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Ambitious Renewable Energy Projects, Moving From Construction to Tech, and WakeCap's New Acquisition
61 Plays2 months ago
This week on the podcast, Jason & Carlos are joined by returning guest and team member, Sam Hanisch, as another 3 topics are up for discussion.
The trio talk through some of the most ambitious renewable energy projects that have gone under the radar, then discuss why more people should consider the construction technology space as a career option, before ending on the recent news of the acquisition of Crews By Core by Saudi company WakeCap.
Top 10 Energy Infrastructure Projects: https://constructiondigital.com/top10/top-10-energy-infrastructure-projects
Follow Carlos on Linkedin | Follow Jason on Linkedin | Check out Aphex
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Transcript
Sustainable Heating Solutions in Helsinki
00:00:00
Speaker
so Sustainable heating sort of solution for the city of Helsinki. They're these sort of floating islands, aesthetically look a bit like the Eden project, but floating. So these sort of like bubbles with guess hexagon shapes sort of across them. And they're basically massive reservoirs. Yeah, they're these huge reservoirs of water. They hold 10 million cubic meters. And we always love a stupid stat. It's 3,300 Olympic
Introduction and Guest Host
00:00:24
Speaker
swimming pools. where the just to visualize that for every everyone wanted i like to so way
00:00:30
Speaker
yeah
00:00:40
Speaker
Welcome back to the podcast. Uh, so today we've got a, uh, I guess a special episode. In addition to Carlos, we are joined by a guest host, Sam Hanisch.
Vegemite vs Marmite Debate
00:00:51
Speaker
Sam's an account executive, uh, Apex. And based on the topics that we're covering today, someone that knows a thing or two about instruction and technology and some of the things we're going to cover. So Sam, mate, thank you very much for making it back. You enjoyed your first time so much. Um, it didn't take any, uh, persuading,
00:01:10
Speaker
Thanks for having us back. Good to be here. Awesome. Carlos, how are you going, buddy? I'm good. I'm outnumbered. I've got a Vegemite hat in the office. Let's think about putting it on so so I can join you rather than make the two-on-one a ah trio. Vegemite hats are like kind of the equivalent of, um you know, those shirts that are kind of a big union jack that people in Australia It's not culture. Come on.
00:01:39
Speaker
It's like that's what we think you wear every day and you think we wear Vegemite hats every day. We wear them to riots if you're part of that. yeah Okay mate. So it's identical to the Vegemite hats because the writers here, yeah it's very similar. I was confused when I came over last year that there weren't Vegemite hats everywhere because Angus suggests that common fashion but and anyway we'll see. Yeah well Angus had the day off recently maybe to do some writing so... that's good
00:02:10
Speaker
could all be ah It all could all be making sense.
Energy Infrastructure and Career Trends
00:02:13
Speaker
up On that though, this is a probably for another time. ah Sam, pro-mite or vegemite? Vegemite, obviously. Who goes promark he on promo he's pro pro pro-mite? It's pro-mite like the literal vegemite. It's like the pro version of vegemite. It's the runny one, yeah? It's just a different taste. that Marmite or Vegemite. I like the consistency of Marmite though. That's pretty good. It's an easy spread. But no, Vegemite all the way. Marmite, it's spreadable Vegemite. I've never tasted Marmite, I don't know.
00:02:49
Speaker
and ah you can tip it out. Oh, really? Oh, that seems like it's something's right. That seems like something's wrong with it, then. Yeah, they've messed something up along the way. It's bad. It's bad. They've messed it up, rebranded it, and made you all excited about it. both Yeah. No, ah pro tip. Pun intended. Go pro might. It's way better than Vegemite. No response. Cool. Is it not $10 a jar? Because then you might win me over for it.
00:03:15
Speaker
I don't know if you've seen the price of the jar of vegemite these days, but it's like 10 bucks for a jar. The cost of living is hitting hard. Especially in Bali, where you are Sam, I don't know what vegemite is there. I don't even want to check you, it'll be 20.
00:03:31
Speaker
ah Awesome. So we've got some topics to cover today. So we're going to do three different things.
