When a Contractor needs a Construction Lawyer with Tim Sportschuetz (Sportschuetz & Co.) & Marcus Hamm (Westcor Thermal) | EP88

In this episode, James and Christian are joined by Tim Sportschuetz, Owner of Sportschuetz & Co. Construction Law Firm and Marcus Hamm, Owner of Westcor Thermal.

Tim shares his inspiring journey to becoming a lawyer, starting with his onsite civil construction experience, his law degree and eventually establishing his own firm in April 2020. Marcus shares a familiar story that contractors know all too well, the founding of his business, the early day hardships, followed by the success of his determined efforts and the ultimate need for a strong construction lawyer to be his ally. The conversation then focuses on Tim's expertise in construction law, including his experience dealing with contractors and subcontractors. They delve into the adversarial nature of the construction industry and provide valuable insights into contract disputes and the importance of fair treatment. Tim also offers practical advice for contractors on hiring lawyers, avoiding common mistakes, and navigating the legal landscape. The episode wraps up with a fun rapid-fire round where James, Christian, Tim, and Marcus share personal stories and experiences in the construction field. Marcus brings a wealth of contractor knowledge and experience in the construction industry to the discussion, making for one of our most fascinating and informative episodes to date.

EPISODE LINKS:
Tim Sportschuetz LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timsportschuetz/
Sportschuetz & Co. Construction Law Firm Website: https://sportschuetz.ca/
Marcus Hamm LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcus-hamm-5b886b72/
Westcor Thermal Website: https://westcorthermal.com/
Westcor Thermal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/westcorthermal/

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:
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Transcript

Christian Hamm: 0:00

K rollin. We are. Yeah, we're seeing beverage sponsors. We're not sponsored by bubbly, not sponsored by bubbly. or red. Or red truck bubbly or red truck beer or Red Rock beer Mexican lager. here locally on terminal Ave. I think on second F near terminal red truck brewing in Vancouver.

James Faulkner: 0:23

Yeah, where are they? Is it not terminal? Not the rover on what he call it off? Great Northern way. That little?

Christian Hamm: 0:29

Well, it's closest between Great Northern way in terminal. All right, fine, but we've got some fantastic rhetoric, beer, skis and bubblies that we're not sponsored by. And we even want to say that if you're not,

James Faulkner: 0:42

yeah, you can say whatever you want. Right? Okay. But your lawyer, what do we need? What do you think first A MAN Yes.

Tim Sportschuetz: 0:50

Say whatever you want your podcast, you say whatever you want.

Christian Hamm: 0:53

Can you say that? Like if we have a bunch of brands, and we're not sponsored by any of them? We're just saying, Hey, we're here. We're not sponsored by bubbly. We're not sponsored by red track brewing. But we have bubbling, we have red track. Is there any issue with that? We're giving them a shout out.

Tim Sportschuetz: 1:07

This is the this is the go to lawyer answer. I'm gonna refer you to IP counsel because that's not my specialty.

Christian Hamm: 1:13

It's not your specialty. Yeah.

Marcus Hamm: 1:15

Well, hey, Joe Rogan's got the bud light going all the time. He does have the bud light going all the time still on? Oh, no. He got rid of it. Odd. But now when he had the what was that comedian that used to always drink it. The chubby guy Bert kreischer? No, the other guy. No, no, no. But no, he tend not to slip lines and Dylan's great. I like but then he comes on with Marc Norman. And in a drink Bud Light. But now they keep the CANS under the table and they pour them into pint glasses.

Christian Hamm: 1:47

Low key low key. We are. We're here. We're just chatting. not making any introductions to anybody. Because this is this is a cold open. This is nothing. This is just random discussion.

James Faulkner: 2:02

It's the early banter before we get into business. Yeah, business is good. Yeah.

Christian Hamm: 2:07

But we will be jumping in we have had a fun couple of weeks here launching the weekly site report. That's been good. We recorded more episodes of that this week talking about all sorts of things that affect the wonderful world of construction, bringing in some cultural elements into the built environment. And we've had some great early success with video content, because now we're here in studio, which has been a lot of fun. We get these guys they're not the guinea pigs anymore, because we've done this a few times. Yeah, it's

James Faulkner: 2:37

true. Actually, guinea pigs for the for camera setup.

Christian Hamm: 2:44

Oh, the first couple guests in studio.

James Faulkner: 2:46

Yeah. Double, double, double.

Christian Hamm: 2:49

All right, to the end your music.

James Faulkner: 2:51

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

Jesse Unke: 3:03

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: 3:09

you read all the books you read the E Myth read scaling up you read Good to Great, you know, I could go on

Sebastian Jacob: 3:14

we're at the place where we found the secret serum we found the secret potoin we can get the workers in we know where to get

Jesse Unke: 3:21

one time I was on a jobsite for quite a while. And actually we added some extra concrete and I ordered like room finished patio, out front of the site trailer

John Reid: 3:29

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 a Faber Connect platform on your guys's podcast,

Zack Staples: 3:39

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

James Faulkner: 3:47

Let's get down to it.

Christian Hamm: 3:53

All right. Well, we are here for real. We've been looking forward to this one for I mean, I've been looking forward to it for quite a while. One of our guests that's sitting here next to us was actually introduced to us by a site visit alum, Jesse Anki. Shout out to Jesse Yeah,

James Faulkner: 4:09

gotta love Jesse.

Christian Hamm: 4:10

But we've got Tim sports shoots. I'm saying that correct? You're absolutely correct. Yeah. Right on joining us. Tim is a construction lawyer. He's gonna get into his background. And we've got this guy over here, but makarkin carcass homme?

James Faulkner: 4:25

How do you how do you pronounce the Mc Homme?

Marcus Hamm: 4:30

When we were little he would call me Marcus. Marcus.

James Faulkner: 4:34

Oh, Mar as a kiss. Marcus, that's

Marcus Hamm: 4:37

we really I was gonna say, come a long way.

Christian Hamm: 4:40

I was gonna I was gonna say like, intro with like a total Yeah, like a like a dis or something. But I'm gonna you know what, I'm really proud of this idiot. You know? That I call my brother. He's my brother. He's not idiot he's awesome.

James Faulkner: 4:56

But I think we need to leave them alone. Just I like it hug it out.

Christian Hamm: 5:01

But we've got, and this is what I've been kind of excited about, because we've chatted about it for a while. But yeah, it was my brother Marcus ham. He is the owner of West Corp thermal, especially contracting business. That is a going concern around the province of British Columbia in Western Canada. And he's going to share a lot of great insights. You know, I'm speaking for him. Marcus, why don't you just tell us a little bit about yourself? And then we'll talk to Tim?

Marcus Hamm: 5:27

Well, I have a lot of great insights. Oh, good, good. All right. And, ya know, I kind of picked up the pieces of a broken company about six, seven years ago, went under, and there was some contracts to finish out, I took on the equipment and agreed to finish out the jobs in exchange for the equipment basically, and, and had a few bad years and, and learn from some mistakes. And now we've had a few really good years. And, you know, now we've grown to the site we're on, we're on some of the largest projects in North America right now. And I've gotten to the point where I've needed this guy, desperately.

Christian Hamm: 6:11

Well, that's, that's pretty cool. I mean, like, we'll unpack details of that journey. But in terms of the summary of that, you've come through a lot of different things, and probably grown and resilience, but to the point that you're at right now. That's really cool to see, I'm probably going to learn a few things that I didn't even know about your business, which is exciting. But we're also going to get a little bit of an intro Tim, could you tell us a bit about your just your background, let our audience know how you got to where you are, right now with your own business.

Tim Sportschuetz: 6:37

Absolutely. So where I am now as a bit of a roundabout way, how I got here, so I studied accounting and real estate in at Florida State and undergrad. That was back in oh eight. During a grad trip down to Costa Rica. I met this fella named John. John owned a heavy equipment company in Squamish. Okay, I knew Squamish from from kiteboarding. So I said, Oh, that sounds pretty interesting. I didn't have a job lined up. So he said, Why don't you come up and visit me. So I went up to Squamish, checked out his operations, and he needed a numbers guy. So he offered me a job on a handshake. And I moved my life from Florida, all the way up to Squamish and worked for him on a handshake for six, six years. Wow. And I learned from the very ground up, he made me go into the ditch a few days a week at the very beginning. So I learned pretty much all aspects of a civil construction project. And you know what to look out for with with heavy equipment, how to run pipe crews, compaction, pipe underlayment, anything to do with with on site issues that you might run into. And then I learned the ropes around more of the financing bonding, how to negotiate deals with with suppliers, pipe suppliers. And naturally, we got into disputes with with some union municipalities, and we would hire local litigation counsel here in Vancouver. And I would help them paper the dispute so lawyers tend to only know what you tell them. So I would drive to town and lay out the drawings and explain to them you know, we're having a sanitary dispute, or over sanitary line, and here are the issues on the drawings. Can you help us and these lawyers kept telling me you should go back to school for this because you're you're you have a knack for it. Yeah. So and I enjoyed it. And I was like your jobs much cooler than mine right now. So I went back and studied for the LSAT for God every single day, I think ours finally got a high enough score and ended up going to UBC law and ended up working for a very highly respected boutique Construction Law Firm. Went to a bit of a bigger firm here in town after that, and then launched my own firm and that was in April 2020. Yeah, now I have a great litigation, co counsel, and small team of three people and we got our office space here in Mount Pleasant and it's been amazing, amazing journey.

