Recession Talks, Contractor Fragmentation & E-Verify in Construction - WSR#003 | EP90

In this Weekly Site Report, Christian (joined by James in New York) digs into current news, topics and trends related to Construction, Culture and the Built Environment.

In this episode, THREE hot-button topics are covered from the potential of a recession based on recent economic markers to the fragmentation of contractor requirements around construction tech and the implementation of E-Verify in certain US markets. 

PODCAST INFO:
the Site Visit Website: https://www.sitemaxsystems.com/podcast
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Transcript

Christian Hamm: 0:00

All right. Recession, recession. Are we is there? What's happening? You know, lots of conversation about this. We're in the weekly site Report Number three, comm NACHA. Got a few different things going on. This is always the one that we talked about. No, we don't talk about it. But it's come up more recently just because of rising interest rates, et cetera. Lots of talk about James, how you doing? How you doing? There's James. James is joining us from New York. I believe that is the Brooklyn Bridge in the background. And, James, it's great to have you joining from New York. James. How are you doing? Ya know, doing doing well? Doing well? Yeah, New York, I believe. Yes. Brooklyn Bridge. Not Manhattan Bridge was a little confused about that prior, but I think we got that straightened out. All right. Well, lots of cameras today. If you haven't check it out on YouTube. We've done the last couple episodes, full episodes. Alright, James. James. Are you doing? Yeah, man still doing well, still doing? Well. It's good to see you though. On the east coast on the other side of North America. Doing well, James is he's over there, actually. With DMZ Toronto Metropolitan University, we're a part of it an accelerator program. This is through site Max. The our company and this is what he's doing over there. He was in Tokyo not too long ago now is in New York, doing the roadshow. Anyway, it's good to have James, joining us from New York. And good to be digging into things just a little bit further here with our third installment of the weekly site report. Again on YouTube, check us out the last few episodes, they've been up there, getting a sense of how it all goes down, how clips, reels, everything how everyone interacts. Get over there, subscribe to the channel. Please like those clips. Like those videos. There's a lot more coming out. This is going to be a fun one. Dave QD, enter Music.

James Faulkner: 2:10

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

Jesse Unke: 2:21

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 and

Justin Bontkes: 2:28

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

Sebastian Jacob: 2:33

We've got to a place where we've found the secret serum, we've found the secret potion, we can get the workers in we know where to get them

Cam Roy: 2:39

One time I was on the jobsite for quite a while and actually we added some extra concrete and I ordered like a broom finished patio, out front on the site trailer

John Reid: 2:47

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 about the Faber Connect platform on your guys's podcast

Zack Staples: 2:58

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

James Faulkner: 3:06

Let's get down to it.