The Hot Heart Project and Renewable Energy
00:03:37
Speaker
The first thing we're going to dive into is recently there was a a list published of the top ah energy infrastructure projects around the world, which had some super interesting projects that I'd never personally heard of. So we're goingnna we're going to dive into that list a little bit. Then we're going to discuss why there's this like increasing trend of people from construction moving into like construction technology roles and and discuss exactly as you've done, Sam, discuss that a little bit. And then finally, there's the recent acquisition of a US-based construction software company, Cruise by Call. by a Saudi Arabian company, Wakecap, and these kind of two smaller um software companies combining. We'll see what that means for, I guess, the future of what the product they're trying to build and dive into that a little bit. I guess topic off the bat, these and energy infrastructure projects. Carlos, you love doing research into projects around the world.
00:04:36
Speaker
ah um might I might set it up and then we just dive into, I guess, one of the ones that you found. Obviously, there's this big energy transition happening at the moment. The world's kind of energy mixes is being actively changed because of things like the data center demand driven by things like AI and then this transition to things like EVs.
00:04:59
Speaker
That's pushing across lots of parts of the world a big change in the energy mix, which is then driving this big demand for infrastructure development, ah energy transmission, and and generation, and also storage. So this list is some of the largest and most ambitious schemes in the world that was recently published. And we'll put it in the show notes from a ah news source. And yeah, as I said, some of these I'd never heard of. And I was blown away by the scale of some of these projects happening all over the the world. Carlos, what?
00:05:29
Speaker
What jumped out to you, right? Yeah, the first one, I don't know if I just completely missed it, because it feels like it should be something that's more commonly known about. But the Hot Heart Project in Helsinki, it's a sustainable heating sort of solution for the city of Helsinki. They're these sort of floating islands, aesthetically look a bit like the Eden Project, but floating. So these sort of like bubbles with hexagon shapes sort of across them. And they're basically massive reservoirs. Yeah, they're these huge reservoirs of water. They hold 10 million cubic meters. And we always love a stupid stat. It's 3,300 Olympic swimming pools with the water. Just to visualize that for everyone. I like how you put them back to a swimming pool. I know. Swimming pools or shards, that's all in there. Pints, that's like seven million pints of gin. Pints is better.
00:06:22
Speaker
So it houses this water, it heats the water using sustainable energy. So it uses unused energy, I guess from the grid, but it will say it has its own sort of wind and solar attached to it. um And then it distributes the hot water through the city, which is like a huge reduction in yeah and energy being consumed. um And it's trying to take them to this 2035 carbon neutral target in the city.
00:06:46
Speaker
So run run that again. So it's like it's a storage system as opposed to like normal batteries. Yeah, they're they're they're storing this water and in these pods, it's keeping the water at temperature using renewable energy to to keep it heated. And then it distributes the water to the city as hot water directly to to homes and offices and everything else.
00:07:08
Speaker
I'll be the one that's going to ask the dumb question. Why are they in the ocean? Access to water. ah I don't know. I'm not sure. um because ah just sound Here we go. my this is it's the sex That's why we brought attention here to this chat.
00:07:24
Speaker
so this this is This is the one that's got like, it just looked like super futuristic. They've jammed like AI across the, yeah it like was all the it was all the buzzwords and all the cool things in one. So yeah, Sam. hi because i you Did you see the video? No, I didn't get a video. So it's it's the, they're using it because I was thinking how they do videos.
00:07:46
Speaker
yeah It's seawater, seawater heat pumps, which I had no idea about. And I looked it up a using heat transfer. They pulled the seawater in and then they transfer the heat through like a refrigerant and then they compress it to bring the heat up. And then that's heating heating the water and that gets transferred to these big pods or whatever they are. And it keeps that water at at a hot temperature. So in the videos, you know, it almost looks like, you know, thermal baths and
00:08:17
Speaker
I mean, I don't know if you covered it, but they've got those big recreational areas that they're planning to build there as well, which is, you know, completely different to any other energy project on that list. So, so do if if my face isn't telling him, I'm looking, so I get the water and the heat transfer that's, yeah, that's quite cool. But is, is there like the sea level thing part of the, like the motion of it, or is it just the thermal mass of the water is what they're going for?
