Building Canada's Fastest Growing Company with Joshua Gaglardi, Founder & President of Orion Construction | EP76

In this episode, James and Christian are joined by Joshua Gaglardi, the Founder & President of Orion Construction. In just four years, Orion has grown from a team of 4 to over 40 and was recently recognized as the fastest-growing company in Canada.

The trio covers a wide range of topics, beginning with Josh's involvement in bringing a new Junior B hockey team to Port Coquitlam. They go on to discuss his background in construction, including his experience as an electrical apprentice and his time at UBC studying economics. Josh then explains that timing, a unique service offering, and the ability to offer pre-construction services have been significant factors in the success of Orion Construction and that growth over the past four and a half years, has been made possible by frequent hiring in order to build a high-performing team, and attract top talent. The conversation also covers industrial construction and the company's strategy of diversifying its services within its current projects and the geographical market in which they now operate, having six new projects starting in 2023 between Kelowna, Kamloops, Langford, and Colwood. Overall, the interview provides valuable insights into the construction industry, innovation in industrial spaces, and the strategies a successful company uses to grow and maintain its reputation in a highly competitive market.

Josh Gagarldi is an experienced construction professional with a wealth of knowledge in building light industrial projects in Western Canada. At Orion Construction, Josh plays a key role in each project from start to finish. With a strong focus on project management and negotiation, he has secured over $1 billion in construction projects throughout Western Canada.

Orion Construction is an award-winning company that brings new construction projects to life with an exceptional team of experts. Their preconstruction process is well-defined, ensuring each step proceeds as planned, while their full-service construction management services oversee the entire construction process with a focus on quality and efficiency, building lasting relationships with clients. With over four million square feet of designed space, Orion provides creative solutions that meet all project requirements, including budget and timeline.

EPISODE LINKS:
Joshua Gaglardi LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshua-gaglardi-73978025/
Orion Construction Website: https://orionconstruction.ca/
Orion Construction LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/orion-constructionca/
Orion Construction Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/orionconstruction.ca/

PODCAST INFO:
the Site Visit Website: https://www.sitemaxsystems.com/podcast
the Site Visit on Buzzsprout: https://thesitevisit.buzzsprout.com/269424
the Site Visit on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-site-visit/id1456494446
the Site Visit on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5cp4qJE5ExZmO3EwldN1HH

FOLLOW ALONG:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thesitevisit
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesitevisit

Transcript

Christian Hamm: 0:00

All right, so we're we're fresh off almost a dozen Live episodes at Build X last week. I was quite the experience.

James Faulkner: 0:08

Yeah, it was it was. It was weird, like doing that on the open floor. Like, you can't be in control the entire environment. No, no. So yeah. So to remember that, that? I think it was, I think one there was one company that was giving away free coffee or whatever it was. And they had to keep servicing it with like new plates and filling up the coffee and all that. And there's this. This, I guess, person that works at the facility of the, what he call a convention center, and his little trolley and would go over these bumps. And you had here the place go claim to claim. So four wheels, two bumps. Yeah. So that was like, Go clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk. Not everyone, however,

Christian Hamm: 0:57

on Rohan throughout the episodes, so if you're, if you're listening to those, they're all out. Please go check it out. But also, there's a little counting count how many times the coffee lady came by?

James Faulkner: 1:11

Yeah, the coffee cup, we should figure that out.

Christian Hamm: 1:14

It would be good to know, but it was it was a big success. And we had a fun time. We look forward to doing it again. And picking up a lot of new listeners from that. And we have coming off the tail. the coattails of that a fantastic episode. Today with long time coming here. Friend of the podcast, customer site, Max. Yeah. And recently named, fastest growing company in Canada, not just construction, but in Canada. We've got Josh GALARDI. From Orion construction joining us.

James Faulkner: 1:50

Yeah, it was cool. Listening to him. And it's pretty impressive.

Christian Hamm: 1:54

Yeah, in for just four short years. They've gone from a four person team founding that company to fastest growing company in Canada. Did you say 43 to 4043 out from four to 43 in four years. And he said nearly 400 million in backlog over the next few years. Yeah, it's crazy. It's wild. But please enjoy this episode with Josh regularity from Orion construction. All right.

James Faulkner: 2:21

Welcome to the site visit podcast leadership and perspective from construction with your hosts James Faulkner and Christian Hamm.

Jesse Unke: 2:33

Business as usual as it has been for so long now that it goes back to what we were talking about before and hitting the reset button

Justin Bontkes: 2:39

and you read all the books you read the email and read scaling up your read good to great you know, I could go off the place

Sebastian Jacob: 2:44

where we found the secret serum we found secret potion we can get the workers and we know where to get

Cam Roy: 2:51

one time I was on a jobsite for quite a while and actually got some extra concrete and I've ordered like a broom finish patio, out front of the site,

John Reid: 2:59

that a guy hit me up on LinkedIn out of the blue and said he was driving from Oklahoma to Dallas to meet with me because he heard the favorite Connect platform on your guys's podcast

Zack Staples: 3:09

own it, crush it and we celebrate these values every single day.

James Faulkner: 3:17

Let's get down to it

Christian Hamm: 3:23

all right. We're going okay. This has been a long awaited episode. Refresh off bill. That was a fantastic week. It's James and Christian here and we are joined by Josh Joshua GALARDI from Orion construction. It's awesome to have you awesome to be here. And welcome. Yeah, there's a few things that we're talking about kind of headed into this I wanted to just share right off the hop because I got Joshua T Josh asked for a tea. I don't know if you remember Josh a time when we were in Starbucks. Oh, and we got a tea and I think maybe I had a tea or you had a tea. And I I turned around really quick. And I smashed the tea out of your hand all over your arm and everything like that. Do you recall

Joshua Gaglardi: 4:11

no remember, but as you tell me it's it's starting to come back.

James Faulkner: 4:15

You can look for the scar in your eye. Is this a birthmark?

Christian Hamm: 4:19

The reason why I say is because your reaction was it was it was you're obviously in some pain. But I was like holy smokes like that must have really hurt you. Anyway, all this to say is that it's come back full circle and I had it happened to me at a Starbucks as well. And man oh man, I can totally feel for you and how that went. I had my hand in a bucket of ice for a solid day and I didn't sleep that first night. Oh

Joshua Gaglardi: 4:45

my god.

Christian Hamm: 4:46

Oh man. burning yourself is brutal for yourself.

James Faulkner: 4:50

Unfortunately, Yeah, that sucks. It does. It's

Christian Hamm: 4:52

really bad anyway,

Joshua Gaglardi: 4:53

well if if it makes you feel any better anytime I order a tea now I get like a third cold water.

Christian Hamm: 4:58

Oh do you Why do you need to wait through that? You got to wait 20 minutes before you can do it first if anyone knows so, I don't know. Anyway, it's it's awesome to have you like I said long awaited a lot of fun conversation right before we jumped in you were showing us some pictures. Do you want to share a little bit about what you're showing us there Josh?

Joshua Gaglardi: 5:15

Yeah, for sure. So part of a group who is carrying a junior B hockey team in Port Coquitlam sort of be an expansion team. There was the old buckaroos, which was junior B team there, they moved to Port Moody. So this is a new team in an old market. So we were just finalizing the name and the logo and the colors and the equipment and everything. And then we're having a camp this spring, and then the official season start is September. Well,

Christian Hamm: 5:45

that's awesome. Well, big congrats, man. I know that you were posting a lot about that on social and that was kind of a little bit hush hush. And then when it finally got announced,

Joshua Gaglardi: 5:52

yeah, that's good. or social media. Page got 1000, like grassroot likes before is officially anything. So that's really know what it was to the team for putting that together.

Christian Hamm: 6:02

Well, I know, you know, younger son plays hockey and the hockey community is like a pretty tight community. And everybody kind of knows what's going on and little rumblings and even one of the guys he's pretty involved in the goalie coaching aspect of things, and in British Columbia, and across Canada, but he was he was even talking about because I said Yeah, buddy mind. I think he's got this junior B thing going on as a goal. Yeah. You knew all about it. Oh, yeah. Everyone always knows. Yeah. That's pretty funny. But no, that's great. Josh, why don't you give our audience and those that'll be listening through your network and everything. Just a bit of a background of who Josh is. And then we can get into some Orion construction stuff.

