera: Mm.
Robert: of that job and and and the flow of the the mechanized process, whatever that is. You're you're trying to get it right. And it'll be interesting to see because you know, obviously we're we're just kind of one week in, but it'll be interesting to see, you know, they're like, well, it moves a little slower than what a human would do, right? It's probably interrupting the flow a little bit, but I'd love to see it, you know, here in four or five weeks when we start to see the autonomous vehicles are really starting to kind of hit their stride a little bit and then the humans I gotta start seeing some competition, you know, like the night shift versus the day shift kind of thing. And I I really see that. I mean, that is that's fan that's fascinating.
Rachael Ferrera: Well, and I think naturally most folks in construction are competitive, you know, like yeah. So
Robert: yeah.
Rachael Ferrera: that that might bring an interesting component. I haven't actually thought on that too much, but that might actually like well you know, kind of have a hold my beer moment, like, I need I need a
Robert: Yeah. Well, okay. I I so because I come from the field and I come from that environment. There was never a time I worked on a side when I'm as a younger man, there was never a time when we weren't looking at what other guys were doing, other crews were getting done and going they're nothing compared to us. Like we have framing houses or whatever we were doing at the time, you know, it was like, no, we s we knocked that out today, you know, we're like we're number one, you know, bar none. We're the best. There's a extreme amount of competition that goes on. It's friendly, for the most part, you know, but there's a lot of I don't know it's a lot of that that happens.
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah, it does. And it's I think it's I mean it's a good thing. I have twin boys and Lord knows they're competitive. And sometimes
Robert: Yeah. Yeah.
Rachael Ferrera: I mean I want to be competitive and do their best, but sometimes I'm like, chill. It's like it's a puzzle. There are bigger things in life to be freaking out about.
Robert: Right. Well we're we're kinda getting into the existential point of the world, you know, the why we're here kinda thing. So wanna kinda dial it back in.
Rachael Ferrera: Uh-huh.
Robert: so is this the only space that you're using it autonomous stuff in right now, or you have plans, or you're gonna move it to the quarries? What i what's the what's the idea here?
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah, so we do want to move it into other spaces, especially as they move to a different classes of equipment. would love to see autonomous dirt fleets and you know, a synchronized system that just all kind of works together. And it's coming in time. I have a lot of confidence in this group. and we're looking at it for our Corey side of the business as well. The the power horse on that type of project. You have your loaders and you have your haul trucks. you do use I mean we use excavators on some of our quarries. It's but it's usually with a hammer where you're breaking down you have a blast and something isn't gonna fit into the primary crusher. It's it's more than f three or four feet depending on your primary. So you've gotta you've gotta use a hammer and make it smaller. Yeah.
Robert: Yeah, you gotta ch you gotta chip it down. Right. Yeah, make it smaller, right?
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah. So there there is space for that, but I don't think there's not a lot of that in in construction. So I don't know that that's something that's gonna be a focus as in that type that workflow or that type of work.
Robert: I gotcha.
Rachael Ferrera: whereas like loading dirt in a truck, that's half of what an excavator does. It does twenty other things the other half of the time, but half the time it's loading dirt in a truck. So that's a that's like a okay, that that's a that's a great use case for autonomy. 'Cause it's very
Robert: So
Rachael Ferrera: equal.
Robert: yeah, and so on this, 'cause we talked about this before and it was kinda like we want the autonomous vehicles to do kind of the the dull stuff. You know, we don't
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah.
Robert: need a guy, you know, running back and forth to the dump site, you know, who's a skilled operator, you know what I mean, when they could be doing other things that were far more important. So are we already, you know, kinda got plans for that or we're already kinda s I know we're in the early stages, but obviously it's like, hey, now our schedule, and the kind of like the outlook for the schedule of this is, well guess what? We can do the autonomous here and then such and such and such and such can move over here. Are we already seeing that? Have we had conversations amongst the project management group that's like, Hey, this might just work out the way we want it to?
Rachael Ferrera: You know, right now as far as like the functionality of the excavator specifically, that the roadmap for that is is bedrocks and I can't I can't really speak to that. we have NDAs in place. But it Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Robert: I no no state secrets here. Okay, okay, yeah.
Rachael Ferrera: But I I foresee where there's going to be a lot of use case is where it is that incredibly repetitive work. Because that's if you think about robotics in general. it's and autonomy, it's places where it you ha you have to have a know a large knowledge library, I guess you could say, right, to build the machine learning in order to do specific tasks. So if you have things that you do less frequently or are are very precise and particular, that may not be a good use for autonomy. At least in the beginning stages. Maybe a long roadmap I could see it being a part of the the larger path forward. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Robert: Yeah, but we're still saving the specialty stuff for for the real the human operators, right? We're definitely saving that for them to so they're not doing the doldrums, you know, driving a truck back and forth.
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah. And I see that the you know, I don't know, there may be folks that love just loading dirt in a truck all day long. But I imagine they'd rather be trenching where a pipe is gonna go in and you're having to meet a certain grade, like slope at two percent or whatever, like that that type of work I think would be just more enjoyable.
Robert: Right. Yeah, and it's definitely and it's more important too, like that more that precise work. It's it's definitely yeah, again, I get it. You don't wanna be in that part where you're sitting there, you know, just sitting in a truck waiting on a a load of dirt, you know. Because that's yeah, that's that's boring. All right, so Two contractors, one schedule. You're working with kind of a kind of a joint venture there on the on that site, right? Whose schedule holds up? everybody's got different scheduling ideas, and just kind of throw this at you.
Rachael Ferrera: Mm-hmm.
Robert: Whose schedule takes precedence on these kind of things?
Rachael Ferrera: You know, I I have not been involved at that level at all with this project. we're a subcontractor, so I I would believe as somebody who
Robert: Okay.
Rachael Ferrera: usually operates as the general contractor, your schedule is what's in charge. and we're trying to meet that schedule. But at the end of the day with any hyperscale project, the pressure is is coming from the owner, right? They It's schedule seems to be the most important component for everything we've looked at. Safety and schedule.
Robert: Mm-hmm.
Rachael Ferrera: Like price is not even a blip in the bucket, which is so weird
Robert: Really?
Rachael Ferrera: from from typically bidding DOT bid build projects where price is the entirety of how you get selected. It's really different to look look at these different types of contracts where it's like, I need to be assured that you're going to meet the schedule and you're gonna do it safely.
Robert: Yeah, hyperscalers is a different different world,
Rachael Ferrera: It is.
Robert: because they are in a real hurry to make these build outs happen.
Rachael Ferrera: To be first.
Robert: yeah, to be first, but again, there's there's a lot of moving parts to that.
Rachael Ferrera: There is, there is.
Robert: of course you gotta get the gotta get the dirt moved to get to start get the buildings in, so they they wanna get you in and out. It's likely.
