Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Constructive Voices, the podcast for the construction people with news, views and expert interviews. Hi, and welcome to Constructive Voices. I'm Steve Randall and I'm joined, as always, by Pete the builder Peter Finn. Hi, Pete. We've got another great episode, haven't we?
[00:00:16] Speaker B: Yes, Steve. We have a great guest today. Great to be chatting to you again. But today we have David Hernandez. And David is an expert in in the technological side of construction. He's the director of a company called Alekosoft, and he's based in the US. And he has a very interesting background in terms of he was a contractor on site and obviously had the knowledge that you would pick up on site, and then he's taken that into the technological side of construction. So really good conversation. I actually take the lead on this one, Stephen. I am the interviewer and yeah, we had a really good conversation, and we discussed lots of different topics. One of the topics is about schedule compression, or program compression, as I would call it, which is basically if you have 20 weeks to do a job, and then the client comes and says, hey, guys, guess what? We've 18 weeks now to do the job. And how you can make that work in lots of different ways. Obviously, it needs to work in terms of physically, logistically, can it happen? Then it needs to be done safely. Is it possible to do that by maybe increasing manpower or whatever aspect of construction? Can you overlap the trades and that type of stuff? So we had a really cool discussion about that, and I do have some experience on that as well. So it was good to hear that I got some things right in that area and some things wrong. But then also, while I had the opportunity, of course, I had to ask someone who is in the technical side of construction, are the robots taking know I'm a bit fascinated by that. So we had a really good conversation about that. And then David, being from the US, I took the opportunity to ask him, how are things over there? How is his pipeline in terms of work ahead and how does he see things going? So really cool conversation and really good. So really, really looking forward to hearing it all again.
[00:02:07] Speaker A: Okay, well, let's dive straight into the interview then, and then we'll come back and have a chat.
[00:02:10] Speaker B: Great. Soft, Steve. Chat down.
Yeah.
[00:02:14] Speaker C: So, my name is David Hernandez. I am the managing director of Alico Soft LLC, which is the US based entity of Alico, which we create construction solutions primarily in the US. It is planning and scheduling software, but we're looking to expand that offering in 2024. I always make sure I throw this part in there, because first, I am a father of seven boys. I do try to throw that in there.
And a recent grandfather. So that part is always the important part. I grew up in a construction family and like most people who grew up in construction families, their parents try to push them away from it and go do white collar stuff like be a doctor and a lawyer and all that fun things. So I went the opposite route and decided to go into sales. So my career started in sales. I still found my way into construction, owned my own construction company for a few years here and we were Houston based, commercial and residential. Dissolved my partnership in 2018. And when I dissolved that partnership, I thought I would retire and get to go have fun and fish. And my wife said, no, you're going back to work. So I was lucky enough to fall into construction tech, which really was something that was intriguing to me because our construction company grew very quickly and we did not have proper resources in place and technology was one of them. And so I understood quickly the pains that the companies suffer when they're going through growth or trying to manage complex projects without having the right tools. And so construction tech just absolutely made sense because I can still be a part of helping the industry that I love. I don't always have to wear the hard hat unless I'm visiting a client, but it still get to impact the industry. And I think that is the thing that gets me up every morning, is that we can effectively impact the industry projects, help people have better project efficiency and just overall just safety money. All the fun stuff comes with that as well.
It's been a fun journey. Everything that I've done I think has led me to this particular role with the Licosoft where we have had a presence in the US since about 2016, primarily through Reseller Channel. We were a sales arm basically from the UK, but in 2021 formed an LLC, became our own business unit. I joined last year as the managing director with the primary goal of growing our brand and footprint here in the US and North America. I guess because Canada as well.
[00:04:53] Speaker B: Technology has advanced so much in all of our everyday lives, but in construction it has dramatically changed as well in terms of not only the technology in how homes and our buildings work, but also how we construct and also the type of materials and the type of expectations that our clients have now as well. So do you want to delve into that a little bit more then from your side?