Joshua Gaglardi: 6:41

Yeah, of course. So, you know, Christian, we had the fine pleasure of working together a couple different times. Yeah. In our long storied history. So you know, classic story. Family contractors, Dad's contractor, brothers, contractor, uncle's contractor developer. So definitely grew up in construction. started early age on site was working as electrical apprentice when I was 1617. On site, also worked in restaurants at the time. So you know, had a lot of experience from really like young age, which is really great. Moving forward, going to UBC studied economics, in the summers worked on the real estate side as well, working construction in the summer. And then that's where we ran into each other in Northland properties. Yeah. Day one they wanted to connect. Yeah. And then that was a really great experience. After that, went over to company integrated construction, who is a smaller sort of commercial industrial company worked there for, you know, seven years, many of those with you. Yep. And then, oh, four half years ago is no time to start something new. And, you know, incomes Ryan construction?

Christian Hamm: 7:52

Well, that is that's a Coles notes. I mean, there's a lot, a lot in there for sure. And you've accomplished a lot in in just four and a half years of starting things out. And I think it's really cool. Like you said that we work together. And we were talking about, you know, constructions is a small world as well. Right? And so you along the way you kind of accumulate all these relationships, and you're you never know what's going to happen. But a lot of people along the way can kind of catch wind of a vision that you might add, and I think starting construction, and maybe beyond that was always in the cards for you.

Joshua Gaglardi: 8:24

Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's definitely part of the plan. It took a little longer to get there, obviously, then, maybe I hoped but I think Orion was founded just after just before my 30th birthday. So Sheesh. Yeah.

James Faulkner: 8:37

So four years ago? Yeah. Four and a half, four and a half wild crazy. So I think like we we first met at this office over here, you have a question came in? Yes. That was ever that

Joshua Gaglardi: 8:49

yeah, I totally remember that. That's why it's like when I walked in here. So

James Faulkner: 8:53

you hadn't you hadn't been down here with us? Like the two of us here since that? No, we're there. Actually. That Christmas party? I think. Yeah. Vancouver club. Yeah, that was Yeah. Well, that was really good. Yeah. You guys had that bar member? Yeah. Yeah. It was good. Yeah, it was good time.

Christian Hamm: 9:09

That was probably that was when you and I really first connected about what we've been going on a few things by that point. But that might have been a might have been. Yeah, that's one unifying moment. That evening, when we were all

James Faulkner: 9:22

sharing his wife Rashmi goes, so you'd like to cook? Oh, yeah. Anyway, start we digress.

Christian Hamm: 9:30

No, no, that's all good. And, you know, part of that team. What do you talk about your team? Actually? Yeah, of course. Yeah. Let's get into that a little bit.

Joshua Gaglardi: 9:39

I'll give you just a little history of Orion. Just a brief rundown and then the team. So 2018 arrives, you know, we see an opportunity to get into the commercial construction, late industrial. We'd already left. The previous company we worked at So there's four of us originally is me. Miles, who's now our director of construction. Thanks Who you obviously know very well. Brian Smith, who's our director pre-construction Then Adam Drake, who was estimating John Smith.

James Faulkner: 10:07

He sounds familiar.

Joshua Gaglardi: 10:08

He was at one point in time of Wales guy.

James Faulkner: 10:11

Oh, yeah. Remembering. Super nice guy. Yeah, it really nice. Yeah. So

Joshua Gaglardi: 10:14

he left or, but he went from Wales to integrated and then he came with me for a ride. Oh, right. Okay. So the four of us started and started on maybe a 350 square foot mezzanine that we sublet in an office in an industrial warehouse in Campbell heights. So you know, the classic, you know, IKEA table, paint one wall blue, right Orion on it, and then have an Ikea table in a TV. That was our first office.

Christian Hamm: 10:39

That instant top notch branding. Color on the wall.

Joshua Gaglardi: 10:43

Yeah, that was pretty, pretty quintessential startup.

Christian Hamm: 10:47

It was, it was a nice, it was a nice place. And you guys like again, in just four years. And we'll get more into, you know, the fast nature of your guys's growth, obviously. But yeah, like I came in saw you guys early on when you were just in Campbell heights there. And you got fitted out pretty nicely was the kind of that startup vibe, for sure. But you guys have moved like quite quickly because you've you're already into a second or third space or getting into it. Yeah, we're in our third space. So we had the little

Joshua Gaglardi: 11:13

mezzanine, and that lasted no less than a year, you can't fit six people in one single room. That's 300 square feet. So we went from there. And we purchased some strategy units and Capitol Heights. And then we occupy that that for about 10 people sort of our maximum there so that last dozen or the year. And then now just last year, we moved into our current space, which is about 6500 square feet. So it's got space for about 30 office stuff. Nice. And I think we're at 2025 or so and then on Turner Street and Langley 200. Okay. Yeah. So for us, that's really the center of the Lower Mainland for our business, because we've brought projects from East Vancouver, Richmond all the way to Chilliwack. Hope, that area. So that is sort of the epicenter and right by the highway. So it works really well. Okay, logistically.

James Faulkner: 12:04

So, you know, as you have you gone from this, you know, small, little place, what would you say are like your top three reasons why you've been able to, you know, continue to get project opportunity after opportunity after opportunity.

Joshua Gaglardi: 12:24

Top Three Reasons. So I'll just like,

James Faulkner: 12:26

What do you think of the main, like, we got this, cause we got this cause we got this cause?

Christian Hamm: 12:34

Because it's been a series of progressions, like and I think that's a good, good place to get into is a bit about like, your project makeup. Yeah. Right. Because you obviously don't start with like$100 million of construction value. No one, right. Yeah. But you do get into something, you know, a tenant improvement or a few and then you progressively go on from there. So yeah, kind of the James's point. Did you build on that? Yeah, I'd

Joshua Gaglardi: 12:54

say one of the one of the most fortuitous things for us was the timing of that, and we enter the market. So, you know, industrials, been a significant asset class in the Lower Mainland for decades. Yep. Yeah. But as we came in, in the 20 2018 2019, area, we really was starting to pick up some momentum. And in the construction world, you know, on the development side, lots of developers were doing lots of work. So it was ever expanding, you know, the story of vacancies incredibly low. Yeah. But on the construction side, there wasn't that many, that many groups that are were active, and there's, you know, there's obviously whales, BD does their own stuff. But we didn't have a lot of competitors outside of some of the smaller sort of family shops. Yeah. So the timing to come in, and, and present ourselves as a brand has really good and really fortuitous career, but to take a lot of market share quite early. Yeah, that was one of the biggest things. And the other thing was sort of our service offering. So our service offering isn't just, you know, you go hire the architect and engineers, and you call us when you got a permit? And, you know, we'll be looking for you. Yeah, we saw, that's what a lot of our competitors are doing. So we developed this design build strategy quite early on. And we really honed it. I think we're the only general contractor design build contractor with a 10 person pre construction slash Development Services team. I say, okay, so it's that process that we put together that did give us quite a competitive edge early on. So when we're competing against other groups who may be more of a track record, it was really our service offering that that gave us that competitive edge. Oh, cool. So we're competitive on cost? You know, we had less experienced at the time for sure. But we did have more services. So that's when we want a lot of early business.

Christian Hamm: 14:29

And that's pretty interesting story. But like, because I know back when we were even managing some projects together is that offering that pre construction component was something that you kind of would just like, throw out there. So yeah, you add, and then if you got it, you'd be like, okay, and you figure it out on the fly. Yeah. Right. And eventually, eventually, eventually, you get I don't mean that. No, no, no, no, you're absolutely correct, though that, but then you build a team and some professionalism around that. And it's a huge differentiator, right. Whereas other builders might still do that whole Well, yeah. I will do exactly recon. Sure. Yeah, we'll take you through the whole development permit building permit process and whatever. But you master it. And

Joshua Gaglardi: 15:09

exactly. And I think one of the things that lots of people fail to recognize is that those sites back when we were just kind of throwing a throwing our hat in and saying, yeah, we'll do that pre construction. That was, you know, zones service. Yeah. sites and camera lights like, yeah, now you're talking about no zoning, no servicing, maybe an OCP. You know, is there a creek on it or desert? Is there some sort of more complex, nuanced challenges to it, and that's what most of our sites are today, like the zone service ready to go property that you can just kind of figure out on the fly? That's gone sales, right. A lot of our competitors have, I think, caught wind of our competitive advantage on the pre construction development services side. And yeah, I think they're offering those services. They gotta catch up. I think they got a lot of work to do to provide the same service level that we do. There was also