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah. Yeah, and it this would be a whole nother podcast. I'm not an expert in this space at all, but I start thinking about when I see all these hyperscale projects that are slotted to happen and I start thinking about supply chain for them. And I'm like this is
Robert: It's that's what I do. Yeah. So that's my other like my other business, dentoring research, that's what I look at. I look at supply chain availability. I've calculated there's probably seventeen different metrics right now that we need to be looking at for feasibility of hyperscale builds. And it's
Rachael Ferrera: Have you graded any of them? Like okay.
Robert: I s I score them, yes, I score that's it's all it's all part of it. But yeah, it's a very interesting strange field because again, it's kinda to your point, we got DOT projects where it's all about how cheap can we get it done? You know what I mean? Timeline be damned, you know? Which which boggles my mind a little bit
Rachael Ferrera: Well, hopefully you're yeah.
Robert: because the more time I spend on the job the more money I'm gonna charge. I I just you know.
Rachael Ferrera: Well, you're you're you're paying L D's if you go over your timeline, so Yeah.
Robert: Well, yeah, I s look, that world to me is so strange. Course, if we live in Texas, it's like the state tree is the orange cone or something like that. It's it's this weird dynamic. I still don't get it. I drive by these things every day, right? And you see like the work sites and all the different whatever. I won't mention any of the companies just because you know I don't want to, you know, frustrate anybody. But
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah.
Robert: you know, I see this work going on. I'm like, why did they do that? And then I'm like, okay, well, they've still got they've got another budget behind them. that they're they're planning for it so they had to do it this way. It's again, there's a lot of a lot of things that people aren't in construction don't see and they're really tired of the orange cones, but they don't understand like the timeline and and how they have to put not just their timeline together, but they have to put it together with another timeline on another part or another street in another area for whatever, drainage, erosion control, all the different things that have to kinda go into this before and so my day when I'm driving around I'm like, okay. And then I'm sitting there driving running through my brain like, Okay, what are they planning for here? Because I'm trying to figure this out.
Rachael Ferrera: Well, and a lot of you know, i I mean, Texas is actually I would say pretty blessed. We get a lot of we get a lot of money back in the state to do infrastructure projects. Not all states do, but we also have a lot of people and we sent a lot of tax tax money to DC. so a lot does come back. But usually it's the dollar, right? It's where yeah, there may be a hundred projects that need to be completed, but right now we have money for maybe fifty of them or seventy five of them and then you're having to then have a metric at which you decide which ones make sense, like which are gonna add capacity at the right time and and it often feels like when infrastructure projects happen is far later than when they should. Like it's already really congested and now we're gonna add construction on top of that. But the reality is is you can't build a twelve lane freeway right now in anticipation of where you're gonna need it in twenty years, one, the pavement would deteriorate. say thirty, forty years, you need to be rehabbing pavement. but the capa you know, we can't spend the money here because we need to be able to spread it across the whole state. So yeah, it's it's, you know, we're always not our people's favorite folks when we're building the jobs, but once the job is done, people are usually like, This is amazing.
Robert: That is correct, Dad. Well, I gotta tell you, you're my favorite, folks. I gotta be I gotta be honest with you, 'cause I really do appreciate again, coming from the world of, you know, I've poured a little concrete, you know, I've done a little bit of all that kind of stuff, and I've worked on the road crew a time or two, so I get it. And I'm like, man, this is a thankless job. so that's one of the things. But let's kind of get back into the world of in innovation here, which is kind
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah.
Robert: of that that feel we're talking about. How How do you think I guess tech moves into this? Because again, how does it move into this sector sector to kind of help in these in these situations?
Rachael Ferrera: I will say there are definitely different categories, I guess you could say, of startups or different caliber of startups. There are a lot of people, first of all, Silicon Valley has finally discovered the construction industry and how laggered we are and and a lot of folks come in that have no industry expertise. Sometimes they don't even want input from anybody in the industry. And I'd say that's probably a very wrong way to build tech for this industry. and so they come in with something bright, shiny and new but have never gotten dirt on a pair of boots or even owned a pair of boots, never put on a hard hat.
Robert: That's yeah. I've had several people reach out to me, trying to pick my brain about where they should, you know, enter the construction space. And I'm like, Well there's you know, there's a lot of doors.
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah, there are, there are. so you do have that type of tech folks that come into the industry, they've built something maybe really cool that's financial tech related and they think it could also apply to construction and so are trying to pivot and also get into this market. and those are not typically the the things that I think end up being successful. The ones that are successful are the ones who are working alongside a contractor. Either they've brought somebody onto their team that
Robert: Mm-hmm.
Rachael Ferrera: is from the construction space, or sometimes founders are folks that they worked in construction. Maybe they their dad had a construction company and they worked in their dad's company and but they really liked computer science or got a degree in something different and they're like, this is a terrible pain point. We need to solve let's let's talk about the thing that every I feel like most tech years ago, let's solve RFIs, let's solve submittals. And so anyway, they they they lived it a little bit and they're trying to find a solution. But a lot of times they may not have they have the expertise of just their family's company. they do need to make sure that they get other perspectives.
Robert: Mm-hmm.
Rachael Ferrera: and so those I think those technologies can often be successful, but the the ones that seem to be the most successful are where they're gonna bring their domain experience and they're gonna partner with a contractor or several contractors is the right solution and and truly collaborate. Okay,
Robert: Right. And build it from there. Mm-hmm.
Rachael Ferrera: let me teach you a little bit about how this technology works and what it's capable of. Now tell me what pain points you're having and how we can solve those and then let's iterate and let's work together. It's not like, let's have one meeting, okay, let's go work in our own corners and build something and deliver you You know, it's agile development and that that's where I see the most success. Or that's where at least we've seen the most success in Sachary.
Robert: Yeah, that's and that's difficult to yeah, and it has to be the right partnership there because it's difficult kind of w like we were talking before. Maybe training is a culture thing, right? Maybe we haven't trained our folks up enough because now we're starting to see the results of kind of when we missed. And then the the tech side of the world. Right? It's it's not you know, we hit our hand with a it we hit her thumb with the hammer and don't do that again kind of thing. It's like, well, we made this mistake, let's tweak and then kinda do this and let's well, let's try this. And some folks just don't have the patience for that. Again, it has to have the right partnership, in that space, to to get where it's going. I was really more talking about where do you think we're going with this autonomous sector that you're into. No, I
Rachael Ferrera: okay. Sorry.
Robert: love I mean we can go I say we can go anywhere we want to go. I was
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah, yeah.
Robert: but I'm I'm trying to get your thoughts on where do we go from here? I mean we're brand new into this, you know, thing, but I'm sure you see you know possibilities, things that you're imagining next. W can what is that? What do you see?