[00:05:17] Speaker C: Absolutely. So one of the things I love about the construction industry, and I've heard this a couple of times when it comes to technology and it actually kind of rubs me the wrong way sometimes when people say, well, construction was late to the adopting technology because they're not very innovative. And that is absolutely first of all incorrect. I think construction is probably one of the most innovative industries out there. I do think that there were some slow to change. But I think if you look at the roadmap of technology and construction, there was an early rush, 2015, 2016, maybe into 20, 17, 18, where construction companies were buying technology just because they thought it was going to solve problems.
You still have your old school guys that didn't want to change. Well, I think today what we have is technology fatigue because there were a lot of solutions that were put into place that maybe didn't fit, that weren't sold properly. They were sold as a product offering versus solutions. And so I think for me, the way that the industry has switched, you have construction companies who have gotten Savvy, which is really good, they're hiring directors of technology and innovation to kind of help protect who comes through the door. So I think that allows companies who are really trying to do it correctly when I say do it correctly. I talked to my team and we talked as a leadership team across the organization. We need to be problem solvers. You can take a paper process and digitize it all day long, but if it's still a bad process, just because you digitize it doesn't make it good. So what we really try to do is, number one, listen to our clientele and our customer base, and we're big enough to deliver, but small enough to pivot. And so listening to our customers and developing things within our ecosystem that they truly need versus things that we think they need. And when we position our products, we're trying not to throw up product on them. We want to dig. Let's find out what the problem is. It's kind of that five y methodology. Okay, I understand that, but why is that happening? And you kind of just dig down and when you finally find the problem, if our solution solves, that fantastic. If not, the worst thing that we do is we've walked away either educating ourselves or educating our customers or both. And I think that that is something that does get lost. I'm not saying that other technology companies don't do that. I think construction technology companies are getting a little smarter where they're hiring construction professionals to kind of come in and either be on the business development or the sales team. I think that's an absolutely brilliant strategy. You need people who understand the industry, the problems that they deal with. But I also think that the technology piece needs to fit the process.
And I think at the end of the day, if we're kind of moving that needle, we need to help be the experts as well and helping our clients say, okay, you've done it this way for the last ten years. Is that efficient? If it is, is there some things that we can help tweak and then kind of build and kind of design our software roadmap around that?
[00:08:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I absolutely agree with you. And I think another thing that people don't really consider when they talk about construction technology is got to remember that every construction company has a business and there's obviously different areas to that business. So there's the onsite stuff that needs to be done there's, then the scheduling stuff that needs to be done, safety, and then there's just your invoicing and your day to day business end of things as well. So if any one of those areas are not in tandem with the other area, it results in problems and sometimes even complete failure. So I think from what I can see, the technology tools that have come out now are helping a lot of construction companies and the business side of the construction company streamline itself so that the information is being spread to the necessary people very quickly. The way construction has gone now with records and ensuring that we build quickly but we build safely and obviously that we're able to store the correct information and hand it back over to people as they need it as well. So there's so much to this subject. I know it's a very broad subject. So if you don't mind just delving a little bit deeper then into what you guys do in Microsoft and kind of maybe go into one or two of the tools that you have and give us a bit more information on those. I know from a bit of research I've done that schedule compression is one aspect but we'll talk about that in a couple of minutes maybe if you talk about some of the other tools that you have.
