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Are Your Planning Routines Helping or Hurting Your Project?
47 Plays22 days ago
Join Jason and Carlos as they explore three topics in construction and technology:
💰 Contractors as Tech Investors: Examine the trend of major contractors like Turner launching venture capital arms to invest in construction technology, questioning whether this strategy delivers real value or creates conflicts of interest.
📋 Effective Planning Routines: Dissect a viral LinkedIn post on seven key planning habits for construction projects, evaluating which practices actually keep projects on schedule versus creating unnecessary administrative burden.
🔍 ConTech's Missing Pieces: Discover the untapped opportunities in construction technology, from comprehensive commercial forecasting tools to integrated field data capture systems that could bridge critical gaps in project delivery.
Key Timestamps:
00:00 - Intro & Weekend Recap
03:45 - Contractors as Tech Investors
18:37 - Planning Habits Analysis
32:27 - ConTech Opportunities
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Transcript
Memorable Job Experience
00:00:00
Speaker
A favorite highlight of any job was, well, there was this one project I'm thinking of, no, two projects I worked on where our office literally was overlooking a site. And the amount of times that the commercial or quantity surveyor team would come over and ask, have we done X?
00:00:16
Speaker
And the answer is look out the window. Yeah, but have you ever, I've been caught looking out the window. and then I still get, I said, get your fucking boots up. I was like, I could see it though.
Podcast Introduction
00:00:34
Speaker
Welcome back to the Offsite Podcast. I am Jason Lanzini, joined once again by co-host with the most, Carlos Cavallo. And today ah we are talking the trend of general contractors becoming con-tech investors and the big push into corporate venture capital off the back of the news that Turner is creating a CPCR.
Preview of Topics
00:01:00
Speaker
Then we're going to look at a post that describes something near and dear to our heart, the seven key habits of staying on schedule and planning as ah as a major construction project.
00:01:11
Speaker
And then finally, ah probably a little bit conceited, we're going ask ourselves a question which part of the construction software marketplace we would be interested to tackle if we were starting all over again and not building short-term planning software.
Personal Experiences
00:01:26
Speaker
Carlos, how are you? Fresh off ah a stag do, bucks party, that sort of thing. Fresh is the word. ah Yeah, I think it's ah it was a it's what I would describe as a mature mature group of adults going on a stag do. say That sounds like a big orgy actually, if you just listen to what you said. and its who Yeah, I regret that statement. But no, it was paddle, it was a boat trip, things like that. Sorry, just just to go into that. we It's interesting that we had very different weekends, but actually
Contractors as Con-Tech Investors
00:02:00
Speaker
in some ways quite the same then.
00:02:02
Speaker
a massive discussion on an argument here on the weekend. Is it Paddle or Paddle? It's only Paddle if you listen to Eddie or Archie Curzon from Clapham. um It's Paddle to everyone else.
00:02:14
Speaker
So, yeah. Okay, well, i had the same conversation in Germany here where we went to and found a local ah Paddle court and and played a little. And yeah, the big argument was Paddle versus Paddle. Someone can clarify in the comments.
00:02:33
Speaker
Yeah. Maybe there is a broader argument than I assumed. I thought it was just guys from Clapham calling it Paddle. I think that and the Spanish maybe. Yeah. Yeah.
00:02:44
Speaker
Well, they said paddle and I think it's Spanish origin. Oh, you were in Spain. Okay. Yeah. No, my comment was because it is Spanish origin. So yeah. Okay. yeah You would know. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
00:02:56
Speaker
ah But no, good fun. Very good. So you're going to do all the stories about things that happened on the stag do? No, they have to stay where they were, I think. On on the paddle court. Yeah, exactly.
00:03:09
Speaker
Yeah, But no, all good. This time next week, we I don't know if we are going to record, but we might be recording from a very sunny Da Nang in Vietnam as we're taking the whole company on ah on a road trip to Vietnam.
00:03:25
Speaker
I look forward to it. Yeah, for anyone listening, as a remote first business, ah pretty exciting to be able to meet a lot of people for the first time that we've worked with for, well, years in some cases. So yeah, massively looking forward to it.