Rachael Ferrera: You know, I think the thing that we would love to see is we do a lot of earthwork, whether it be a heavy highway job or a hyperscale project, we would love to see kind of an autonomous fleet that could all work together. Like you give it whatever goals, whether that's cut to a certain grade or or you need to excavate out twelve feet, whatever whatever the rule may be, but you give it a directive and then it just does itself. that is that would be amazing. and I think a lot of the stuff around autonomous equipment thus far has been more rule prescriptive of work inside this geo fence, do this, and you're you're passing it, you're telling it precisely what to do, which
Robert: Mm-hmm.
Rachael Ferrera: is still solving a problem and still an advancement within technology.
Robert: It's yeah.
Rachael Ferrera: I don't know that I define that necessarily as real autonomy. I think what we're excited about is is are we gonna have a fleet of equipment, not a whole a whole fleet, say a a spread, a group of equipment, a crew, quote unquote a crew work autonomously together. that's something that we're excited about and we hope is is in In the near future.
Robert: That's well I and that seems like it's a long way off, but it's really not, right? I mean it's
Rachael Ferrera: I think it may be sooner than people people expect, honestly. I don't know. We'll see. I think what's most important is maintaining the safety on the sites and not cutting any corners in order to meet objectives because Safety is is key, is paramount, right? every day we want to send every single employee home the same way they showed up at the job site. and so meet those goals but do it in a manner that it is doing it the right way, I guess is a simpler way to put it. Just do it the right way. Take care of people.
Robert: Yeah. It's so it's fascinating me. I I because it almost it it gets into the air of, you know, that kind of robotic technology as well. autonomous robots and, you know, humanoids and and those types of things. So it gets into that whole it's this weird space that quite honestly, I think as a kid, you know, I'm I'm I read about it, I read about it in comic books and and stuff like that where it's like but now We're actually in the age of AI and we're actually kind of living this on the front end. I wanna know b you know, before we get too far along, you've been out on the site, you've s you've seen it happen, you've seen it working. First thoughts when you just when it f w you know, opening day or whatever it was, when you you when you saw it working and you and you what was the feeling? Kind of give me the
Rachael Ferrera: gosh. I think it was it was relief in that I
Robert: I love that.
Rachael Ferrera: well and and and maybe because there's maybe a little bit different goal than one would expect, but we we knew when the media announcements were gonna be and we knew when we had to achieve this by in order to be a part of that. And there's only gonna be one First contractors using autonomous excavators, right? After
Robert: Yeah.
Rachael Ferrera: this, you're no longer the first. And so it it was a lot of pressure and relief that we made the cutoffs. Again, not because of anything my project team was doing, and not anything because of what Bedrock was doing, but stuff just kept sliding and sliding and sliding. It's like and I will say that that They executed in about a quarter of the time than what they normally execute. And that's how fast this atom this tech is evolving. so anyway, it wa I think it was relief. Like, okay, thank God it it happened. Okay. Now now we can proceed with all the media stuff that we need to proceed with and then and then Yeah,
Robert: Yeah. And then get back to work, right?
Rachael Ferrera: go back to work. Exactly. Exactly.
Robert: Okay. Next milestone for you for you folks on kind of this thing. What do you what do you hope to see?
Rachael Ferrera: I think next milestone is it is it meeting the same productions as a human. So being able to load a truck in the same cycle times that a human can.
Robert: have any numbers on thinking when that's gonna happen? Is that six weeks, is that eight weeks or or is that state secrets? All
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah. Stay secrets.
Robert: right, that's totally fine. I have to ask the questions, right? You know, if you'll interviewing
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Robert: So, okay. Well, relief, you've got work ahead of you. Where Do you do you stay on this same focus or is there a is there a new job on the horizon?
Rachael Ferrera: Are you talking about with autonomy or
Robert: no with Zachary and autonomy, you've kind of you got the kickoff date, now you're kind
Rachael Ferrera: No.
Robert: of now monitoring progress. There's gotta be a next one, right? Or is there
Rachael Ferrera: yeah, definitely, definitely.
Robert: like a next three, an X five?
Rachael Ferrera: There's it's that's also kind of state secrets, but there's there's a handful of things in progress. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Robert: Very good. Very well, I would like to, you know, have the exclusive on anything new, of course, but you know,
Rachael Ferrera: Ha ha ha.
Robert: that's probably never gonna happen. There's a lot of lot of bigger fish out there than me in the in the media space. But I really do appreciate your time with me today and just I know it's taken a while and I knew what was kinda going on a little bit from the, you know, kind of research in the background. You and I have been trying to pull this podcast off since we met at E and R. So you've been real busy.
Rachael Ferrera: The other way.
Robert: Yeah, yeah. You've been real, real busy and I am happy for you. I say congratulations on this. It's a it's a fantastic accomplishment.
Rachael Ferrera: It's ex it's been exciting. It took a huge team. I get to be kinda the person in the middle that makes all the things happen, but and sometimes being the spotlight and be the the talking head, but there's a huge team behind me, both exactly and bedrock. So props to all of them and all the hard work that they're truly putting in 'cause it without them it we wouldn't be there. So I I can I can push so much, but they actually have to do the moving, so yeah. It's exciting. Yeah.
Robert: Yeah, that's right. And and folks on that note Please remember that if you're a G C or if you're a subcontractor, you're whatever you are in the loop, folks, your contribution matters. It does not come down to one person, it comes down to the whole team working together in order to accomplish these goals. And we're going to find this out more and more as we move into these hyperscaler days, what I call them. You know, these hyperscale bids are extremely important. Lots of controversy around them, but they are extremely important for many, many reasons, and you will start to see some of the things that are going on here at the Contech Exec start to shift from toward what those solutions look like for those hyperscale builds because of the vital importance to them. so I hope you guys all stay tuned. But until then, Rachel, thank you so much for being with me today. I really do appreciate it. And I look forward to having you on again where we're gonna talk about these next projects, even though they're state steak state secrets right now.
Rachael Ferrera: Well, you know, once contracts are executed then things are different. But Yeah.
Robert: That's right, that's right. Let's make sure we've signed on the dotted line.
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah. Well thank you having me again on Robert and good to meet Sadie this time, so Yeah.
Robert: She's she's so excited. Look at her. She she fired up.
Rachael Ferrera: She's much quieter than mine, man. Thank you so much.
Robert: Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's a good girl. Thank you. All right.
Rachael Ferrera: I don't remember. No big deal.
Robert: Okay, well I'm doing the best I can over here, you know. And of course we got Sadie in the background. everybody's been noticing Sadie here lately. She gets closer and closer to the microphone. I think she's gonna take over at some point. but anyway, Rachel, what is going on at Zachary Construction? excited to hear about it. You said you had some good news, so I'm I'm gonna let you run with it.
Rachael Ferrera: So it was announced last Monday. This is it towards the end of August. But z we are partnered with Bedrock Robotics and that announcement's been out for a long time. But we're one of three contractors that has deployed autonomous excavators, truly autonomous excavators out on our job sites. And we have one on a data center project. Yeah,
Robert: really? wow.