James Faulkner: 15:55

like, you know, you know, we've we've got quite a few customers, with site Max and in the Lower Mainland, and, you know, I've been sort of watching the mark, and I was involved with whales in the earlier days. And, and it seemed to me that, you know, you're totally correct in your timing of when you guys present yourself as an offering. Yeah. Because it seemed like as the residential boom was happening, a lot of companies sort of just spread themselves too thin. And it wasn't specialized. Yeah. And, you know, I think you guys came in with that. Okay, this is what we do this, what we know and how to do for a while. Yeah. And there's also the kind of new kid on the block thing. There's always the discovery people like, well, let's just give them a shot. I mean, how many times did you were you were you? Was your sort of, you threw your hat in the in the ring, just because you're asked to at least because you're the new guys. Well,

Joshua Gaglardi: 17:00

did that happen? That effect actually wasn't that strong? I wish I wish it was, you know, in the first couple of years, not a lot of people wanted to take a risk on us, for sure. Just come a little closer closer on them like that. Not a lot of people wanted to take a risk on us for sure. Yeah. There was one client though, right? In our first year, they did give us a shot on a pretty substantial project that had in in Chilliwack, okay. And there's still a client today, we've done multiple projects with them, and you know, their partners and a bunch of stuff. But they gave us that first real opportunity. On a really, at the time, 180,000 square feet was by far our biggest project we'd ever done. So that sort of catapulted us for sure, into the next level, they've given us that shot. And then after we add that project to our books, and to say, hey, we did this well, then all sudden, it opened up a lot more bigger projects for us. And, you know, today, we just completed a 430,000 square foot building in Campbell heights, and, uh, you know, that's one of the one of the larger buildings and lower mainland. So now, you know, in a short time, we've established ourselves of a builder scale that that kind of stands out.

James Faulkner: 18:05

So when you guys decided to, you know, the the Orion name, obviously, it's, you know, big out there in the galaxy kind of

Christian Hamm: 18:12

constellation. Yeah. What

James Faulkner: 18:14

was the what was the sort of, you know, impetus of that name? And how did you guys figure that out? And

Joshua Gaglardi: 18:21

it's really good. It's really good thing to talk about, because if your naming company in the early 2010s, late 2010s, you'll soon find out that almost every name exists has been taken. Yeah. So I had, I had a list of about 150 names that I thought of, and I just worked my way through those names to find out that every single one been taken. And then my dad approached me and said, I really liked the name of polo. I don't know what is like it was hollow. Yeah, like Apollo as in the another another thing God like God, yeah. And I don't know where it came from. And I looked it up, and it was taken. And then I actually had a dream. And in my dream, Orion came to me, I was like, Oh, that's really cool. I really liked that old Orion, like in the movies back in the day. Yeah, like pictures. I don't know if they exist anymore. But I always really loved that. It's like stealing my mind from watching movies in the 90s. And so look, that one up and of course, was taken. So I noticed there was a residential address. So as I told myself, you know, I'll set my ceiling at 1500 bucks, and I'll go knock on this guy's door, and I'll see if he'll give me that name. And so I knocked on his door, I sat down as Darren table. He reserved the name for his kid if he ever did get into construction, and he offered to give it to me for free, so long as they made him a promise. The promises that never do anything shady with the name. Wow, yeah.

James Faulkner: 19:36

That's amazing.

Joshua Gaglardi: 19:37

I know, is that wild? So we signed over that not on the at the table, he signed over the game to me, and I made that promise.

James Faulkner: 19:42

So you're one of your credos could be this listen. There is no way that a project can go sideways. Yeah. And the first reason is because we don't do that second, third reason is because our track record is fantastic. Third reason is I don't want to lose my name.

Joshua Gaglardi: 20:00

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I made a promise. That's awesome.

Christian Hamm: 20:03

Okay, did you document that process?

Joshua Gaglardi: 20:05

I did not document that process. It was too surreal at the time. I know you're just you're, you know, you got a million things to do. You're trying to make a business plan and you're knocking on some random doors and hoping, Oh, this guy's gonna give you this name. He's probably not going

James Faulkner: 20:17

to like you're in the like, late in the day. Yeah.

Christian Hamm: 20:20

Did you have dinner? What did you eat for dinner?

Joshua Gaglardi: 20:22

Or was it it was done over in 10 minutes? That was that remember? I don't even remember was no like past the piece. No, no, no, no, no, that no,

Christian Hamm: 20:29

no, that is. Yeah.

Joshua Gaglardi: 20:33

No, I got that thing signed, and I was out the door.

James Faulkner: 20:36

Nice. That was awesome.

Christian Hamm: 20:38

What were some runner up names other than follow up,

Joshua Gaglardi: 20:40

man, everything you could think of I tried to take a westco law natural approach, you know, like, whatever evergreen construct Yeah. And yeah, just like try and play into nature. That's the most like cliched taking the Yeah, you could get like our beauty story. That kind of stuff. So it is really tough, but Ryan's good. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's a single syllable, which I like and it's short, and you don't have to like turn it into a nickname. Oh, oh, Ryan.

James Faulkner: 21:06

That's three syllables. Ryan. That's three syllables. Ryan.

Christian Hamm: 21:12

three syllable word. That's why I love it. Most people think it's one. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. No, it's a short word. And it's memorable. And I'm getting this five letter word be three syllables. So wild. Yeah, look at that. It's complicated. Now around wasn't really the right name.

Joshua Gaglardi: 21:27

I had to go back to that house.

James Faulkner: 21:30

I've noticed some the the identity you guys have you have sort of like a measurement kind of motif going on there. Yeah. Kind of. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a zoom in of a drawing almost.

Joshua Gaglardi: 21:41

Yeah, I had a I had a high school friend who did a lot of the branding. I think he worked for the Integrated branding stuff, Gary. Oh, yeah. Yep. Yeah, he's just so talented. He's so so good at this stuff. So I asked again, first crack and said, Hey, I need a logo for this. And he came up with that, like, oh, sort of under construction, and that that type that no harm? Yeah, exactly. You know, it's kind of classic. And it wasn't cliched. Yeah. Yeah. So nice. worked out pretty good on first try.

Christian Hamm: 22:09

Well, yeah, no doubt, obviously, the name and the foundations of the story. You know, it's worked out well, what? Let's talk about, Okay, a couple of these years progressing in four years. four short years, you guys have gone from startup to just recently, in at the end of 2020, to being recognized as

Joshua Gaglardi: 22:34

the fastest growing company in Canada. Yeah, it was just a wild ride. Yeah.

James Faulkner: 22:41

So what are the what are those, like qualifying metrics that make that the case? I don't

Joshua Gaglardi: 22:46

remember, but you had to have like a certain mon revenue amount, which is like a million dollars or something. And then there's the increase over and then they take your last three financial three years? Three years? Okay. Yeah. So it's incremental. So it really lends itself to startup companies or high growth companies. I see. And I knew we had a new, we had some pretty crazy years, and I knew that our growth is, you know, pretty wild. And so we applied. And, you know, looking at the years past, I was like, wow, we might actually be like, top 100, which would be, that's pretty cool. Yeah. And they don't tell you, they don't tell you anything. They just say, you know, when it's published, is published. And you know, if you want, we'll call you for a photo or whatever. And so they called in the US interview, but the guy wouldn't tell me anything. And so then, like a week before it's published, they just sent an email and had our placing first, I was like, wow, that's, that's way higher than I thought we'd be.

James Faulkner: 23:42

Hundreds.

Joshua Gaglardi: 23:45

So that was really is really nice surprise, actually.

James Faulkner: 23:47

Yeah, that's fantastic. Congratulations. Yeah. Thanks.

Christian Hamm: 23:49

Thanks. Congrats, man. Yeah, what was the initial feeling? So you got an email? And you see that and you're just kind of like, okay, or like, was it no jockey right on the

Joshua Gaglardi: 23:59

my chair. And I was like, wow, is am I reading this correctly? Like, number one? I just have typos. Is there supposed to be some zeros on the backside of this 100. But I know is really great night. We've got around the same time we got top 20 biggest contractors in BC with business in Vancouver and also top five contractors under 50 employees with on site amazing. I don't know why those get a bunch of good news. Right. And all at the same time.

Christian Hamm: 24:26

Yeah, no doubt. Well, last. Yeah. Last year is the year of awards. Yeah. And you got you got a number of awards yourself. Personally.

Joshua Gaglardi: 24:32

That was good. And 2020 twos was good. 23 I don't know what to do.

Christian Hamm: 24:38

Yeah, you build a bigger building.