00:03:37
Speaker
And you've been spreading the rumor that Stag do part two. ah yeah Yeah, that's probably Mike. Cool. Well, we've got a a couple of interesting
Why Contractors Engage in Venture Capital
00:03:49
Speaker
topics. The first the first two are are really interesting to me. So let's dive in right off the back and I'll frame it up. So recently we spotted in the news that ah the US construction giant, Turner, had created its own venture capital arm with the aim of investing in early stage and growth stage startups in the industry.
00:04:10
Speaker
This is a something that is a growing trend in the construction of built world space. And it probably ah warrants the question of like, why does it happen? What's the the calculus inside of the these contractors that drives them to do it?
00:04:26
Speaker
Before I like hand over it and and ah land on a question. Framing it up, you know, in previous conversations, Carlos, we've talked at length about how the construction industry is high risk, low margin.
00:04:39
Speaker
We've talked a lot about how um contractors are forced into this like ah Winner's curse, where they're trying to bid jobs, the jobs are picked on lowest bid, and the one that wins the job is the one that's got the most lift and the hardest work to do to make any money from the job.
00:04:57
Speaker
It seems somewhat counter ah to the point that they would also spin up investing arms that require a lot of illiquid cash that gets locked up for quite a period of time.
00:05:10
Speaker
So maybe we can actually wind back and start with like what is venture capital and corporate venture capital in particular, just for those that aren't like super familiar with the industry. So there's an industry of venture capital firms whose job is to professionally find companies that can grow at outsized rates that they can invest money into.
00:05:34
Speaker
with the hope that at someday there is some liquidity, as in the company sells or goes public or something, that returns them a rate of money that is worth the investment for locking up for five, seven, 10 years or something.
00:05:51
Speaker
um compared to you know what you might do if you just put the money in the bank or in the stock market. Corporate venture capital is this phenomenon where instead of professional investors, so with whose job is solely to to drive this ah return on on money.
00:06:09
Speaker
um They are typically companies that spin up within the company a venture firm and they have slightly different goals often. They'll talk about you know strategic investments that maybe relate back to the business that they're naturally in.
Benefits and Drawbacks of Contractor Investments
00:06:25
Speaker
So an example would be a general contractor investing in a construction technology company that they may be also a customer for. So that's that's a bit of like, that's the...
00:06:37
Speaker
worst 101 course on venture capital that anyone's ever done. But um what do you reckon the lie calculus is here for why Turner or why general contractors generally would would join enter into this business?
00:06:51
Speaker
Yeah, I think there's two, there's definitely two sort of sides to it and each of them have their own pros and cons. There's obviously the, I guess the pull or the law being contractors make two, 3%. They can utilize their experience and influence decisions in a market.
00:07:07
Speaker
If they were investing in tools, they could have a ah very high return down the line. you can see why that's an appealing space to get into. But as a contractor actually sort of trying to function, You've always got the choices of really to sort of build, buy or bet.
00:07:21
Speaker
So build something internally, purchase a tool from the market or bet on a tool being successful, which is like the investment idea. And we have our view on contractors building tools. There's not too many success stories there to sort of shout about.
00:07:34
Speaker
So you're buying or you could invest in tools. In terms of the the why they might be doing that, getting in at an early stage with a software vendor will allow you to be fairly influential. And you could sort of selfishly make sure that that tool is perfect for your organization, that you're already sort of running with blinkers on and maybe restrict the ability for that tool to actually be sort of broader market fit rather than just company fit.
00:08:00
Speaker
So it's ah potentially an all-legs-in-a-basket situation. Do you want, yeah, is that like just double-clicking on that point of like, I think that's true. I think a lot of them have the view. And when you read the you know the the the press releases or or prospectus, like it's it's ah it's a broad phenomenon. turn Turner adjoining the fray, one of the most famous or well-known is Suffolk in the u k who in the U.S. sorry They have very broad programs around investment DPR do, BOEG do in in in Europe, as does Vinci, Skanska. So it's a fairly broad phenomenon.
00:08:40
Speaker
um Often when you read the press releases, et cetera, they will talk about kind of having a influence or guiding hand over the development of the technology, which begs the question whether that's a good thing.
00:08:53
Speaker
If I was a contractor, would I want to start betting on tools and losing the thing that I think is best, which is agility to, you want to be able to drop a tool and pick up a tool when there's a best in market.