Rachael Ferrera: so that's very, very exciting. it's something that is kind of additive right now. It's the it's not the finish line. A lot of people may think like, okay, we checked a box and we're moving on. It's like, no, this is this is the beginning of the autonomy. It's still developing
Robert: Yeah.
Rachael Ferrera: and growing. but it it's very exciting to to reach this milestone with them and in good company with Sunt Construction and Champion Site Prep, which is land development in the in the Austin area or site work in the Austin area. So really excited
Robert: Get you.
Rachael Ferrera: to be be working with them and just reach out milestone.
Robert: Yeah. Okay, lots of questions on on kind of this part. you mentioned the fact again it's the kind of first run. This is just the start, right? And a lot of people will say like they're never gonna buy the first run product because, you know, they're they're gonna end up with the with the lemon or whatever.
Rachael Ferrera: Mm-hmm.
Robert: but you gotta go through the growing pains. You somebody's gotta be first through the door. you know, Steve Jones says everybody wants to be first to be third and I'm like, Well somebody's still gotta be first
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah.
Robert: How does that feel right now? I mean, w what do you are you you know, I mean it's a great success, but now the really the hard work starts, right?
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah, it's I mean, you have to you have to innovate with them, right? We all bring to the table our different skills and expertise. So they bring this amazing autonomy resume with their years of work at Waymo or in Uber, and we bring the construction expertise. So they're not gonna build an asilo and it's not something we could build. We don't have the expertise to build that type of technology either. So that's what a good partnership looks like where you work in conjunction and It's not just executives, it's not just equipment operators, it's people throughout our whole organization that are providing input to their team to solve problems, not just okay, we can't get enough people into seats or we want analytics and data and information from the the data that's collected by the equipment. It's it's solving lots of pain points.
Robert: Mm-hmm.
Rachael Ferrera: and it's the collaboration with them is it's very, very exciting because if you don't contribute as as the industry, right, if we don't contribute to the technology being built, then often it's not really built for the industry. you know, they're gonna have tons of expertise on their team, but they're not gonna have a lot of people from industry on their team. They have some, but
Robert: Mm-hmm.
Rachael Ferrera: they're they're focused on the tech, right? And we need to bring the industry expertise to the table.
Robert: Yeah, I think that's a great point. Y you gotta work with people that are specialists on these things, right? you're never gonna put the tool belt on and do the house by yourself kind of thing. So you gotta work with the specialists and you gotta take their input and they're gonna take yours and so kinda you know what you're saying, you've got a nice synergistic relationship with these folks. Everybody's going really well. Kind of first week in here, let me ask you Are you getting some what's the what's the initial feedback from I'll say the field first. What's the initial feedback?
Rachael Ferrera: Okay. So the initial feedback, which this was expected, is that's not as fast as a human. And and it's not gonna be. Again, it's it's it's not there. It's where you have to they've done all the safety testing and that those are very big hurdles to surpass in order to actually be able to deploy autonomously. And then once you deploy autonomously, then you can go ahead and improve on the production and it's just gonna get better and better and I imagine at some point it's gonna surpass human capacity. not only in like if you're comparing a human working for ten hours and a machine working for ten hours, but it doesn't need restroom breaks. It doesn't have a fight with its spouse in the morning that maybe sets their day off right and they don't show up fully present to work like
Robert: Well that never happens. Come on.
Rachael Ferrera: So it doesn't have sick days. there's still maintenance of equipment. That's no different whether human or you know, autonomous
Robert: Yeah, right.
Rachael Ferrera: operations are going on. But it it's going to provide us more capacity at the end of the day. so initial feedback in the field is, well that's not as fast as I thought it was gonna be. It's that yes, and that that's not the the line that we just crossed,
Robert: Right. It's not the point.
Rachael Ferrera: right? The line we just crossed was, okay, we have autonomous. Now let's get to that human production rate and faster. So
Robert: Okay, so let's talk about that. Because, you know, one of the things that I'm a huge proponent of, one is a lot of planning, you know, like, you know, you need to put in the planning time if you're gonna have a successful output. You know. My dad was always famous for saying, you know, poor planning prevents piss poor perfor performance. You know. And so I grew up with that. And then the next part of it was you have to measure it to know where you started from. Okay. So Kinda walk me through kind of how you're gonna measure these next kind of milestones to know if, you know, this is better than the human or it ex far exceeds what the humans can do. Kind of can you walk me through that a little bit?
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah, I mean it's just gonna be looking at i are you is it capable of moving the same amount of dirt that a human can move in a day.
Robert: Yeah.
Rachael Ferrera: Right now right now we're using it to load dirt on a site job, load it into an articulated dump truck. So that's what it's doing. And yep. It's
Robert: That's all we're done. Okay.
Rachael Ferrera: it's it's a it's a very large job. We're it's one point two million yards of dirt.
Robert: Yeah, it's a lot of
Rachael Ferrera: And that's just phase one of the project and there's multiple phases. So yeah, it's it's a lot of dirt to move. So we have the capacity to have several spreads on our team that are human, all human, and we have one autonomous spread and that's we'll we'll see what it does. but
Robert: Okay. So when you say spread, is that multiple vehicles you've got three or four trucks in that autonomous rotation?
Rachael Ferrera: Yes. Like we have no no, we have sorry, we have one autonomous excavator, but we have
Robert: Okay.
Rachael Ferrera: s multiple excavators, otherwise like several fronts moving dirt. and a fleet a truck.
Robert: Sure. Okay. So you're actually able to compare you yeah, you can really compare kind of what these folks are doing over here to what the autonomous group is kind of doing and you really've got some kind of side by side metrics in the same environment.
Rachael Ferrera: Yep. Yeah, for sure. Cause we're you know, we'll know trucking wise, what trucks went how much dirt we moved with the trucks going to the humans versus how much dirt we moved with the trucks going to the autonomous excavator, so
Robert: So who do you think the safety people are more worried about, the humans or the autonomous vehicles?
Rachael Ferrera: you know what's funny is I think just because of newness, people are gonna be worried about autonomous vehicles. but if you look today, I don't I don't remember the number. I'm probably gonna be off by magnitude, whether it's three hundred million miles or whatever it is that's been operated by Waymo's,
Robert: I'm not gonna hold you two. Yeah. Yeah.
Rachael Ferrera: there's never been a fatality caused by a Waymo.
Robert: Yeah.
Rachael Ferrera: So and that's that's the same safety culture that this team has. So at the end of the day I think it will be a safer environment, but it's new, it's different. People have to learn how to engage and interact if that's gonna be any different with the equipment.
Robert: Mm.
Rachael Ferrera: Again, we're in a development stage, which is different than a full blown deployed, you know, stage that will be in the future. So people might be more afraid of it today, but I I think that's just the newness. It's different.