00:08:47
Speaker
I thought it was just the it's not a sea motion thing but I don't know what it did you see anything colorless on that yeah no my assumption was using it no yeah my assumption was it was just like a convenient place to put reservoirs because Norway is quite mountainous right to have there's 10 of them and they're quite large so you need quite a huge area to put this on land and then pump the water in so I guess if you can float it why not Do you know when it's supposed to be being built? ah It's due for completion, I think in about one or two years. It says mid 2020s, which is a bit loose. um Yeah, so they had some better renewables target by 2035 to get net zero on their heating for
00:09:29
Speaker
Helsinki or wherever it was and by building this in theory it'll get them there by 2028 so pretty you know pretty impressive outcome plus looks awesome plus it's these yeah massive recreation areas i think four of the pods are going to be they'll have like a little rainforest in there they'll have a couple of beaches like so pretty pretty cool To ask scary what will get um so ask a dumb question, probably, transporting hot water long distances, it must be quite hard to maintain the temperature. Do you think it heats to the point of steam and when you lose so much heat? This seems like a question for this seems like a question for Sam.
00:10:08
Speaker
No, I mechanical call that hard. stuff We'll just do concrete, right? Yeah, yeah yeah i don't know that sounds something ah yeah i'll ask I'll find someone to answer answer that question. Maybe I bring up British gas.
00:10:29
Speaker
I've watched it on hold for seven days.
Global Renewable Energy Projects
00:10:32
Speaker
Let's jump to another one. Sam, while you're educating us, were there any on the list that jumped out to you? Yeah, so the first one, number 10 I read and talked out is the Mahdi Pradesh floating solar array. I don't know if you got a chance to look into that one, but you have jumped out to me. So they spent all this time and investment building this thing.
00:10:50
Speaker
And it's a floating, so there's a dam somewhere in the middle of India at a reservoir where they floated all these um solar panels. yeah And however long they took to build it, one week after they started operating that huge storm, which knocked out like a quarter of the system. So as a developer's nightware nightmare, they've put this huge investment in. I was looking through trying to find I was trying to find a video of it, and it was like a proper mess. You just see these huge wakes of water traveling ah along this reservoir, just knocking over these solar arrays. They're all getting piled up next to each other. And the developers have dropped the quote after saying, oh, it's all good. We'll we'll have it sorted shortly. And it looks like an absolute biggest nightmare you could think of. We recently did ah an episode we dove into like the top 10 unluckiest projects. And I was surprised that wasn't on the list.
00:11:42
Speaker
I got another dumb question. When it says floating solar array, the photos that I'm looking at are all land. I feel like this and the last project have mixed each other up. This one should be on the water and then the the giant pools of water should probably be on the land.
00:11:59
Speaker
Yeah, to tell you the truth, I saw floating and I saw the picture and I went and I went through the list and I came back to it and looked it up and it's not the right photo. It's actually a floating series of floating solar panels. It looks very cool in the summertime, still water, but then you see this video in the storm and you've got to wonder who ticked it off.
00:12:20
Speaker
I wish they had the real picture. When I was checking which ones to look into, I saw the picture. I was like, it's just another soda farm in the desert. But this looks quite cool. Yeah, I think the idea is interesting. Like unused space, they probably already have electrical infrastructure going out there. There might be some hydroelectric happening and then they've got chucks and solar panels out. But yeah, small design floor.
00:12:45
Speaker
bit of a bit of wind knocks it over. So um there's probably a bunch of developers around the world that are had a heap of these projects ready to go as well. And then they see this sort of thing happening, getting investors a bit worried, you'd think.