00:09:05
Speaker
And I'd, as a contractor, just trying to deliver jobs, I wouldn't want the influence of a venture arm saying we could really do with you sticking with this tool because our investment is going to die if the the contractor that actually invests in it doesn't use it, let alone everyone else.
Challenges in Corporate Venture Success
00:09:22
Speaker
And you're soaking up the time and energy of the team to refine that tool potentially during if it's an early stage investment. So the loss of freedom or the loss of agility is quite a quite a con that outweighs a lot of the pros.
00:09:38
Speaker
yep like i I'm not completely up to date on how many investments VCs typically look to be a winner out of all the all the bets. But yeah are they in a position to be making that many bets at the ah the detriment of the project? Well, yeah, that's such a good point, right? Because like professional venture firms So ah they're in the job of uncovering and probably as early as possible picking ah potential category winners.
00:10:06
Speaker
um And ah venture firms, professional venture firms, has this concept of the power law where some very small subset of all of their investments will actually be winners and they will pay for all of the losers that are in that batch.
00:10:20
Speaker
So and its ah venture as a whole industry is going through a moment of like so many of them are actually underperforming, just putting the money in the stock market all the or even the bank in some cases.
00:10:33
Speaker
um And so even for professional firms, it's incredibly difficult to pick some small percentage of winners outside inside of a whole
Successful Investments in Innovations
00:10:41
Speaker
portfolio. Corporate venture firms have if their goal is to guide the development of it so it fits inside their business, they're almost forced to like needing like 100% success rate or some really abnormally high success rate because they're going to invest so much institutional time in this company ah because they're kind of picking their winner that is going to be something that they're going to guide and and ideally deploy.
00:11:04
Speaker
so I think it sets up a like impossible scenario in that way where Yeah, in order to in order to not waste a whole bunch of time of their people and their projects, they have to be picking at well above the best venture firms in the world. Yeah, they just be absolutely nailing it. But I guess I've boxed my thoughts into software.
00:11:27
Speaker
If we think outside of software, I think it completely flips the argument. If there's some sort of... innovation or proprietary something. Like I think an example back, this is going back a long way and I'm pretty sure it was Costain where they they developed the concrete railway sleeper, which used to be oak or timber or whatever it was. Right. And that's patented. So it makes a lot of sense to invest in a company that comes out with a material or ah ah ah something physical on site. That sounds like an internally developed innovation that they then paid to do.
00:11:58
Speaker
It wasn't an investment. No, but I mean, I guess what I'm saying is if as if there was some sort of startup that's come out with something which you would sort of dominate the market in in that space rather than sort of software that has 15 competitors.
00:12:12
Speaker
I'm trying to think of an example right now, and it's- It's hard. but yeah Floating concrete, you might want to be first in the door for that.
Contractors' Cash Management Strategies
00:12:19
Speaker
Yeah, okay. We have floating concrete, but um yeah, I think there's a different argument when it comes to that sort of innovation because there's it's easier to protect that like design, patent, or whatever for a long time, which is,
00:12:34
Speaker
yeah, maybe a bit of a ah more obvious win than software, which you could be, you can go from relevant to irrelevant in a very small amount of time. Yeah, I think one of the other arguments that they might make internally is like, oh, you know, we think that this tool or platform or whatever has promise. it It sits in a category that we have a clear gap and we can see the need for technology.
00:12:57
Speaker
You know, we could buy the thing, and we might pay some amount of money to be a customer of it. And if we just made this you know minority investment in this next round, well, the benefit of that is we we can we can have some say and some visibility and some guidance and you know talk to the the company.
00:13:17
Speaker
which you you do as a ah customer as well, ah because there's a whole other conversation of like, why would a customer, like these companies' goals are to sell software to you. to you So yeah they, yeah, the say that you have should should be probably more so as a customer rather than an investor would be my theory of the world, because as second the company is being guided by the investors, there's a whole other kind of like, that's a whole other thing of problems that you're going to have.
00:13:45
Speaker
So I'd say they should have more say in the company as a as a customer or a prospective customer. But there's this argument that we're going to spend, I don't know, 400 grand a year or 500 grand a year or a million dollars a year or something on this piece of software. But if we invest in this round, well, some percentage of that is delivering value back. you know We're getting something else for our drab money as a customer. What do you think of that argument? you'rere you're the You're the CEO of some large general contractor that's thinking about spitting up a ah venture firm.
