The SiteVisit

Construction Tech Investment, Jobsite Robotics and the 15-Minute City - WSR #001 | EP85

• Andrew Hansen, James Faulkner, Christian Hamm • Season 4 • Episode 85

Share episode

Send us a text

In this episode, the inaugural Weekly Site Report, James and Christian dig into current news, topics and trends related to Construction, Culture and the Built World.

Something the hosts have wanted to do for quite some time, they kick things off by exploring the groundbreaking construction tech investment by EllisDon, a leading, Canadian-based general contracting company investing in construction tech startups. They highlight the potential impact of this move on project efficiency and sustainability and its influence on fostering a culture of innovation within the industry. Moving on, they take a deep dive into the world of robots on the jobsite, focusing on SuperDroid Robotics and their cutting-edge and economically priced robots designed for construction sites. They discuss the advantages and applications of these robots, along with potential challenges and the future prospects of this technology. Lastly, the hosts tackle the somewhat polarizing topic of the 15-minute city, examining both sides of the debate and discussing the benefits, challenges, and potential for hybrid models. Tune in most Tuesdays to the Weekly Site Report for more engaging discussions around construction, culture, and the built world.


EPISODE LINKS:
EllisDon ConTech Accelerator: https://readsitenews.com/ellisdon-launches-construction-tech-accelerator/
Superdroid Robotics: https://www.superdroidrobots.com/unveiling-an-affordable-autonomous-reality-capture-robot/?utm_source=newsletter.readsitenews.com&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=going-nuclear
The 15-Minute City: https://youtu.be/TQ2f4sJVXAI
CBC: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/15-minute-city-conspiracy-theory-essex-county-council-1.6808005
National Post: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/what-the-15-minute-city-means-and-why-its-nonsense

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

James Faulkner:

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

Zack Staples:

business as usual as it has been for so long now that it goes back to what we were talking about before hitting the reset button and you read all the books and read the email read scaling up your read good to great, you know, I could go on

Sebastian Jacob:

we got to a place where we found the secret serum we found secret potion we can get the workers and we know where to get them

Cam Roy:

one time I was on a jobsite for quite a while and i actually added some extra concrete and I poured like a broom finished patio, out front of the site.

John Reid:

Guy just 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 Faber Connect platform on your guys's podcast.

Zack Staples:

Own it, crush it, love it, we celebrate these values every single day.

James Faulkner:

Let's get down to it.

Christian Hamm:

All right. Well, what was that love for your genius? I'm so sorry. Okay, ready? Hey, I'm excited. This is this is our second official video podcast. But you the audience hasn't actually seen the first one. No, but this is, this is something fun for us, because we're going to be doing this weekly as well. Have a little fun. I don't know if we've done this before where it's just been you and me chatting, chatting about things that are relevant and construction news topics trends.

James Faulkner:

No, I don't think we have the cool thing is we have the screen. We didn't now we can like pull stuff up. So we've been chatting about stuff that's in the news. Yes, we have. Yeah. And then talking about some other stuff of podcasts we've had and stuff coming up and the recap and all this stuff. That's kind of cool.

Christian Hamm:

Yeah, exactly. So without boring people too much. We have to go back a little bit, just a little bit. So a couple weeks ago, we were up in Whistler. These are all posted now for the construction Leadership Forum. eight episodes, conversations with industry leaders, construction, general contractors, consultants, regulations. It was fun putting all those clips together there. There's some pretty good good nuggets in there. Yeah, that are gonna lead some full breakout conversations with a lot of our guests.

James Faulkner:

Yeah, totally. Okay, let's talk about something interesting. What do we got?

Christian Hamm:

What was interesting about that a little housekeeping stuff. Yeah. Well, in addition to that, we are going to be doing these like I was saying, weekly, and this week, we last week. Sorry, we released episode officially. That was at four we had Josh Levy from Document Crunch.

James Faulkner:

How's awesome. Oh,

Christian Hamm:

so good. Yeah, yeah, it was really good. Ya know, going through all that. And actually, it led to a couple conversations with construction lawyers. Yeah. Who wants to come on and talk more contract, understanding contracts and actual case stuff with subcontractors and general contractors. real world examples.

James Faulkner:

Oh, you've had people reach out? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's gonna get heavy. That's interesting.

Christian Hamm:

Isn't that interesting? Oh, no. It's just bugging. Oh, no, that's all good. But I think it's really cool. Because that that happens a lot. There's a lot of we talked about adversarial nature and construction. Yeah. And we have a lot of our guests come on. And when they share their favorite stories from the site, usually there's legal implications to those types of things. And yeah, having Josh on last week, was great to know that there's tools out there that are going to be helping construction professionals, be able to create better contracts, pull up nuggets inside their contracts, and just help them understand what they're looking at.

James Faulkner:

Yeah, the interpreter, the interpreter. Yeah. Yeah. That's basically what it is. Do you know, like we're recording in the middle of the afternoon and it kind of feels like I need some kind of cocktail, even though I can't have one. I feel like I need one.

Christian Hamm:

can have one because his middle of the afternoon?

James Faulkner:

Did you just pull something out of your bag? You get a Mickey in there.

Christian Hamm:

No, no, no, no.

James Faulkner:

Okay.

Christian Hamm:

Fireball knows is that what's always in? This is my coffee. Yeah, there's little tea and fireball.

James Faulkner:

Tea and fireball. That'd be actually be pretty good. What about one of those? Bangles spice tears with No,

Christian Hamm:

it'd be pretty good.