Joshua Gaglardi: 24:41

You just got to make sure everything goes as as planned. So the

James Faulkner: 24:45

year in terms of like sales, develop enrollment, like getting your getting your deals getting your like, is like being part of the developer community, I guess. Yeah, I mean, Is it like now up and all that kind of stuff? Like where we're at is like,

Joshua Gaglardi: 25:04

Yeah, I mean, we we don't have a big client base, we've got just a handful of clients who work for it. So very selective and who we do work for. So we've got one developer, who is a significant amount of our book. So I see, you know, they're, they're a top priority, okay, for sure for us. And then we've got another of other sort of private, local real estate companies that we work for, okay. But we don't have it's not like we're not we don't we haven't marketing ourselves super hard. We just been really focusing on the clients that we've wanted to work with, and really just pushing our services with them and making sure that, you know, they've got everything they need to be successful. Yeah, it's only in the last year, we sort of brought on a cat marcher, okay, as the Director of Sales Marketing, and he's helping us sort of expand sort of our program a little bit more. So being more involved in nail up and BRCA and a number of these things that we've really been getting involved with over last year.

James Faulkner: 25:59

Right. So is it is it kind of like the, the, the Your reputation is as good as your last project kind of thing? Is that is that paradigm? Does that make sense? Yeah.

Joshua Gaglardi: 26:07

I mean, that's, it's a really small community, like you alluded to earlier, Christians, very small, you know, the word travels really quick. And you have a bad project. Everybody knows about. Yeah, I mean, we hear about all the time with other projects, just in our backyard, that we're, we're building at the same time as like, there's not not too many secrets in, you know, warehouse commercial construction? No, not at all.

James Faulkner: 26:29

The, you know, in terms of people used to ask me all the time, this is sort of was, you know, what's the what's the, you know, a branding secret of, of, you know, how to how to, you know, have a great profile, a, you know, or a great brand in construction as a as a contractor. And I always said it was like, it's how you conduct yourself. It's how you do business? I mean, it is, it's how your sites look. So every sub trade shows up at your site. It's either organized or in disarray. Yeah, your site signage is tidy, clean, no frayed edges, none of that stuff. And it's like, all the gates are totally very, you know, the signage is very clear on what to do. Yeah. And, yeah, like, you've done a good job with your everybody having your branding on your vehicles, and your everyone having the Orion stuff on there, you know, your, your apparel, and all that kind of stuff. So I mean, all of this stuff is, it starts to the signal to everyone is organized. Yeah. And organization is, in construction. As you know, it's the most disorganized, really, because everyone's showing up to do their own thing. And when they want to do it, everyone's schedules are trying to Yeah, trying to match. So if you guys are the beacon for organization, and that's the signal you guys are putting out, then that's the way that seems like you're doing that

Joshua Gaglardi: 28:02

organization, like you said, his massive reputation is so important. That's definitely the most important thing. And then you're right sites are so important. Miles, our director, construction, heaps, all our sites and packable. You know, you see a lot of our sites through social media, and we do a lot of drone videos and stuff like that, you'll see our sites are really, really well kept. Yeah, so that's huge, especially when you've got site visits by clients or trades coming by and you know, the result of that is law traders want to work with us, because you can see we're so organized, we can see that we respect our work so much.

Christian Hamm: 28:36

Yeah. Well, there's not much negative that gets communicated by a job site that's clean and tidy. Yeah. Because it means that it's a it's a safe job site to write. Yeah, of course. And that's a big thing, especially when you've got like you were saying, James, we always talk about this with site Max is like, it's one of the only places you could have like 15 to 20 Different companies that are completely disorganized in their own way, or somewhat organized, come together and try and build something together. Right? Yeah. You're the champion of that. You're the general, you're the prize. Yeah, you are organizing that all. And so you kind of are in a way responsible for the trickle down effect. Yeah, of course.

James Faulkner: 29:09

It is kind of like a circus with x. Right? You're the ringleader?

Joshua Gaglardi: 29:14

Yeah, I mean, it could be maybe a better leader would be like an orchestra

Christian Hamm: 29:20

conductor.

James Faulkner: 29:22

Well, the thing. Yeah,

Joshua Gaglardi: 29:23

I mean, it's really true.

James Faulkner: 29:24

The thing about you know, the, the circus is really, it's because they're all so different. Whereas an orchestra has to play together to make the sound. Whereas sometimes there's only just one sub trade, like if you're site clearing, there might be just one sub trade there that day, and that's the lion Act, or the elephant or the elephant that doesn't forget anything. But yeah, so And the thing about the circus is, is that you know, like if one person in a sense When you're an orchestra is out the whole thing screwed. That's not necessarily a case for the construction. It can just be that one thing. Everyone's looking at going. What is going on there? Yeah, it didn't. It didn't ruin it for the audience. So that it's yeah, it's kind of interesting. So that alone the T. Barnum hopefully schedule.

Joshua Gaglardi: 30:17

Yeah.

James Faulkner: 30:20

That's cool. Yeah.

Christian Hamm: 30:21

Well, if you know, you mentioned, miles, yeah, who's a good friend of ours. And he's a bit of a legend, I think in the industry, for sure. I think he is relentless, let's say, with focus about the things that are in front of them and creating a construction experience and a set of operations to make sure that projects going on without a hitch. I'm sure he takes great joy and pleasure in

Joshua Gaglardi: 30:46

Oh, man. Yeah, he's taking this to the next level. Yeah, for sure. I mean, he. All the trades and insults are so are so enamored by him. It's incredible to see. And the way that he tours clients through the site, it's like it's an experience. It's yeah, it's quite wild to see actually.

James Faulkner: 31:06

What's an example of this behavior.

Christian Hamm: 31:09

Okay, well, we have a High Museum. Yeah.

Joshua Gaglardi: 31:13

So good examples. We have a tilt party. Does he have a headset? No, no, no speaker, bombastic that a headset is not required. Next week, but we do we do tilt parties. So for our clients whenever we're tilting and building it's a big milestone usually means you know,

James Faulkner: 31:31

or tilt party is

Joshua Gaglardi: 31:33

that well in our

James Faulkner: 31:35

like in Europe? Be careful.

Joshua Gaglardi: 31:38

Okay. Oh, God, specifically a construction tilt that party moving forward. I'm just getting worried. Precast to panel, you should see my eyes. So well, telephony, yeah, full full construction till the party and and we'll have food and we'll have the client there. Usually there's 4050 people at these things. Yeah. And miles will put on a whole presentation. And yeah, he'll go from soup to nuts. So you'll tell you about the exhibition all the way through the panel installation and the pins and the roofing and why it's sunny today and why the grounds wet and everything. So it's good. That's cool. Yeah, it's great. It's

James Faulkner: 32:14

great. It's a very like when that when those walls get pulled up by those crazy big cranes, and that's an impressive thing. And, and you think like, when they're balancing, they're thinking, Oh, my God, like, how much could go wrong? Yeah, at that point, it's just, that's when you really feel small and human. When you see those big panels. Oh, yeah, for sure. That's

Joshua Gaglardi: 32:34

100,000 pounds.

Christian Hamm: 32:36

There's something about tilt construction, like at the end of the day, you look at it, it's it's a I mean, they're getting nicer. Like aesthetically, they are getting pretty cool when you can put nice facades on them and cladding and all sorts different building products. But when you look at it, when it's you know, before it's painted, or anything's on on, its on its concrete box. Yeah. And you look at high rises and big cranes and the shape, cityscapes and all that kind of stuff. You're like, Whoa, cool. There's nothing like watching till panels. Oh, yeah. Go up, because the building takes shape from nothing into something overnight. Yeah. Over the course of a week, you know, it can be learned on Monday, and it's flat site and you're there on a Friday. And there's a you know, 200,000 square foot building there. It's wild. Yeah, it is. It is really cool.

James Faulkner: 33:19

Do you guys know of any story ever that they haven't got a concrete release stuff like that? Oh, there's

Joshua Gaglardi: 33:25

just glued recently. Yeah. Recently it happened to a contractor Munich happened in Tri Cities. I know. It's happened a couple of times in the last couple years, obviously don't want to talk about anybody buying anything. And then so the panel's just like a new. Yeah, I mean, they switched to recently to low VOC. Bomberger? Yeah, so it's not the same material that once was waterbase. So it's maybe doesn't have the same properties but safer for the environment, everything. So when they switch that over, I think, you know, there's a little bit of a learning curve, but there was some stick some panels that stuck to the, to the slab, and it's tough to remediate for sure. It's expensive.