Robert: But you are you're using this tech on a job that's producing revenue. I mean, that's really not a pilot, right? That's a this kinda needs to work. Or did you kinda maybe factor that into the bid like, hey, by the way, we're gonna be rolling out autonomous on this job.
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah, I don't know that when we bid the job we knew we were gonna be putting an autonomous excavator on it. So we bid it with just humans. This is kind of just icing on the cake.
Robert: That's not well, I mean, that's a risk in itself, quite honestly. And it's and I get you know, kudos to you for, you know, having it having the confidence in the team. Kudos to the team for, you know, putting it all together and being ready for something like this. Again, this is something that I fairly unprecedented, right? are you guys the only ones doing this stuff right now, First Autonomous? Are you do we know any of those statistics?
Rachael Ferrera: so with the the big announcement, the media announcement that came out last Monday, so it's us, Sun Construction and Champion Site Prep. So all three of us all have autonomous excavators deployed on projects. And actually we were we were last to the party. it was not not by choice, just by contractual delays and whatnot to get actually get on site and get deployed. not with not with bedrock, just all the things that happen with these huge hyperscale projects, but
Robert: Right. Yeah, there's a lot going on there. Yeah. I get
Rachael Ferrera: yes, there is, there is. So anyway, the the other teams have been using them longer and I think actually might have more than one excavator. We literally, I mean this is we we barely squeaked by and our team and their team were phenomenal. there were l I had literally hundreds of phone calls, text messages, meetings, emails in the last couple of weeks before that announcement to just to make it happen. so
Robert: Right. that was gonna be my next question was like how did that, you know, work together? I mean, obviously they've been using doing it, and they kinda p pulled you along a little bit. That's nice.
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah, it it it I mean it was getting the project team, the regional operations team, the contractor that we're working for, the owner, all of the site safety, getting the right people deployed, the it it was it there's a ton of logistics in it and that's I'm kind of a checkbox and get get stuff done, girl. So that's I it was it was a good project for me to work on. but it just it took a lot of orchestration. So major props to both my field team that were just amazing and receptive and and they've got a project where they they're working long days, six days a week, and they managed to support this initiative as well so that Zachary could be a part of it because it's something that we want to be a part of things that are changing industry for the better. And we really feel like this is gonna be a game changer within construction.
Robert: Yeah. You know, I would ask, is it changing any bids yet? But we're still pretty new into the whole
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah.
Robert: thing. but obvious as plans as you move forward, they're probably gonna use your data, to then, you know, kinda monitor. You know, what what kind of savings is in this? What are we what's our return on all this work?
Rachael Ferrera: yeah. I mean we're gonna wanna see an ROI for sure, right?
Robert: Right.
Rachael Ferrera: I think people look at it from different lenses. So some people are gonna look at it from look at all of the hyperscale, just hyperscale construction that's slotted to happen here in the next few years.
Robert: A lot of announcements.
Rachael Ferrera: Yes. So if you just look at that and then look at yeah.
Robert: Just in Texas.
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah, just in Texas, true. Thanks Elon. but But if you just look at that and then you look at all the conversations that have been happening for years now about the shortage of workers within the construction industry, the statistic that I think it's forty percent of craft labor are supposed to retire within the next five years.
Robert: Yeah, I've heard several different things. I've
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah.
Robert: heard the statistic that I heard early on was for every seven that retire, one will be available to replace them. Lately I've heard it's f one in five. And so I don't know if the if it's that just numbers getting better because the awareness about craft labor is becoming more prominent. I mean, kids are finding out a little bit now that maybe that college education may not be a a great idea and so they're turning to the trades. I don't know, maybe that's working.
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah. I I just saw one of my friends from church, you know, they're posting the beginning of the school year pictures and kids say like what they want to be when they grow up. And they were actually doing one of those signs for their senior in high school and he had on there that he wanted to be an electrician. I was like, Yes, that's awesome. that that excites me, right? The young young folks
Robert: Yeah, I mean
Rachael Ferrera: are looking at the trades.
Robert: well, I mean Meta is Meta has its own program that they've rolled out. Google has its own program that they're rolled out. And from what I can tell from what I've heard, and I could be rumors, so don't you know hold me to this, but what I've heard is that's no strings attached. It's like you go take their program, maybe go work on their job. If you don't like it, you can skate, but they're paying good money to train you how to work on their data centers.
Rachael Ferrera: That's awesome.
Robert: yeah. I and I'm like, really? Because normally so I came up through the carpenters union. I'm not electrician, yeah, but the carpenter's union, but normally you get trained in the hall, you stay with the union, and you go back to the hall when you're out of a job. You know, that kind of thing. but it's it's kind of not that way. It's a little bit a different approach. So I I think it's I think it's interesting. But
Rachael Ferrera: Yes.
Robert: have you found and this is something I was gonna ask you, like the operators, Is there a shortage of operators? Is there a shortage of people in those seats that you that you know, that this is really filling a void for?
Rachael Ferrera: You know, for us right now, it's not that we haven't been able to hire people. but I will say, and this is not necessarily like Zachary's experience, but something that I've talked to many GCs about. I talked I leading innovation for Zachary, I like to talk to the folks that are in the same position I'm in at different companies and love that collaborative network. And a l a lot of the consensus is you can get people in seats but they don't have the skills that my operators have that have been with us thirty, forty years. Which is to be expected, right? But then the other side of that is well, ten years in they also don't have the skills I thought they'd have ten years in.
Robert: Mm.
Rachael Ferrera: and so I don't know if that's a culture thing, whatever. I mean we we We're happy with the operators that we have. We just don't if we were to go the we're on a growth trajectory right now at Zachary, we're growing, which is great. It's the plan and we're executing on it. So that's always exciting. but as we continue to grow, I don't know that we're gonna be able to hire at the rate that we're wanting to grow. And the other thing we're seeing is for these, you know, these all these hyperscale projects, the critical infrastructure projects. are all located typically in a pretty remote location. So you're not necessarily hiring in that space. And you're gonna have to bring people in and pay per diem and whatnot to bring people in. And it is actually a bit of a struggle to get folks. because it is a to me it's an an employee's market and not necessarily an employer's market. Like if you wanted to get hired, you could go get hired, right? So if you don't want to move to some remote site and work 12 hour shifts and have a double shift project and be away from your family. Yeah. For eight, 10,
Robert: Mm and accommodations.
Rachael Ferrera: 12 months, then you don't have to. And so we're we're trying to plan ahead for those type of circumstances. Or maybe it's an opportunity where you have a day shift that works a day shift and maybe you have an autonomous evening shift where you can't hire, right? You use that same piece of equipment with a human during the day and autonomy at night.