Christian Hamm: 9:43

Okay, well that is that is really cool. I think you summarized that pretty well. Wow. I didn't realize you came from all that background on the tools and civil construction out in the field and everything as a lawyer where you are now how does that feel when you reflect on you worked somewhere for six to seven years on a handshake.

Tim Sportschuetz: 9:59

It's um It makes me respect the old school way. I, a lot of my clients are the exact same way as as my, my mentor, John was. And I respect John a lot. John unfortunately passed away. He had a massive stroke. But I'll never forget the lessons he taught me. I graduated and I was always typing text messages to suppliers or emailing. And John would say, I got you this damn truck, jump in it, and go see them in person. And that really built that, you know, that old school way, handshake way. Now I the problem with the handshake deals, that doesn't work any longer. The disputes on site, or deals that are reached on site often are broken in the boardroom. So unfortunately, I now have to advise my clients to never do handshake deals to put everything in writing to send daily delay claims, extra work claims, put it in writing, please give me at least a documentary, a thread that I can then use to help negotiate a better deal for you. So it's, it's, I find it a little bit sad that it's it's no longer you know, the old school way.

Christian Hamm: 11:21

Yeah, it definitely is old school. But the sentiment of that it is pretty neat. And to be able to have that as part of the background and part of the story and the journey is. That's pretty awesome. Are you from Florida originally?

Tim Sportschuetz: 11:32

No. So I was born in Germany. I'm a dual citizen. I have German and Canadian passport. My dad

Christian Hamm: 11:39

Sprechen zie Deutsch.

Tim Sportschuetz: 11:41

Yes. My dad moved the family to Florida when I was 12 years old. And I grew up did middle school and high school there and then University. So yeah, my parents now live in Georgia on the east coast on St. Simons Island, and my sister's there as well.

Marcus Hamm: 12:01

His mom has guns. Yeah, to Georgia.

Tim Sportschuetz: 12:04

Yeah, they all have guns.

Christian Hamm: 12:07

I bet.

Marcus Hamm: 12:09

If you want to pitch pictures, dad think about the German guy in Django.

Christian Hamm: 12:14

Oh, is that Christopher? No, that's not Christopher Waltz. That guy's epic. And all those movies. Oh, yeah. He's

James Faulkner: 12:20

Christoph. Waltz, Christoph, waltz. Waltz. Zie Germans. Yeah,

Christian Hamm: 12:24

he is scary. Man. Oh, portrays those characters well. That is really cool. Okay, maybe I don't know who to? Who should who should tell the story. But apparently how you guys met is pretty good. Yeah, Marcus. Come in there nice and close. Mark

Marcus Hamm: 12:37

It's a good story Right on, it's a good story. I'll start off if I miss anything jump in. All right. So I've, over the years grown to the point where, you know, I can send my financial statements and get on the big jobs. And I won't mention any names. But we took on one project, in particular, the owner of the building, and I won't mention the contractor. But because we're you know, some level of anonymity is important here in the construction world. But we started the project late, and they advanced trades in front of us. And it made our job very difficult. And they also basically had an entry level grad as a project manager. And they have all kinds of information on you. They know how much working capital they have, they have your financial statements. They know how much money they have to hold from you in order to put you under. And then they don't have to deal with you go into court with them. Right. And that's exactly what they did. And, and then when I decided to try and take some legal action against them, so that we wouldn't lose our shirt. It turns out that our column, our lawyers, were the same firm. And it was a conflict of interest. So right, I got a referral to Tim. Yep. And I got a phone number. And I called him up. And I kind of conned him in to taking the project on. He seemed a little busy. He asked me how big it was. I phoned him up the first thing I said, Hey, I'm looking for the best construction lawyer in Vancouver, which was directly a line off his website. And he thought I was just some prankster. And then when I said no, no, no, I've been referred to you by you know, your colleague. And he said, Okay, and then we explained the situation. He said, how big is the job? And I was like, I don't know it's 20 or 30 pages, the contract, but

Tim Sportschuetz: 14:39

yeah, like 10

Marcus Hamm: 14:41

It was like a 400 page monster. He's like, Well, I'll take a look at it. I'll take a look at it. And then I basically in the end had to beg him to take this on because it was it was quite a bit bigger, but I entire time I downplayed how big it was and how important it was. No, no, you're good. You're good. You can you can If you can put a letter together for me, you know, we just need to get this out. And I was just putting them under intense pressure to get a letter fired back to this contractor. And in the end, after some persistence, this guy took care of the job. Like he cleared up all of these problems. In fact, what they ended up doing was, and he had such sharp points. And they were they were so it was like razor sharp, you couldn't argue with it. Yeah. And he even came to site and like, walked the site with me. And we didn't tell anybody that he was coming. And he got a good feel of everything we were doing in everything they were doing. Right. So that he could put an informed decision together, like find me a lawyer that I knew that, you know, and, and then he came, and then he, what they ended up doing was they put a reasonable person in charge of our contract. So in the end, everything got resolved, and we got paid and we got some extras. We didn't get everything we wanted. You don't always get everything you want. Right? Yeah, but you get what you need, basically. Yep. Did I miss anything? No.

Christian Hamm: 16:09

Does that sound about like how it went down? Yeah, yeah, that's,

Tim Sportschuetz: 16:11

that's about it. Yeah, he called me randomly one day and said, I got this little issue. Can you help? So yeah, he definitely suckered me into that one.

James Faulkner: 16:19

Did you want to do that? Because of the project? What like, what, what was it? Was it just Marcus's charm? Or was it something some other reason? Reasons.

Tim Sportschuetz: 16:29

Um, you know, I'm, I'm very careful about taking on too much, I had just launched the firm. So I have a very specific one year, five year and 10 year plan. And, in my opinion, to scale a firm in the right way, and still continue to service your client the right way, or your existing clients the right way, you have to be careful not to take on too much, because a project like that can very quickly suck up to three hours a day. And now, you cannot feel the calls that, you know, are coming in from your existing clients. And the one thing I did notice working for other firms and other lawyers, or being around other lawyers is they seem to be oftentimes they they miss a key component, I think we're in a service industry. So when someone calls me or texts me on a Sunday morning at eight, I will call them back on that same day, within an hour or two, and that is, you know, I don't I don't have a, I don't have a close time, you can email me or call me anytime. And I don't get offended because I think you pay me a lot of money. And I have an obligation to to answer your questions. And we're dealing with a lot of money and important businesses, oftentimes family businesses that if you don't get paid 250 grand or 500, grand or 80, grand or six grand, it's it doesn't matter how small or large the AR's are, you gotta collect Yeah, and I know from firsthand, if you don't collect your bills, and they start aging on you, it's it's catastrophic for your, for your company. So, you know, I try to find the right fit and the right clients. So I also don't get myself in trouble. If it's a massive issue that come to me, I oftentimes refer them out to other counsel that are more set up to take on such files, like with five or six associates that they can say, look, go crazy review these 100,000 documents that came to us. I cannot handle that right now. Maybe in a couple more years, when we're when we've grown a few more bodies, but not not right now.

Christian Hamm: 18:46

What do you have a prescribed amount of a company your size, a firm your size of how many files you could handle at a given time? Like do you try and fluctuate within a certain orders or certain customers? Or have you

James Faulkner: 18:57

scale of each file? Probably there. Yeah,

Tim Sportschuetz: 18:59

it's very difficult. I'm learning some important lessons as I go. Because you can take on files where, you know, you look at it, and you say, Okay, if everybody's reasonable here, and you have good counsel on the other side, which is of key importance, oftentimes, if you have bad lawyers on the other side, it makes your job exponentially more difficult because they ask stupid questions. They ask the stupid questions,

Marcus Hamm: 19:24

Can I jump in? Can I jump in? One thing about Tim is that he literally knows everybody. He knows if somebody's suing me, oh, I know that guy. He's reasonable. I'll deal with them. Right. Right. And then that good to know who's on the other side Fisher and a lot of times, it's like, did you go to school with these people? Or how do you meet all of them? You literally alone, every single lawyer that I've dealt with, you've known them,

Tim Sportschuetz: 19:47

you know, it's a small bar. So so when you are practicing in the construction law bar, there's some really amazing people that work in this industry. And that's why a lot My job, I, I cannot say enough about some of the people that have helped me, for whom I've worked, I mean, the, there's senior lawyers with 20 years of experience that are, you know, charging eight 900 bucks an hour that I will call and they will give me their time. And I'm, I'm really, you know, honored that they do that. And so you get to know the people in this small community. But also, you can't be an asshole, you have to be, you have to be kind to people, you have to, you know, always be respectful. And you find that certain lawyers at times, take, you know, a very aggressive stance or an unreasonable stance, which is fine if they get those instructions from their clients, and they literally have to do that. But you can do it in a nice way. Right with counsel, you don't have to be an asshole. So those guys get weeded out,

Christian Hamm: 20:56

right? Quite quickly.

James Faulkner: 20:58

So when you like, Can you sense when counsel is communicating with you that they think that what their client is proposing is kind of nuts? Sometimes without them saying it? Like, can you just sense from them? They don't even like it, but they got to do it?

Tim Sportschuetz: 21:13

Yeah, you use certainly can at times it's a it's a game of poker, but oftentimes, you know, you can you can tell they're getting some really bad instructions. Yeah, there's certain, I'm not gonna go too far into it. But there's certain key phrases that lawyers learn to use emails, or on phone calls, where you're like, Okay, I get it.