James Faulkner: 34:04

Yeah, yeah. remediates very friendly word. Yeah,

Christian Hamm: 34:11

yeah. Well, you're talking about team we've obviously talked about, we kind of jumped to the end in terms of where you guys are at now, today, fastest growing company in Canada. But you have a team that's nearly 30 people. Yeah. And you've built a team, like that's quick to build over the course of three to four years. And it's funny. I may have mentioned it. I think when I was with miles at the office not too long ago. We were talking with some other customers of ours. We've got customers spread out all over North America, but we obviously we're here in Vancouver, right? So we got a concentration of customers. And they often come to us and like oh, you know, we're building some projects. We need some people. And they were joking around about our lines taking taking everybody. And I was like, I don't know but like Literally, you guys have attracted a real high caliber, you know, a real top notch set of customers right from your field. Yeah, all the way through to your office staff and your professional staff in the office, when you talk a little bit about how you built the team. And what kind of goes into, you know, the culture and high performing team, for sure,

Joshua Gaglardi: 35:19

we've been really intentional with our growth, because, you know, we knew that we had quite a big pipeline. So we wanted to make sure that we're hiring ahead of our pipeline, we always, you know, made sure that we weren't strategically caught our back foot with our pipeline. So we started hiring pretty, pretty frequently, pretty early. And pandemic is actually really good for us. So we started with four, we're now actually 43, including site supervisors. And during the pandemic, when a lot of people were, you know, scaling back and being really cautious. We had a lot of opportunities to pick up some really good talent, who were willing to take a risk on a company at that time that was quite new, didn't really have that much of a brand. So we jumped on that opportunity, and picked up a bunch of really good, really good team members, which was great. And then we actually got our busiest coming through the pandemic. So, first half of the pandemic, the first year, I guess, it was quite quiet, no one really doing anything, we didn't pick up any new work for all 2020 Basically, from when they kind of shut down. But then 2021 warehousing kind of took off. And people, you know, just started doing business again. So our 2021 we picked up, I'd say like $400 million, where the work is just a wild ride. So during that time, when it was really slow, we're able to pick up some really good people. And then through referrals and word of mouth, we're able to grow that team. And just over the last year, maybe 14 months, we picked up 14 or 15 New team members. So a lot of that growth has been in the last a while as we sort of built out our team. So our marketing team is growing quite significantly, our construction team has grown significantly or developed services team. And then we also have some new verticals. So we do we've architectural technologist in house, we've got a BIM specialist in house, we've got interior designer in house, and we've got a 10 improvement vision in house Nice. So you know, we saw the opportunity to, to continue our growth, but also be better at the, at the growth we had, or the products that we had, by vertically integrating and offering more service was within our current project. So that's been really successful. And that helped grow our company last little bit. So most of our hires had been through word of mouth, but we sort of exhausted that last year. And, and so now we've had a bunch of recruiters helping us out. But we've had up until just recently, we had 100% retention rate, which was really great. You know, that really helped with our story. And then I think we, we do provide a lot more in our office, like we've got a full jam, we've got quite a nice office, you know, we do provide food every Monday, you know, for sure and gets dropped off to our office, and people are able to take advantage of that. And we have the Orion building Futures Program. So through that we provide unlimited counseling to any of our employees. So outside of you know, benefits that are provided by our insurance, if people hit that ceiling and need to top up, then you know, they can reach into that fun that we created. And so, you know, we try to really attract top talent, and you've had been pretty successful in doing it so far.

Christian Hamm: 38:28

Well, that was one thing I was going to ask as you said, you've kind of tapped it is the word of mouth, right? Like your your internal network. You obviously get your best people from your best people. Because they're gonna know other eight players, right? For sure. And they bring them along. And you're right, you can kind of exhaust that network. But then if you're doing things like we we often talk about what comes up almost on every episode is labor shortage that Yeah, but what else has been coming up a lot? Mental health and construction? Oh, yeah. Right. Like this comes up like we had Chris Gardner from ICBA on. And then we had, we had another ICBA we had Jordan Bateman, and Sanjeev all back a bunch of and they have a really cool wellness program. Yeah. And so we talked an awful lot about that. And I think that's really cool. Because oftentimes when it comes to, you know, employee benefits and stuff like that, either people don't even know how to use them. Or if they do, you can tap them out pretty quick. And we're talking about important things. You know, the well being of your, your employees, it's key. Yeah, his key. Yeah, you need that foundation. So we've put a lot of emphasis on it in our culture as making sure it was taken care of and, and that their well being is taken care of as well. The accounting program is totally an on a non anonymous. Yeah.

Joshua Gaglardi: 39:40

So I don't even know how well it's going, but I presume it's going well.

James Faulkner: 39:45

That's tough because it's the anonymous part you kind of you know, if you've you obviously it's hard as a leader because you're like you don't you know, you can't get involved but you wish you could in some way you know it's just not the right place. The certain terms of the, those blinds are great. Hey, we need to we need to oil those blinds either. So for any anyone listening to sun just came beaming in here and I was like pretty much blind for about 10 minutes because we're Yeah. But so you were saying you were you incorporated a company just before your 31st. So So as your Ford 3430 You're gonna be 35 Yeah. 35. Okay, so but what's the average age of the company in terms of like the average age of all of your PETA?

Joshua Gaglardi: 40:33

That's tough, but it's definitely a younger company. Yeah.

James Faulkner: 40:36

But that's like, when you said, you know, you know, we didn't have much of a brand to me. You have a brand, the minute you start a company? Yeah, it's just depending on you might I think a lot of people confuse the word brand with brand exposure. brand exposure means your audience is massive. Yeah. But you do have a brand, regardless, in your brand. Was this up and coming, young, cultured, talented company. So that was the brand for sure. And it was a new thing. Yeah. And for those that have, you know, have perhaps interviewed at a lot of the sort of legacy companies, whatever it is, like, that's the one. So, you know, would you say that the the average age is, is maybe what? Mid 40s? To mid 40s?

Joshua Gaglardi: 41:25

Yeah, low to mid 40s.

James Faulkner: 41:26

Yes. 100 100 year old people? Well, I don't know, brings the average I was gonna say,

Christian Hamm: 41:31

well, 40 average for a construction company is pretty that's I'd say that's pretty low. Considering when you have superintendents and field person. Yeah,

Joshua Gaglardi: 41:40

exactly. Right. Usually on the higher side of the spectrum. Yeah. Right. More experienced. Interesting, more experienced. Well, yeah,

James Faulkner: 41:47

I mean, just pick just because it's

Joshua Gaglardi: 41:51

if you were to take just the office, as your cohort, yeah. It'd be less for sure. Yeah. Yeah.

James Faulkner: 41:56

Right. Okay. Yeah. That's cool. I mean, there is the obviously the, you know, the experience side of things. But I mean, it's not like this is your first rodeo at construction. I mean, it's not like you just decided to do this yesterday. Exactly. I mean, you've been in this for a while, and Myles has been doing this for since he was in diapers. Yeah. Yeah, I

Joshua Gaglardi: 42:14

would imagine so. So once we got the first sort of round of projects under our belt, then the experience part of it no longer came to relevancy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

James Faulkner: 42:22

I mean, that was that was not a anyway, attempt knock on like, experience, it was just more of just talking about the why you've been able to attracts so many great people. Yeah. Is because of this sort of new thing. And

Joshua Gaglardi: 42:37

I'd say, another thing that worked our favor is a lot of different construction companies in town are going through different stages, right. And so we've been able to capitalize on that. And a lot of a lot of our recent talents come from really, really strong companies that are maybe at a different stage in their development or their growth, or

Christian Hamm: 42:55

that is a really cool point to make, though, right? Because this this could go for anyone else that's, you know, starting up a contracting business, or otherwise, you know, obviously getting initially it's always the hardest, right? Getting your first few projects, always the hardest. Doing a really good job. That's difficult, too. But if you can kind of kind of get those things together, and a lot of it is a grind. And you get those first few years under your belt, like you said it almost the experience piece speaks for itself. Yeah, you've got your credibility, you've got clout in the industry. And if you can just get through those hard things, doesn't mean it gets easier necessarily. But getting more repeat business, you know, you have a portfolio that speaks for itself. Yeah, you got a talented staff behind you. But to be able to do that, yeah. Because oftentimes, you'll have someone that's been at it for like two, three decades. Well, how on earth did Orion do that to fastball I mean, you crush it and your first couple of years, and the momentum kind of carries you from

Joshua Gaglardi: 43:49

there. And then it just becomes about consistency. Yeah, consistency is what we're pounding on right now is as our key to success, because providing a consistent experiences is really important to our clients. Yeah. You know, you can be an experienced contractor and have your company for 25 years or whatever, and still not do a good job. Whether you've done it for that long or not, it doesn't really matter. But consistency in execution has been our main focus for

James Faulkner: 44:13

the last little bit. And that consistency, I mean, if you're if you're consistent to your staff, then they will be consistent to your customer. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, that's obviously works its way through in terms of the something that you're probably I mean, if you're, if you're being if you're banging on the door of doing 400 million, Alicia the business more or five, well, half a billion dollars. That's a lot.