00:12:58
Speaker
the I think the idea of the floating solar farms are super interesting. That one there that we're just talking about in Madhya Pradesh is 600 megawatts, but the biggest solar farm is 200,000 hectares in China. Floating? No, this is How many football pitches is that? Yes. Oh, I was just pausing to like try and work it out. And it's supposed to be 6,000 gigawatt hours. That's crazy big. 6,000 gigawatt? Nah, it couldn't be that much. I bought some of these new, like, i'm sense um yeah I think I just read something and he was investing 50 billion to get like 38 gigawatt.
00:13:49
Speaker
ah new and eu dynamics i sense this yeah know More trustworthy new source, 3.5 gigawatt. soul yeah six out Six billion kilowatt hours. So I think the other source would probably just like mix up the numbers a bit. But yeah, it's like crazy big hour crazy how big some of these are going.
00:14:08
Speaker
The other one just really quickly before we move on, uh, that jumped out to me was obviously the same. Did you know about this, uh, the one in Australia? No, but I, I had no idea. Um, it it looked like a pipe dream. It sounds like it's fairly developed.
00:14:25
Speaker
yeah Yeah, so for Carlos, I don't know if you saw, but there's a thing called the Asian Renewable Energy Hub, which is actually planned in Western Australia. It six and a half thousand square kilometers that's designated as kind of an area of renewable energy plants. So it's supposed to build 26 gigawatts of wind and solar power in this kind of renewable energy area.
00:14:51
Speaker
It's supposed to have 1700 or more wind turbines and like 18 different solar farms or arrays across the um the project. And the expected investment is about 50 billion Australian dollars that is expected. That's good value. It is in, is it? 26 gigawatts. I'm just checking my bank account. they say yeah Hey, I always refer back to Hinckley. I know Hinckley's slightly over budget. Hinckley's 20 billion pounds for three gigawatts. You're getting 10 times though that. That's pretty good value. For a fifth of the cost, yeah. yeah That's the benchmark for good value, anyway. Yeah, yeah. It's over in Australia with double.
00:15:34
Speaker
yeah Yeah, you should also rephrase that Carlos. It's like it's not good value. It's just not the worst value. it's probably Yeah, but like typically wind farms is about a billion dollars for a gigawatt. So yeah, okay. Well, that's basically what it is. Yeah, it's pretty similar. Why is it called the Asian renewable energy hub? that's so we're selling Although this other site that I looked up when I was doing research into this one says the Australian Renewable Energy Hub, formerly known as the Asian Renewable Energy Hub.
00:16:06
Speaker
Did you see who's invested in it? it's Yeah, i Sam, it the developers are BP. I think there's a Chinese energy firm in there, Vestas, and then maybe some like funding funding banks, isn't it? Yeah, I just noted the BP took a 40% stake a couple of years ago, which was... Yeah, yeah.
00:16:26
Speaker
And reading into assets, so they're going to make a heap of green hydrogen. It sounds like to offset their other, like to get their net renewal to like zero target of 2050. So they had had a note there that they're trying to take a 10% stake of hydrogen production globally is like their internal target. You know, sort of going into that space, but you'd think that would be a massive contribution. That's sort of, um, those numbers.
00:16:50
Speaker
Yeah, the thing that's crazy is like in the context of all the other renewable energy projects and zones across Australia is ah as a country, this has blew me away that I hadn't come out across this one. It's still kind of early in the um process, so I don't think they're expecting final investment decision until January, until 2025, and construction hopefully commencing in 26. But that it's a that's an enormous amount of investment There must be quite a chunk of the overall Australian energy consumption.
00:17:25
Speaker
Yeah, I think there was some silly, I think it was a, it was like a third they were saying, yeah like at its peak you could do a third of the yearly production. It's interesting. What was it? Cause there's that other, um there's that other huge project that the solar farm to trans is it sun cable to transfer from like a big solar farm in the Northern territory. Now we're going to have a cable run out like a subsea cable to Singapore. You've seen that there was, um, the guy who had What was the, he had the Atlassian, one of the old Atlassian owners. Yeah. I was just thinking that I was going to, I was at risk of making a dumb comment, but I'm surprised that like surely that must be trying to export energy, but then I'm thinking like, I think the, let me go back to it. Cause I'm pretty sure it's trying to be exported and it's producing green hydrogen. So it's using the energy to produce green hydrogen or some other.