00:14:15
Speaker
Yeah, it's definitely that but that is sort of, i guess, hidden or unobvious value that you would receive. um So part of that investment, yeah, you're going immediately a win in some of those spaces. I think the other part, which becomes, I guess, a bit of a gray area. some And something I've thought about before is coming straight off the top of my head. But if you're using, if you're a venture capitalist arm of a company, which is
Value of Corporate Venture Investments
00:14:43
Speaker
pushing software onto the projects within that company, then ultimately that cost is probably being passed onto clients.
00:14:49
Speaker
Yeah, they can become very quickly area. I can see the wheels turning here. The QS's wheels are turning. Is this a conflict of interest? Well, the natural thought would be we would want a discount because we're an investor in this tool. But actually, it makes more sense if you're passing on the cost to over inflate the price, which generates more revenue for the company, which is growing in value quicker than the contractor can by shaving up a small fraction of the cost of one of those projects.
00:15:17
Speaker
So put yourself in a really odd spot there. Yeah. Okay. You've gone down. But I think the at the end of the day, like I think that the truth is that this, except in the case where you know these are construction contractors that have development or asset ownership businesses like Vinci or something, which ah jennna you know has a cash printing machine. that has the They have the problem of what do we do with all of this cash?
00:15:49
Speaker
um So you could easily see an argument that they would say, well, we've got this cash. We would go and invest it somewhere. But given we're in this business, we have some strategic insight in this business, which gives us some alpha or leverage.
00:16:04
Speaker
I can see the argument there. But for And on top of that, they should be able to accelerate ah some of those early stages because they can remove a lot of red tape. Yeah. And then there's the argument that they're the kingmaker. Like, you know, if you want to be the category winner, they make you the category winner by adopting it, which I don't know if if that's true. But um if you're a pure play general contractor,
00:16:27
Speaker
um you're in a like usually relatively cash poor position. You know, you're always fighting for payments from clients. You're trying to pay your subcontractors as late as possible.
00:16:38
Speaker
There isn't millions of bucks sitting around under the couch to go and ah you know ah place bets on on startups typically. i don't I don't know that it's I can see the rationale that I would you know i'd jump at it if I was running that type of you know construction service business. The perceived upside is that so the company that you invest in raises another round later and raises more money. And if you read the the research on the success of these corporate venture firms, they'll often say, oh, these have been really successful because the cohort of companies from contractor A's venture firm have gone on to raise $300 million dollars worth of of money.
00:17:18
Speaker
In the venture world, that's like people marking their own homework. they're not That's not actually generating value. Like you're not you're not getting any money back from that as the shareholder.
00:17:29
Speaker
That's just, yeah, ah paper marks going up. I reckon if you dug into actual value returned, most of it for them would sit on the actual tool that they bought side, that compared to distributed cash from exits, because they're they few and far between generally in the construction industry.
00:17:48
Speaker
So these folks have to be doing something beyond with some order of magnitude better than the professionals in the space to be doing anything that's returning any real value. So yeah, i don't know. Yeah, for sure.
00:18:02
Speaker
Did you say it's fake? Is that what heard? No. is that what i heard
00:18:08
Speaker
No, I think, yeah, it's punchy. If I was a GC, I don't think I'd be pro investment arm. I think it's, yeah, I think it's restrictive. I think you you lose your agility.
00:18:20
Speaker
And I think you're just not the expert. Yeah, I don't think contractors should build tools. And I'm not sure they should be investing them too. I think they should right picking runners super early. Yeah, you lose all your ability to pilot the best in the marketplace. You overfit it for yourself. There's all sorts of reasons why.
00:18:36
Speaker
Yeah, I'm with you. Cool, moving on.
Improving Scheduling and Planning
00:18:38
Speaker
So the second thing that we wanted to cover was some a post that we saw on LinkedIn. um We both love LinkedIn, we're there all the time. hanging out in the comments, came across a post that kind of hit close to home for us. The post was from Carl Ditchin who detailed these seven habits or routines um that drove better planning for staying on schedule on the project. So I'll run you through the the high level and then we can talk a little bit about, yeah, what bits ah resonated with you and and then what you see is like, what you you think could be improved.