[00:10:03] Speaker C: So Legosoft has a wide variety of offerings that kind of service the built environment as a whole in the US. Our primary product that we're excelling currently, the industry knows it is asta it was asta Power Project. But we've added a few solutions under that umbrella and it's CPMs, scheduling and planning and critical path method. What we've found is, what most companies are finding is you have all of this data and information, what do I do with it? So we have packaged our Power Project, our scheduling solution with a single source cloud solution that allows that first of all document management and being able to kind of grab that data and then deliver that into some active and actionable business intelligence. Because if we can help deliver data based around their actual information, there's some value in that. Within that we've got some pretty cool, pretty cool solutions. And one of the things I talk about our product is I think probably one of our best features is it's scalable. You can be a single custom home builder and I build three or four of these over a year. Or you can be a megaproject general contractor where you're doing nothing but 2 billion and up very complex projects and our solutions fit all of that. The other piece of that is we have some integrated 4D that is really cool, and we don't do a good job, I think, of talking about that enough. We had a really large customer of ours that kind of flipped the industry on its head a little bit. So the Active Four D name came from this particular customer, because they learned to start with the model, then go to the schedule, which the industry, as you know, coming from the industry is they start with the 2D plans, and then they kind of do that. Maybe they send it off to VDC to get the model built. What they found, and this company was Cemic, they've given us permission to share their name. What Cemic found was they were having a hard time, sometimes scheduling complex projects off of 2D because you just can't see it. And even if you can see it, if you and I are sitting in a planning meeting, you might see something completely different than I do in my head, and then it becomes difficult. But if I can see the same thing that you're seeing now, the collaboration really becomes pretty cool. So our Active 14, the idea was, if I can take that IFC model, which is rich with data, bring it into asta, let asta, then break that down, it then creates a schedule, and that is when you see that in real time, it's a pretty neat process. So, Cemic, one of their particular project that this actually was very effective was they had a very complex project that was going to go it was a bridge project, but the project was most of it was underwater. So they were having a hard time figuring out how this process was going to work. They couldn't schedule it out. They were able to get the model from the client. The schedule team, who was struggling on how to schedule this, the head scheduler, took it home on a Friday, by Sunday afternoon, had a fully developed schedule. The client was expecting this project to run. Twelve months after they ran the model, put it into the software, spit out a schedule, ran all the risk analysis, did everything. It came out that it was actually an 18 month project. So they met with the client. They said, do you see any where we're wrong? They said, no. So basically, they were able to save their client six months of change orders. Obviously, that was definitely very costly on both parts, all because they were able to just take something that already existed, put it into a software tool, and position them for success.
That 40 pieces, probably one that I would put as one of our top functionalities within our software.
[00:14:20] Speaker B: Very good. I find it very interesting what you said there, because anyone that's listening to this podcast will know, program is so important, and scheduling is so important on any construction project. And I was given this advice, or I suppose you'd call it a statement, a long time ago, and that's basically that you live and die by your program.
The project is either a success or failure based off how programming and scheduling goes. And there's nothing worse, there's no worse feeling than being in a project and you're looking at your program going, we're after telling the client, the architect, everybody involved here, that this is going to be done in twelve months and then in reality it takes 18 months and then straightaway you're into battling. QS are starting to battle and everybody is kind of on the defensive, whereas I always try my best now, and I always try and advise people to manage the expectations by giving a realistic schedule of time and budget is the same. Try and be realistic with your budget rather than telling your client that the program is shorter than it realistically is going to be, or obviously the budget is lower than what it's going to be because all it leads to is problems in the future and then that cost everybody money and stress and time. So another thing there that you have that we did mention was schedule compression. So I'm really interested to hear about this because I've been involved in some projects where we would have had maybe let's call it an eight month program of time. And it's usually in commercial situations where there's a building that has been closed and needs to open up again by a certain time. And then the client comes back and goes, okay, we've made a new deal with a certain client and we need to be open in six months. And then it causes a lot of head scratching and a lot of work in the background to make sure that that works. So would you like to talk that through yourself there and let us know how you guys can help that or your experience in this situation?
[00:16:21] Speaker C: Sure, that scenario that you just gave out never happens in construction. I'm sure that's hypothetical.