Christian Hamm: 21:37

It's interesting, like, I haven't had to engage a different kind of lawyer for too many different things. But in any experience of doing it, you do start to see that it is a bit of a dance, right? In the way that you might know a bunch of other great lawyers in the industry and the nuances behind their like behaviors and strategy to Yeah, it's a total strategy to it right? And like, and I kind of get why. And this is something that we'll talk about is, is, as Mark was saying, you need to know when to lawyer up? Well, you kind of do, because there's certain things that you can be educated on and handle yourself. But then there's definitely a time when you need to bring in the pro, because they're gonna navigate for you in the right way. You know, and do that poker game, that dance or whatever it is, and get you you know, the optimal outcome

Marcus Hamm: 22:24

from from the contractors perspective. I have basically, Tim on one shoulder and the devil on the other. Right? Yeah. And quite often, I'll be angry, and I'll want to send an email. And then Tim will be like, No, you better not do because of this. And he brings you back down to earth and you make smart decisions. So even just, you know, for small, small stuff, quick and easy, you know, an email or a 15 minute phone call, he can sort of direct you in the path where you're going to be more successful. Yeah. And to the email, he doesn't need to jump in. And he doesn't need to jump in and spend two or three hours on your case, he's gonna just spend a 15 minute phone call and tell you how to handle your business. And you'll do it far more successfully, than if you didn't have this angel on your shoulder to direct you in the right path.

Christian Hamm: 23:16

He was just called Tim before.

Marcus Hamm: 23:19

I'm just I'm just trying to help anyone who's listening. Yeah, this is how you use the resources that are available to you. And sometimes they're great guys like Tim, or maybe it's your accountant. But the other thing I hope we can talk about later is how to pick your lawyer.

Christian Hamm: 23:34

Totally. These are all things I think we can uncover. I just got to say, like, what I like a lot about this dynamic. And you know, you don't know how it's gonna play out when you actually get to sit down. But this is a very real world scenario, right? Where you have a contractor who, you know, clearly the way that you're explaining things is quite direct, because you have business to take care of. You need to move a big project forward. You need to, you're gonna have beer. I'm gonna have some beer. 100% Yeah, okay. Yeah, it was. Guest first. Oh, yeah. That's jam. Are you good? Yeah. Okay. All right. He said, Lorena. Yeah, I know. He's probably thinking for the refuge. Like he's solving complex math problems in his head. I have this beer.

James Faulkner: 24:14

Yeah. So I went on the podcast instead of stuff. I gotta

Marcus Hamm: 24:17

remember. I've seen him have a glass of wine. He does on

Christian Hamm: 24:21

that part of what we'll edit that day that's coming up. But back to what I was saying, like, think contractors, big, big, small, whatever size you are, whatever work you're doing. You have a lot to take care of. You have a lot of responsibilities. There's a lot of moving parts. There's a lot of balls in the air. There's a lot of things coming. And if you have someone who's, you know, we have general contractors on this podcast, we have developers on this podcast, we have all sorts of different things. So it's really just trying to unpack it as objectively as possible. But, you know, a big general contractor or a big developer has got a lot of moving parts and a lot of peace. Is that they can, you know, utilize for different things. But you are one of those things, and it's really important to you to handle your business and to do well,

Marcus Hamm: 25:09

while the subcontractor is really at the short end of the stick. Yeah, yeah. You know, like, we're here. Like, when they want you to do something, it's you do it, or they'll call and they'll yell, they'll swear, they'll, they'll threaten to hold your money, they'll threaten to kick you off the job and then sue you for the difference in cost to get someone else in. Right. So we're really just getting shit on constantly. And I've kind of taken the stance that you got to pick and choose who you're good to. And I have a few contractors that are phenomenal. Like RAM construction. Shout out to ram. Ryan's really good shout out to miles shout out to miles, miles and Josh and Josh. Yeah, yeah, even even Liam has had a little bit of conflict with him. But it's good now. And love it. And these guys are great. And the Elliston guys have been pretty good. And we're working at Dave McFarland shout out. We're working at Oak Ridge. And that's the biggest project in North America right now.

Christian Hamm: 26:10

That is really good.

Marcus Hamm: 26:11

I've taken on, I've taken on a contract there that's bigger than more work than we do in a typical year. Wow. It's enormous. Yeah. And, and then, and then I there's also one off companies like we're not going to name names, because you know, they're going to be listening to, but rhymes all those those companies like they don't use you consistently. They don't treat you well. And you know, you might have been really low on a job. So they took you and those guys, those are the guys I fight. If I'm on a job where they're good to me, and they need something done, I'll do it. No problem, I won't charge them. I'll always drop my price to help them out. I'll bend over backwards, I'll do extra mobilizations and an extra, whatever, and I won't hit I won't charge them because they're consistently good to us. These other companies that are one offs that pick you because you're low. Those are the guys like if I'm having problems I call Tim and I say, Tim, what do we do? Do we lean? You know, and Tim sort of directs what the most effective course is?

Christian Hamm: 27:11

Well, I gotta say, you know, having been on the other end of it as a project manager, dealing with subcontractors, I mean, we have worked together. Yeah, in a professional setting, yet we have, which is pretty cool. But having been on the other side of things, like I know how it goes, right? Like you have you sometimes you do develop preferred trades. But it's like any relationship with those that you do lots of business with those that you respect those that you know, you treat a certain way and get treated that you like it's reciprocated. So that totally that resonates.

Marcus Hamm: 27:42

If you want your sub trade to do free stuff for you treat them good. Give them consistent work, treat them good, be fair with them, if they're not low, still pick them kids be good to them. And if they're, you know, and if you're not, they're gonna say, Oh, you want me to do this will fuck you. You know, pay up. You want me to do an extra for free? No, not going to. Yeah, right. That's just how it is. Right? And I think a lot of contract general contractors need to learn that. Right?

Christian Hamm: 28:08

Right. Here this is good question. Oh, gunky go, oh, this is great. Yeah.

James Faulkner: 28:12

So are there when sub trades are, are taken advantage of? In other words, it basically what you're saying is they're kind of they're trying to mess you guys around. Some of these guys is there, there are some sub trades that the work is in so much demand, they can't afford to treat them poorly. So there's obviously a spectrum of different types of subs that get treated different ways. Would you would you think that like 100%? So what are the what are the who would be like, let's put the who are the snowflakes of the sub trades that you cannot mess around? Or your job is toast?

Marcus Hamm: 28:54

What will any any one where you have a license to use a product that other people can't use? Okay, yeah, right. So we have fireproofing products. They don't issue licenses out to just anybody, they usually pick two or three people per district or area, British Columbia being one area. And they don't they're not going to give licensed anybody else. So if you have a hard spec to a product project, and you need to use this material, yeah. Which is usually typically what happens. And you know, you have two or three trades to pick from if you piss all three trades off, you have nobody to do your project, you'll be fine. You'll be flying someone in from Calgary, right. And that's going to be astronomically more expensive.

Tim Sportschuetz: 29:35

I can't mechanical electrical plumbing is usually the ones that you know have a call on nificantly more leverage. Yeah, the leverage leverage voice there. I find mechanicals is key and then also elevator supplier well

James Faulkner: 29:50

Oh yeah.

Marcus Hamm: 29:54

Elevator guys dictates so much. They kick us off jobs all the time, just because they take priority.

James Faulkner: 29:59

Yeah. That makes sense. So one thing that we've, you know, since being in the construction industry, you know, with software's is that we've always tried to, like, unpack why construction tends to be so adversarial, in general. And we've always talked about this as like, it's almost as though the minute that all the contracts are signed, a delay of some sort ensues, like at some point that just shifts the course of time. Right from the beginning, though, since the last signature happens, it's some kind of delay could be a permit. It could be something, and everybody has to course correct. Yep. So I think that's probably why is because it's just never straightforward. ever know. So and it's somebody who's going to have a dispute with someone else. We're, and because of that schedule, shifting around, as you said, with the example that you had on that project, is because they had trades going in before you you couldn't get your stuff done. That's obviously going to wreck your entire pipeline of work, and scheduling all of your guys, people. So there's a what do you guys think about that sort of understanding or perspective on why this is adversarial? It isn't.

Tim Sportschuetz: 31:17

You want to go first?

Marcus Hamm: 31:20

Well, I think I think there are some times a delay, like you said, because we bid these jobs. And sometimes I just bid a job right near mom and dad's house there for Oh, nice. And they want me to sign a contract. And I'm not gonna say anything bad about them here. So I can bring them up. I think I can use their name right?

Christian Hamm: 31:42

We're talking to them right now. So

Marcus Hamm: 31:44

I like I like, I've had good experience with them. But they want us to sign a contract. And they don't think our scope starts for two years. And I know that 7% inflation, how am I supposed to sign a contract where we're going to be on site and two years from now? It's a big school. It's right on 24th Ave. Oh, yeah. And Catholic school? Yeah, that's exactly, yeah. And they want to they want to contract the fireproofing right now. And you've seen is tricky. Yeah. It's just basically a farmer's field still, you know, and so, you know, they sign you up to a contract, and they expect you to sign it to start and hold your price. And sometimes you do, and sometimes, if you can get out of it, you know, I asked him, can I get out of this sometimes? You know, and he's like, Well, it's so tricky, because sometimes if you agree to bid a job, you've agreed to there was a call again?