00:18:18
Speaker
Air like energy source. But I think the intention, Carlos, is for it to be an export. It's a terrible location to power Australia because it's literally the furthest spot of all the people and in the country. You did mention something about trying to help ah South Korea and um Japan reach their energy targets. so I imagine a lot of it's heading there. Hence the name. For some distance. Yeah, that might be the Asian bit, Carlos.
00:18:45
Speaker
Yeah, fine. All right, let's jump along because I'm conscious of, I just saw the saw the clock. So the the next topic that we're going to dive into is, I guess as part of this, there's this big transition happening and ah trend ah in the construction space where technology investment is just growing and growing and growing and the amount of startups and funding and investment in technology is really starting to ramp up over recent years. you There's this growing need that we're seeing of like professionals that have come from construction with on-site experience to help i guess guide the the industry in the transformation and adoption of a lot of the technology.
Transitioning from Construction to Technology Careers
00:19:25
Speaker
I guess the idea of having folks that are just from the technology space and translating that to site, there's like a gap that that that creates. So I thought it'd be interesting to talk about, yeah, one, is that something that we think is, is there something you think is needed, the the kind of need for folks from construction to take roles at technology companies, to take internal technology facing roles and and be kind of the stewards of this adoption or this transformation that's happening? And what are you seeing kind of in companies, Carlos, people doing? both in the like technology vendor space and then internally with it within companies. Yeah, it's ah it's an interesting topic. And I think if anyone looks back, and not even look back, look at certain sort of technology that people use within industries, one of the biggest frustrations is talking to people that don't really get or understand the thing that you're trying to do. And it's just like a computer says no type answers for someone without any sort of
00:20:23
Speaker
not just deep understanding but don't even care what you're trying to do or achieve. So the experience side of it is invaluable but I think I'm keen to ah throw a question at you Sam.
00:20:36
Speaker
ah Every parent's dream is for their kid to pick like a stable profession like civil engineering. It's like longevity, you're safe forever. What was the like catalyst for you to go, right, let's actually flip to the technology side? like then it must be There must be some pool keen to understand what the strongest one was.
00:20:53
Speaker
Yeah, I think, um, I think anyone you talk to that's in construction and I'm sure you felt this, there's this point when you're sort of in your mid twenties, you've been doing it for a bit. Go come out of uni and do like your five years on site. And there's some point that everyone starts thinking. Oh, this is a big shit. Or, you know, I can't picture myself doing this forever. Tell us when you really think. Yeah. I mean, the the hours, the hours along, there's a lot of, there's a lot of, um, like the outcomes, like the wins you get on projects there, they're great, but there's a lot of work that goes into it. I mean, that's a cool part of, you know, sort of, or trying to help out. Um, but yeah, I guess there's this, uh, there's this thing where you think.
00:21:34
Speaker
Uh, you know, I wouldn't mind doing something else. So you start weighing up different things you can do that, uh, you know, um, you're not starting from the bottom again. And so the typical sort of pathway that most people take is going to some plump consultancy role. That's sort of the obvious sidestep into, you know, there's, if you want to relax, go work for the government.
00:21:55
Speaker
work on, you know, as a consultant and, and like, it's not the disco. Like I did that. There's, there's, you know, there's plenty of need for it. It's interesting that there's, you don't really think about tech or it's not really something that I sort of thought about, you know, I, for me, the the moment was when I wanted to do it and give something else to go was having a demo. Like I really just loved the product and thought, you know, it'd be a good opportunity. I'm I was pretty passionate about planning inefficiencies driving me nuts. And so that was for me personally, but you know the point of jumping across. um I never really thought about tech before that because yeah I didn't think it was on offer. ah
00:22:31
Speaker
I think it's really interesting because I've had this conversation with many people before, and I think there's this like kind of i guess funny dynamic in construction where there's almost like this um this pressure to like super specialise. You go into construction, you deliver a ah road project, and then for some reason, the conversation that happens for young engineers or or folks in construction is, well, you know you know road projects, but you need to go and do a i don't know structure scope, or you need to go do this other type of scope.