00:19:14
Speaker
So the seven habits at the top was to pull plan every milestone three months ahead. The second was to run pre-construction meetings three weeks ahead. The next was to run this six-week look-ahead planning cycle every week, to review the risk and opportunities every week, to spend 30 minutes a day doing drawing review, and then to do 30 minutes a day doing schedule review, and then every day do ah daily field walks.
00:19:42
Speaker
And in combination with this, he attached an image, which is probably where most of our discussion can be around this like planning cycle. This is something that we literally talk to multiple customers per day on.
00:19:55
Speaker
So this is Kyle's recommended weekly planning cycle. Monday, identify new constraints. And then the last plan is begin preparing weekly work plans. Tuesday last planners finalize weekly work plans.
00:20:09
Speaker
ah Wednesday, project leadership reviews a look ahead and weekly work plans and then distribute the six week look ahead. So that's a Wednesday. Thursday, run a weekly coordination meeting.
00:20:20
Speaker
Friday, project leadership review risk and opportunities and then redistribute the six week look ahead. So yeah this is ah this is a fairly regimented cycle.
00:20:33
Speaker
um I think if I was to start and talk about the things that resonate with me, well, the first is just the concept of a cycle and rhythm. um I think from our experience or my experience with projects around the world, the most important thing is this consistent rhythm that becomes a habit on the project. So when things get harder, things get hectic, you know, a number of trades on site ramps up.
00:20:56
Speaker
that there is an established cycle that builds structure, builds collaboration and identifies issues and and people lean back on. Not that the second, you know, it's like this chocolate teapot, the second there's any issue on the project, the first thing to go is we don't do any of the look ahead planning process because we don't have time.
00:21:15
Speaker
So first and foremost, like I think any cycle is better than no cycle. What do you think? Did you used to review all of your drawings every day for 30 minutes? No, i I did not. i thought that was probably like pushing the ah things a bit. a bit yeah I did, however, like ah the bit I do resonate with was like one of my, i don't know, what i thought was like a secret superpower on, on,
00:21:40
Speaker
projects when I turned up was I would read and note and like mark up every drawing that was like inside of my scope and every contract document that was inside of my like scope, ah including the the head contract and kind of like training my own LLM on on how on the specifics of this project. because I think like knowing the more of that you can internalize is like a massive superpower. I wouldn't do it every day, but right at the start of joining a project, I would go yeah massively deep. I'd print my own set of drawings out in this massive like plastic sleeve folder and I'd pull them out. I'd look at them. I'd mark them up. I'd make questions, post the notes everywhere.
00:22:19
Speaker
Go ask people, you know, what are we doing on this detail? What are we doing on that detail? um Yeah, the more I could build that knowledge up front was a big unlock later. Yeah, for sure.
00:22:30
Speaker
What did you do as a QS? All of that and more. so are You were on the job.
00:22:39
Speaker
Yeah, it's ah it's it's too important, you would understand. yeah so i think i think So obviously the schedule itself has been posted. i think from a principal point of view, there's lots of aspects that we would all agree are strong points. um We've got this sort of pool planning.
00:22:57
Speaker
We've got pre-construction meetings. We're doing weekly look ahead planning meetings, daily walks to stay on top of the job. That's all good stuff. But the schedule doesn't really suggest who. It sort of just says this is a schedule of what should be done every day.
Flexible Planning Cycles
00:23:10
Speaker
yeah And if you make the assumption that that's a suggested schedule for like one person or a project manager or an agent, then that's that's a huge amount of daily routine leaving not too much space for everything else.
00:23:24
Speaker
Yeah. If we make the assumption that that would be distributed responsibility to different role types that cover each of those bases, then the danger is you lose that cross function or cross meeting sort of knowledge that is actually the but stuff that you want. So if a project manager turns up to a daily construction team kickoff, they want to be flagging potential issues and vice versa. You want a superintendent in the look ahead meeting to be like, that's never happening because this is going on.
00:23:53
Speaker
I think it's kind of like, let's take all the best ideas and make put them all into a schedule rather than maybe sort of, if you actually think about the particular project you're on, you'd probably cut some of those aspects to make it a bit more manageable because it's super. Yeah, like like let's like let's dive right into detail, like one of them, for example. So like take the six-week look ahead.