James Faulkner:

That would be good. Yeah. Anyway, I digress.

Christian Hamm:

That's good. Okay. And the other thing we're going to be doing and we've done this before, is we've had Russ Hicks and Russell Hickson from site news, join us. Yeah, he will be jumping in every couple of weeks probably, to go through these news and these topics and things like that. They have this weekly newsletter called Site news, which I think some of our audience is probably familiar with. But it's been out for a little while now. And it's really picking up some steam. Yeah. They bring out a lot of really relevant news stories and construction, which is funny when we when we first started saying hey, it'd be really good to sit down and do our own stuff. We've been doing this for the better part of three years with some significant breaks. Yeah, but we've done it always interviewing somebody bringing on a guest to Talking about their story, entrepreneurial journey. Just whatever things that are happening in construction need to be discussed. And we're like, is that even going to be relevant is even going to be enough to talk about, but it turns out when you see their site news, weekly newsletter, it's pretty broad. It's very broad. And there's a lot to talk about, and we're gonna dump jump into a few of those things today. Sweet.

James Faulkner:

Sweet, it's good. So their their site news is kind of like a morning, Joe for construction.

Christian Hamm:

Yeah, like the Morning Joe

James Faulkner:

even has a chart and yeah, it's pretty close.

Christian Hamm:

Morning brew! The hustle. Yeah. Sponsorship morning, Joe. Yeah, anyway. No, that's really good. Yes, that's exactly what it is. It's that for construction. And it's weekly shout out site news. You'll be hearing a lot more of that. And Ross, who's going to join us? And actually, we'll be pulling news stories from things like site news today, especially. And so lots of shout outs to those guys and to Russ. But do you want to jump into some of these here?

James Faulkner:

I do. I do. I think so today, I had three possible guests. Yeah, just reach out today. Guys. It's crazy. Like I didn't anticipate having this many inbound people wanting to come on the site.

Christian Hamm:

Who tell us it because this happens every time we sit down. I think we were always like, Oh, that few more email or whatever. Yes. There's quite a few that come in, you kind of sift through them all and make sure that and actually, we should let people know a lot of the guests that do come on. We're people that did reach out to us. Exactly. Yeah, we do have our own circle of customers at Site Max and their leaders and their owners that want to come on and talk about things. But you know, that would become very much just our close circle. Yeah. If that's all we kept doing, and then that might drop agency they keep Yeah. might show it to Mike drop agency. Yes. Cool. Yeah, they brought on Steve Dellorto. Yeah, from concentric that was really cool. He's been doing a lot of podcasts as well.

James Faulkner:

Okay. So denona in the news, right. Yeah, let's hit it. What do we got?

Christian Hamm:

Okay. Well, we being SiteMax, you know, we know a little bit about construction tech construction software. Yeah. And, and I think we can kind of dig into this a little bit, because in the journey from start to where we are now, yeah, lots of people can get involved in your construction tech business from investors and customers who want to invest, et cetera. But one thing that's really cool, and we've seen here through a site news article, which I think producer Dave, shut up producer,

James Faulkner:

Dave. Hello, Dave.

Christian Hamm:

He can bring up these things here. This is Oh, my goodness, look how high tech we are. We've got video, we can pull up screens. But we and this is fun, too. We had David McFarlane from EllisDon. Join us at the construction Leadership Forum, which is really great. But EllisDon is partnered with Impulse Partners, and they are going to be doing a basically like a construction tech incubator now. Yeah. Not primarily construction, Canadian construction. But this could be from anywhere, but it's really neat to see the industry or an industry leader investing into the industry the way that EllisDon does. So they

James Faulkner:

say, accelerator what's the difference between the accelerator and incubator? incubator makes the egg accelerator makes the egg go much faster? Much faster, I guess. I guess the lamp on the egg is the accelerator would be the chicken. Is the incubator? Something like that? So are they I wonder what stage of companies these are in their funding? Well,

Christian Hamm:

if you scroll down there, you can see the three primary primary focuses. Okay, so densification of technology driven solutions, okay, with high potential. Alright, so assuming, you know, these things aren't nothing burgers yet. These are, you know, something that's had some traction. Okay, one of them.

James Faulkner:

I see. I see. So yeah, construction sector confronts these escalating challenges, including rising costs, labor shortages and environmental concern, embracing innovation is crucial to maintaining competitiveness and promoting growth. Very, very, very true. So, from being insight Max and scaling this company, like we know how difficult this is, yeah, you know, it's all in the execution, like ideas are cheap. Yeah. And I hopefully that these guys can, can really get the rubber to sort of hit the road in terms of the execution side. I mean, being part of Elliston I do believe. What was that that product that they had for a while? It was gate something was a number, okay. 12345 Something like that. Yeah, gate three. I

Christian Hamm:

think gate three. That sounds that sounds right. Yes, I'm

James Faulkner:

sure we got it wrong. But whatever gate it is, yes. You know, I know that when we like before sight Max was a company it was in a construction company. And if it just like it was an internal project divided just stopped and gone and done something else it would have died. Yeah. And I think that that's what happens with a lot of these companies. They think that they can they or they don't think they underestimate how much of a a people driven business. Technology is right? They just think I mean, even my dad would say, Well, why do you say Only developers it's built already. Yeah, well, come on. It's a living organism improvement iteration. Yeah, yeah. And so it's, it's, it's something that in construction you, we always talk about the rip and replace how difficult that is, you know, kind of like, if somebody wants a new type system, or they want a new safety system or a system to share drawings, etc. You don't want to be because of the different stakeholders and construction and all of the moving pieces, you don't want to be doing it twice, one in the real world. And the other one is you're testing it, like doubles the workload for everybody. And no one has time to double the workload, they only have time to do it once. So the rip and replace becomes very slow, because of the potential risks of ruining a project because of the software. So, but it's interesting that we had if you look at the interview that we had with David, it was at Whistler. It was He was talking about, we got to worry about AI and all stuff. Remember that? Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if