Robert: So I was thinking about that too. So i I could say that we could go on a long time on this because I I love this topic because we stop and think about it. One of the things in kind of lean construction and when you're trying to kind of develop a a flow, right? I mean you got one operator over here doing a certain amount of of work. He's really, really good. You know, I got another operator, maybe not so much experience, a little slower, right? Those same trucks maybe can't service it's there's a there's a r you're right, there's a there's a flow that has to go. We don't want this truck that's sitting here with the excavator moving, dumping, you know, into we don't want him sitting there too long. We want him, you know, pulling right up, you know.
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah, you don't want an excavator sitting idle and you don't want a truck sitting idle.
Robert: Right. So the idea is that continuous movement. It's the flow
Rachael Ferrera: Mm.
Robert: of that job and and and the flow of the the mechanized process, whatever that is. You're you're trying to get it right. And it'll be interesting to see because you know, obviously we're we're just kind of one week in, but it'll be interesting to see, you know, they're like, well, it moves a little slower than what a human would do, right? It's probably interrupting the flow a little bit, but I'd love to see it, you know, here in four or five weeks when we start to see the autonomous vehicles are really starting to kind of hit their stride a little bit and then the humans I gotta start seeing some competition, you know, like the night shift versus the day shift kind of thing. And I I really see that. I mean, that is that's fan that's fascinating.
Rachael Ferrera: Well, and I think naturally most folks in construction are competitive, you know, like yeah. So
Robert: yeah.
Rachael Ferrera: that that might bring an interesting component. I haven't actually thought on that too much, but that might actually like well you know, kind of have a hold my beer moment, like, I need I need a
Robert: Yeah. Well, okay. I I so because I come from the field and I come from that environment. There was never a time I worked on a side when I'm as a younger man, there was never a time when we weren't looking at what other guys were doing, other crews were getting done and going they're nothing compared to us. Like we have framing houses or whatever we were doing at the time, you know, it was like, no, we s we knocked that out today, you know, we're like we're number one, you know, bar none. We're the best. There's a extreme amount of competition that goes on. It's friendly, for the most part, you know, but there's a lot of I don't know it's a lot of that that happens.
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah, it does. And it's I think it's I mean it's a good thing. I have twin boys and Lord knows they're competitive. And sometimes
Robert: Yeah. Yeah.
Rachael Ferrera: I mean I want to be competitive and do their best, but sometimes I'm like, chill. It's like it's a puzzle. There are bigger things in life to be freaking out about.
Robert: Right. Well we're we're kinda getting into the existential point of the world, you know, the why we're here kinda thing. So wanna kinda dial it back in.
Rachael Ferrera: Uh-huh.
Robert: so is this the only space that you're using it autonomous stuff in right now, or you have plans, or you're gonna move it to the quarries? What i what's the what's the idea here?
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah, so we do want to move it into other spaces, especially as they move to a different classes of equipment. would love to see autonomous dirt fleets and you know, a synchronized system that just all kind of works together. And it's coming in time. I have a lot of confidence in this group. and we're looking at it for our Corey side of the business as well. The the power horse on that type of project. You have your loaders and you have your haul trucks. you do use I mean we use excavators on some of our quarries. It's but it's usually with a hammer where you're breaking down you have a blast and something isn't gonna fit into the primary crusher. It's it's more than f three or four feet depending on your primary. So you've gotta you've gotta use a hammer and make it smaller. Yeah.
Robert: Yeah, you gotta ch you gotta chip it down. Right. Yeah, make it smaller, right?
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah. So there there is space for that, but I don't think there's not a lot of that in in construction. So I don't know that that's something that's gonna be a focus as in that type that workflow or that type of work.
Robert: I gotcha.
Rachael Ferrera: whereas like loading dirt in a truck, that's half of what an excavator does. It does twenty other things the other half of the time, but half the time it's loading dirt in a truck. So that's a that's like a okay, that that's a that's a great use case for autonomy. 'Cause it's very
Robert: So
Rachael Ferrera: equal.
Robert: yeah, and so on this, 'cause we talked about this before and it was kinda like we want the autonomous vehicles to do kind of the the dull stuff. You know, we don't
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah.
Robert: need a guy, you know, running back and forth to the dump site, you know, who's a skilled operator, you know what I mean, when they could be doing other things that were far more important. So are we already, you know, kinda got plans for that or we're already kinda s I know we're in the early stages, but obviously it's like, hey, now our schedule, and the kind of like the outlook for the schedule of this is, well guess what? We can do the autonomous here and then such and such and such and such can move over here. Are we already seeing that? Have we had conversations amongst the project management group that's like, Hey, this might just work out the way we want it to?
Rachael Ferrera: You know, right now as far as like the functionality of the excavator specifically, that the roadmap for that is is bedrocks and I can't I can't really speak to that. we have NDAs in place. But it Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Robert: I no no state secrets here. Okay, okay, yeah.
Rachael Ferrera: But I I foresee where there's going to be a lot of use case is where it is that incredibly repetitive work. Because that's if you think about robotics in general. it's and autonomy, it's places where it you ha you have to have a know a large knowledge library, I guess you could say, right, to build the machine learning in order to do specific tasks. So if you have things that you do less frequently or are are very precise and particular, that may not be a good use for autonomy. At least in the beginning stages. Maybe a long roadmap I could see it being a part of the the larger path forward. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Robert: Yeah, but we're still saving the specialty stuff for for the real the human operators, right? We're definitely saving that for them to so they're not doing the doldrums, you know, driving a truck back and forth.
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah. And I see that the you know, I don't know, there may be folks that love just loading dirt in a truck all day long. But I imagine they'd rather be trenching where a pipe is gonna go in and you're having to meet a certain grade, like slope at two percent or whatever, like that that type of work I think would be just more enjoyable.
Robert: Right. Yeah, and it's definitely and it's more important too, like that more that precise work. It's it's definitely yeah, again, I get it. You don't wanna be in that part where you're sitting there, you know, just sitting in a truck waiting on a a load of dirt, you know. Because that's yeah, that's that's boring. All right, so Two contractors, one schedule. You're working with kind of a kind of a joint venture there on the on that site, right? Whose schedule holds up? everybody's got different scheduling ideas, and just kind of throw this at you.
Rachael Ferrera: Mm-hmm.
Robert: Whose schedule takes precedence on these kind of things?
Rachael Ferrera: You know, I I have not been involved at that level at all with this project. we're a subcontractor, so I I would believe as somebody who
Robert: Okay.
Rachael Ferrera: usually operates as the general contractor, your schedule is what's in charge. and we're trying to meet that schedule. But at the end of the day with any hyperscale project, the pressure is is coming from the owner, right? They It's schedule seems to be the most important component for everything we've looked at. Safety and schedule.
Robert: Mm-hmm.
Rachael Ferrera: Like price is not even a blip in the bucket, which is so weird
Robert: Really?