00:24:14
Speaker
I think the principle here that we would try to follow, at least from our own background, is like, We want to do the least amount of but do the least amount of things that drive value. We're trying to build processes for the frontline leaders that don't make extra work for them. So let's take the six-week look ahead ah cadence.
00:24:36
Speaker
Here, they've got a ah pattern of, he's saying distribute the look ahead on a Wednesday and then redistribute it on the Friday. and then that is probably off the back of a Thursday coordination meeting. What are your thoughts on, well, just like how many days that whole part of the cycle takes and the rigidity of it?
00:24:57
Speaker
Yeah, this's ah I think I've got two problems with that. The first is just that process taking three days, um that's quite substantial. It's half the week. Or if you're running a five-day week, it's more than half week. It's more than half the week.
00:25:10
Speaker
And the other is, it's it's almost like it's this systematic, we plan this week for next week, and then next week, going to plan for the week after. But in reality, not only are they suggesting it's going to take three days to sort of nail down next week and upcoming weeks, but doesn't really assume that the entire plan is changing every day. Yeah.
00:25:30
Speaker
So you would suggest more of a ah a quick daily exercise to make updates rather than this three day slog to get the plan in shape, which kind of makes an assumption that it's not going to change on Monday when the first issue pops up.
00:25:45
Speaker
So it doesn't feel very sort of, it feels a bit less reactive and a bit more reliant on the plan being successful.
Technology in Planning Processes
00:25:53
Speaker
Yeah, I think what you're pointing at, well, this is like, admittedly, this is probably talking our own book to a degree, but like, it's still worth probably covering.
00:26:02
Speaker
But there's two there's two parts to this cadence that that's worth followinging looking at. so Firstly, there's that three-day, six-week look-ahead cadence from Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And distributing on a Friday is like, I would say, you know broadly common practice. um So you kind of run towards an end of the week, re-plan for the following you know six weeks.
00:26:23
Speaker
And then the second part of the cadence is like a weekly work plan preparation cadence from Monday, Tuesday, and then finalized on a Wednesday. And I think this is symptomatic of some of the issues that some projects have with really rigid processes or really rigid ah routines, you know, the the ones that are branded routines.
00:26:45
Speaker
if you spend three days planning for the next week, six weeks, and then it takes the three days of the next week to generate the weekly work plans for that, like you're never, you you spend your whole time regenerating outputs.
00:26:56
Speaker
And really what's in that weekly work plan is driving what's in the look ahead and what's in the look ahead is driving the weekly work plan. And so that probably points to one of the principles that we have you know built Aphex around, which is these should just be views on the same plan. So you should generate your look ahead, ah publish it on a Friday or distribute it on a Friday, as Kyle said, and that should automatically have your weekly work plan done.
00:27:20
Speaker
not you know go and generate a weekly work plan, it should just be the weekly work plan. And then on ah Monday when the team run the daily supervisors huddle or week or daily construction meeting, people are reporting back the progress and that's updating not only that document that they're looking at on the screen, but every other document. So the weekly work plan is updated.
00:27:41
Speaker
The six-week lookahead is updated. So I think the structure and the cadence here of like start the week with the plan and then replan the week at the end of the week is totally like that's what we people I see on every project.
00:27:55
Speaker
yeah um I think there's just a lot of improvement that can happen for projects about removing all of the admin by creating all of these documents that have that are ingrained in like systems that were created 40 years ago.
00:28:09
Speaker
So like technology can definitely make a big impact to removing all of, there's too many steps on these days for a person that's running a major project that also has safety responsibility, has to meet with subcontractors, has to meet with the client, has to work out how to do the design.
00:28:25
Speaker
It's just, yeah, there's too many steps on each of these days, um given the responsibilities on people running projects in today's you know day and age. Yeah, for sure.
00:28:35
Speaker
um It also misses the sort of daily cadence of a startup shift or a sort of data activity yeah briefing. Yeah. um So if we think about kind of the the point on these like daily micro adjustments to a plan to keep it up to date and ultimately to make sure that like in theory could reduce all sorts of issues and rework by communicating on a daily basis, and not just the plan, but changes to the plan from the the day before.
00:29:01
Speaker
I think that missing from this generally, it feels very much like a like this is the week and the week is the week rather than appreciating it for what it is and keeping everyone in the loop.