00:22:59
Speaker
And that idea of like these kind of slight variances in discipline are so wildly different that you need to like collect the little tickets to get your experience to make it further in construction. you know that are there There is things that are unique to each of those types of projects. But if you zoom out, like they're very similar in the the grand scheme of things. And I think that ah feeling of Well, if, you know, ah a structures project is so much different to a road project than the idea of going and working for technology. That's, that's crazy. That's so far outside of my, my zone. Yeah. On the other side of that, it's funny from the like software side, how much ah someone that has that onsite experience has to offer for a third party software vendor for an internal project. And, and actually how the skills that they've got are like 90% of the skills that you need. But when you're in, when you're in the role and in construction It feels like, you know, you're so so hyper specialised that, you know, the idea of even just going to a different different discipline in the same role feels like ah a big change.
00:24:01
Speaker
yeah It's interesting to say that because the thing that like having now sat in it for about you know six to eight months, the thing that you realize is that in construction, you' you're constantly building something for a client. like you're You've been engaged by someone to give a good product and you're trying to get a good outcome. and Really, you're doing the same thing. like There's the same relationship happening. You're trying to get good outcomes for people. It's just in a smaller Um, it's in a different way and it's different to what you're used to, but when you can sort of get past like a different routine, a different rigor at the end of the day, you're, it's the same thing. Like you're employed to be there on site to get a good outcome for someone. So it's not a huge hurdle.
00:24:41
Speaker
And Carlos, you said the thing before about how like every parent stream is to go into like this industry and safe. I think one thing that we're all seeing from all of this like AI hype is the things that people would have thought were safe are probably the things that are not safe.
00:24:55
Speaker
And so it really does make, you know, if you were, if you were going back to yourself, I don't know, 10 years ago, five years ago or whatever, it's, it's interesting what you would think about, you know, with that kind of perspective, looking back, I saw this interesting post. I probably should shout out the author. So I don't know if you've listened to the bricks and bite podcast, but they, they often have, um, uh, Patrick Hellerman joined the podcast and he posted, I think literally yesterday.
00:25:23
Speaker
This this graphic which I'll put up onto the screen where it's basically talking about this trend that he's that they've observed and studied where from the time that a sort of technology ah starts attacking ah a market category like a vertical.
00:25:39
Speaker
The time it takes to grow from the market being $5 billion dollars a year to about $50 billion dollars a year in funding, it's about eight years. And this construction technology space is kind of partway through that ramp at about $34 billion. hit He excludes some ah numbers from the mix there, so somewhere between $35 billion and $40 billion.
00:26:00
Speaker
It's like partway through that ramp. But the the thing that he they they, I guess, studied or claimed is that once they hit this marker of having invested 50 billion into founding technology and seeding technology, it ends up occupying or consuming between 2% and 6% of the underlying market size. So said another way, there's this kind of like incubation period of of something like eight years where the ah combined ah funding that goes into different technologies sort sort of starts to ramp up towards this kind of $50 billion dollars mark.
00:26:37
Speaker
And then it eventually starts to consume somewhere between 2% and 6% of all of the revenue in that market. So all investment ah in the technologies ends up between 2% and 6% of the market kind of size. And currently in the the construction space, it's at 0.2%. So it's somewhere between one tenth and like 130th. Yeah, 130th. Good, better math. um And so that's like a 10 to 15 X size in the size of the yeah the market from here. And this graphic here kind of shows the the state of like the construction space. So going back to one thing i I've reflected on you know thinking about when I started in construction is how little you think about the trajectory of the market that you're in and this idea of like the rising tide lifting all boats.
00:27:28
Speaker
if i was thinking If I was talking to a younger version myself and I was still in construction, I'd i'd definitely be encouraging myself to like stick my head up above ah the fray for a moment and just get a sense of yeah where's where do I think the the industry is going in five, 10 years? What do I think it looks like? What I think is changing? Where's the growth and how can I kind of make ah an impact?