Christian Hamm:

you really, you brought that one in. But actually, it was like, super thought provoking for him. Yeah. And for Sarah, that was joining us in that one. Yeah. And I think I think it's really cool. Because just back backtrack, just a teeny bit here. Yeah. I think it's one thing, a couple things here. Clearly that they're jumping into this at this point in time. There's a lot of Greenfield still in construction technology. It's an industry that, you know, you've seen everything from the early 20 or 2000s. Yeah. All right. All the the CAD stuff, right, and everything and all the like, we talked with Phil Ogilvy, right, yeah. And he came on was this was 20 years ago, you know, 25 years ago.com era, and building things a quarter century later. And there's still like, major like cake note, this is still a complete, not fully untapped, but something that's ripe for so much innovation, I don't know if that's just the slow nature of adoption of construction and technology and construction. But I think it goes to your to your point a little bit of its, it's such, none of this goes for other software, okay, in other industries. But there's such a human element of this and such a direct connection to if this isn't going to help me. We're not using it. Exactly. And if you miss that in construction tech, it just doesn't game over.

James Faulkner:

Yeah, I know, I was just thinking that same thing, because you have the paradigm where in consumer software, you know, Facebook, messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram, all of these apps that people use a lot in, there is a significant volume, and also the fact that they are not paying for it, right? It's free software, free software to the masses, so and massive valuation companies that can really get it right. Whereas in the SAS space, be to be constrained construction, or b2b in general business. You're trying to get people to pay, right? And when you are trying to get people to pay in the early days, they tell you what they want. And that drives the product growth, right? And the product roadmap and what can happen is the wrong customers can give you the wrong roadmap. That that is that's the part in the b2b That's difficult. Yes. And you have a lot of a lot of confidence and conviction that you have got it right. So with the LS Don situation is Ls Don might say to through their accelerator, okay, this is what we need. For our size of company. How many Atlas stones are there, right? Unreal. for North America? Me is are 200 of those.

Christian Hamm:

You're in Canada, you probably only have a view. Right? But

James Faulkner:

yeah, yeah. So this may be a couple of 100. Maybe, maybe. United States is pretty big. Who

Christian Hamm:

doesn't? Yeah, there's definitely a lot more. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So

James Faulkner:

but obviously, you need something that works through all the trade contrast, trade contractors, etc, rather than just what it works for a big general. Right. Yeah. So I don't know. We'll see. The cool thing is, you know, Elliston is not their first kick at the can here. No, obviously done that. I don't know if the people who were doing gate hashtag three. gate number one, define the gate number undefined. Did that. Have those people are still involved in this initiative or not? I guess we'll find out.

Christian Hamm:

Well, what's really funny too, is and I don't want to say too much. But you know, you're saying in b2b software companies how roadmaps can be driven by customers. Yeah, it's it's kind of interesting. Usually watch. With Twitter, and yawn. You see users, and usually they're pretty well known or well followed users, but making product requests, and he's like answering them and he's like, Well, these are great ideas. This is fantastic. But just to see that level of iterate, innovation and iteration and In a product coming straight from users, is really key. And we know that drives something like construction tech products. But with Elliston, you know, they we know them to build things internally before but also invest in utilized outside tools as well. But clearly, they see the need, as many have probably come to the same conclusion that companies that are built outside or on their own can kind of, they might be able to drive innovation a lot more we see oftentimes, and like a product that just can iterate a lot quicker and be a little bit more niche, but just dialed in. And we've seen with people who, when we go and approach them with you and our product like SIMEX, they'll be like, Oh, we tried to build something ourselves. We spent $150,000 building an app. Now we have to pay somebody 60 $80,000 a year to manage it. Yeah, it's a contract, and it's a contract. And it's in then, you know, they get stuck in that. And very often, they got to move away from those things. So all right, this is exciting. We wish them all the best in their pursuits in finding the most promising Canadian tech. tech startup. Cool. But on a similar note, and I know you've chatted about okay, yeah, Dave's bringing this one up here. But and we've talked about it a number of times. This is a good one. It is not the third thing is a really good one. This is this is really cool. Because we've talked a lot about with guests before robotics. Yeah. You know, I brought it up a lot. You brought up a fair bit, well, maybe you leave this one off, you want to talk about robotics and and take us away on this one replacing jobs or simply making us more efficient?

James Faulkner:

Yeah. Well, I think that the, the human form is really good at some things, and terrible at other things. For instance, you know, the picture we have up here of the autonomous robot, and if Dave, you can pull that scroll that down, there's a picture there it is right there. Yep. So that thing there, if you were to, you've seen that has a camera on it, and it's moving around, it's going to be taking a 3d capture. So you've seen probably how a movie has been captured, somebody, a human has to have a Steadicam on them, just to stay the right height, and your muscles get tired when you're holding the camera. So they have to have that huge contraption on top of them. So there's an example where the human form is not ideally designed to go around a flat surface and go and take and capture stuff. And it's a bad use of our time to speed, how fast is going, it doesn't understand to slow down speed up whatever it is, in terms of how much to capture this thing can go at a certain speed, certain height. It knows what it's forgotten, it can keep going back, right? All that sort of stuff. So in this respect, I don't really think that the the robotics is anything for anybody to be scared of somebody is going to have to run this thing. Yeah. And make sure that it got all the information needed to get. And what was reading from this article is that this stuff has been used in the military quite a bit. You've seen these things go into, you know, to, to check out bombs and stuff like that, and go into high risk areas where landmines are and stuff like that. So this stuff's been around for a while. It's just a matter of, you know, how does it apply for construction?