00:29:12
Speaker
um So i think that's a big missing um aspect to the schedule, which is already pretty heavy. But I think Carl's like broadly nailed it. I think the the cadence is roughly is roughly close to what we'd see on most projects and and best practice.
00:29:28
Speaker
I think where where there's just a, I think, yeah, like you said, when you layer in like the start of shift briefing or the pre-start meeting or the daily construction like when you layer in realistically all the other stuff that you have to do as that person running the like on that project, I just think that you know it's like the classic thing. There's like way too many things in the list to do every day.
00:29:50
Speaker
and so I think this planning cycle needs to get narrowed down to We update on a Thursday, we ship it on, it we discuss it and ship it on a Friday. and then ah all the other things are done in the existing cadences.
00:30:02
Speaker
You know, as we do the daily meeting on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, we're making the updates as a result of those meetings, not we we're blocking out time to do these jobs on top of those jobs. Yeah, for sure.
00:30:15
Speaker
um And the daily field walk, Probably only engineers up to a certain level do that every day. i think not to understate the importance of that, i think that's a good addition to anyone's schedule because everything is about knowing where we are and actually understanding that.
Humorous Job Site Stories
00:30:30
Speaker
And the worst offenders are obviously the commercial team who get updates from from emails or conversations with their counterparts. So um yeah, that should be pushed on at all, in my opinion.
00:30:43
Speaker
A favorite highlight of any job was, well, there was this one project I'm thinking of, no, two projects I worked on where our office literally was overlooking a site.
00:30:53
Speaker
And the amount of times that the commercial or quantity surveyor team would come over and ask, have we done X? And the answer is look out the window. Yeah, but have you ever, I've been caught looking out the window. and then I still get, I said, get your fucking boots up.
00:31:08
Speaker
I was like, I could see it though. But it was raining. The best joke is um there's this there's actually this bra brought back a really funny memory. it was on It was on one of these projects. There was a quantity survey. It was in the UK.
00:31:21
Speaker
The quantity survey was standing looking out the window at the site. And we just finished a weekly construction meeting where we go and argue about the schedule, et cetera. And all of the leadership team were walking out of the offices and down the lifts back
Opportunities in Construction Tech
00:31:36
Speaker
to site.
00:31:36
Speaker
And as we walked out there to like call the lift to go down, um the works manager, like the the head construction leader of the project, walked over to the constructors' quantity survey and said, that's the project.
00:31:49
Speaker
and ah That's a tough day.
00:31:56
Speaker
um there was I actually know a QS in one of our projects and he kept being bugged by the team to go on site and it went on and on and on to the point where he was like I i can't ask for PPE now because it will reveal the fact that I've never been two and half years and I haven't been on site yet.
00:32:16
Speaker
It was a... That's when you start Googling, can I like spray paint my jeans orange or something? like That's when you go and tender a package for like a laser scan. Okay,
00:32:28
Speaker
yeah okay cool. All right. Really quickly, third topic. So last week we kind of dove into another LinkedIn post from a construction software founder that was making these claims that a bunch of technology in construction today is vaporware, it's been vibe-coded, it's you know it's it damages the industry.
Inefficiencies in Forecasting Tools
00:32:52
Speaker
And after that, we were talking, it brought back conversations that we're talking about off-air around which parts of the industry still have like wide open opportunity you know The construction technology space is relatively exploded over the last, say, five years.
00:33:07
Speaker
And it seems like in many categories, there are many, many, many competitors or startups trying to build something that that overlaps. um And it brought up a discussion of like, are there any bits that are kind of really untouched? or Or maybe even there are one or two, but there's no clear winner a or category leader.
00:33:26
Speaker
I know you had some thoughts, but yeah, that was the, was there anything that came up that want to share with folks that they can steal and and and go and build? I think for me, and this is obviously biased towards my experience of industry, which is part of the commercial team, but um I've not seen any example of a ah bottom-up forecast or CVR that major or complex schemes can use and the team actually work in. So there's a few tools out there that will allow you to sort of plug numbers of like packages or value of instructions and add that to a target cost. And it gives you a bit of a, this is what we're gonna spend and this is what we're going recover and here's our profit and loss.
00:34:07
Speaker
But every QS on every scheme, and I have this conversation all the time, still work in Excel, whether it's your so subcontractor package or your like prelims and everything for the job.