00:27:48
Speaker
But no, if you guys got thoughts on, on this, there's probably one thing I was thinking about is that I think often the thought is that engineers or people in construction think, all right, I'm going to go out and found something to fix a problem. Like I'm going to go out and be a founder and start something new because you, you, you're constantly there. You're in the pain and you're thinking about her. I can solve this problem. Like, you know, I'll get some developments. I'll make a piece of software at all and I'll fix it. And you don't often think that there's already a myriad of companies out there that are trying to solve that problem that you can actually go to and really help, um, you know, with your understanding, your experience and have a ah bigger impact. I think it's good to remember that, you know, none of these companies went out and solve these big problems as one person. Like it's these huge teams that come together. and So, you know, that's probably like the big differentiator. I can guarantee you there's a heap of engineers sitting out there. If I speak to them now, they tell me ah I'm going to write a bit of code to solve this problem. you know They could equally go out and have a huge impact with a bunch of companies that are um working now. It's like it's like the the classic saying or or proverb, right if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. And there's massive impact in Yeah, you could probably go out and get like a version one of a product that you, you know, you try to deploy on a project or whatever yourself, but to have a real impact and to kind of ride that wave, whether it's you founding it or building a group of like minded people together or joining ah a company, there's this like, yeah, people coalescing from the industry to to form groups that go in, you know, in a company, go and do so. It's I think it's that's you're totally right, Sam.
00:29:27
Speaker
I think also if we if we think about what we said earlier, which is there's this natural path in construction where you sort of, you move to different areas to generate experience and it's all about this CV of ah wealth of knowledge to go up the tree. You're not actually leaving the industry and you're developing deep knowledge in the area that that team or product or company is serving. So it's quite sensible to think of that as part of that journey.
00:29:48
Speaker
um for most people. Yeah, if we compare the career path, whether you think of that as your earnings or just the rate of acceleration through that path, the difference between going to a tech company and and staying in a contractor, you're going to absolutely fly up. Like if your aim is to double your salary in 24 months, you can you could do that at a tech startup. If you try to do that at a contractor, they'd laugh you out the door and say, you've got to be a division director to double that salary. So yeah.
WakeCap's Acquisition of Cruise
00:30:15
Speaker
done Yeah, but the combination of the excitement and the law of something that would be quite exciting, fun and like exhilarating, but also you're not you're leaving industry. You're just sat on the other side of the fence. We spend more time speaking to projects about how they run projects, probably the most engineers on projects because they're in their own little package world. Yes, definitely. it's That's amazing. Yeah, that that I think that like someone from construction has delivered project that has a growth mindset that's keen to like make an impact. Any company should like find a job for them.
00:30:47
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're the other ones that you go, awesome, let's harness this massive energy rather than go, now go to that road project and focus on curbs for 12 months and come back to me then. It's not along with curbs.
00:30:59
Speaker
Cool. Let's move on. The final thing I guess to discuss on the docket is, I don't know if you saw, but recently in the news, this Saudi based contact company called WakeCap acquired a US, I guess, almost Silicon Valley based software company called Cruise by Core. I guess a somewhat odd transaction. um So WakeCap is kind of like a a workforce management product. So you think kind of like time and attendance. I think they have kind of some sense of products that track where people are and what they're they're working on. And then Cruise by Core is probably like a more field scheduling style product. It's, I guess, ah an unorthodox thing. Both are kind of very early in the journey, relatively small, weight cap had only raised somewhere around two and a half million USD. Both teams were kind of somewhere in the sort of 50 odd people. I guess to to have an acquisition that early is definitely kind of like an unorthodox
00:31:57
Speaker
outcome. It'd be interesting to see Sam or Carlos whether you guys thought had any thoughts about maybe what the background of that is and and then maybe what the strategy of the of the acquisition from from I guess either side from the the acquirer or the acquired party was.