Not only that, when everything is going well, it's always, well, can we do this a little faster? Inevitably the problem with that, if it's not well planned, things go wrong. So I think the idea around schedule compression is it's kind of a controlled methodology. So the term schedule compression is used throughout the industry, but our software is not actually like a scheduled compression button, it's just the methodology part of that. It comes from a couple of places. One, being able to manage a project that has logic, a software that has the logic in it to kind of say, yes you can do that, or no, if you do that, it's not going to happen. Being able to manage things that you could run parallel, that could speed up the process, our software quickly identifies, yes, we could do that. No, it's not going to happen. And so I think being able, first of all, to see what type of risk you would run into by trying to do that methodology is important. The visibility, the collaborative piece, the communication and I'm sure you've been involved in this, it sounds like, from your experience. So it's very tough to try to kind of rope that in on a project in the middle of a project. So I think you typically have that conversation up front. Typically it's going to be a team that maybe you're familiar with or at least the majority of the team you're familiar with. But I think the communication and collaboration piece is key and so you have to have tools and not just the scheduling tool. That's kind of what I'm biased too towards. But it has to be multiple things that you can all easily have access to, visibility into. There's currency and accountability. I think all of that kind of comes into play and so where we are able to provide that from a company perspective, our tools are designed for that. So you have the collaboration where you and I can work on the same tool at any given time. We don't even have to be in the same location.
I mentioned their data and analytics to be able to quickly have a snapshot of how things are going, identify things that are going really well, things that are going not so well. If I'm going to fast track this project or if I'm going to throw additional resources at it, at whatever methodology we're going, I have to be able to manage that resource. So the resource management functionality that we provide is very robust. There's also a cost factor. You don't want to get to a point where you're trying to do schedule compression at the expense of diminishing returns if you're just throwing a bunch of bodies at it and your labor costs and everything else is so expensive that you're really just shooting yourself in the foot. And if you can't see that, if you're just managing that on Excel, or if you're managing that paper or even through an ERP system, sometimes it's very tough. So the visibility piece, I think when you talk about schedule compression is where we really begin to help our clients. But it also comes back to my original conversation was we're trying to partner with them in that journey. So we have not only onboarding new customers but existing customer bases. Our professional services team consists of many industry experts and if they're not industry experts, they've been doing this for a long time and they've set in multiple meetings with our clients on site, learning from them. So they bring real world experience and can help companies. If they're super experienced in it, they can add some value and if they're not experienced in it, they can help add some value. So it is beyond more than just the software.
I love talking about the software. It's how we make our money. But at the end of the day, if our true passion and our why is to help the industry. To me, it's irrelevant about the software. First it starts with us helping our clientels, the prospects, whoever it is we're talking. Do you understand this process? Have you all covered the complexities here's where we can help the most? And that conversation is key, in my opinion.
[00:20:41] Speaker B: Yeah, 100% agree with you there. When it comes to different tools and different products, yes, it's good to know they're out there, but at the end of the day, it's about ensuring that everything else backs that up and that the information flow is correct. And obviously that the company is ready to do what's required or the whole trying to compress a program becomes counterproductive and actually can cost you more money and then can also create a lot of problems on site with maybe trade crossover and stuff like that happening at the wrong times. So maybe just a quick chat. Then again, let's talk about let's stick on the technology side of things. How far do you think this is going to go?
We often get people talking about robots taking over and stuff like that. And there's no doubt about it, we've seen some huge advances in certain aspects of construction with AI and robotics and in the way we schedule and do everything else. So where do you think technology is going in the next sort of ten years, let's say, and maybe even a bit further from what you can see and what you're involved in at this moment in time?
[00:21:52] Speaker C: Yeah, I actually love this topic and I joke AI may take over one day, but let's figure out a way to utilize it and help us make as much money and be profitable as possible.
And I say that in jest, but I know AI is obviously the big topic. AI has been around for a while now. It's really heavily moved into construction. We've actually recently hired head of Data Science because AI is on our roadmap. We actually just recently had a press release, I think it might have been yesterday, actually partnering with companies like Nodes and Links out of the UK, which is very AI driven business intelligence and data. For me, I think the value of AI first and foremost is data. I think in the construction industry there's so much human element that is needed. AI is just another tool to me. It's moving from the handsaw to the skill saw in moving from tools that we already do have access to, like business intelligence and just kind of putting it a little more, giving some automation behind it. But if you could look in the future as a project manager and your data that you have that your team is putting in, and you can see most companies are already doing this, they're doing three, four, five week look aheads. And the reason they're doing that is they're trying to mitigate any problems that might arise. If you have a tool like AI that could analyze not only your data, but industry trends, historical data from what you've done on past projects, maybe some historical data from subcontractors that you use on how they performed. And so you have performance and predictive analytics. To me, that is the piece that I think could be really transformative for the industry. That I can walk in my office on a Monday morning, says, Good morning, David. Your projects are really great. However, in three weeks or four weeks, you're going to run into this, this, and this.