Christian Hamm:

know for sure. And I think that the you mentioned that this isn't necessarily going to replace people. But it's doing something that somebody that had a bunch of things to do already. Yeah, just another thing to do. Right? Yeah. Or they don't have to do or they don't have to do Sorry. Yeah, but they were doing before. Yeah. But the cool thing is, is and we've talked about these robots that can lay out like floor floorplates right, these things kind of tend to be like deployed at the construction site once everyone's because it's the one

James Faulkner:

that sprays the stuff down to, I don't know, marks it as well.

Christian Hamm:

That's the one I was talking about. I'm sure there could be multiple use this one, here's got some 360 photos that it takes and progress capture and a bunch of other stuff on there as well. But these things seem to be typically deployed when people are gone, right? Yeah. And presumably wants to Bri is kind of cleared or somewhat clear can seemingly navigate the

James Faulkner:

room but right man, yeah, room is gonna suck if you leave stuff all over the floor.

Christian Hamm:

Yes, exactly. But it does know how to navigate and everything like that. But the cool thing is like a human and this is something again, like in construction software or even services that people offer like, oh, we'll come take progress photos of your, your job site, right. We'll do like, you know, pre pre concrete, pre boarding on your walls, you know, pre finishes and coverings so that you can see pre closing things up so you can see plumbing, mechanical, etc. Yeah. Well, you know, you got to remember those things, and you got to do it consistently. And if you're, if you're like, oh, yeah, I want to do that four times this week. I should have supposed to do it. Five. Right. So

James Faulkner:

is this a multi Vista killer? No, I wasn't gonna say anything like that. But

Christian Hamm:

I mean, like this thing here, and here's where the complicated thing is.

James Faulkner:

multivessel just get these things. Yeah, possibly. I mean, they have all the customers that's it

Christian Hamm:

right and you just leave it on a jobsite on one floor plate, let it do its thing till they have the next floor plate ready, then move it up then let it do its thing again until the next floor plate and it's just Making a whole bunch of these exactly right. Yeah, that's the thing that was like, the thing can't climb stairs. But presumably, if you're building a high rise, you're just not that hard to just move it when you're on to the next floor plate. So yeah, exactly. But the main thing here is well, in addition to the fact that, you know, this thing is not scaring too many people for jobs necessarily, but it's the cost. This thing is cheap. It's cheap. Or it's a lot cheaper than 16. Grand. Yeah. 16 17,000 bucks there. Right. So it's, it's, it's almost a fifth.

James Faulkner:

Wow, yeah, he's 29. Grand. Wow. Right.

Christian Hamm:

Which is crazy. And you see that with technology over time, things drop in price from the initial units and the initial machines, right. But this is, this is pretty cool. And seemingly something that I think could have some real life. Good implications here. So

James Faulkner:

So these bullets here, let's just go through this. So first one is automatic. The robot travels across facility or construction job site without an operator. Okay, well, someone's going to need to like set this thing up. So I mean, what's not going to be like a Roomba thing where it goes in its little thing and recharges? Maybe it is? I think so. But still, the problem is a construction project continues to evolve. It's not the same house every time. Right? So it's going to have obstacles that a human is gonna have to reset it for, I would think totally. So get the second one schedule whenever this robot can scan an entire area during the off hours. Well, that's pretty cool. job sites closed. Yeah. Interesting. So I wonder what the safety implications are of this thing moving around and shifting stuff around by accident. Interesting, too. Does this thing need its own safety manager? Safety would have to be part anything that changes the jobsite at all. Yeah. would require some kind of safety of some sort, wouldn't it?

Christian Hamm:

Well, I mean, this thing is, doesn't look like it can do that much damage. It's got small, but yeah, I don't know.

James Faulkner:

It's not gonna break an arm. But okay, so software integration, the import the 360 images into most reality capture application companies. Reality, okay, so interesting. So that you'd be able to go in with your headset on and then go and check that thing out after?

Christian Hamm:

Yeah, I mean, we're just going to take these things and upload them straight to the cloud type thing. So it's, you know, a lot of people have a 360 camera. And like I said, they send somebody around to take their pictures. Right, then they upload it to their software program.

James Faulkner:

What are those? Matterport right, was that what those things were? Yeah, stuff like

Christian Hamm:

that. And, but this just seems like it's gonna kill a few birds with one stone. Yeah.

James Faulkner:

Did you? You heard about that Apple headset? And it's gonna be coming up a little bit. Yeah. 3000 bucks. It's an augmented reality. Oh, yeah. So you stick the thing on your face. And it basically has the camera, giving you the reality, and then also putting a layer on top of like, new stuff. So yeah, apparently is coming up June. No way. So it's gonna be interesting what that's gonna do for construction.

Christian Hamm:

Well, I mean, yeah, you have all these things already. HoloLens and a few other things, right, that people can use on job sites. But to make something that says consumer ready is a pair of Apple glasses.