Tim Sportschuetz: 32:33

Well, the there's the contract and contract B regime and in Canada, so your bid documents and your your request for tender is forms a contractual relationship. As soon as someone submits a bid and the irrevocable terms of contract a require a bidder to enter into contract B, which is the actual underlying construction contract. So you have to be careful because you might be entering into a letter

James Faulkner: 32:59

it makes sense, because of intent or an LOA of some sort, where there's language in it that's so clear and concise, and, you know, unconditional that you're you've agreed to, to, you've agreed in principle on terms of a contract. So you know, you have to be careful at times, because you can you can go down a road where you didn't, well, many contractors don't even realize that they're,

Marcus Hamm: 33:32

I didn't Well,

James Faulkner: 33:34

it does make sense, because you're essentially on on putting that bid in you are somebody else isn't. Right. So they are they you're kind of, you're kind of stuck at a staging point where they're still making the movie, but you're one of the actors, but they don't necessarily have four others that are like that, that are standards waiting for you to not do it. So that's probably where it can where it can get into trouble because it is like an intent.

Tim Sportschuetz: 34:04

That's it. Yeah. Yeah. And and, you know, the the owner or the client has an obligation to treat every bidder fairly and objectively, but, you know, if you if you put, if you put your bid up, then you have to be prepared that you're the chosen one. And if that happens, you can just simply walk away. I mean, I've seen this happen over and over where, you know, even after the project's commenced, contractors, will at times just randomly out of nowhere, send an email to a client and say, We're done. We're we're not prepared to do this job and walk away. And that's, that's, that's the exact wrong thing you should do. And going back to your point about, you know, why are our construction projects so litigious? And adversarial, it's, I think, unfortunately, we've lost the touch of sitting down at the beginning of a project around the table and saying, This is what we're going to build, here's the schedule, maybe even do a pull schedule on a wall. You know, a lot of contractors are starting to use those where you have a combined exercise where you figure out a schedule that might work for everybody out of sequence work is one of the worst things that I've I've been watching. In the industry, I mean, big owners will just direct a mechanical, it's just to install hangers, and then the mechanical components before another contractor had to get to the ceiling. So it's just, it's it's minor issues. But I think it just a full breakdown of communication. Because these people are reasonable, they want to do a good job. But no one talks anymore. It's all emails, emails, emails, emails, and I always say don't send emails, go meet with people sit around the table, talk it out. And this is actually how I solve a lot of disputes that a lot of other lawyers might say, I got a good one, I can bill a hundred, or two hundred grand on this file. I tell I talked myself out of more work with Marcus than I can count, because I'll say, Look, you can either go into litigation or nasty dispute through the courts or through mediation or, you know, I can stick an associate on it. But why you're going to net out much less than then if I can try to negotiate this thing. And if it doesn't, if it doesn't settle, then it doesn't settle. You always have the other recourse through the courts. But I find that there's just so much aggression in that in this industry, where people want to pound their fists on the table. Okay, do that. But once you're done, usually people are ready to listen. And I just I've dealt with so many meetings where people are screaming at each other and my boss is starting to get up to fight someone. You know, my former boss. Yeah, he's a he's a boss. He's an ex boxer. So he's a tough guy. He's six, five. So you know, you get into these meetings, and you're, you're used to it, but but at least we resolve things right? You you, you end up figuring it out. And nowadays, I find that you have consultants, owners just sending emails that are offensive to the trade contractors or even the GCs just you start off on the wrong foot. Possibly on an email that wasn't even meant the way came out.

James Faulkner: 37:35

Yeah, yeah. Context, context is super lost.

Marcus Hamm: 37:37

So, I have one other hypothesis on this, okay, adversarial thing. In the Western world construction is sort of the last frontier of the alpha males. You know, like, they're all lifting heavy shit. They're all eating their meat and potatoes. Yeah. And they're all going to work. And they're all working their way up the line. And then the foreman of the pipe guys, he's a burly, or the concrete Masons. He's a burly dude. And he's coming in. And he's, I mean, like, men these days in the rest of the Western world, they don't have any testosterone, they're not lifting heavy stuff. They're all eating processed food. And so you actually have real men on construction sites, you have women too, there are good women that are working out, but they're also pretty awful as well. Because if you want to survive in a man's world, you have to be Yeah, and like, we got one project manager in Oakridge, who's a woman and she's great. She's worked her way up through the trades, for sure. And she knows exactly what she's doing. And then she's also done it for long enough that she went through our contract with us and, and, and so that's one also. And then the other thing is to then you also have this mix of entry level grads that just don't follow their spec, right. And those are the people that are throwing the you know, the hangers ahead of you, or throwing all the conduits and cable trays ahead of the drywall, there's the drywall the ceiling, like they don't read or take the time to learn how this stuff works. And it's all laid out in the construction spec from one to whatever it is 12 And it's like an R spec is said install hangers install, tops track and how the concrete poured and then spray your fireproofing. And how often does that happen for me, like, you know, as you're you used to do the contract, general contracting. How often do you actually say that? Well, really only if I call you and tell you hey, don't put your thought walls in. Don't put your pipes in and let me spray first, which I've been doing a lot of lately, I've been making sure I call a month, two months ahead of time and saying hey, don't put no shit in the way or I'm going to charge you more money. You know, and that works well. But like Tim says, there's like a lack of actual physical communication like people discussing.

Christian Hamm: 39:53

You know, it's interesting, like as you're talking, it's bringing up memories, right? It's like I'm guilty of a lot of these things having been a pro Project Manager and navigating, you know what I thought were good. You know, they probably were really were good relationships with some pretty loyal subcontractors. Yeah. But the subcontractors eat a lot. You know, they suck it up a lot. Because we're driving projects forward, trying to make us make a schedule, keep a schedule, and you'll throw something in and you know, you'll get a Marcus calling you and be like, hey, hey, I was just down on site, and I noticed you through the tracking, or I noticed, you know, he started dry Walling, and hey, my guys can't and it's just like, hey, I'm sorry, dude, you just got to figure it out. You know, you just got to figure it out. And then so much so many subcontractors just do like scared.

Marcus Hamm: 40:40

Profit profits are razor sharp to like, people are gonna fight over money like crazy because we don't have a big profit margin. general contractors have like, what? 2%

Christian Hamm: 40:48

Oh, that's right. Yeah. So anyway, what's

Marcus Hamm: 40:52

your profit margin? Tim?

James Faulkner: 40:55

90%. The

Marcus Hamm: 41:00

way we need to get into a different line of business I think.

James Faulkner: 41:04

Gotta go. Gotta go do the that nasty school thing that took you forever? Yeah, no doubt.

Marcus Hamm: 41:09

The how many years of school? Was that? Tim? Three. Because you had a degree before that, though? Oh, sure.

Tim Sportschuetz: 41:13

Yeah, no, three posts. After university. It's three years and then articling year,

Marcus Hamm: 41:19

and then it's amazing how much of your your experience in the civil actually relates to what I do and every other trade because you were having fights on a different it was a different scope, but you're dealing with the same people and you're, you're having the same battles with change orders and whatnot. Right. You were working. Were you working for Graham and all those big companies.

Tim Sportschuetz: 41:42

Mostly municipalities. I mean, we did we built a really cool project was in Kamloops. We built a nine field, softball pitch. It was pure earthwork fit perfectly because we tried to bid go after work that fit within our, you know, equipment profile. So we had a lot of dozers, we had a lot of articulated trucks like 30 tons. Lots of you know, backhoe scrapers. So we tried to go after the good work for us. Because earthworks is actually you can run some good profit margins if you do it, right. So yeah, we worked some some big projects, we worked VANOC projects for the Olympics, we did some work up the Sea to Sky. So there's some really interesting work. But also I mean, I, I made a lot of mistakes, right? As a young guy, you think you know it all. And you're coming out of university and you think you're smarter than everybody and then you start sending these emails where I just, you know, I sometimes go back and read those emails from 2010 2011. And just cringe. That's

James Faulkner: 42:50

the stuff that Marcus was talking about. It is cringy Yeah,

Tim Sportschuetz: 42:53

exact know for sure.

Christian Hamm: 42:54

For James, I know, you got a question. I'd how many construction lawyers would come through the ranks with your type of background, actual physical construction in the dirt type experience, because it really changes perspective.

Tim Sportschuetz: 43:11

I don't have the numbers on this. But it's it's, I mean, out of there's a, there's very few out of 100 construction workers, you might have 10 that are maybe engineers, you might have five that are actually still licensed and permitted engineers under APEC BC. Out of those five, maybe three have actually seen and managed a job site. Many of them did the engineering degree, did a six month internship and then went back to law school, never ran a company in their life have no clue about operational matters on site, or the issues you're dealing with on a human level. contractors that have experienced in the dirt, I'd say like, I don't know.

Christian Hamm: 43:58

It sounds like very few at low. Yeah. Yeah.

James Faulkner: 44:02

That's cool. So Mark has, since I've, I've known you, you've you, you have this persona is like kind of a, you're like one of those burly guys, you have this kind of you have this. And I think this probably is part of the brand part of the whole thing of your company, and the fact that you very capable kind of persona. So as you have gone through through your life, you've probably fought every fight in your life. You're always like, I'm going to get on that and I'm going to fix this and I'm going to do that.

Marcus Hamm: 44:35

I think at one point Christian actually was able to beat me up. No, it

Christian Hamm: 44:38

was it was probably like one, maybe one day in and you had a very weak moment.