But if you do this, this, and this, we can mitigate that. That's where I think the power of AI is. You're seeing it pop up more and more. I think it's understanding what it is first. Right.
My conversation will be for those that are looking at it, understand what it is before you implement it. Obviously, if somebody's trying to sell you a tool with AI, they should help explain it. But I am always a fan of doing my own homework. Look at what it's done for other industries. I don't anticipate it in the construction space replacing us. We already have robots on job sites, right?
We're using drones. I know there's softwares out there that can map real time job sites, and they're using robots to kind of do that, which is pretty cool. That is now freeing up a superintendent who would have to kind of walk around, give some notes, and send it back to his PM. So how much more productive is that superintendent being on a job site? Those are the things that I try to look at as opposed I'm definitely a glass half full guy. So if I can give more free time to my skilled labor to be more productive and free them up from the little stuff, that probably drives them crazy anyway.
There's some value in that. And I think that's where I think AI is going to come. I think there's some other obviously we already have a lot of the IoT stuff, especially they're doing it in sports. They kind of brought it over construction. I understand. I have a lot of old school friends in the industry. They feel like they're being tracked and being told they have to take a break. But if we're talking about safety in the industry and we want our people to go home, I don't see any harm in making sure that we're truly loving and taking care of our people. And I think that's really all it's doing. But again, that comes back to now. If we are monitoring and making sure that our teams are taking breaks and doing things they need to be doing, we need to be managing that project very efficiently, because the waste and downtime is probably very minimal when you're doing that.
That's a subject I think it could go so many different ways. I'm a fan. I'm a fan of it being done properly. And I think that the only way that that is done properly is to continue to talk to industry experts, talk to your customers and figure out how we can best utilize the tool.
[00:26:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. And look, whenever change comes in, you will always get a certain amount of pushback, no matter what it is that you're bringing in. And then once people begin to understand that it's not going to take over their job or it's not going to completely change their lifestyle or affect them economically, especially, usually, people will buy in and understand then that the new technologies and the AI or robotics or whatever it may be, are there to benefit and there to help. Not to take over or to monitor them in a negative way.
I also think you've made a great point there as well. In construction and in every industry as well, there's always going to be need for human input because there's no way of tracking some things.
AI is not going to know if a certain amount of subcontractors just simply didn't turn in on the day.
There's a very high number of checks put in place for that. So that's the type of human stuff and materials deliveries, all of these type of things, you can monitor them, but sometimes it gets to the point where it costs so much to monitor to feed back into a system that it becomes counterproductive. But yeah, look, there's lots of exciting new AI and robotics and all forms of technology on sites at the moment and currently obviously being developed to make them more user friendly and more mainstream as well because at the moment you kind of only see them being used in sort of isolated situations.
I think more what you've been talking about there earlier on, about the data input that's I think making its way into mainstream companies quicker because I think you can see the benefits of that from an end user very quickly. It makes you more organized. And obviously the other aspects, there's quite an investment into them. So you have to be careful about investing into something unless you're sure you're going to get the return on it just then two more questions. One of them will be in terms of the industry itself. I know that you're US based, but you do work with the UK in particular and Australia and lots of other areas as well. How do you see things at the moment in terms of do you have a lot of work in the pipeline? Do you feel that we still have plenty of good times ahead or are we maybe coming to a peak and we're going to plateau for a while? What's your general thoughts on that?
[00:28:57] Speaker C: Back to my glass half full guy.