James Faulkner:

Yeah, I mean, if if it's apple, I mean, Apple is not exactly. And what have they done? I think on the all end podcast, they said that, like the first Apple Watch kind of sucked. Yes. But now, it's a took to series five to be good.

Christian Hamm:

It does seem that everything that they put out, first time around is just better than the last thing they put out first time around.

James Faulkner:

Well, that's typically what they do is that they, they they wait, and they get it to be as they release it. But this one's different strategy, I think, because like, Who's Who else has done this? Like Google is not a Google Glass. It's not HoloLens. And it's not. You know, Metis. And would you call that thing? Oculus? Yeah. So it's gonna be interesting. We'll see what it looks like.

Christian Hamm:

Okay, well, we'll have to do when that one comes out, though. Yeah, we're going to be a construction application, though. If you if you're gonna in this case. So this is the big thing with you know, okay, if you if you jump back even. And Cameron would appreciate this, because from our days of laying out buildings and stuff like that, yeah, a total station is just, you know, it's a piece of equipment that you can lay out all sorts of different grid lines and plot plotting points on the ground for foundations and different layout stuff, right, excavation, etc. People really start to you know, enjoy those things and geek out around them, and you know, they're costly or whatever, but everyone kind of needs one. It's like an essential tool on a jobsite and you go one of these things. You know, this isn't going to be like every superintendents running around with one of these, or maybe for 17,000 bucks. You might just have a few of them in the company and you just have your people operate them yourselves and learn how to deploy them yourselves and Ultimately, I think people want to be able to have control of these types of surveying things. So this is something I could see where that happens. And then to your point about, you know, Apple glasses or glasses or whatever, yeah, if it's more consumer ready, we're literally just have like, you know, every supers got a set of these things. Yeah. And they just go Oh, yeah, let's go for that sidewalk. get thrown your glasses, guys. And it's a no we are they are kind of already have some we've joked about. Yeah, throwing these massive things in and falling in holes, because you're trying to walk on the floor. That's not there yet. Yeah. But with augmented reality, you're looking at what's actually in front of you. Plus, plus,

James Faulkner:

yeah, it's gonna be it's gonna be pretty cool. And they have a directly all you will do as a developer is you will update Xcode. Yeah. And Xcode will have services then for these things, just like they updated it for air tags. Yeah. So yeah, it's pretty crazy.

Christian Hamm:

Yeah, that's pretty sweet. Well, we'll get into that when it comes. But the last thing here. And this is one that I think it's always funny, you know, we, we cover a lot of stuff, like we were saying, we talk a lot of stories we often uncover, you know, parts of people's stories a lot through the last three years, you know, through COVID. We're talking about things that people have differing opinions on. Well, yeah. This one right here. And this again, came out of site news, their weekly newsletter this morning, they did a whole bid on 15 minute cities. And you want to even when I came in, and I was telling producer Dave, like, Hey, this is what we're talking about was like, boom, automatically. Like it was a it was a point of, yeah, he already had some opinions about this. All right. So do we want to do we want to listen to this, this was this was a clip on YouTube, I'm pretty sure we can we can play this, this is fine. This is gonna be on YouTube later. But this is a clip from the I think, Spanish gentleman who initially coined this word. But we'll give a little context what we're talking about 17 minutes, whereas that, yeah, yeah, it's it goes from zero to two. Okay, but we're gonna give this a try and see the works. I'd say,

YouTube Speaker:

for to room, those of us who live in cities began small, have accepted the unacceptable. We accept that in cities, our sense of Davis workprint. Because we have to waste so nauseous, just adapting to the absolute organization in long distances of more of today's cities. Why is it we have to adapt and to degrade our potential quality of life? Why is it not the city that responds to our needs? Why have we left cities to develop on the wrong path for so long, you'd like to offer a concept of cities that goes in the opposite direction to modern urban is an attempt at converting life into a human sized space, rather than fracturing it into inhuman bigness. And within forcing us to adapt. I call it the 15 Minute city. And in a nutshell, very there is that cities should be designed, already designed for that, within the distance of a 15 minute walk, or bike ride. People should be able to leave the essence of what constitutes the European experience, to access work, housing, food, health, education, culture, and leisure. Have you ever stopped to ask?

Christian Hamm:

I think that that kind of gives a bit of Yeah, and hopefully not wearing a mask in the 15 Minute city

James Faulkner:

but wow. Yeah. I mean, he's he seems like he's in his is beautiful Paris apartment there with his nice millwork and expensive artwork. He's sitting pretty,

Christian Hamm:

without getting, obviously if you know, if we're being cynical about the thing, then you know, taking a stance on on, on what this concept is. I find it funny immediately in that I read it this morning, in sight news newsletter and I had heard about the concept prior many times. This is 15 minutes. 15 minutes city. I had heard about it before. Never. I mean, you hear so many different words and phrases and things thrown around in the last two or three years. But you know, you look into them all do you dig into them all? I think it's really good that people know what everything is. But it's interesting that you know exactly immediately that it is a polarizing concept as soon as you type it in, it's like conspiracy this and conspiracy I know.