00:32:14
Speaker
One thing that did make me laugh when I was looking into this was Cruise by Core on one of their sites. It's like the number one construction field execution platform. You know, as people carve such a niche that they're always number one, when you get like, this is the number one like vegan friendly, all nut, organic, date free lunch bar for kids, like, oh wait, we're number one, shit. But yeah, no, it was interesting. The company that was being acquired Cruise by Core, their head count's been steadily decreasing.
00:32:44
Speaker
if we take LinkedIn as any sort of truth. so Which we all know is 100% truth. Yeah. So I wonder if there are two sort of tools that maybe they were quite sort of they're quite in their little niche space and maybe they've seen that combining those offerings is a much stronger play. They marry up relatively well. It's kind of the plan versus actual thing. So my guess from not knowing anything about the companies or reading into into it that much is they think they're offering a stronger together. And um yeah, it's really weird that they've like acquired or maybe merged this early, but you'd bet the Saudi back company probably has loads of cash. It's a bit of a play to pull in a company from America, which will probably help them get a leg into that market anyway. But the product does look very basic. So you wonder if they're just using it as a starting point rather than doing something from scratch. that They actually had them pipeline.
00:33:38
Speaker
That was a brain dump of like five different thoughts I had reading the articles. No, yeah, that was the initial thought. I was thinking, well, you're either going to keep the brand and you're trying to sell both the products across both the regions, but you'd think that they're thinking about some way to merge them and get, you know, double value by combining them. But, you know, when I start thinking about, you look at the sort of projects they're doing and Saudi white, from my understanding, you know, you've got huge workforces on some of these projects.
00:34:07
Speaker
And so I imagine that, you know, the product where they're getting this clocked in clocked out is, you know, very good. I'm trying to imagine how you then layer a like a planning tool to use, like maybe the actual data is getting that somewhere, but then someone's got to administer it. So all you're getting is you're taking actual data and putting it into a plan. It seems like something you could do in Excel that you don't need. um sort of like a software integration to get heaps of value out of it. We'll get Olu to put the ah shots fired sound effect over the top there. Yeah, no, you're right. It seemed like a really odd marriage. I think like the existing customer base seems like very different. One seems like smaller contractors in the US. The other's like mega projects, a handful of mega projects in the Middle East.
00:34:58
Speaker
the products themselves feel targeted at those sizes of of projects, as as you said, Sam. And then there's just like the the actual just running of this company piece and like these two totally different cultures in the team. And then you've got like product teams into countries. If if you were doing that, you would kind of imagine you would have like a sales organization, one and a sales organization, the other, but you've got this like very bifurcated culturally productive. It seems like a really interesting marriage and um there's probably a lot that's not i guess covered in the the press release.
00:35:38
Speaker
But it interesting really interestingly relates back to the i guess the previous topic where we're talking about people thinking about going and working in construction companies. you know It's really important that if you know folks that are thinking about it, you want to think about the company that you're working for, making sure you uncover kind of the alignment with the company strategy. It's really important, I think, for folks to think about the real value that's being delivered by that software or that technology on site. Because there's ah I guess there's a lot of hype in In any um a startup environment, there's a lot of hype because sometimes you do have to kind of fake it until you make it. yeah If you know the kind of space, the specific niche that that technology is going into, if you know that down, you'll be able to tell, is there real value delivery there? Sam, like you said, you jumped based on a a demo that you you saw of the product.
00:36:30
Speaker
So yeah, there's I definitely encourage people to do some due diligence when they're also thinking about the the companies that they might make the move to. um I think we'll wrap it up there because that is all the time we have today. So thank you very much, Sam, for joining us as ah as a guest host, mate. It's nice to have some well-researched and knowledgeable people on on the podcast for the change apart from Carlos and
Closing Remarks
00:36:54
Speaker
I. Are you trying to say? No, I guess in contrast to Carlos and I, so that sounded like I was ripping into previous guests. Thank you.
00:37:04
Speaker
Thank you, Sam. And thank you, Jason. um And also a huge thank you to everyone who tuned into the show. um If you did enjoy today's episode, um please do like the video that you're watching or follow us on your chosen podcast platform. um Your support is appreciated and we'll see you all next week. Thank you very much. Thanks, folks.