I am the eternal optimist, but I do do my homework and I pay attention. I think that one of the things I love about the construction industry. If you look at any past. Whether it's a recession or downtime or even COVID. Right. COVID was dramatic for a lot of businesses, but construction still thrived. It is a business that I think is built to continue to fight through anything. And I think actually what's happened so I've had several friends who own businesses, large businesses, very good friend of mine who owned a very large general contractor business here in the Houston area. At his peak was around 200 and 5300 million in turnover. Very large backlog of work and had a recession, had to lay off quite a few people, but they were able to maintain work. He's probably operating, I think you want to say 60, 70 million now. And he will tell you that his staff is they're happy, he's doing really well. They've learned to operate very efficiently. When you start to kind of get to become that monster, you have to keep feeding the monster. But I think what some of these situations have created is it is opening the door for tools like AI and tools like our softwares and other softwares. It helps them be a more efficient operation.
And I want to say less bodies because it's not about letting people go. But if you already are kind of like running thin, you're like, how do we scale up? Maybe hiring isn't necessarily the right strategy at first. Maybe it's implementing tools that allow the team that you already have to operate at a little bit higher bandwidth, be more efficient.
Then once they get to 95% bandwidth and they're about to overflow, then you start looking at the hiring process. So I think the industry itself is very healthy. I think if you look at all projection models, growth is in the stars. But trying to figure out what we're going to do three or four years from now sometimes it's guesswork, but I think the industry is really well, obviously.
[00:31:14] Speaker B: We'Ve gone through a very unique set of circumstances in the last few years with COVID inflation and also the cost of material spikes that have happened as well. So I think you said it quite well there. We're very robust in the construction industry and we certainly champion that here. In constructive Voices we are very reactive and proactive to make sure that we adapt to whatever the circumstances are in front of us. And definitely when it came to COVID and the Pandemic in general, I think the construction industry really did step up to the market and was able to continue on in a safe way, which was brilliant. And it certainly was one of the industries that encouraged everybody to get back to normal as quickly as we possibly could. So I suppose then, just one last question in Constructive Voices we are very conscious of the climate change situation and I suppose the environmental battle that we have going on globally. What's your general thoughts on that? And again, from a technology point of view, is this something that has been taken absolutely seriously now, or is it something that is still a conversation or a debate that is happening?
What's your general thoughts from what you've seen and experienced over the last period of time when it comes to the very important climate change battle that we've got going?
[00:32:37] Speaker C: Know, it's one of those topics that people have very differing opinions on. Right? So I live in the energy capital of the world here in Houston, Texas. But I'm very familiar with a lot of the industry that's I said. I have seven boys and a so I'm very, very concerned to make sure that we live in a state that's not polluted. So I know the industry here, especially the oil and gas industry, they were doing carbon capture before. Carbon capture was a cool thing to do. So I think they kind of set some of the standards that we're seeing in other industries. And construction is one of those animals where it's like, we love the space, but construction comes with growth. And with growth, sometimes that means we're expanding out. So I think we have to do it responsibly and look at, again, back to the impacts. So I know we have several customers in the US. Who, yes, they're construction companies that they love building. They're going to continue to do that, but they're very conscious about making sure they're involved in doing maybe a replanting. Like, okay, if we're going to develop this piece of land, can we go donate and plant a thousand trees that the trees that we just destroyed? So I think in that part of it, I think there's a responsibility that we've got to be good, we've got to be very conscious about. I like that objective. I think as a corporation for us, for Licosoft, we're very conscious. I mean, even to the point now where for me here in the US. For example, most of my team is remote. My sales team, they travel to customers. So nationally, we try to be responsible. Does it really make sense for us to jump on a plane every week to go seek these clients? Can it be done virtually? Obviously, there are times when we can't avoid that.
We try to be conscious about that. The other side of it is I think you've got to still operate, still operate without fear. But I think there's a responsibility. So I don't know if that's kind of vague, but it's one of these areas that I think I would say I'm concerned about, and it's on my radar, especially as an executive. But it's not something that I think I fear for my children as long as I live in a state that is very conscious about that. I work in an industry that I believe most of the companies we deal with have their eye on it and are responsible. And I think those that aren't responsible, I think it's okay to have that conversation as well try to really tiptoe around that one. Give me trouble.