Joshua Gaglardi: 44:36

That's new words, but that's over the next few years. Right. So we're sort of average, right? We just broke 100 million last year. I see. Okay, I think we're trending towards 220 25. And I think that's kind of the area where we'll be, you know, pretty successful. Yeah. But to do $200 million in one year, you have to do like 500 million in sales, right? Just because you project a long time sometime.

James Faulkner: 44:58

You know, there's something that We've experienced that same maximum, which is something that you're gonna go through, which is weird, is that, you know, when you're starting, you're constantly playing like offense, right? You're getting new business, you're doing your thing. You know, it's like, but then as you get bigger, suddenly you're like, Oh, I get to defend my net now. Now I'm now I'm the incumbent to some other new new up and comer. So it's a, you've been able to attract, attract attract the business and you say you've had 100% retention rate in terms of your staff. It is a weird shift suddenly, when you're like, oh, yeah, you have to defend now.

Joshua Gaglardi: 45:38

Oh, yeah, I think about that all the sudden, the growth curve. Where are you top out? It's the top of the parabola. parabola that's a

James Faulkner: 45:45

pretty that's a pretty great, I forgot the word sophisticated. Wow, crazy. It's gotta be rainbow.

Christian Hamm: 45:55

Look at that. Double Rainbow. Okay, um, pot of gold right here. Well, you talk about building up a bank of work over the next few years. Definitely want to talk about some trends because I know that you're you're big into kind of what the industrial markets doing. Potentially diversifying or wherever that looks like. Maybe just a bit of a sense of I know, we've talked about industrial construction, we've talked about till construction. Yep. But talk about just really quick, just some of the makeup of your projects, sizing for patients, and then we can get into some trends stuff. Yeah. So I mean, we're being really careful not to diversify too much.

Joshua Gaglardi: 46:34

So we're focusing more on just providing more services within our existing sphere. And then, you know, vertically integrating a little bit rather than going to do something totally crazy, like gonna start building museums or whatever, right. So we're really careful on that. But we have done recently is diversified our market. So we've got projects now in the interior of BC and on the islands. So between Kelowna, Kamloops, Langford and Cole wood, we've got six new projects starting in 2023. So we've been building out that sort of diversification strategy Oh, geez, jeez, I

Christian Hamm: 47:08

was just in Langford, man that crazy old center boom, yeah, there's cranes everywhere. Yeah, no, let us know. Let's order a salad. Sorry. No lettuce. Lots of crazy. Yeah. No lettuce. Yeah.

Joshua Gaglardi: 47:25

So yeah, that those those areas on the island are crazy growth and then the advert just vertically integrated with our own sort of space has been a huge party for us. Right? And you said Kamloops, right. Kamloops, Kelowna? Colwood and Langford column. It's right adjacent to two Lankford. It's right on the water that Oh, yeah.

James Faulkner: 47:47

Okay. Yeah. Crazy.

Christian Hamm: 47:49

All right now in terms of this is all Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

Joshua Gaglardi: 47:52

Project sizes. So we've got our most successful projects are sort of in the 102 plus 1000 square feet range. Yeah. We've got single projects now, though, and Campbell heights. So you know, we've got one project that is multiple phases, over 1.7 million square feet. Oh, one single building might even be close to a million square feet. But most of our work still is in the city, Surrey and sort of that, you know, camel Heights area or bridge you? I'd say, Langley, Surrey Chilliwack. Abbotsford, south of the Fraser is where we see a lot of growth potential in our asset class right now. And then we also have projects north of the river and Maple Ridge mission. Park coulomb, and then, you know, Richmond, Burnaby, as well.

Christian Hamm: 48:38

Right. Right. All right. So you talked earlier on about when we were talking about the design build process, and how things were, you know, pre service, lots, all that kind of stuff. It's pretty straightforward to do, you know, pre construction, but now there's a couple of things I guess happening and be good to get your insight and where things go. There. Obviously, Campbell had specifically opening up a lot more land. Yeah, pushing self doubt. And it's funny we have we have friend down there that they're on a piece of property 20th, I think, and you can look just through the bushes, and there's already like, there's there's fresh, clean sites. Crazy how much how far south it's pushing. Yeah.

Joshua Gaglardi: 49:16

And these all have to be serviced and everything like that, when we talk about Yeah, some of the industrial trends, some of the other things going on province, I think two of the big trends we're gonna see that we're focused a lot on right now is, you know, multistory industrial buildings. So whether it's, you know, your more traditional smaller units, you know, multi level, you know, four or five storeys with maybe office above. That's something that's been popular last couple years. And so we're seeing that, but we're also seeing, you know, in the Fraser Valley, more sort of stacked industrial like warehouse on top of warehouse distribution center and Trump different distribution center. So we're seeing a lot of growth in that market. And there's a huge push towards sustainability right now. So we've got a handful of net zero prod index. And a lot of these bigger companies, institutional companies they've got, they've got mandates to be net zero or some sort of equivalent. So we're focused a lot on that right now. And just making sure that we're, we're a leader in those two areas, because we see a tremendous amount of growth there. And so I'd say those are some of the bigger industrial trends sort of happening right now.

James Faulkner: 50:18

The because we were we were talking to, you know, enough to bring up someone else. But I think that this is the the there's the innovation in terms of industrial or commercial spaces, let's like like light industrial, like warehousing, etc. There's a lot of like, neat stuff that's going on in terms of so, you know, like, Where does this Where did these trends? Where do you find this stuff is or places in Europe? That's like pushing it the limit? Is there any place that has mandala space is obviously going to start innovating? Yeah. So where are the where are the key markets that you're seeing crazy innovation?

Joshua Gaglardi: 50:56

Well, I think the Lower Mainland in itself is got two major constraints. One, land is scarce, land is expensive. So working within those two constraints, that's going to lead to the innovation. So we're seeing land pricing going up so high,

James Faulkner: 51:10

are we a leader here in terms of innovation? With that kind of extraction?

Joshua Gaglardi: 51:14

I'd say no, that was gonna say, we got actually people looked at, I mean, you look at you look, you look at like Prologis. And they've got one probably the biggest industrial portfolio in the world. And they've got multistory facilities all over the states and, and Asia and Europe. And it's more commonplace than what we have here. I think Vancouver got its first trough uncompleted last year by Oxford Properties. Yeah, river, Ben.

James Faulkner: 51:41

So let me let me ask you just like, I don't know a lot about the stuff but in, in respect to vehicle weights and loading bays being elevated, is that the main constraint of having like, load bearing, like, how much weight? Like can a semi truck pull up to one of these? Like, if that's the issue, most, that's

Joshua Gaglardi: 52:03

an issue, but that's functional cost.

James Faulkner: 52:04

So is it okay?