Christian Hamm: 3:12

All right. Well, James is in New York. I'm not going to say that anymore. He's actually not joining today. It's just me. It's gonna be me today. But we've got some hard hitting stuff to talk about today. Again, weekly site Report Number three, we're going to talk about is there a recession coming? Just chatter a lot about that lots of things to go through, breaking down some articles from construction dive as well as site news site news, sent out their weekly site report, not there with the site report there, their weekly newsletter, which is been going on for quite a while. And we're gonna get Russell picks him back on here. He puts that beautiful newsletter out. It's fantastic, by the way. But yeah, that came out today, they did a whole section on actually labor. And we talked about that a lot. So kind of tying in labor with recession talks, etc. But also looking at some numbers, interest rate hikes in Canada, as well as some Housing, Construction, rather numbers in all sectors in the United States, and then jumping into a little bit of contact and talking about fragmentation of construction, tech offerings, and also just requirements from contractors and general contractors just being different. And we'll jump into that as well. And then talking a little bit about E. Verify. All right, this isn't a thing from the US Department of Health Department of Homeland Security, something that lines up verifying workers with the businesses that they're going to work for again, I think that these things Dave, you know, we've got producer Dave, it's just me today I'll be bouncing some things off. Dave a little bit here also, I'm already feeling it. I'm going to be drinking probably a lot of water. I've never done this. This is going to be So I've been looking forward to this, Dave, doing this kind of on myself, but also going through some some great articles, and hopefully getting some banter back and forth with Dave. But it sounds like and we were chatting about this earlier, before we got rolling here. We've been kind of hitting this three segment topic, sorry, three topic segments here in the weekly sight report. It's been a little bit of Industry Insights. To start off in the first one. We've talked a lot about labor. We've dealt with a few other generic generic things in the construction industry. And then a contact or construction tech segment, we've talked about investment from companies like Ellis Dawn into the construction industry in context startups with their own accelerator program. And then we've kind of done this, like, third segment, that's been controversial stuff. And now, Dave, Dave, chuckles at that one. You know, we're trying to hit these things as objectively as possible, obviously, you know, we're construction, podcast, culture and construction, hey, they blend together. Lots of construction men and women straight shooters like to talk about all these things. But again, trying to open up these things to both sides. We talked about what was the first one day last week or last week, the site report we did the opioid crisis. And the first one, the 15 Minute city? That's right, yeah. And so and actually kind of want to dig into that one, a bit more probably with people who know a little bit more what they're talking about. And again, construction guy, been in contact for six years kind of removed from physical construction for a while, but still know the game pretty well. But definitely getting in more pros to discuss these things. And actually, speaking of that, we talked a little bit about robotics couple weeks ago, that company that we discussed, actually, might be joining us chatting with them later on in this week. But that'll be fun to actually dig into that just a little bit more. All right. Well, before we get into that, the last couple of weekly Site Reports they've been doing pretty well getting a lot of good feedback on those again, go check those out on YouTube, just add site Max up on there. We're gonna be putting out all sorts of clips, reels, breakdowns of these episodes, little tidbits and nuggets to digest as well as the full length, which is been pretty well received to date. A little bit of a work. We're up here in Canada. We're in Vancouver, proud Canadian moment. This weekend, we had our National Golf open. This isn't a golf podcast. This is a construction Podcast. I'm a golfer James likes to golf. He's a golfer too. But pretty epic. First time in 69 years Canadian, the tailor to comb our national championship, the fifth official major, maybe? I don't know. Anyway, my question is other than celebrating that and the fact that it's now the US Open this week, which I'm pretty excited about one national open to another. Is golf. The sport for construction? I don't know Dave, I mean, you know a little bit about construction having joined us but is golf I feel like it it is more it? Oh yeah, that's no doubt that the last few years have definitely seen a boom in construction. Even I have so many friends that I'm like, never would have thought they'd get up there to swing a club. Construction, non construction. My wife My wife has taken up golf. Pretty crazy. Anyway, again, not a golf podcast, but let us know comment, again, get to the YouTube page. Okay. And comment there or on any of our social we're always posting these gonna actually start posting this fully on Twitter. I'm going on a bit of a rant here, but actually starting to put these videos out on Twitter as well. Maybe that's a great place for conversation. So hop on there again, it's just all at Site Max and get in there comment is construction. Sport, golf. Okay, one more golf in the Vancouver construction Association had their annual tournament. It's a huge thing double shotgun at Northview where they used