[00:35:20] Speaker B: Look, I think you're just giving your honest opinion there. Yeah, again, look, totally agree with you. It's a subject that is certainly a volatile one in lots of different ways and certainly people do get quite worked up on both sides of the fences. But I definitely would take from your answer there that people are very conscious of it now and it's certainly something that's on everybody's agenda now. It doesn't dominate their agenda completely, but it's certainly something that they're aware of and conscious of and I think that's fair enough and I think that shows that there's a lot of movement in the right direction. Is there enough movement in the right direction? Maybe not yet, but we're certainly going in the right way. David, it's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you. Is there anything else that you would like to discuss or mention before we wrap up? I think it's been an excellent conversation so far and I really do appreciate your insight into some of the excellent aspects that we discussed today. So is there anything else you'd like to mention?
[00:36:15] Speaker C: First of all, thank you guys for having me on. I love having conversations, especially about things I love, like the industry, but it's always good to learn from other people.
So, yeah, I appreciate you having me. Hopefully I provided a little bit of some type of nuggets for your listeners to grab from, but I think at the end of the day, we're all in this together, right, and it's about how can we help each other regardless whether it's buying something from a company, I think it's all about learning from each other. So definitely appreciate you guys having me on. Great stuff.
[00:36:49] Speaker B: David. And would you just like to wrap up by just letting people know where they could check out your company?
[00:36:54] Speaker C: Absolutely. So probably the best source of information is the website, so that would be Alicosoft, that's Elecosoft.com. Obviously there's webinars, there's a lot of information on there and then there's ways to contact our team via our website. You can look me up on LinkedIn. I try to try to post non sales stuff, I try to try to know informational stuff around the industry and then we obviously have a leak of LinkedIn page as well.
[00:37:22] Speaker A: This is constructive voices. So Pete, I mean, always good to get so many different perspectives on this podcast about different areas of construction and not just areas in so much as technology or talent or those different areas, but actually geographical areas as well. And I think you covered those off really well with David there.
[00:37:44] Speaker B: Yeah, myself being a humble builder from the Emerald Oil of Ireland and speaking to a technical guy from the US, it was a great conversation and being I really enjoyed it. I really learned a lot as well about how the products that Alekosoft and other companies that do similar types of programming products and scheduling products can really help accelerate work on soy's, can make sure that you're ultra organized, can detect where crossover and trades will work or won't work.
So, lots of really interesting stuff there. Good to hear that the robots aren't quite taking over just yet as well. But yeah, it's good to hear somebody who's so deeply involved in the technological side of things still have faith that us humans still have a role to play and that we still have a long way to go before the AI gets to where it needs to be or gets to where maybe people's fears are. I personally got a lot of satisfaction now hearing that.
[00:38:51] Speaker A: Yeah. And just to get your sort of perspective, obviously you've been in construction for many, many years and as we've talked about on this podcast, you work with lots of different people, from Apprentices just coming in to those who have been in the business for many, many decades. And what's the sort of perspective that you have of people on the ground so on site as to how they view technology and how it's changing? Do they see it as a net positive or a net negative?