Rachael Ferrera: from from typically bidding DOT bid build projects where price is the entirety of how you get selected. It's really different to look look at these different types of contracts where it's like, I need to be assured that you're going to meet the schedule and you're gonna do it safely.
Robert: Yeah, hyperscalers is a different different world,
Rachael Ferrera: It is.
Robert: because they are in a real hurry to make these build outs happen.
Rachael Ferrera: To be first.
Robert: yeah, to be first, but again, there's there's a lot of moving parts to that.
Rachael Ferrera: There is, there is.
Robert: of course you gotta get the gotta get the dirt moved to get to start get the buildings in, so they they wanna get you in and out. It's likely.
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah. Yeah, and it this would be a whole nother podcast. I'm not an expert in this space at all, but I start thinking about when I see all these hyperscale projects that are slotted to happen and I start thinking about supply chain for them. And I'm like this is
Robert: It's that's what I do. Yeah. So that's my other like my other business, dentoring research, that's what I look at. I look at supply chain availability. I've calculated there's probably seventeen different metrics right now that we need to be looking at for feasibility of hyperscale builds. And it's
Rachael Ferrera: Have you graded any of them? Like okay.
Robert: I s I score them, yes, I score that's it's all it's all part of it. But yeah, it's a very interesting strange field because again, it's kinda to your point, we got DOT projects where it's all about how cheap can we get it done? You know what I mean? Timeline be damned, you know? Which which boggles my mind a little bit
Rachael Ferrera: Well, hopefully you're yeah.
Robert: because the more time I spend on the job the more money I'm gonna charge. I I just you know.
Rachael Ferrera: Well, you're you're you're paying L D's if you go over your timeline, so Yeah.
Robert: Well, yeah, I s look, that world to me is so strange. Course, if we live in Texas, it's like the state tree is the orange cone or something like that. It's it's this weird dynamic. I still don't get it. I drive by these things every day, right? And you see like the work sites and all the different whatever. I won't mention any of the companies just because you know I don't want to, you know, frustrate anybody. But
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah.
Robert: you know, I see this work going on. I'm like, why did they do that? And then I'm like, okay, well, they've still got they've got another budget behind them. that they're they're planning for it so they had to do it this way. It's again, there's a lot of a lot of things that people aren't in construction don't see and they're really tired of the orange cones, but they don't understand like the timeline and and how they have to put not just their timeline together, but they have to put it together with another timeline on another part or another street in another area for whatever, drainage, erosion control, all the different things that have to kinda go into this before and so my day when I'm driving around I'm like, okay. And then I'm sitting there driving running through my brain like, Okay, what are they planning for here? Because I'm trying to figure this out.
Rachael Ferrera: Well, and a lot of you know, i I mean, Texas is actually I would say pretty blessed. We get a lot of we get a lot of money back in the state to do infrastructure projects. Not all states do, but we also have a lot of people and we sent a lot of tax tax money to DC. so a lot does come back. But usually it's the dollar, right? It's where yeah, there may be a hundred projects that need to be completed, but right now we have money for maybe fifty of them or seventy five of them and then you're having to then have a metric at which you decide which ones make sense, like which are gonna add capacity at the right time and and it often feels like when infrastructure projects happen is far later than when they should. Like it's already really congested and now we're gonna add construction on top of that. But the reality is is you can't build a twelve lane freeway right now in anticipation of where you're gonna need it in twenty years, one, the pavement would deteriorate. say thirty, forty years, you need to be rehabbing pavement. but the capa you know, we can't spend the money here because we need to be able to spread it across the whole state. So yeah, it's it's, you know, we're always not our people's favorite folks when we're building the jobs, but once the job is done, people are usually like, This is amazing.
Robert: That is correct, Dad. Well, I gotta tell you, you're my favorite, folks. I gotta be I gotta be honest with you, 'cause I really do appreciate again, coming from the world of, you know, I've poured a little concrete, you know, I've done a little bit of all that kind of stuff, and I've worked on the road crew a time or two, so I get it. And I'm like, man, this is a thankless job. so that's one of the things. But let's kind of get back into the world of in innovation here, which is kind
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah.
Robert: of that that feel we're talking about. How How do you think I guess tech moves into this? Because again, how does it move into this sector sector to kind of help in these in these situations?
Rachael Ferrera: I will say there are definitely different categories, I guess you could say, of startups or different caliber of startups. There are a lot of people, first of all, Silicon Valley has finally discovered the construction industry and how laggered we are and and a lot of folks come in that have no industry expertise. Sometimes they don't even want input from anybody in the industry. And I'd say that's probably a very wrong way to build tech for this industry. and so they come in with something bright, shiny and new but have never gotten dirt on a pair of boots or even owned a pair of boots, never put on a hard hat.
Robert: That's yeah. I've had several people reach out to me, trying to pick my brain about where they should, you know, enter the construction space. And I'm like, Well there's you know, there's a lot of doors.
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah, there are, there are. so you do have that type of tech folks that come into the industry, they've built something maybe really cool that's financial tech related and they think it could also apply to construction and so are trying to pivot and also get into this market. and those are not typically the the things that I think end up being successful. The ones that are successful are the ones who are working alongside a contractor. Either they've brought somebody onto their team that
Robert: Mm-hmm.
Rachael Ferrera: is from the construction space, or sometimes founders are folks that they worked in construction. Maybe they their dad had a construction company and they worked in their dad's company and but they really liked computer science or got a degree in something different and they're like, this is a terrible pain point. We need to solve let's let's talk about the thing that every I feel like most tech years ago, let's solve RFIs, let's solve submittals. And so anyway, they they they lived it a little bit and they're trying to find a solution. But a lot of times they may not have they have the expertise of just their family's company. they do need to make sure that they get other perspectives.
Robert: Mm-hmm.
Rachael Ferrera: and so those I think those technologies can often be successful, but the the ones that seem to be the most successful are where they're gonna bring their domain experience and they're gonna partner with a contractor or several contractors is the right solution and and truly collaborate. Okay,
Robert: Right. And build it from there. Mm-hmm.
Rachael Ferrera: let me teach you a little bit about how this technology works and what it's capable of. Now tell me what pain points you're having and how we can solve those and then let's iterate and let's work together. It's not like, let's have one meeting, okay, let's go work in our own corners and build something and deliver you You know, it's agile development and that that's where I see the most success. Or that's where at least we've seen the most success in Sachary.
Robert: Yeah, that's and that's difficult to yeah, and it has to be the right partnership there because it's difficult kind of w like we were talking before. Maybe training is a culture thing, right? Maybe we haven't trained our folks up enough because now we're starting to see the results of kind of when we missed. And then the the tech side of the world. Right? It's it's not you know, we hit our hand with a it we hit her thumb with the hammer and don't do that again kind of thing. It's like, well, we made this mistake, let's tweak and then kinda do this and let's well, let's try this. And some folks just don't have the patience for that. Again, it has to have the right partnership, in that space, to to get where it's going. I was really more talking about where do you think we're going with this autonomous sector that you're into. No, I
Rachael Ferrera: okay. Sorry.