to host the Air Canada championship. PGA event some years ago. I'm gonna reminisce get nostalgic. Anyway, that was taken home. That tournament was one taken home by a few guys. I may or may not have been a part of that group. Shout out to James and Joel from radius security, as well as John from the Vancouver gold tour and lead you all right and of Gulf wrap. We'll see who's next and that one though. All right, let's okay, this is episode 90. We're approaching episode 100. Let us know what we got to do for episode 100. I think that that is going to be a bit of a celebration. itself, we got to do something big, probably get in like alum, maybe site visit alum. Whenever we go to these events, and there's one this afternoon, meet the generals. Yeah, yeah, totally do do a roundtable. And I think that that would be a big hit, we bump into past guests. And they we invite them back for like update episodes, and they tend to go pretty well. But we also would love to do that with a roundtable to celebrate the 100th episode of the site visit podcast. All right, yeah. And as I said, I CBA that's the independent contractor Builders Association, Western Canada represented. Big Meet the generals meeting this afternoon. That will be fun. And hopefully, definitely see some site visit alum there as well. Looking to do a site visit event too. We'll get to that another episode. Okay, that's it. Let's get into this. Boom. Recession. What recession? Alright, so we're looking at looking at documentation, take a sip of water. Not sponsored by bubbly. Construction dive, these guys put out a lot of really great industry insights, and all sorts of things. Construction, Industry Insights, economics, now not an economist, but definitely, as a know, as a consumer. Someone, we're building a business that is affected by the economy, dealing with customers who are all affected by the economy. But looking at this here and construction. In the US, they're saying question mark, recession? Well, what happens to the good old days when I mean, not to get into it too much, but recession was simply what was it two negative quarters of GDP decline, and boom, you're in a recession. You know, call it what it is. But you know, what, Canada's a bit of a different story just kind of been hanging on slower growth, but not quite those multiple quarters of decline. In the US, I kind of felt that a bit in the fall. But now construction, going through here. Out of just crazy backlog of projects, crazy backlog of spending in all construction sectors, with the exception of residential. Which is interesting. I mean, looking at this consumer spending down, probably US and Canada, both consumer debt, at its highest, I think over a trillion and us not sure what the number is in Canada, but of the things I was reading earlier of the g7 nations, Canada is the highest for consumer debt. You know, a few, like, maybe going a bit of a tangent here on the consumer side of things. But I feel like when it comes to spending, you know, just like leadership things trickle down, right? When you've got governments that spend in poor to, you know, push loads of money out there, into their economies, to boost things up continuously do do so just to prop it up. You know, spending on an undisciplined way kind of trickles down, consumers, you know, we feel sometimes, you know, we deserve these things, we can buy these things, let's keep going. And in a way kind of Prop things up, you know, people in the last couple years with housing prices, just shooting through the roof. You know, people just buying more, they stretch themselves to super thin, just throwing out everything they can get what they feel that they deserve. Hey, you know what, everyone's working hard. Once people are working hard. These things are nice. Owning a home is great. But hey, at some point, these things, they start to slow down and going through this article here a little bit, talking about potential slower growth, but all these non residential, industrial, I mean, commercial, we know obviously, is going to be hurt quite significantly. They can see rates down for offices, etc. And all these renewables of loans and everything coming up in the next 18 months for commercial. Not looking so great. But yeah, here's a great chart. And this is what everybody can kind of look at here. You can see the red figures and what is actually there's month over month, and then there's 12 month change, but total construction costs. So sorry, spending in construction, 12 months up 7%. But in residential down almost 10% in the 12 month, year over year. slight uptick from previous month, however, but you know, this is something that we're going through here. There's always this just constant uncertainty and it feels like it's just been going on year over year, just slowly. You know, are we going to hit this slowdown? Are we going to hit this downturn? Is this really just gonna come to a grinding halt? Are we just slowing? And just trying to? It's weird? I don't know. You know, we're approaching interest rates that have been rising in both the US and in Canada that are now, you know, of 2008 levels. In Canada, we just opted quarter point, quarter point this past week, four and a half 4.75. And we'll get into more of the Canadian situation, but just looking at this in the US is decline looming? I don't know. We'll see. But it's been strong. non residential spending again, has just been going up, but we'll see the screw up a little bit there. Dave? So yeah, we'll see what's gonna go on, you know, 2023. There's lots of good backlog seems to be a solid year still for non residential construction and 2023, but far less certain in 2024 as this decline depicts. And largely due to consumer spending and a weakness, its mounting and tightening credit conditions, as we've been talking about. Yeah, Canada's situation. It's strange. I mean, we've gone What was the last one, the last one was January, I believe. January was the last interest rate hike or earlier this year, rather. And we thought maybe maybe we were done. The jobs report comes out. Now. This is the one that we just saw here. In, we can kind of get off this construction dive one a little bit. Dave, there's one. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so this came out. This is more candidate situation. And this is kind of where searcher recession talks always kind of in the it's always out there. It's always kind of the buzz in the background. But the labor market? That's always the buzz thing. How's it doing? Other lots more jobs? What sectors are getting jobs? what's slowing down? And of course, construction. Always wondering about that labor shortage, skilled labor shortage? It's been ongoing, got all this backlog of work? Do we have enough workers, you know, always struggling to get those great people to get to these projects? To complete them to do them? Well. And? Well, we see here, interest rates go up, but maybe prematurely. It's kind of what you're saying here. Ultimately, down 17,000 jobs from the job report. This is the this is coming out from these are Statscan numbers. So Canadian numbers down 17,000, aggregate 77,000 between the ages of 15 and 24. Now, overall, I think 25 the next segment, they're they're up at down net negative numbers 17,000 In the month of May. And you know, usually what's that saying? Is that saying? You know, retail business, slowing down service slowing down? Are people spending less? Are they going out lesser people? We've talked about it before austerity measures are people reining it in, perhaps? Well, clearly, the jobs market is speaking when there aren't as many and significantly less available, especially to students university age, those that are graduating, even high school entering the job market, just far less jobs, you know, and and also, you know, just the inflation percentage that just seems to, as the report calls it stubborn. Well, it just seems to keep trending slightly up. I think always trying to keep it within that 2% range, and they're saying here for and change. But keeping that number up, matching it with labor rates, and and hourly rates, average hourly rates, and just kind of keeping those in check. But that's climbing like crazy. You know, I'm seeing kids, these kids are me, my son included, I think I talked about this before coming out of you know, he's in high school, but even his buddies, you know, they're going to work jobs where they're making 20 something bucks in our high school students, you know, and it happens to be in service, even though there are, you know, decline in numbers here. In the month of May. These guys are getting out there and they're finding work at least piecing together hours, but man, those wages just trying to keep up with everything else that's going on is it's just crazy. But that's just staggering. It really is that there's that many. So these are students, okay, again, graduating students from high school students in university you're always going to work you're doing some Then, right? I mean, most do in the US I'd imagine go to work got lots of potentially big student debts to pay. But and I'll bring this back to construction. This isn't just general labor, discussion or general unemployment numbers, rather. But I look at these these kids and I'm like, Okay, is there is there not work available? Or do you not want to be working? Now, again, my son, maybe it's because it trickles down a little bit of work ethic or getting out there and hustling. He went out there, he found a job, he was pretty motivated. His friends are similarly which is great to see. But we talked about, I think, last time as well. All right, so there's this gap. Okay, there's this decline. Now the numbers are showing us it's affecting all industry. But construction, okay, the same spending still hot in the US. Up here. We know, we got lots of customers with sight Max up here. They're busy, they got loads of work. backlog is healthy for now. And they need people. Okay, so bringing this back around to construction, labor market down, unemployment numbers, slightly up, construction. There's that whole university aged students, I and I will tie this back maybe again, not just biased because I'm in construction or because I went through this process myself and university, worked my way through university doing formwork and framing, getting real hands on on the tools experience. But it was, it was more than just me I was on ticketed and never went through any trade school. A lot of it was figuring out what to do. But man construction really introduces you being on site. This is for anybody, there's, there's not just dirty jobs like formwork. There's lots of different ways to be involved in construction trades, skilled trades, in so many ways, in so many different experiences and even interests that can be experienced here through construction. But for myself, going through that process was was a lot of life learning done and construction on the job site. There's a lot of people that you see, that are, you know, they're experiencing the real effects of a tightening economy. know things like Okay, getting back to the interest rate thing, rent, rent is going to have to watch Yeah, you're shaking your head Dave. Like, it's crazy. You know, maybe does housing slowdown again, not get to get back into that conversation too much? Does it? You know, do people just aren't they gonna get rain in their spending, but rent. And lots of people are subject to that. And that's, it's hard. I've got a buddy, I've got a few friends actually trades workers. Great, great guys. They are, it's tough. Got to find more hours got to work more hours. I mean, there's only so much you can keep raising someone's hourly rate. Right? They actually got to go and work and you gotta go make more to be able to deal with and this is just even six months ago with the rising interest rates and rising rent rates or your mortgage if you're on a variable. It's tough. Right? Especially those now even renewing on a fixed it's a lot higher than we're used to again. The rates aren't. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean. Yeah, well, that's right. I mean, like I say, you know, with kids entering, you know, they're getting paid crazy amounts of money, making, you know, 20 some odd dollars an hour. I remember being in high school. My first job was at a driving range at a golf course. I was doing decent, but they also had this program where you had to make $6 an hour for your first 500 hours. I tell my son that he just you like he just, he's like you're a sucker. I'm like, No, do that was life like that's, that's just, that's what we had to do. And we had to go through and I was making more than that as a cashier at save on much more and then at the driving range as well. But then when I got back to working at a gas station, or my employer was like, oh, no, I'm definitely putting you threw that 500 hours at six bucks. Anyway, I'll never forget that man grinding it out. But I didn't have any I didn't think anything otherwise. It's just the way it was. And that's like, Hey, I'm cutting my teeth. And again, maybe that's again these job numbers, or they're not there. Or people not want them. But it's the understanding that all this stuff and earlier just cutting the teeth. It's learning it's gaining valuable life experience, work experience. Again, if you're, if you're able bodied, if you're if you're able to get out there and do these things. Now again, construction at that's a great place to be so yeah, that was my that was my experience. Five years on the tools through university, doing a business undergrad but again, working with my hands I mean, you don't necessarily need to be with a lot with construction a lot with the trades as you just got to get over that. The whole, maybe it's just the mindset is like, Oh, I gotta be outside and I gotta be, I gotta be on site somewhere I gotta I gotta show up early, they got to be a morning person. Really a lot of stuff right now is just, you know, are you showing up? Are you a responsible young adult? Are you do you have some work ethic that is, you know, resembling of a job well done, or that could get a job well done. And so I look at this and I go, man, job numbers, openings, there's lots of them younger people not filling them. Construction needs people. I know we talked about a lot but gotta get gotta get these these spots filled man. I think there's a lot of young men and women that could jump into trades, trades, trades trades. I was listening to a I can't remember the name of the podcast, but it's a Canadian real estate podcast. one guy's on the East Coast. One goes on the West Coast. They're a real estate podcast. And they talked about trades for quite a while this week. And just saying it's a place to be it's a place that people can go and they can make great livings make great wages. Great experience. Great for your life. Yep. I don't know what this one was. The it was just a part of that. Yeah, here again, jobs biting back. Yep, yep. Oh, good. I think that's the next one there. I don't know. Is there anything else on this? Dave? Anything that I think I'm pretty exhausted? I hope this is like, I'm just doing this. I'm ranting just going off on my own here. Yeah, working? Is it working? Let me know if it's working guys, this won't probably happen all that often. But alright. Let's jump to the next one here, contact construction tech. Obviously, little bit of you know, some thoughts about this, and personal thoughts about this with site Max. But having done this, again, I just kind of shared was on the tools and construction and then a project management for 10 years. But this is the past six years building contact business. Alongside alongside James, we started the whole thing. And I was just good, good insights and perspective. This one. This one made so much sense. And that. And I hope that those that are listening, because we have owners, we have consultants, we have general contractors, we have subcontractors, and those in the field as well as in contact, because we've been bringing lots of contact founders on in recent months. But this one made a lot of sense. And there's I think a lot to break down in this one here. Despite $50 billion of investment contact is being held back by a fragmented customer base. So I mean, investment aside, construction Tech has been something quite prominent in the last two decades, you know, you had your early early on ones, early 2000, drawing software, computer aided design, you know, then getting into BIM and, and all sorts of different fancy things, and then just more of your productivity, job site, project management, construction management tools, but then now, you know, fast forward to 2020, even before that, so many different construction offerings, construction tech offerings for all the different nuance little pieces of construction. Now, the landscape of construction, tech and funding. It's been something that's been funded with loads of Greenfield meaning tons of opportunity for Jewish like heavily well over a decade. Lots of good companies, the plan grids coming up and partnering up are being bought by Autodesk, that type of thing. But you know, having been found in the early 2010s, and then seeing a great amount of success through that decade. But then going through