James Faulkner:

So layout didn't lay out the conspiracy argument. Okay, like, what are the what are the themes? Well, first of all, let's layout both sides. Okay. Okay. So and I think that because the, the the side that's, that would be probably a proponents or an opponent of it comes out pretty clearly, he said two things there that like really stood out to me creating a human sized space. And what does that for people human size, that's what he was referring to with all that human needs. And again, we're always going to pull this back to the built world, right? Yeah, because this is how cities are built and constructed. So we don't want to get too far off plot here. But I think it's super relevant. Because it's yeah, it's how cities take shape. But this human size thing, basically saying that all your human needs can be met within a 15 minute radius of your city walking or biking. Right? Okay, human sized, then he is kind of outline outlining that the negative opposite of that is human bigness. Okay, human bigness, meaning, you know, I would like to take my family maybe on vacation and drive across the country, or down the Pacific Coast Highway to California. Right? You know, what, what happens when you are when this concept takes root? And, you know, is that frowned upon? Or is that just, well, you're a rural person. Okay? Anyway, so laying the two things out, would be that you could have everything within a 15 minute radius of your house, walk or bike, everything you need groceries, amenities, recreation, all the things that you would do for work, social life, etc. But I heard there was, I looked at the National Post article. Yeah. Okay. And that had somebody saying that, in order to do that in the cities, you'd have a certain permit to be able to drive into a city, right? That means tracking everybody. And this is like Big Brother kind of situation. People don't want

Christian Hamm:

totally. And this is funny, because knowing that we were going to be talking about this today. And not that we weren't excited about the other things we were talking about. But I feel like this one has some pretty significant human consequences, or at least impact I live in. I live in the city called Surrey, which is about an hour outside of a city called Vancouver. So a rural versus metropolitan area. It just so happens that you live in the city and I live out of the city. So it's almost like breaking this down to knowing how we would now interact. Yeah. And as I was driving in, it was funny, because I didn't even I wasn't trying to uncover anything that was like, Oh, this is terrible, or something like that. But as I was driving, it just clicked to me. I was like, would I be crossing over some sort of a point right now where I'd be paying a toll to be like, Oh, hey, sorry, guy. He's coming into Vancouver. Oh, just so you know, you're now entering the 15 Minute city. Yeah, you know, and you got to you got to do whatever, you know,

James Faulkner:

but that's what they do in London. They do they? So there's, there's areas that you you have to have a permit to be able to drive in London. Oh, no. Yeah, that that certain area that drive in though drive and not not just not be and be in? Yeah, I don't think they would get to be in Yeah, no, no, no. Well, they're talking about facial recognition. So there was a it was somewhere in the UK, they had a an event, I think was a concert or some some sporting event where the police were using facial recognition cameras to scan for people who have been problems in the past. Yep. So yeah, so I think this stuff is all happening already. But, you know, so I'll give you so let's just talk about this in in relativity to Vancouver for a minute. Because the 15 Minute city has been talked about here. Yeah, of course. Okay. So we have I'll give me an example of a real life situation. So my parents live in on the North Shore. Okay. And my dad had to have an eye surgery at Vancouver General. Okay, so he says Can I pick him up from hospital and drive him home? Absolutely sure. I can do that. So I go off I go pick him up at the hospital all good. I come off the ground Woodbridge I go to take a left and Drake now which used to be used to be able to get on and go up to another street that would connect to a major artery to go to the North Shore does not do that anymore. Likely full bike lane. It's you can't you can't turn there. So what I did was I went oops, okay, I'm gonna go in the alley and try and go that way. And then what ended up happening was there was a garbage truck in the alley which is their wrecks. That's what alleys are for for service. And I get stuck is a car behind me. I looked to the left as a guy doing fentanyl or heroin or some Like with a needle open drug scene, right? Next, and my dad's like bloody hell, what is going on here? Yeah. So what we find is, is that Canada loves to do this. So it is, you know, the liberal United States loves to make examples of what happens in Europe and goes, Oh, we just need to do this here. Well, they don't understand is they don't have the cultural fabric to pull it off. They don't have all the services around it. So for instance, like, you know, and there's some realities of Canada as well, you know, in that podcast, from the National Post article, they were talking about, like they're trying to do this in Toronto. Yeah. And the density of the of Paris versus Toronto is huge difference. Yeah. I guess, like 20 times or something like that. And the other part is, is that just because of the climate, you can't ride your bike all the time. And sure, if you want to have these policies in the middle of June or July, great, but not everybody wants to get soaked on a bike or get frozen in I mean, it's just not safe. First of all, and it doesn't really make a lot of sense to you can't go and do your groceries all the time. You can't do big hauls, people have big families. It seems as though that the governments that we hire, to provide services to to pay taxes to are telling us how we should be, which doesn't really make a lot of sense. This, I mean, I'll give you an example. So if you were to hire a gardener, for your garden, yeah. And you were to pay them X amount of dollars, and they just tell you what flowers to plant. You'd be like, oh, excuse me, I pay you. Yeah, I'll tell you what I want to plant. So this is kind of like this. People are making us grow stuff. We don't want to grow. Sure. It did I just get flooded.

Christian Hamm:

No. Why did I mean this is this clearly is if you just And Dave is showing this here, you know, this was this concept was brought up again, in in, in site news, a construction newsletter. But as soon as you dig deep into it, there's just two polarizing sides to it right away. So it's a political issue, no matter what you do, no matter how much you you get into it, or a little you get into it, they've already made it that way. You got CBC saying one thing and National Post saying another thing. So there you go. So there you go. But bringing it back, just the human element to this right. I love I love living in a more rural area. I kind of grew up up there. And I like it. But I've always worked in a metropolitan city. Yeah, like almost since graduating university, I have spent the better part of my career working in a metropolitan dense metropolitan area, commuting, driving, whatever. Yeah, and always driving. Yes, there's some elements that are annoying, but I like it, I like being able to go back somewhere where there's a little bit more space and room to run around, and then coming in to be in the hustle and bustle, and the air is different. It's how the air is there. And you just like it just changes the way you think. But it's like anything, if you live rural and never come urban, is that right? Yeah, you don't you also have a different way of thinking, right, but the crossover and have that, I just think it just creates this, it's such a nice condition. For one to be in to be able to be exposed to different environments. That's, that's kind of how I think about it. And I love the beauty of it from a construction development standpoint, that you can have more, you can have metropolitan areas where you can, you can build up and you can allow people to be in those environments. But you can also have all these great recreational places to go and play to go and see things and to go and travel and to take time to go and do that. But this guy is almost making it seem, I guess, that the human bigness is like being commuting and moving so far is a waste. But I don't know, is it a is it wasteful to go in on a road trip? Is it wasteful to I can I kind of get you know, like you want to be able to get places quickly?