Joshua Gaglardi: 52:05

I mean, if you look at Vancouver, you know, Richmond in some other areas, there's an alluvial fan. So it's it's just sand that's been brought down the Fraser River and deposited over time. So there's no bearing capacity there. I see. So, going into Abbotsford and Chilliwack, and Surrey, where there's more bearing pressure, you're able to more economically build those types of buildings. Oh, cool. Okay. But that's just a function of costs, really, land prices went so high scarcity went so high that finally the economics made sense to start doing stuff that we'd never seen before. I mean, they've been talking about that people don't talk to me about multi storey buildings for a decade, and then say, Okay, I want to do the multistore building. So great. Here, we do we plan and we pray three days in, like more than one Yeah, more than one story. And then we've planted and we price it, and we sit down and and they say, well, this doesn't make any economic sense. And so, you know, I've been having that conversation for eight years. And then now the last few years, you know, people are fine saying, Oh, well, you know, this actually makes more sense now. And so so the economics have changed, with the land prices the way that they've gone in local market. That

James Faulkner: 53:07

makes sense. Yeah. Yeah,

Christian Hamm: 53:08

that's something I was gonna ask, right? Because if you don't run out of land, you're not necessarily forced to push in another direction for innovation, I think. Yeah. But then you're saying it's the land costs that now make the economies of scale? It makes it makes the project makes sense. Now, it's for the added? You said it's a functional cost to do these projects. Yeah. To make them make sense. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. The,

James Faulkner: 53:32

there was a time this is little story here in terms of in terms of what like what makes sense in terms of cost. So there's this little story. I was back in back my old branding days, I had this customer remind us client, and they were they were a natural gas, they were gonna go and try and find more resources and rock. It was a petroleum company. And I was like, they're like, yeah, what we do is we, we drill underneath wells that have already been depleted, because there's an extra 10%. Underneath that there's no pressure on so they go, and they go underneath and up like this. And I was like, okay, yeah, I could probably invest like 10 grand or whatever it is, should have put it in apple. I'd be a lot richer man now. But then when oil prices did this, the whole business model didn't make sense, because it would cost too much to go. Yeah. Right. So this is a similar kind of thing. Oh, for sure. So it's all depends. And the oil price is akin to the real estate those, you know, square meter, hectare acre acre, yeah. Price, where that balances out. So you're seeing that now there's an opportunity to do the multi story commercial.

Joshua Gaglardi: 54:47

I mean, there's two sides of it costs has gone on, for sure on land, right. But also, you know, lease rates and celebrates gone up as well. So there's more economic incentive to do these projects. Yeah, right at the same time, as it has been cost prohibitive to not do them. Yeah, that makes sense.

James Faulkner: 55:04

So you were saying that, you know, often you see the sort of is it the kind of strata warehouse office upstairs? It was kind of medium size, you know, warehouse space rolls up door and like a garage door kind of situation. Is you seeing a lot of that out in the Campbell heights? Is that what that stuff is as industrial

Joshua Gaglardi: 55:27

parks see more sort of aircore? Like you see that stuff in East fan? And so with fans? Yeah. A lot of stuff in the in the Fraser Valley and other markets, you see more like distribution center on top of distribution center and isolate different program. Right. It's meant more for you know, multiple truckloads. Dock loading, not the garage door sort of roll up.

Christian Hamm: 55:46

Right Man Cave stacked on Mankey. Yeah, exactly. sticking their boats or whatever. Yeah. But

James Faulkner: 55:50

as, as the real estate, you know, keeps growing in the Fraser Valley. Does this the requirement for those? It kind of falls the people, right, because people want this little business close to there. Yeah. Sort of Not really.

Joshua Gaglardi: 56:02

Not really. I mean, it depends you it's to function to the people but also sort of the market disturbing, right, so Vancouver's such a big market. It doesn't have a lot of big industrial options, right? I mean, it's got a pretty big industrial base, but there's no, there's no room for group growth in Vancouver. Like there isn't Chilliwack. Abbotsford, Surrey. So you see a lot more opportunity for new new projects and a bigger scale out there. Whereas in here, you just kind of have to do with what you have. Because

James Faulkner: 56:27

one of the notable projects you didn't do but where did you enter Molson? Now who did you notice that others Wilson Yeah. But there's an example. I mean, left Berard over here? Oh, yeah. And then, you know, went way out?

Joshua Gaglardi: 56:44

Yeah. And when went this way? Not this way.

James Faulkner: 56:46

Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Crazy. Yeah. Okay, well, we've

Christian Hamm: 56:51

covered a lot of things

Joshua Gaglardi: 56:52

you're covered. Are we on track coverage?

Christian Hamm: 56:56

No, no, no, no, this this is what happens when you have a freak freeform conversation that can go in all different directions. But it gives me it helps us I mean, we're always curious to know about these types of things. But it gives the audience a good a good sense of the market, but then also your story and where Orion is going. So on that note, what are you excited about for the next couple of years for Orion for your team, just something that just gets your just get you up every morning and

Joshua Gaglardi: 57:23

say, What am I excited, I'm really excited about our merging sort of growth markets like the the new challenge of going to the interior and going to the islands. I'm really excited about those because it's it's new and challenging. We've we've had a lot of success and have a pretty well oiled machine in the Lower Mainland. So it's, it's gonna be a nice new challenge to go these new markets with new trades. And we've had some success making inroads with those trades. So that's, that's really exciting. And then I think just continuing to, you know, grow market share in this local market is really exciting for us to sort of get to where we want to be in the next couple of years. Yeah,

James Faulkner: 57:59

I'm excited about your Orion branded seaplane. Sounds like I was just gonna say, yeah, that'd be sweet. Yeah, I mean, especially going to the island, because it's very stinks.

Joshua Gaglardi: 58:09

I know, we've been doing the jeans. What is harbor harbor? Yeah.

James Faulkner: 58:14

I mean, that's it's actually pretty good. But just imagine having your own. Yeah, I would imagine the maintenance. It's, I don't, I don't I don't know. I mean, like, it's a big deal. Yeah. One

Joshua Gaglardi: 58:24

of our one of our development partners has a plane. So we've actually had the the ability to use it every once awhile. Waste Management open. For it, yeah, like for it? Yeah. Don't track those things. Do they?

James Faulkner: 58:41

You'd be on the list.

Christian Hamm: 58:44

Already. That's one thing that people need to know about Josh. He's got a posse. He's got a crew and they go to sporting events all in. In unison. How long do you guys plan to prepare for these things?

Joshua Gaglardi: 58:56

Well, I went to the Superbowl last year. And I thought, wow, that's

James Faulkner: 59:00

really special. Was that the weekend? That was it. The weekend who was who knows last year was like,

Joshua Gaglardi: 59:05

Snoop Dogg. High school yard throws back selja. And that was such a great experience. And so this year, we turned into a bit of a client trip and took some of our clients and development partners and did it again in Scottsdale, Arizona, just so happened. It was also the Phoenix open on the same weekend as the Super Bowl. So an incredible experience. If you're into sports. That weekend.

Christian Hamm: 59:29

It wasn't credible. Watching your stories

Joshua Gaglardi: 59:32

on the 16th 16th. That was this year. This year, I think is like three weekends ago.

James Faulkner: 59:37

Yeah. Was Rihanna. Rihanna. Yeah. I think she was lip syncing. Yeah, sure. The stage saw the words keep going.

Christian Hamm: 59:49

Right on Josh. Well, okay. We always finish up our conversations with all our guests, one by saying, Is there anything you'd want to share with our audience or your team? potential customers, just leaving with some sentiments from Josh.

Joshua Gaglardi: 1:00:09

The most common ask question that I've been getting lately is this pricing going down. So that's a really tough one. Because every time I tried to predict pricing, in the past, I've been wrong. Turns out there's way more to pricing than anyone ever think. And I think we learned that mostly through the pandemic, yes. During the pandemic, we were forced to really figure out our supply chain and where all these materials are coming from, why are they taking so long? And through that exploration? You know, we found out that, you know, almost nothing comes locally, except for maybe concrete. And so, I guess anyone listening, I think prices are gonna go down in the spring and summer 23. But I don't really know.

Christian Hamm: 1:00:45

Yeah, it's a bit of a no one's got a crystal ball, and things are ever changing.

James Faulkner: 1:00:50

I mean, he was like, going up. So yeah, we prices the same. Yeah. And

Joshua Gaglardi: 1:00:53

another really thing, I think that maybe isn't stated enough, and it is well documented in the media. And you know, Chris Gardner does a really good job of it. Is that Yeah, you know, there's a there's a major labor shortage in this market. Yeah. And right now, you know, some multifamily projects and maybe put on hold, or some bigger projects have been put on hold. But that's just a small part of the picture. You look at what the government spending, and I think, I forget the stat but I think we're at it, like multitude of five, or no multitude of three over the last five years in public projects. Right. So, you know, our spending on public projects is probably overshadowed the, the amount of work we're doing on the private side, so, so no matter what we do, yeah, we're gonna have a major labor shortage on our hands. No, no. I'm gonna be cognisant over the next coming. You know, three 510 years.

James Faulkner: 1:01:39

Yeah, yeah. Well,

Christian Hamm: 1:01:39

we talked about it a lot. And I mean, I feel like it's, it's the rallying cry of every episode. And every time we sit down with, we didn't mention that you're a new customer to Yeah. Which is awesome.