[00:39:18] Speaker B: It's very obvious that pretty much every human on the planet has become more technologically advanced, whether we like it or not. I find it really helpful in work that I can take a photograph of something, I can then even use my finger to draw an arrow and point at something and then send it to somebody going, this is the location that you need to fix something, or something along those lines. Let's say we've got an underfloor heating screed to be poured. I will get the farm man or I'll do it myself on site. I'll walk around and I'll let you do a video recording of each floor of the building before the screed is poured. And therefore if we have a problem a few months or weeks down the line, we can just take the video out and have a look and go, oh, there is a pipe there, we can't drill in that location. That type of stuff has really helped a lot and that's the kind of simple end of things. Then you can go to much more advanced stuff like what myself and David did discuss there, where the whole pre planning of construction now can be done pretty much to a T. And time is money, it's an old saying, but it's certainly something that is more and more relevant day by day. And pretty much projects can live or die by how quickly they are done. If you can get done ahead of program, most likely that means you're on budget or possibly even in profit. And the longer a job goes on, most likely the more costly it's going to be and therefore people are losing money, which is obviously a bad thing, or it's costing a client more money. Technology absolutely has advanced construction in lots of different ways. I would also say that it's made sites much safer and it's made sites much more organized than they were when I first started. There's a new generation of people coming through, so they've been reared on the modern day technology. So laptops are absolutely something that they would have been used to right from the start. And now mobile phones, we've all seen the young whizzes, how quickly they can send text and book a table at a dinner table or something like that. I'm like, how did you do that so quick? You barely had the phone in your hand. But that's the level that people who have grown up with a phone in their hands are at. And I think that transfers then into the technology when it comes to construction as well. They're very quick to catch on. Even the tools, the accuracy of tools, and you can pretty much link your tools with some programs. CNC machines, when it comes to joinery, these are kind of sort of small robotic influences that are coming into our lives. But bluetooth tools can speak to each other, can pass information to each other. So, you know, an awful lot of positive stuff. I am a little bit of a dinosaur. It takes me a bit of time to get my head around it, but once I've got my head around it, I can usually catch onto it fairly quickly. But I still do always have that little bit of fear of going, another new thing to learn is it really going to be worth my while? And then two days later, I'm going, oh my God, this is the best thing I ever did. So it's still a bit of that going on. But I would absolutely say that at this moment in time, technology is huge advancement in terms of the organization side of construction. I don't feel that we're going to be at the mainstream in construction, where robots are coming in and doing a dramatic amount of work for a considerable period of time, simply because those type of equipment are just too expensive at this moment in time to be realistic for different levels of construction. But it is coming and it is certainly being tested and there are certainly changes ahead of us, and some of them for the better. Again, I discussed it with David there as well, about being able to send in a robot or a device that can measure a very confined or enclosed space in a very safe way, even at the basic levels. There's ways of measuring and ways of viewing these type of spaces now without having to put someone in danger or put someone into a very enclosed and difficult situation. So a lot of positives and yes, it is becoming more acceptable, I think. Obviously, as the years go on, the newer generations that come true are growing up with this. So they will obviously make it more and more acceptable as time goes on and the cost is not as high as it used to be. So lots of stuff going in the right direction. But as David said there, I don't think we have to fear yet. I can't see robots with hard hats going around for a while know, I.
[00:43:38] Speaker A: Think unfortunately, Pete, you know, robots, AI are going to replace me and you doing this podcast before they replace people.
[00:43:46] Speaker B: On possibly, possibly another really good thing out of discussion was as well. Dave gave us an insight into where he sees the US economy at the moment and the market. Now look, it's a huge country and I know different areas within the same country can have different levels of economy scale, but I definitely got a positive vibe from David and I think, look, we've spoken about this before on Constructive Voices. There is a global demand for housing, there's a global demand for improving our energy efficiency and how we build our homes, and how our homes and our buildings as well, commercial buildings as well, how they perform. So a lot of positive stuff. Really good interview and it was great to get some really good insights into lots of different aspects of construction from somebody who is pretty much living on the far side of the world. So all good, really enjoyed that one.
[00:44:36] Speaker A: Fantastic. Good job Pete, and we'll talk again next time.
[00:44:39] Speaker B: Cheers Steve, look forward to it.
[00:44:40] Speaker A: And that's all for this episode of Constructive Voices. Please take a moment to share it with others who may find it interesting. Follow or subscribe to get the latest episodes automatically on your favourite podcast app and rate and review the podcast if you can. You can also listen to the latest episode by saying Alexa play Constructive Voices podcast Voices. Here's the latest episode and on our website where there's lots more information too that's constructivevoices.com. Don't forget the dash. Until next time. Thanks for listening. You're really helping us build something.