the what was a lot of money, a lot of dry powder that entered the market for all tech, but construction tech in the past three years, which obviously slowed down about 12 months ago, quite substantially. But the investments, all these things, so many different little companies popped up and I'm getting somewhere with this, but so many different construction tech companies popped up. And that's because there's so many different nuanced pieces of construction that require a piece of software. This article, you can just take a look through it as I'm talking, but you can read the reason these things come up. There's so many nuances between contractors, when they say it's fragmented because of a customer base. Well, first of all, construction was fragmented to begin with. There's loads of different people, different trades on every job site. Lots of paper, lots of manual communication, lots of things that just are broken down and disorganized. So let's get addressed by your project management tools, your end to end tools, your construction management tools, etc. But then you have And this is from our personal experience with site Max, you got loads of customers who do things differently. And to put them all into one box. And this is not too terribly different from, oh, say a corporate project management tool, like an Asana or Trello, or something like that. But there's so many nuances, it's so hard to just make a one size fits all product product. And it's funny, like our customer base. And I imagine this is the case, because we got lots of friends in contact as well, who say that say the same thing, they share some similar sentiments, you know, you can only build so much, and you want to, because ideally, you want a one size fits all for most of it, so that it's not loaded with customization. But every contractor has a nuanced way of doing something, or they have a certain preference, you know, around how they do purchase orders, or how they do their time cards. 10 cards is crazy. And that's why you see all these are single point solutions for timecards. I mean, these companies, they build great, great products, but they're single point solutions, right? And then people end up with like loads of different apps. And now, you'll see here that you're ending up with all these different companies that have been funded. You're getting loads of fragmentation in your construction tech offerings. Alright, we want to read through this a little bit. How does it relate to this conversation here? Okay, so investments in Construction Technology surged 85%, between 2020 and 2002. It's kind of I was saying, right, that whole COVID era boom of all that dry powder in there. So just tons. And obviously, there was just loads of Greenfield and in construction tech, hang on. And, I mean, there still is still lots of open, open parts of the market to just get in and steal so much of the industry that uses manual process, it's always astounding, great big companies as well doing, you know, loads of revenue every year. That's still, you know, use manual process, but they found something that works. But yeah, getting into this a little bit more. So the report found, okay, so did a report, and they found just trying to go through this year to see oh, yeah, the construction site in 2003. Still looks much like it has in 1923, right? Manual Brick Lane blueprints, you know, laborious things handled scaffolding, scaffolding, et cetera, which is it's true. And we talked about this with the robotics thing is like, there's only so much that is not redundant, on a job site that you could automate or, you know, have the same thing over and over again. But it's still so different and so nuanced. But it's the analysis that they've done here. This is again, a construction dive thing. Inside for construction firms struggling to crack contexts, code by putting blame squarely at the feet of the customers they're trying to sell to. Never going to blame the customers for this. But the fragmentation of construction projects, multiple stakeholders must converge, converge to raise a single new structure and infrastructure element out of the ground has been held, has held tech adoption back. I was just saying that right. There's, there's all these companies in construction on a jobsite together, you can have 30 together on a high risk project or more companies upon companies just trying to coordinate them all, everyone's got a different way of doing things. Everyone uses a different piece of construction tech, right? Now, the GC or the prime or whatever, might have that big all encompassing one that is the project hub, you know, but it still requires everyone to then okay, get out of what they're used to get into something they're not, or maybe they're kind of familiar with, interact in that environment, then go back in their own environment, then actually go and do work in and they come back, and they have to navigate that it's just, it's construction was fragmented. Thing construction, tech offerings were fragmented, then their adoption of construction, tech, further fragments, things. It's really interesting. I mean, maybe it's interesting, as a construction tech guy, you know, and guys, like James and I, that this would resonate a little bit more. But I would think, you know, our customers and our audience, and those listening, that are impure construction that are out there building, this would resonate, that they would understand this, that they would see it themselves, we hear it all the time, customers will be like, oh, you know, company XYZ is using Procore. And these guys are using Autodesk. And these guys are using a site Max AND, and OR safety app or a time app or whatever. And they want us to report a certain way in their system, and it doesn't talk