James Faulkner: 1:01:50

Yeah, that that we really, I haven't had a chance to chat with you about that. But thank you very much for for your business. Yeah. You know, took took a while it's really it's really cool. I mean, I know that Christian really, you know, wanted to have you guys with us. And yeah, we're, we're always gonna be working for yourself. Yeah.

Joshua Gaglardi: 1:02:10

No, we're happy to have you guys for sure.

Christian Hamm: 1:02:11

That's awesome. No, I love that. You just texted me out of the blue. And you're like, there's miles. Okay. Did you do something?

Joshua Gaglardi: 1:02:19

Miles came to me and said he wanted to say Max, I don't know, for some reason he had a penis monitor. He never wanted it. But now all son one day after Christmas, he just couldn't live without it.

Christian Hamm: 1:02:29

Well, we love that. And I do actually, I really do want to know, because we just went through this whole circuit of having 1011 episodes that Bill decks last week. Yeah, I saw that. That was really cool. And it came up a couple times. Supply chain. Yeah. And you mentioned it with the exception of concrete, which you get pretty much in the backyard type thing. But there's lots of different components of everything that goes into oil. And that can come from overseas. Is there anything? Is there a trend? Even our lumber bounces all over the place before it gets back? Right. Yeah. So is there anything, though, to look more, you know, domestically, for certain products? Just to control things a little bit more on the in the realm of construction materials?

Joshua Gaglardi: 1:03:13

Yeah, I'd say. I'd say there's definitely a trend, like a macroeconomic trend happening, especially in the states on shoring and, and having more local manufacturing. Yes, definitely happening right now. I don't know how involved Canada is on it, I think, you know, usually removed after the state. So I'm sure it's coming for sure. But I think, you know, there's a lot of hard lessons to be learned during the pandemic. And I think that's one of them. I think we'll see more locally sourced materials and products in the future. But so much of it is regulation

Christian Hamm: 1:03:43

as well, for sure. Absolutely. Not so much you can do. Well, that's a great way to kind of tidy up the conversation, but we want to like we always end every episode of the site visit with three questions. Josh, we're gonna put you on the spot. Not really, you've seen these but gives everybody a chance to decent, a little bit more about you. And what makes Josh tick. How does that sound? Yeah, that's great. All right.

James Faulkner: 1:04:08

Okay, sounds

Christian Hamm: 1:04:09

you're like sounds great.

Joshua Gaglardi: 1:04:11

This is the only part of it I didn't look at. Thanks.

Christian Hamm: 1:04:13

Let's get that's, that's the best way because then these are really organic responses. All right, rapid fire. Here we go. Josh, what is something that you believe in? Or do What is something you do that others would think is insane?

Joshua Gaglardi: 1:04:26

I would say everyone on my team thinks I'm insane for continuing to push sales and marketing as strong as I do. It's just ingrained. And yeah, I can't stop.

Christian Hamm: 1:04:37

All right, any specific examples of some is there like a quirky thing that you might do? Or

Joshua Gaglardi: 1:04:42

well, it's just like, you know, we did the we had a really, really full pipeline. And the anecdote we're really full pipeline at the end of the year. No, we aren't but we on boarded a new marketing sales director. Yeah. And another couple team members and then I came with the idea for the Blitz So the Blitz was a three month period where we set a goal for sales. And just all hands on deck, see if we can hit the targets. That's really hit the sales engine heart. And we way surpassed our targets. We just went really crazy on sales, and it was really successful exercise. But you know, some I imagined him saying, you know, we've got quite a bit of work was unnecessary. This crazy.

Christian Hamm: 1:05:24

Good, crazy. Yeah. Oh, that's great. All right, Josh, if you weren't doing what you're doing right now, and I know, it's hard because you're living your dream. Okay, you're building some. That's incredible. What would you be doing?

Joshua Gaglardi: 1:05:36

That's a really good question. I've been asked this recently, because it's, it is really hard, because I'm so invested in what I do, and I genuinely love what I do every day. But I'd wished that I was good at, at some sort of, like, more creative design center type thing, you know, like, I'd love to be able to design buildings on BIM or stuff like that, you know, like, I'd love if I was more talented than that aspect and was able to do that as my job because, you know, I just think that, you know, being able to create something like that in 3d or and then have it come to fruition. I know. That's kind of what I do.

Christian Hamm: 1:06:10

Remember, when you were designing glam? baseplates?

Joshua Gaglardi: 1:06:15

That was my peak. That's my peak. Yeah.

Christian Hamm: 1:06:19

That's cool, though. I think. Yeah, having that creative aspect of things always is a nice that last one here, what is your most memorable story? From a past project or from a job site? Good question. I gotta think about this one was second. story. I mean, the cool thing is, is that like you, you have some great experience working on projects on the job site.

Joshua Gaglardi: 1:06:45

Yeah. All over the place. Yeah. Most memorable, this is gonna take me a second.

Christian Hamm: 1:06:52

Sometimes people share like, sentimental things. And they're like, oh, that project, you know, made me feel a certain way. Or some people say, this was really ridiculous, and I have no jobs that that I

Joshua Gaglardi: 1:07:03

can share. Yeah, I've got one of those, but I can't share it. Yeah, that was the first thing that came to my mind. Sentimental you gotta give me a second. Oh, it's all good.

James Faulkner: 1:07:12

It could be something funny too. Yeah,

Joshua Gaglardi: 1:07:14

I know. Again, I got one but I can't tell. I'd say I'd say we did have one really good one. So we did we did a project in Abbotsford for a user and we are involved in all stages of the project with the base building and the tenant improvement we've been partnered with the the user and sort of like a build Sue basis and in the height of the pandemic BC Hydro is an unavailable to any sites like BC Hydro is the biggest problem but long as they time item. Yeah. Basically didn't know when BC Hydro is gonna show up. Same with Fortis. Yeah. And, and we had we were at this Abba's for job site. And we were supposed to be done right at the end. And, you know, in within one week, I think BC Hydro showed up BC 40 or 40, showed up energized the project, we broadcast to it. And we were able to hand over that project that same week. And I think that was the fastest project we ever did, I think was about 10 months, start to finish, full base building full 10 improvement office and manufacturing facility. And that client was so happy when we finished that facility for them. And we had a party sort of you sort of had like this event yet land and food and everything. And he actually had this giant wall to chain because he's in steel manufacturing created and he cut through the chain instead of like cutting a ribbon he like took like cut through this chain is that's pretty cool as awesome. And to be able to, I mean, that project was, you know, on budget and too much how to schedule during the middle of pandemic is great, great story. Yeah.

James Faulkner: 1:09:00

I just took a picture of that. Yeah, I

Christian Hamm: 1:09:02

was gonna say was it longer than two minutes? Three minutes.

Joshua Gaglardi: 1:09:08

It took a little while and then it actually well, we were at that party. Well, we're at that event. It was the vote for Metro van for the new camera heights, health exclusion. Oh, yeah. Which a vote we thought because, you know, I had clients who had significant holdings in that. And so while we were at that event, we got the news that it was passed by one vote. One councillor and Vancouver was the extra vote take it over night and pass it and if we didn't pass that in the metro, it would go under the all new Metro Van 2050 and and take years and years and years and Pete It's huge hold up but but that one vote took it over and it took all that happening in you know the course of you know, one week in one day. Wow, pretty awesome.

Christian Hamm: 1:09:53

Well, that's pretty cool. So that would that have shaped a little bit of future for you then? No, yeah, for sure.

Joshua Gaglardi: 1:09:57

I mean, now we've got this massive project in cap All right, so so Right, right. I worked out that's not 10 years away.

Christian Hamm: 1:10:04

Well, Josh, this has been fantastic man, like I was saying in the beginning, long time coming. Thanks for taking the time to get down here. Yeah, to share your story to get into some of the nitty gritties and the nuts and bolts. It's always nice to hear what goes into building a great company. And we wish you the best of success. And as James said, you know, obviously your customer so we're here we got your back, but we look forward to keeping in touch and doing this again, we'd like to do following on episodes and see how things go.

Joshua Gaglardi: 1:10:35

Yeah, thanks so much for the opportunity. Thank you.

James Faulkner: 1:10:47

Well, that does it for another episode of the site visit. Thank you for listening. Be sure to stay connected with us by following our social accounts on Instagram and YouTube. You can also sign up for a monthly newsletter at Site mag systems.com/the site visit where you'll get Industry Insights, pro tips and everything you need to know about the site visit podcast and Sitemaps the job site and construction management tool of choice for 1000s of contractors in North America and beyond. Site Max is also the engine that powers this podcast. All right, let's get back to build