00:34:19
Speaker
And ultimately, yeah, building that back up to a first principles forecast of how much we're going to spend at the end of the job. So similar to like contract schedule updates, this is the sort of thing that we do once a month at best.
00:34:32
Speaker
I've seen some projects do quarterly. yeah um So we're not reactive to overspend signals. yeah We're not reactive to the end result or the cost of milestones or everything else that comes with it. Yeah.
00:34:48
Speaker
We're not tracking the volume of downstream ah compensation events with supply chain. I've got to the end of packages and we've got 5000 CE's that are unagreed and they were happening years ago.
00:34:59
Speaker
yeah so um I guess there's a dark world of question marks and unknowns, which is also subject to numbers being muddied and muddied up to a top report that is given to a client.
00:35:11
Speaker
So there's just yeah zero visibility. ah It's super inefficient. We can't pull any data or real insights. um And it's still not been done as far as I see. As you were describing that, I had ah at an interesting thought. So yeah, there's ah there is obviously, I guess, question is, do you see a ah You kind of alluded to it.
00:35:30
Speaker
There are a range of tools that do the report bit of it, like where you plug the numbers in, but the the working calculation and you know alignment between what's going up and down is the bit that you're probably alluding to is not not really broadly built or adopted.
00:35:46
Speaker
Do you see any ah possible link between the fact that if that existed, the client would want to see it? Yeah. that' the the The real difficult spot for the contractor would be the client knew that system existed, bought it and mandated it. Then you're in a real difficult spot.
00:36:02
Speaker
You would have to change contracts because that's not information that they got. I just, I had never thought about that until you were describing it. And then and then I was like, I was like, there is a benefit to being like, oh, all this is in some other system, in some spreadsheets. We can't possibly find them or show them to you.
00:36:20
Speaker
Or if we do, you know people might change numbers or whatever. This like system of record for that ah so suddenly opens up a level of, it's a level of transparency that I think many people are comfortable with. Yeah, it's not.
00:36:34
Speaker
I can understand a system like that on ah the type of contract where it's cost reimbursable or like a yeah a very open commercial setup. But um on a target cost or an activity schedule, that's that's a horrible world to open up.
00:36:49
Speaker
I broke your brain on that one. That's very good. But no, yeah, I think um I'd love to see it. If anyone wants the ah the detailed setup, I'm willing to sell it for a lovely price.
Challenges in Accurate Tracking
00:37:01
Speaker
All right, we're going to be short on time, so I'll very briefly touch on mine. i think this area of ah record capture is really, there are definitely companies in the space.
00:37:11
Speaker
And what I mean by record capture is the the messiness and disconnected nature of what labor plant materials we had on site, spent, installed on on our projects.
00:37:24
Speaker
So not there's a whole space in terms of progress capture that that um is fairly well developed, but the actual inputs to that being labor plant material. There are companies, ah there are good companies in the space, but when I go from project to project, people are still in a pretty messy, ugly, disconnected, we have some systems, but we don't really trust the outputs of them. They only capture some things, not all things, space.
00:37:51
Speaker
A lot of opportunity for both those companies to do better or make a bigger impact or something new to to to come along because it's ah it's a big missing piece that connects the commercial to progress.
00:38:03
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. I think that final ah accurate set of actual data on site is a bit of the holy grail for anyone who can nail it. um yeah It's an interesting space there. I've had a conversation with a couple of contractors where the plant um operators and software that comes with it like a trim ball.
00:38:22
Speaker
yeah They have loads data, but they don't like to share it outside of their own world. So yeah that that's a real shame. um Hopefully that changes. Obviously, they're the easiest because they're big bits of kit with technology on board.
00:38:34
Speaker
yeah um You can track what they're on, they're off and all that sort of stuff. Yeah. And a lot of them will track. um They're actually obviously working off of the model and tracking like excavated material and bits pieces. But yeah yeah the yeah, the people and like minor materials, that is a tough spot.
Podcast Closing
00:38:51
Speaker
But um yeah, it'll interesting to see which one ah sort of pulls ahead on that race. Righto, I know we're definitely out of time. So mate, do you want to read us out?
00:38:59
Speaker
Yes. Thank you very much, everyone, for tuning into today's show. If you did enjoy the episode, please do think about liking this video or following us on your chosen podcast platform. We really appreciate your support and we'll catch you all next week. Bye bye.