James Faulkner:

Yeah, I think there's there's a couple of sides to it. Yeah, I think if you I mean, you drive an F 150. And you come in here three to four days a week. And that's energy that's created. There's rubber from your tires going everywhere. There's there is an impact to that to coming in here. Sure. So, but you should have the right to do that. Yeah. So you know what this is, this is something different. This is trying to change the entire setup of a city and saying actually, no Christian, you you actually aren't allowed to do this unless you pay a premium, which is different. So you should as a Canadian be able to go anywhere you want. Within a public road. It's a public road because you actually pay for it. So and your insurance paid for it. The what I find is if frustrating with an article like this is that to kind of make this so Carmen Sillustani here, they've made her look like she's crazy here because they basically say embedded with a lot of other conspiracy theories related to q&a and the great reset all this

Christian Hamm:

stuff, here we go. Like we've been saying these things, I know.

James Faulkner:

But the weird thing is the fact that they're, they're saying that just because this is a way to silence somebody or something, is just trying to discredit them by attaching them to, you know, things that you've heard this from many podcasts is that there are things that two and a half years ago, people were saying, you know, this is a conspiracy, and then suddenly, it's like,

Christian Hamm:

yeah, that's that's kind of what I was saying off the bat is as soon as you see that word, you go, you know, there's more to this story.

James Faulkner:

There is because and I think where, you know, the word conspiracy, just sort of hone in on let's just remit it, as you know, tends to conspire is you know, a group of people getting together towards meaningful event of some sort. And, you know, that the difference? Well, it's, uh, yeah, it's, uh, compared to inspire. And the thing is, whether or not those those conspiracies are nefarious or not, is the question, right? So the conspiracy of JFK at Roswell to all these ones that people say are considered conspiracies, and then to lab leaks. And all the other stuff that turned out to me is not such a crazy story. But people did conspire, get together and do these things. So that's just unfortunate what this is. So if she's saying that, you know, she's saying that this is they're saying, this is a conspiracy. It's like, Are there a group of people getting together? Well, this guy was just on YouTube. He has a group of people, they're getting together to do something towards an end. So it was organized. sockington is an organized initiative. Right. So I don't know, it's kind of

Christian Hamm:

what what's really cool here. I mean, this maybe tidies up the conversation for this for this go round, is that you were even saying that you bumped into a gentleman last week, that's part of Urban Development Institute or committee or whatever, and, and we've had people on, like George Benson from Vancouver Economic Commission. And there's a lot of discussion about the way that cities are shaped the way that they're built, whether they're formed, and the way that they're looked at moving into the future, it would be kind of cool to and we're just two guys here at Brennan, a construction podcast who, you know, have brought on guests and are now talking amongst ourselves going through these issues, which we've always wanted to do. Because we think it's relevant. And these are the things we talked about when we're off the mic. As soon as we get off the mic, you know, our yarn on record now, or There we go. Yeah, our guests are our humans, and they live the human experience, and we get to have lots of fun conversations. But it would be good to bring in those that are maybe even involved in this process, you know,

James Faulkner:

you know, with this, this 15 minute city thing, just one more sure thing with that is that they need to fix the cities first. If they're gonna do they're gonna push everybody towards this, then you got to, you know, the affordable housing. They call it a crisis. I don't know if it's a crisis. It's more of a it's a, it's just a bad situation. Yeah. That has been, you could see it coming. I mean, there's how much money did we let in here? That weren't people from here, how many people have empty homes tax is basically a slap on the wrist of those that can afford it, they don't care, they just pay the fine, right? It's the same thing as you know, what was that Silicon Valley? Example of the guy that used to park in front of this in this no parking zone, he called it the VIP parking just paid the ticket? Oh, God, he just it's that kind of mentality where it's totally those who couldn't afford it can just just can just say whatever they want to do, right? So if we want to have these ideas of 15 minute cities, and we want to have a sustainable living downtown lifestyle, then we need to get rid of all the dysfunction first, and I think until we do that, I don't think you should be selling, pushing everybody downtown. You know, you got to get this right. First, you got to have people to be able to live in harmony, you need social services that are going to help those in need. And you need to develop societies that are can all get along with each other. And right now that's just a big mess. And because Canada Hello, everybody is a baby. Culture. Yeah, it's a baby totally. And everyone forgets that everyone looks at Portugal and for you know, drug addiction examples and all the stuffs he's like, Yeah, true enough, but you can't walk around there out of your mind. You're gonna go to rehab. Yep. Right. So you know these things. I think that we need to understand that as we look to that guy, Carlos, whatever his name is Carlos Gupta. Yeah, I mean, he's in Paris, Marina. Yeah, Marina, you know, we need to, we need to look at the reality of where we are in Canada here and stop looking outward to all these other examples of everywhere else that are inherently different. We need to figure out what works here in our baby land of understanding. Yeah,