Robert: love I mean we can go I say we can go anywhere we want to go. I was
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah, yeah.
Robert: but I'm I'm trying to get your thoughts on where do we go from here? I mean we're brand new into this, you know, thing, but I'm sure you see you know possibilities, things that you're imagining next. W can what is that? What do you see?
Rachael Ferrera: You know, I think the thing that we would love to see is we do a lot of earthwork, whether it be a heavy highway job or a hyperscale project, we would love to see kind of an autonomous fleet that could all work together. Like you give it whatever goals, whether that's cut to a certain grade or or you need to excavate out twelve feet, whatever whatever the rule may be, but you give it a directive and then it just does itself. that is that would be amazing. and I think a lot of the stuff around autonomous equipment thus far has been more rule prescriptive of work inside this geo fence, do this, and you're you're passing it, you're telling it precisely what to do, which
Robert: Mm-hmm.
Rachael Ferrera: is still solving a problem and still an advancement within technology.
Robert: It's yeah.
Rachael Ferrera: I don't know that I define that necessarily as real autonomy. I think what we're excited about is is are we gonna have a fleet of equipment, not a whole a whole fleet, say a a spread, a group of equipment, a crew, quote unquote a crew work autonomously together. that's something that we're excited about and we hope is is in In the near future.
Robert: That's well I and that seems like it's a long way off, but it's really not, right? I mean it's
Rachael Ferrera: I think it may be sooner than people people expect, honestly. I don't know. We'll see. I think what's most important is maintaining the safety on the sites and not cutting any corners in order to meet objectives because Safety is is key, is paramount, right? every day we want to send every single employee home the same way they showed up at the job site. and so meet those goals but do it in a manner that it is doing it the right way, I guess is a simpler way to put it. Just do it the right way. Take care of people.
Robert: Yeah. It's so it's fascinating me. I I because it almost it it gets into the air of, you know, that kind of robotic technology as well. autonomous robots and, you know, humanoids and and those types of things. So it gets into that whole it's this weird space that quite honestly, I think as a kid, you know, I'm I'm I read about it, I read about it in comic books and and stuff like that where it's like but now We're actually in the age of AI and we're actually kind of living this on the front end. I wanna know b you know, before we get too far along, you've been out on the site, you've s you've seen it happen, you've seen it working. First thoughts when you just when it f w you know, opening day or whatever it was, when you you when you saw it working and you and you what was the feeling? Kind of give me the
Rachael Ferrera: gosh. I think it was it was relief in that I
Robert: I love that.
Rachael Ferrera: well and and and maybe because there's maybe a little bit different goal than one would expect, but we we knew when the media announcements were gonna be and we knew when we had to achieve this by in order to be a part of that. And there's only gonna be one First contractors using autonomous excavators, right? After
Robert: Yeah.
Rachael Ferrera: this, you're no longer the first. And so it it was a lot of pressure and relief that we made the cutoffs. Again, not because of anything my project team was doing, and not anything because of what Bedrock was doing, but stuff just kept sliding and sliding and sliding. It's like and I will say that that They executed in about a quarter of the time than what they normally execute. And that's how fast this atom this tech is evolving. so anyway, it wa I think it was relief. Like, okay, thank God it it happened. Okay. Now now we can proceed with all the media stuff that we need to proceed with and then and then Yeah,
Robert: Yeah. And then get back to work, right?
Rachael Ferrera: go back to work. Exactly. Exactly.
Robert: Okay. Next milestone for you for you folks on kind of this thing. What do you what do you hope to see?
Rachael Ferrera: I think next milestone is it is it meeting the same productions as a human. So being able to load a truck in the same cycle times that a human can.
Robert: have any numbers on thinking when that's gonna happen? Is that six weeks, is that eight weeks or or is that state secrets? All
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah. Stay secrets.
Robert: right, that's totally fine. I have to ask the questions, right? You know, if you'll interviewing
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Robert: So, okay. Well, relief, you've got work ahead of you. Where Do you do you stay on this same focus or is there a is there a new job on the horizon?
Rachael Ferrera: Are you talking about with autonomy or
Robert: no with Zachary and autonomy, you've kind of you got the kickoff date, now you're kind
Rachael Ferrera: No.
Robert: of now monitoring progress. There's gotta be a next one, right? Or is there
Rachael Ferrera: yeah, definitely, definitely.
Robert: like a next three, an X five?
Rachael Ferrera: There's it's that's also kind of state secrets, but there's there's a handful of things in progress. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Robert: Very good. Very well, I would like to, you know, have the exclusive on anything new, of course, but you know,
Rachael Ferrera: Ha ha ha.
Robert: that's probably never gonna happen. There's a lot of lot of bigger fish out there than me in the in the media space. But I really do appreciate your time with me today and just I know it's taken a while and I knew what was kinda going on a little bit from the, you know, kind of research in the background. You and I have been trying to pull this podcast off since we met at E and R. So you've been real busy.
Rachael Ferrera: The other way.
Robert: Yeah, yeah. You've been real, real busy and I am happy for you. I say congratulations on this. It's a it's a fantastic accomplishment.
Rachael Ferrera: It's ex it's been exciting. It took a huge team. I get to be kinda the person in the middle that makes all the things happen, but and sometimes being the spotlight and be the the talking head, but there's a huge team behind me, both exactly and bedrock. So props to all of them and all the hard work that they're truly putting in 'cause it without them it we wouldn't be there. So I I can I can push so much, but they actually have to do the moving, so yeah. It's exciting. Yeah.
Robert: Yeah, that's right. And and folks on that note Please remember that if you're a G C or if you're a subcontractor, you're whatever you are in the loop, folks, your contribution matters. It does not come down to one person, it comes down to the whole team working together in order to accomplish these goals. And we're going to find this out more and more as we move into these hyperscaler days, what I call them. You know, these hyperscale bids are extremely important. Lots of controversy around them, but they are extremely important for many, many reasons, and you will start to see some of the things that are going on here at the Contech Exec start to shift from toward what those solutions look like for those hyperscale builds because of the vital importance to them. so I hope you guys all stay tuned. But until then, Rachel, thank you so much for being with me today. I really do appreciate it. And I look forward to having you on again where we're gonna talk about these next projects, even though they're state steak state secrets right now.
Rachael Ferrera: Well, you know, once contracts are executed then things are different. But Yeah.
Robert: That's right, that's right. Let's make sure we've signed on the dotted line.
Rachael Ferrera: Yeah. Well thank you having me again on Robert and good to meet Sadie this time, so Yeah.
Robert: She's she's so excited. Look at her. She she fired up.
Rachael Ferrera: She's much quieter than mine, man. Thank you so much.
Robert: Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's a good girl. Thank you. All right.