Marcus Hamm: 44:45

I pulled ahead after that.

James Faulkner: 44:47

Yeah, yeah. But more or less, less on the UFC physical side, go more more on the fact that How hard has it been for you to essentially uh, emotionally stand down and talk to Tim, do you know what I mean? Because I think your your, your instinct is to be like, No, fuck you, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna, you know, do whatever and to fight your fight, but then you have to go hang on, I need to just, I need to like, shove this down for a second and just go talk to somebody, just so I don't send the wrong email, etc. So how how was that transition for you been?

Marcus Hamm: 45:27

Well, I mean, that wasn't really my thing for a while. But also, like I said, in my first few years of business like I had, I didn't have a lot of success. I think we probably in our first few years lost three 400,000. And it was hard to correct. It's hard to course correct. But you got to learn from your mistakes. And sometimes those are like emotional mistakes, and you just got to, you got to cram it down and find your way you got to mistakes are a gift, you know, if you learn from them. Yeah. Because every, you're only going to learn, you're only going to get better if you can make a mistake and treat it as a constructive thing. Like, have you made mistakes as a lawyer, Tim?

Tim Sportschuetz: 46:09

Yeah, yeah. What would you say? No, that's

James Faulkner: 46:14

not for my clients.

Christian Hamm: 46:15

It's not for Marcus. Not for Westcor thermal.

Tim Sportschuetz: 46:18

No, I think I think you're absolutely right. I mean, it's how you how you deal with with mistakes, most of the mistakes that lawyers will make are procedural issues that you can fix. They're fixable. Yeah, but you got to you gotta own up to it. I find nowadays you have just excuse after bullshit excuse, and I'm not, I'm not that guy. If I make a mistake, I call my client I said, Look, I screwed this up, I'm gonna fix it for you. No charge, I'll get back to you when that's done. Worst thing I find is that, that people push it off to another person or, or, or say it wasn't their mistake, or someone else screwed up, just just own up to it. I will say one thing about Mark is, when I first met him, I thought I would review and there's a point to this story, I would review email correspondence, that would be very confrontational, you know, very nasty. But the one thing I will say about Mark is, is I'm very impressed because they're always very professional, and never, hugely accusatory, just facts, right. And that's one thing, I always tell clients, I'm like, every email that you send, write it with the foresight that that email will one day be read by a judge or another lawyer, or me learning about your project. So be really careful what you put in writing. It's, it's, it's of paramount importance for your future documentary record. So you know, and I gotta say, like, if you start acting like an asshole, and writing, it's not going to read well, in the record, so you gotta be careful.

Christian Hamm: 48:06

I just think all this conversation is, is rich, with just nuggets, tips for contractors, people in our audience that are going to be listening to this because

Marcus Hamm: 48:16

well, I mean, if you can learn from somebody else's mistakes, you're one step ahead of the game, you don't need to, you don't need to lose 400,000 In your first couple years, you can listen and maybe make fewer mistakes, right.

Christian Hamm: 48:29

But what we see totally, totally, and what we see so much, and we often talk about this with guests is that, especially in the contracting world, those that start businesses used to be on the tools, right? Or they're out there in a ditch, right, they are in the dirt. And they excel to a certain point where they realize, to some degree, I could do this for myself, right, but they don't have any of the operational experience the business experience the conversing with a construction lawyer experience, and they have to navigate and figure it out. It doesn't mean that everyone's going to be super rough. But there's definitely a learning curve of how to then go and take that from the step of tools to running a business. Right and I've even seen and this isn't just to toot your horn or anything like that, but your explanation at the beginning of the even the progression of your business is pretty accurate in terms of how I've even watched from the outside and how you've grown it and how you've

Marcus Hamm: 49:26

I had to fire our dad he was trying to be very very involved came to the office every day and and that was a pinnacle turning point to

Christian Hamm: 49:40

that is gonna be a great little short.

Marcus Hamm: 49:43

Yeah, yeah. He I mean he's he's vastly more successful than Chris or I will ever be. He's made millions and he's got a family that's you know, he's he's led us like no other dad kid. We have the best dad ever. No man, waiting No one would ever say anything different to every single person that meets him has respect for him. But when it comes to dealing with his sons is a little different

Christian Hamm: 50:08

He's Dad, he's not business partner, he's Dad,

Marcus Hamm: 50:12

he's Dad. Everything you do is wrong. Everything you do, you could have done better. And eventually I just had to fire him so that I could get him to stop interfering with the business.

Christian Hamm: 50:22

Mom and Dad recently started listening to this podcast.

Marcus Hamm: 50:26

and I'll tell you something that was our first successful year, like, but I'm not saying that everything that I did was wrong. Yeah. Right. What the problem was, he's such a nice guy, that all my shit employees would come to him and he would like enable their bad behaviors.

James Faulkner: 50:42

Yeah, but it's also a problem. It's not the fact that he's not there as the fact that you're alone. Yes, that's the reason. Yes. You have to deal with everything.

Christian Hamm: 50:51

Yes. And that goes to my point about your progression. Right, is that you took ownership. complete ownership. Yep. Right. And then had to navigate these things and sure become refined, like how you approach things

Marcus Hamm: 51:04

before he met us at launch. Tim and I were talking about how we were hit with scammers, right. And my receptionist almost sent $60,000 to Willie, a six, seven years ago. And I the fishing thing. Yeah, the fishing thing. And also, I had another one come from CRA, which wasn't actually from CRA saying, here's the payment portal us $16,000 and rear backs taxes. And then of course, very draconian threatening CRA law came in, in a government sealed envelope. And it was $16,000 for your employment payment, or your employee remittance or whatever. And I was like, how do they know our exact numbers? Well, it's crazy. Well, how do they this so we missed the remittance, but we can make it up through this portal right here.

Christian Hamm: 51:47

Well, we get emails from James all the time. You do? Oh, yeah. I have to probably once a month, I'll send a note to the team on the general channel go back. And it's hilarious. How once a month, what happened to you, Tim, probably once a month, and I say, another email from another phishing email guys, James is not contacting you.

James Faulkner: 52:04

Wow. Yeah, I

Tim Sportschuetz: 52:05

get I get them all the time, as well as

Marcus Hamm: 52:07

super pro to take the reins of your own everything. Yeah.

Tim Sportschuetz: 52:12

I just have a problem. I read a lot of the law, we have an insurance liability insurance through the Law Society, and they publish these very informative updates on the most recent scams. And you know, they're very sophisticated. So I just don't trust anyone with with bank accounts. My bookkeeper who's incredible. My accountant who's incredible. I just don't want anyone else to make a mistake. And I'm responsible for it. So I've also locked it out completely. That makes no one no one gets in there myself.

Christian Hamm: 52:50

Getting getting back to when you guys were even talking about how you first met. And Marc, you want to chat about this about? It's the whole when to lawyer up thing, kind of the interaction of how you guys first got had an engagement. Marcus, you were dealing with an issue on a job site? I don't know the severity of it in the moment. But how is it typically when you start to pick up a customer or a client, Tim, are people at a real dire moment in their project? Or did they proactively look out and say, I have the foresight to know that down the road, I'm going to probably need a good construction lawyer, I better start to build a relationship. Now. How does it typically go?

Marcus Hamm: 53:29

So I have some rules. I have some I had a lawyer at the time before I call Tim. And Tim actually knows him because he knows everybody. Don't I think, Tim you're actually on the VRCA board. And you know, that's how you meet a lot of these people. You were too busy. No, yeah. No, fair enough. But this this prestigious lawyer, he was $450,$500 an hour, he wouldn't reply to me. He wouldn't you didn't even have the courtesy of saying and some of his emails back were I was just asking for a bit of direction. Right? And they were just like, oh, kind of he was kind of like saying, well, you're fucked. And I was like, Okay, thank you. That's, that's and then he sent a bill for$3,000. You know, like, it wasn't literally like that, obviously, lawyers put it in there. The invoice was longer than the resolution. The invoice was like $3,500 for saying you're fucked, which was great, you know, and so this this guy had should have been very involved from the beginning. And he wasn't at all he was, you know, you're small potatoes, whatever. I have other clients or I don't know how Tim describes it. What's What's the deal with these corporate lawyers?

Tim Sportschuetz: 54:41

I, I think a lot of lawyers just they they have a lot, a lot, a lot of files. They're under a whole different type of pressure that I am under because that's why I started my own own firm. Because I don't have to answer to anyone. I'm not bill Selling someone else's dream a lot of these these lawyers seem to be they're dissociated with with their their work, because it's not their name on the door. Whenever I walk in my office, that's my name on the wall. And that's intimidating. But it's also hugely motivating.

Marcus Hamm: 55:18

So it's pretty nice. New offices, because it's a sport shoots on the wall. Yeah. And when you when your dad was there for your grand opening, he was standing by that name, like, with pride. He's like, That's my name. That's my son. That's my name right there. Yeah, it's really good. It's really good. Like his office is really something else. All right, we're gonna see this. Yeah, no, I mean,

Tim Sportschuetz: 55:43

yeah, you guys can come by it's in Mount Pleasant. So I don't even know what

Christian Hamm: 55:48

back to when contractors are reaching out first engaging with you, how's it typically going down?