Christian Hamm:

it's a good point to make, because there's so many concepts that, you know, are maybe half baked, that get fully rolled out. Exactly. Right. And we see that happening all the time. And we forget that yeah, you know, are we are a baby nation, the United States is a baby nation. Yeah, North America is is infancy in terms of economic or not economic. But in terms of the Human Development,

James Faulkner:

I have one other. There's one other note that I wrote down, maybe we just discussed for a second is that the as we look at our I think, today, people are defining themselves more than ever before, they are now their own personal brand. We've heard that for years. Now they're at a time when their own self identity is so important of who am I. And that's where we've seen all these identity politics coming from is is people's thirst and need for definition of themselves, and how they have to become special somehow. So when I look at these 15 minute cities, and I look at people biking in do you think these Instagramers slash people who want to be ballers people who want to be like, the, the the"it" people, they're not going to subscribe to this, those people don't go on the subway, these people don't ride bikes, they walk around and expect to be picked up in a Lamborghini. And these are the people that everyone aspires to become the whole working class of going into an office and all of that stuff, all of the amazing creative people are have all left all of this. Now they don't go into an office now they create businesses by themselves, they have sustained themselves on a in a way that is independent from the big machines. So now it seems like we're building this to these 15 minute cities and these to try and create systems for the old model, right? Of all these people working in one place, well doesn't happen anymore. It's happening less and less and less. And people don't want to they don't want to be individualism is key. People don't actually want to be part of a culture anymore, which is weird. I find. Yeah, you walk around Vancouver. It is. I have people in my neighborhood, who I have seen for 10 years that do not say hello, even though I've had a conversation with a boy. Yeah, my next door neighbor. Yeah. Seems like just don't understand it. Right. So, you know, I think just to cap this off, unless you have any other comments is like, we need to grow up as a culture in order to pull this stuff off.

Christian Hamm:

Yeah, yeah. No, I think it's a good, it's a good point to tidy things up. And it kind of leads into the last two conversations that we've had. And they've been, they've been good for me. And I think you picked up on that in terms of talking about, you know, real, practical solutions to change and to dealing with issues like renewable, embodied carbon, all that kind of stuff, where you can immediately just throw it off. Yeah, but let's really get into and be like, no, no, no, this isn't just like, talking about impact. It's actually making it like making a real change. So the George line is the George stuff, and it leads into the episode that we have upcoming on Thursday. Okay. And with Adam from unbilled, there's, Oh, yeah. And he said something as I was pulling some clips, which I thought was really cool. It's his personal story. But he talked about and this goes back to tying to those that look around and see sure social media or just the people that they're trying to emulate. And it's like, they want to impact, but they want immediate impact with no real impact, meaning there's no substance to it. Right. Right. And I thought it was great. Adam shared in this episode comes out on Thursday of this week. And so our audience will hear it's awesome. It's It's so good. It was rich with a lot of great, great content in this one. He just said, you know, right after talking about getting investment from Dragon's Den, yeah. You know, so you're thinking, oh, you know, getting money back, you know, fast, fast, fast, grow, grow, grow, you know, flashy. He's like, this is about making an impact, and to make an impact you it's a long game. Yeah.

James Faulkner:

Altruism is a long game, right?

Christian Hamm:

And I'm like, It's so refreshing to hear that that someone that's approaching something to create meaningful change and they're willing to put in the time it's a lost art. It's a lost mindset. That notion, whatever. And I think when it comes to even just thinking like 15 minutes just sounds like microwave, I want it done. Now I want it quick. You know, that just just seems the dinner. Yeah. Right. So I think that it's really cool to tidy this conversation up. This was our first kind of crack at. We've said, you know, construction culture in the built world. Yeah, kind of conversation. And we'll get a bit more of that. I think once a week, we'll keep that going. We'll be bringing in Russ Hickson, from site news to bring a little more context to the articles that we'll be discussing.

James Faulkner:

And on Twitter so well, so we're on Twitter with SiteMax, we've been on that for a while we have been Yeah, we've got like some dialogue back from people that listen to us and ask us stuff. This actually

Christian Hamm:

will be good, because this is going to be going up on YouTube. We're gonna be throwing this up, which has comments read yet, which has the comments. It'll be interesting. I mean, this one might get comments that have nothing to do with the construction audience. But hopefully, we get our own audience, we can grow it and hear from people that if this is really meaningful, if this is something they want to hear, and perhaps Yeah, where are the mediums that they want to be engaging with us on? Yeah, you know, Twitter obviously has been investing a lot into or at least saying, Put your videos here. Yeah, put your full length content here. Because the way their algorithm works, they thrive on the dialogue. Yeah. From the organic content. Yeah. Right. That's cool. So we'll be exploring it this is all experimentation. Yeah, the construction or the audio. Only podcast telling construction stories. It worked really well. It still works and we're gonna continue to do that and this video that are the the episode that comes out on Thursday. is so fantastic with Adam Corniel from on builders that's episode 86. Getting close to 100 Okay, here we go. But enjoy, and we will see you again next week down well.

James Faulkner:

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 sitemaxsystems.com/the site visit where you'll get Industry Insights, pro tips and everything you need to know about the site visit podcast and SiteMax the jobsite and construction management tool of choice for 1000s of contractors in North America and beyond. SiteMax is also the engine that powers this podcast. All right, let's get back to building!