Tim Sportschuetz: 55:55

So my favorite clients are the ones that have the foresight, probably from prior mistakes and experience to say, look, we're going to go after this project. This is the type of scope it is. And then I can actually discuss project risks with them right from the get go. And that will help form their submittals. To the owner or the consultant, we can actually say, Look, these are exclusions, these are inclusions, we, you know, we're concerned about X, Y, and Zed on this project, you need to give us, you know, issue an RFI, for example, if that needs to happen, that's very early on. Those are, tend to be very sophisticated, sophisticated clients and long term clients that understand the value that a lawyer can bring at that early stage. Oftentimes, you get contractors still I consider in the early stages to say, Tim, here's a contract, can you review it? These contracts are becoming so one sided, that it's almost embarrassing. I'm almost embarrassed for our industry where it's trending. Because I see these, you know, contracts, the standard form contracts that were intended to be fair and equitable and objective, drafted by all these different industry participants, consultants, owners, GC subs in mind. And then you have someone on the other side, usually from the top down drafting supplementary conditions that are just so severely one sided, that it creates an an immediate power imbalance from day one of the project?

Marcus Hamm: 57:39

Or is that an all Canada thing?

Tim Sportschuetz: 57:40

I don't know. I only know BC. I don't deal with any other province. I refer people out. If I have an Ontario client or Alberta clients, I just don't deal with it because they have a different lien legislation acts, you have to know your limits. As you do, right. You're not going to take on jobs. You don't know. Yeah. But yeah, I find I find these contracts are getting tougher and tougher to operate under especially for for sophisticated trade contractors. They, they're, they're put into extreme positions, and they don't even know it, which is really, really scary.

Marcus Hamm: 58:17

You still have idiots assign these things without even crossing anything out. And I don't read it for years. For years, I've been crossing things out now. Now the big jobs I send to Tim, and it comes back heavily redacted, like, you know, some sort of Joe Joe Biden document, some Hunter Biden documents, or whatever, or some sort of Fauci document, but they come to and I just like, Tim, I need to get this job. I mean, I actually want to get it so we can't cross everything out. But a lot of these bombs are gonna get us canceled. We don't have to cut those out those

James Faulkner: 58:58

No the Fauci is the "F" bomb.

Marcus Hamm: 59:00

Yeah, Fauci is in every podcast. Oh, we're just joking, though. It's all over the place. Don't cut, don't cut, don't cut the cut the Fauci.

Tim Sportschuetz: 59:08

Some of the worst ones are personal guarantees, right, believe it or not right? Owners or big GC or developers they will issue you know, a CCDC 17, which is a trade contract between owner and trade, and they will stick in their supplementary conditions that require personal guarantees from the owner. And I immediately cross that out pay if paid or pay when paid clauses. We will only pay you if and when the owner pays us or the lender pays us and that's a precondition to your entitlement to payment. I mean, these are insane, insane clauses and anyone listening you should never sign anything like that. Because you will lose not only your company, you will lose your home. You will lose your cars. You will lose your wife's home if she's on title. So be Be really careful, I've had some really tough conversations lately with with contractors that I it was too far gone, I couldn't even help them.

Marcus Hamm: 1:00:09

And I've seen them on contracts for like $9,000. That's crazy, this boilerplate, and they just carry them on boiler plate and and they're also their scope specific work, they rope you into everything related to your trade. And they do that to everybody, because some idiots will sign it.

Christian Hamm: 1:00:25

be really interesting to have a general contractor come and discuss this kind of, hey, I had a discussion. We're have a sub GC and a sub together. Years ago, Willi and I, our dad sat down with us at the StuartOlson head office before they were joined up with Bird. And we were $75,000 short on a bid because there was an area we didn't include. The area didn't have structural drawings, so there's no way you could bid it wasn't included on a quote. However, there was a tiny little clause that said work package 13 And, you know, all all fireproofing work package 13. Well, we argued How can we quote that there was no drawings for it. And and then the Stuart Olson guy says, Well, you just got to cross that out. Basically, every big contract that we get the people that know what they're doing these things come back redacted like, crazy. Yeah. And then we have to mutually agree on on the terms. And, you know, when only half of the people are doing that, sometimes it's unfortunate, but they'll just take your contract and throw it in the garbage and they'll go with the better that was $5,000 more, because he signed the contract. Interesting, you know, so people need to cross out these shit clauses. This is gonna be funny, because it's some of the times that we mentioned names, it's like in a good light. And then sometimes it's not isn't like the all in podcast when there's like, we talked to well, just give us the time afterwards to tell us when, like whenever we need

Marcus Hamm: 1:01:56

to, because that wasn't a dig at StuartOlson.

Christian Hamm: 1:01:58

It wasn't a deal. Yeah, it wasn't the

Marcus Hamm: 1:02:02

so with Tim, Utah is when we're walking into trouble here.

James Faulkner: 1:02:06

With those companies that that initially sign stuff that they know that they're they're putting themselves at risk like that, there's got to be times in the project where a certain percentage of sub trades have gotten themselves into trouble. And that can really like derail the project to write.

Tim Sportschuetz: 1:02:25

Absolutely. For everybody, everybody, everybody. So there's, I represent a lot of formwork contractors and they're naturally I had to recently pick a part of a critical path schedule that had their work layered for each level that they were building from P for optiv l 12. There were scopes of work that sandwich their scope, right? So my client was trying to work with the owner and said Look, you've delayed us for six months give us half a million bucks to make up for it was very reasonable in our view, we based it on actual numbers and it was rejected outright you delayed the project we gave you a new schedule schedule was never accepted formally. So what we did was we actually picked apart the schedule and the the each individual activity and we've drafted a very detailed letter to owners Council laying out the issues with it to say look, if your rebar guys are delayed by two days, our guys are delayed by two days and our guys are there for allowed to seek a delay claim and extra costs because it's an excusable compensable delay. So you have to actually pay attention to the schedule which I find is often missed. So if you see that the schedule has certain activities that are that are preconditions to the next activity commencing you can start figuring out okay, we can send a delay notice for each one of these and that's exactly what we did. I told my client I said you're gonna be a pain in the ass to the owner to the point where they don't want to hear from you anymore, and they're just gonna pay you you half a million bucks.

Marcus Hamm: 1:04:13

I have a question for you with these delay costs? Are they like labor downtime? Or are stand by rate material cost increases?

Tim Sportschuetz: 1:04:22

Yep, crane crane rates standby costs.

Marcus Hamm: 1:04:25

You just sent a notice each time did they quantify it? Or did they just give notice

Tim Sportschuetz: 1:04:29

Absolutely. You have to quantify it you have to give proper notice in writing pursuant to the contract clauses so not notice provisions have to be honored. You cannot later say oh, there's a five day deadline to give notice from becoming aware of an issue No, no no you as a contractor you have to follow those notice provisions perfectly if you don't you risk losing out on those claims. So you know you sometimes you have to play the game because The owner might be getting advice that's quite aggressive and they look at the contract, but they don't look at the schedule, or they don't ask the right questions. And they don't realize that, in fact, every single day though contract completion time is being pushed back because other activities or other sub trades are not performing as they should. So you have to, to, to pick apart those issues. And, you know, at times, unfortunately, it's not even the owners fault. It's there's, you're getting bad advice, and they're being led down into a very litigious area. And it's it's really sad because the project ends up, you know, the project ends up being delayed.

Marcus Hamm: 1:05:40

So another question, when you get a schedule sent to you how, like you said the schedule wasn't accepted? Yeah. Well, I should clarify that mean, they got a schedule sent, and they just didn't reply, or they did not say, or do you have to actually reject that schedule in order to be like, No, we didn't accept this?

Tim Sportschuetz: 1:05:59

It depends on the on the language of the contract. So there wasn't official original order for

Marcus Hamm: 1:06:03

you guys. These are legit questions. Yes, good content.

Tim Sportschuetz: 1:06:06

So there was an original IFC schedule that was included by reference Yeah. Into the contract. That was the official schedule. So there's also schedules that you update, an as-constructed or as-built schedule against the as-planned, and you compare the two. And that's generally how you figure out what isn't delay whether float was eaten away throughout the project, and who's responsible for the delay and how it affects completion dates. In this case, you had the consultant issue, updated schedules unilaterally without input from the other trades. And they simply deemed it as the official new schedule, right, which favor their completion timeline. They didn't want to pay for the delay.

Marcus Hamm: 1:06:54

So it's good for us to say no, we don't agree

Tim Sportschuetz: 1:06:57

with absolutely put it in writing and say, We do not agree with the schedule.

Marcus Hamm: 1:07:00

But if you don't, you still have a contract based on the old schedule, correct.

Tim Sportschuetz: 1:07:05

It's risky, because you can do you always, it's never a sure thing in law, if you go into litigation or the courts, you can never guarantee an outcome. So it's so easy just to the amount of millions of dollars wasted, on just sitting down and writing a five second email that says in the subject line meeting today on site was so and so from so and so company, we discussed X, Y and Zed fired off to everybody make a record of it, hat, if those emails existed, you wouldn't believe how many disputes could be avoided. But But contractors generally tend to not do that. Because they're busy, they're outside, it's cold, they're working out of their truck, they don't have access to their phone at that time, or their laptops down. You know, they're dealing with a million other things on site. So it's it's really difficult, but you can you can do certain things in, in this construction world where you can really protect yourself.

Christian Hamm: 1:08:11

I mean, I just think that that is so helpful, right? Just to even have those simple steps outline. A few moments of intention can save you a lot of headache. You talked a bit about and this is where both of you guys can chime in on this. We talked about clauses in contracts talked about guarantees, we talked about contractors getting paid. One of the things that I I really want to and I know James, you and I have talked about it. We've heard other customers at SiteMax talk about it is prompt payment legislation. In Ontario. It's legislated. In Alberta, it was recently brought into law, BC is more of a floated idea with a little bit of pushback from what I know. Maybe just again, just a general discussion, really quick around what is prompt payment, and then just kind of the nuances between how that really impacts you as a subcontractor, and how it can be how it could be put into practice and of benefits.

Marcus Hamm: 1:09:10

The last I heard last I heard. BC was the only province that didn't have it.

Tim Sportschuetz: 1:09:18

It's one of the few that don't have it. So So should I give a quick run. I know your audience knows what pomp and feel for him. So I'll take Ontario, they have the construction act. It came into force, I think, three years ago now sounds about right. Yep. And the idea being they've legislated payment flows through a project and they require certain things like a proper invoice to be submitted to the owner of the project, and that invoice once received has to be paid within 28 days. And from receipt of that payment, the GC has to flow down funds within seven calendar days. And so it goes down the contractual pyramid. So the idea behind it is that if there's any dispute on site, or within a project, you have these intermediate, or interlocutory, mediation sessions where it's binding on the parties, but you pick a mediator, and you get a decision within 30 days as the idea unless you extend that timeline. So it's very, in theory, it's a very productive way and a productive use of assets because you don't have to pay very expensive arbitrators if you go the private arbitration route judges are paid for through your taxes. So if you go through litigation, that's a different story. But oftentimes arbitration happens. And then you're talking hundreds of 1000s of dollars in fees for for the private arbitrators and legal counsel. So the idea behind the prompt payment as both sides present their claim their claims, and they pick through odacc. It's the society that that or association that has all of the qualified mediators regulated, they they pick an odacc mediator, and then the mediator issues, his or her decision within 30 days is the idea. So that decision is is is final. For the duration of the project, there is an idea that you can appeal a decision given by mediator, but it's actually very difficult to do so based on the judge made law that's happened to date. So it's, it's something where the mediator has a lot of power. And it's worked in what I understand from speaking to counsel in Ontario, it's worked reasonably well, in certain instances. Now. There's, there's also a, there's two sides to this, because you you want to, I suppose creative have a fair and balanced view of it. So does it make sense to bring in prompt payment for the contractor who builds for single family homes a year and BC? I just don't know the answer to that. Because why I say that is for such a contractor who might have one or two people at head office, maybe no one at head office, who is going to deal with the claim prep, who has the money to hire a lawyer to deal with, you know, a unilateral mediation session during your project? Not many, so you'd also don't want to overcomplicate the the procedures on site for smaller shots, for sure. If you have a company that's massive, right, 100,000 employees, they can easily deal with these processes. But the smaller you get, I think you gotta be careful to strike a good balance between overcomplicating it and making it work for everyone. So I I'm very much supportive of of the government bringing it in, I know they have a task force since January 2022. They're working on it. The BCA and the varca are heavily pushing it. But I think we need to strike a really fair balance in all of this. So it works for for the industry. Would would it make sense for for for this to have? Like, a spectrum, like different scales based on the amount of let's say you have a you have? It's based on revenue basically. So for the smaller stuff place, you you say for single family homes being built, they don't have to go through this arduous process, where it's voluntary or involuntary. Yeah, exactly. So they can opt out a bit.

Marcus Hamm: 1:13:37

But in BC, we have the CRT, which is really easy and fast to get paid for small amounts of money. Right. The small amounts, yeah, civil disputes. Yeah. So every single time you have a $5,000 claim, they'll just set up a phone court date, and you'll get a judgment. That's the civil resolution tribunal. Right. That's I've had a couple awarded to me.

Tim Sportschuetz: 1:13:56

Yeah, the CRT is a is an interesting novel idea. But I think that wouldn't work in a in a construction on a construction project. Because the amounts involved are too great for that kind of jurisdiction. So but yeah, maybe that's something that the task force considers this to say, look, any any provincial infrastructure project must be governed by a prompt payment legislation. And if you have a project less than 2 million, it's voluntary. You can opt in or out. I don't know the thresholds I'm not up to date with with what the task force is looking at or considering I, I just, I don't want people to think this is some form of panacea where everything is going to be fine with this.

Marcus Hamm: 1:14:48

Pro tip. He told me this. You can write it into your contract.

Tim Sportschuetz: 1:14:54

Oh, you could and probably you couldn't because it's you can't contract out of it.

Marcus Hamm: 1:14:59

You can get a paid when paid clause within seven days put a check on sure you could but whether that's actually accepted or no they don't they do every single one of mine. And but then still pay within seven days of being paid. Yeah.

James Faulkner: 1:15:13

But it's all about recourse right. I mean, it's it's it's what's when you don't get paid on day eight What do you do? Yeah, file a lot. Yeah what right, what lever can you pull?

Tim Sportschuetz: 1:15:22

Right now you're in court.

Marcus Hamm: 1:15:24

that's that's when you need a lawyer up?

Christian Hamm: 1:15:27

Okay well then the average goes back to that question about you know when when is it that you need to lawyer up? And how much does the contractor needs to just be educated on their own? Right? Yeah, like what do you would like? I'd imagine there's certain files and we're not fully done maybe this prompt payment conversation quite yet but I'm sure there's certain files, we're thinking, oh, man, this person is this, this company could probably figure this out. And you might just, you know, give them a bit of advice and send them on their way, in a nice way. Where you're like, well, these people really need my help. Is Is there there must be some sort of a threshold.

Tim Sportschuetz: 1:16:00

There is Yeah, I mean, a lot of times, I get five, six calls a day, on on a regular day, and I'll send five of them away, because I just it, there's no point in me helping them a their quantum is too small. So they come to me and say, Look, I'm owed 5, 10, 15, 20 grand, I understand, I'm not belittling that kind of money, that's a lot of money to anyone. The problem is, legal fees add up very quickly, very, very quickly. So you have to be really, really careful about engaging a lawyer, for the wrong reasons, a lot of lawyers will will commence a small claims action for you when the the amount they want is 10 grand. And it's, it's so silly, because you're going to spend, you know, 10 grand on that on that lawyer and you can't recover your costs and small claims. So you have to be really careful who you hire most lawyers in the construction bar. Excellent. So they will give proper legal advice. But a lot of times people don't even know they're construction lawyers out there. Right. So you know, you you, and then there's, there's contractors that come to me and say, look like I haven't been paid, you know, 400 grand, and I'll say send me the contract. And you see that they have a net 30 day payment clause in it from delivery of an invoice. And, you know, a simple demand letter to the owner, or the GC resolves that because you you say, look, pay us pursuant to the contract, or you're in breach. And by the way, we'll also register a lien. And we'll lock up your entire project. So which route Do you want to go in this in this instance, and sometimes you can get a very quick result. And but you have to act proactively, you cannot call a construction lawyer with a four month old invoice and say, Hey, can you help me? Certainly, yeah, that's a breach of contract claim. And you can file that for up to two years. Under the limitation period, but you're hurting yourself because you could have registered a claim of lien and and how to write an in REM write against the project lands. So that's much more powerful.

Marcus Hamm: 1:18:14

So I have some rules of how to pick your lawyer.

Christian Hamm: 1:18:18

Well, I was gonna I was gonna say this is this is a good place to tidy up the conversation, we have a we have a rapid fire round of questions, but I'm gonna Well, yeah, for both of you guys. So we end every podcast but as a way to kind of as a capstone on the conversation. What would you what advice would you get from from both sides? What advice would you give to contractors? In terms of how they should go about one? Just approaching contracts? If there's a general thing? And also if needed? Yes. How to Pick a construction lawyer.

Marcus Hamm: 1:18:54

Okay. So Tim, Tim, kind of gave you a bit of a background on when to lawyer up? Yep, I would say you definitely need to know how to pick your battles. If it's not cost effective to hire a lawyer for$10,000 Small Claim don't yeah, you know, just file the small claim. You know, Tim can do the little bit of paperwork, you pay him and then you go to the and then handle your business, right. If you have a good argument, and you can speak English, you should be able to you should be okay. Right? Would you say that's correct? Yeah. Okay, number two, if you're on a big job, and you are royally getting screwed, can you walk away from all your outstanding progress drawers. So if you have the sum of these jobs, pay in 60 days, and you've build after your 30 days, so you're looking at about three months in progress drawers can be in the millions. If you have a leg to stand on, you can sue them and walk away from that money, but you're going to be waiting two, three years. Like I was explaining to you guys earlier, or Tim and Chris. I finally got my money from like, 2018. And that was 37 grand. Right? Was it worth it? Kind of, but I mean, inflation's done a toll on that used to be worth 55 grand. You know, and I think that the lawyer I used then played it wrong, played a dead wrong. So, you know, can you walk away from the money? Yes. But you got to have the right lawyer. And so that's the sort of the two rules that I would say, you know, is it cost effective? And can you walk away from the money?

James Faulkner: 1:20:34

Yeah, yeah. Winner, winner.

Marcus Hamm: 1:20:38

Shout out to Daniel Smith in Alberta. Big win big win in Alberta?

Christian Hamm: 1:20:46

Yes, indeed. They did. They did win last night. Okay, let's, Tim has anything you want to throw out there to contractors, things you just want to leave the audience with?

Tim Sportschuetz: 1:20:55

No, you one thing you said you know, what, what's one? One recommendation I can give to contracts. It's just read your contract, please. Do not sign anything that you haven't read, and certainly nothing that you don't understand. If you have a question, I'm, I'm always happy to feel the five minute quick call. asked me a question. I just, I see so many horror stories. I live that life. I saw the stress that it can create. So you know, be really careful. Just sit down with a with a beer or a cup of coffee and read that contract.

Christian Hamm: 1:21:36

That makes sense. Yeah, I mean,

Marcus Hamm: 1:21:39

or send it to him, or send it to them.

Christian Hamm: 1:21:41

All right. We always end every episode when we bring guests and share their stories with our rapid fire round of questions. So I'm going to ask three questions. And just answer first thing that kind of comes to mind. You haven't seen them? Or maybe they you did in the notes, but it's best when you haven't. I'll get

James Faulkner: 1:21:57

four of each or two and two.

Marcus Hamm: 1:21:59

No, hang on. We're doing we're doing

Christian Hamm: 1:22:00

we'll just do real quick. Okay, real quick for both of them.

Marcus Hamm: 1:22:03

Well, what are we after time?

Christian Hamm: 1:22:05

I don't know. hour, hour and a half. Yeah, it's pretty good. It's pretty good. Solid.

Marcus Hamm: 1:22:10

Do you guys cut it down to 45 minutes? Or do you keep we keep it? All right. Just a "beep", "beep" a few times and then an hour and a half. All right, for both of you guys. What is one thing that you do that someone else would think is insane. Text my lawyer at six in the morning.

Tim Sportschuetz: 1:22:33

Okay, I'll go get up at 430 every morning and reply then wait. No, I Yeah. I'm an early riser. To most of my friends is just absolutely insane.

Christian Hamm: 1:22:48

i Yeah, totally. I get that. And I do get I do get early morning messages and memes from this guy. I gotta you got one for me if like 430 today this morning I got very early like right after I woke Yes, yes. I early rising love it. If you guys weren't doing what you're doing today, totally non construction related. What would you be doing?

Tim Sportschuetz: 1:23:09

fighter pilot. I got my license so

James Faulkner: 1:23:11

fighter pilot, like Tom Cruise? Yeah. Wow, that's amazing. Like I used to go

Tim Sportschuetz: 1:23:17

to pilot school Embry Riddle Aeronautical in Daytona Beach. So I have my private pilot's license and instrument rating so that's the dream.

James Faulkner: 1:23:26

Do you fly now? No, unfortunately. Crazy. That's wild. Beat that one Marcus.

Marcus Hamm: 1:23:33

I can't beat that one. I'm not I'm not good at anything.

James Faulkner: 1:23:37

Are you talking I'd be flying MSX

Christian Hamm: 1:23:41

This guys just got a new Callaway paradigm drivers rips at 300 yards on the first tee at 630 in the morning

Marcus Hamm: 1:23:47

golf pro

Christian Hamm: 1:23:47

golf pro baby that's the answer I was looking for. I just had to get fitted

Marcus Hamm: 1:23:51

What's your guys fitting what's the

Christian Hamm: 1:23:52

shout out to Jeff Johnson at modern golf in Richmond

Marcus Hamm: 1:23:55

yeah oh honestly my my everybody goes to him best fit around the inner mechanics of my game have vastly improved. They would however the game overall is still pretty...

Christian Hamm: 1:24:07

nothing Nothing beats though. Nothing beats he goes he gets fitted First Tee I played with him we're playing that was last holiday Monday morning and Swaneset. He said

6: 1:24:16

30am Literally cooked at 300 Plus, right down the middle. Just kind of like "you guys still beers yet?" It was great. It was great.

Marcus Hamm: 1:24:30

Yeah, no, I that driver has made a big difference. It is I mean,

Christian Hamm: 1:24:34

it's amazing. It is fantastic. Okay, last question. Were called the site visit were a construction podcast. What is your favorite or most memorable story from the jobsite? And he has both had good jobsite that experience. Oh,

Marcus Hamm: 1:24:53

like, like just my best construction story I have.

Christian Hamm: 1:24:58

Yeah, best construction story, you were in Fort McMurray, Fort McMurray camps for long time.

James Faulkner: 1:25:02

could be comical, could be...

Marcus Hamm: 1:25:04

Oh man when I was up there three guys got cooked in a vessel.

Christian Hamm: 1:25:08

What?!

Marcus Hamm: 1:25:08

That was pretty crazy. What didn't say that again. Like in I think it was Syncrude, I was working up there with just doing fireproofing that's when I was just starting out. And some guys were working in a confined space and a vessel and someone shut it on them without, you know, the end of the day and the whole way cooked. Yeah.

James Faulkner: 1:25:26

Oh, my goodness.

Marcus Hamm: 1:25:27

Oh, yeah. Construction is dangerous. I mean...

Christian Hamm: 1:25:32

Construction is dangerous.

Marcus Hamm: 1:25:33

Construction is dangerous. I don't think people really actually give it the credit. It's do Yeah, no kidding. And I constantly harp on my guys to work safer. When I catch them trying to bend the rules and break the rules. I get mad. And then I look like a tyrant. But it's like, you guys got to play by the rules for so many reasons. It's your life. It's WorkSafe is gonna come and find us. It's it's a number of things. It's also you know, I could get sued and Tim couldn't help me with that one. Probably not.

Tim Sportschuetz: 1:26:04

All right, Tim, what was your mind is mine is not that cool. In my first couple of weeks, I think working for John he, we were running for 30 Ton, Volvo articulated trucks. So they're like this thing. Yeah. And he was short of an operator and he just said jump in there. I never drove one before. So that was that was pretty cool. Two days and back.

Marcus Hamm: 1:26:34

Yeah, Chris, what's your best experience from integrated?

Christian Hamm: 1:26:40

Why, oh you mean construction? Yeah, yeah. Or anything? Anything?

James Faulkner: 1:26:44

Marcus is the host now.

Christian Hamm: 1:26:45

Marcus, is the host. I've never had to answer this question before?

Marcus Hamm: 1:26:48

Because you guys should yeah, your own experience your own input?

Christian Hamm: 1:26:51

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think I shared it a couple times. Just in terms of experience and what I think changed the trajectory. of my career and construction is I was doing formwork I was this during university with Mike. Not with my dad with Dan, Dan Pitman. Shout out big guy. Miss Yeah, we'll see you soon, maybe. And we, we were building for doing former for townhouses, the Montana project and Clayton heights where I now live not in that development, but in that neighborhood. It was the first project and it was in the middle of summer. And you always get pouring rain days. And when you're doing formwork. In the muck, it's disgusting, right? Like you're up to your knees in mud sometimes and the gumboots, don't do it. do enough work for you. And I remember being so soaked, that I was so great through my boxers, like I was just soaked, like completely drenched. And I remember sitting there probably 11am hadn't even hit coffee or lunch yet. And I'm thinking to myself, I am never working in construction. Again. This is awful. And that was your last day. And I know, I'm still come on. And then I even thought in my head. I was like, you know, and this has nothing against any other careers. But I can be inside. I could be a server. I could be a bartender, I could be someplace warm right now I can be someplace dry. And then lunch came and the sun came out. And I completely dried it up. And that thought never came back in my mind. Again. I had this moment of weakness where I was like swearing off construction forever. And the sun came out.

Marcus Hamm: 1:28:30

I had the same experience doing hot yoga. What about you, James? What's your background? You You've been construction guy?

James Faulkner: 1:28:39

Well, I've always been the tech guy on a construction site. Okay, so that's a whole nother Wow. Yeah, well, mostly the thing that I remember, super early days, I walked onto a job site to explain about an iPad, about the application we'd made. And I saw a smaller iPad that had been run over. Like, in the dirt, I'm thinking I don't have a case on this thing. I'm thinking if I got really good to figure this out, because it was just a metaphor for how rough and tumble. It had to be. Yeah, you know, like and looking back at that I go that was like a sign of seeing this broken, useless piece of electronics that the jobsite just mulched right.

Marcus Hamm: 1:29:26

Fast forward, how many years?

James Faulkner: 1:29:28

that was 2011

Marcus Hamm: 1:29:32

so fast forward 12 years now iPads are a consumable item on jobs.

James Faulkner: 1:29:36

Yeah, yeah, they're exactly why it wasn't it was then

Marcus Hamm: 1:29:39

Because I basically, any of our big jobs the guys get an iPad, I just write them off. I'm not getting

James Faulkner: 1:29:47

100 bucks.

Christian Hamm: 1:29:47

Like you said he's uploading. He's uploading site max for real now. Oh, good. Karela Marcus Hamm, my brother. It's very good to have you on here as pleasure thanks, man. Tim Sportschuetz longtime coming.

Marcus Hamm: 1:29:59

The hero The day the fighter pilot,

Christian Hamm: 1:30:01

the fighter pilot,

James Faulkner: 1:30:02

you're gonna get to come in here like they did with the jumpsuit Yeah, with the helmet under the arm aviators.

Christian Hamm: 1:30:10

This is a super informative conversation and all the breakdown clips and content is going to be really helpful for our customers, our audience and those that have jumped in and it wasn't for the first time because Marcus is sharing. But we thank you guys, and we really appreciate it.

James Faulkner: 1:30:24

Thank you.

Tim Sportschuetz: 1:30:24

Thanks for having me.

James Faulkner: 1:30:27

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/thesitevisit where you'll get Industry Insights pro tips and everything you need to know about the site visit podcast and SiteMax the job site 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!