to the other one. And it was fragmented before this. And now with things that are supposed to streamline construction, it's further fragmented. That's why it's good. You know, if you can find a reasonable set of tools, a smaller set of tools that you can build consistency, you can be quite productive. You can have you know, something that's maybe a little all encompassing of a platform so you can consolidate multiple apps. streamline things a little bit more. Talk a little bit about that. And I got some thoughts. I got some thoughts around what's kind of like an ideal set of tools? And this isn't just like, oh my gosh, like, no, he's got the say max out on top of his head Max, but just in putting content in boxes, just thinking about, you know, as practically as one can. But yeah, is there anything else in this article here? Average construction company employs fewer than 10 people. The average project construction project involves more than 100 different suppliers and subcontractors. I keep throwing around the the number 30. Maybe I'm way off. I mean, like, I guess if you really factor in all the vendors, all the chains, everything that's involved in putting a project together, that's a lot. That's an awful lot. 100 different suppliers and contractors. So achieving scale requires selling to a large number of companies. Yeah. The result is the sales growth for toxic content companies is labor intensive. Yep. We know that. We found different ways this podcast as well as it does well. That's great for industry advocacy, and customer retention. We have lots of customers come on here. It's fun. But it's a labor intensive. And in a slow and risk averse market, like these are things we were we were hearing, like a decade ago, with contact. You know, a lot really still hasn't changed that much. But once tech is adopted, it's extremely sticky. Yep. No doubt. It's true. It really is. I mean, once you get in and you figure out. We talked about a lot in construction, you use a tool. I mean, it's probably similar Dave, you know, producer Dave, you've got your pieces of equipment, you probably have your brands your loyalty, right? Well, in construction, people use tools, use equipment, use certain gadgets, machinery, they become loyal, they build relationships. And when you have so many things to coordinate, again, 100 different contractors on the job. You need consistency, you need something that you can rely on, you can depend on you need your allies, all that kind of stuff, context, no different software selection, choice, everything like that. Find the good ones. Okay, so here's my, here's my thought I wrote some notes about this. The ideal tool combo, and Dave, tell me if I'm crazy, you know, having gone through this and done lots of sales myself in this space. The ideal combo, three tools when it comes to contact, okay? Now, this is just my hypothesis. Okay, three tools. And oftentimes, we'll come across people that are using, and I'm talking about three tools for your entire business, login, everything like end to end. But we have people that come in, and they've got six to 10 different app here, some sites use an app, some sites, don't use an app, a couple sites using multiple different apps. It's crazy. Just think what the disorganization there within your own business, that's one company. But three, a corporate project management tool, you see a lot of construction companies using like MS teams, okay. You've got your corporate stuff, you're in the office, your project management team, your operations team, your accounting, team, payroll, HR, etc, leadership, you're able to all and I'm not recommending that one, particularly but you need a corporate project management tool that comes with a communication tool. So like a slack. You know, Ms teams, I think has something like that as well. But to be able to keep all those things and projects, productivity, upcoming things like oversight, like high level project management tool, okay. corporate corporate pm tool, then you need your construction management tool. Okay. This is like, the magic happens on the job site. Yes, contracts, they get done in the office, they get negotiated? Yes, they get, you have dollar amounts you have. You have estimates, budgets, things that are agreed upon certain margins, etc. But they're made or made or broken on a job site. If you don't have the right tool that's guiding your team collecting information, analyzing that data properly, bringing it together. All the hard work you're doing in the office is a waste, or could be a waste. You can be throwing away razor thin margins or tighter margins, you're not having a reined in job site. And then so that's a that's a corporate project management tool, a construction management job site tool, which of course includes some pm tools as well. And then of course, you need your financial back end. You know, that's, I know, I'm leaving out like, Oh, you don't have your planning stuff or you don't have your estimating and you know what, good, maybe it ties into one of those right factors into one of those. But if you have those core pillars of corporate project management, your construction management, and then your financial management, those pieces all tie together, together nicely. Again, my thoughts you can tell me if I'm wrong, you can share whatever your thoughts are. I would love to have more conversation around that but I think that kind of tidies up that that's the contact part and anything else Dave my Is this making sense? Um, I think I think this is this one, this one's good. Because like I said, we were construction pod. So we always want to talk about, you know, cultural issues. And there's so much in culture, like, that's just so divisive. And I feel like, I won't get into it too much. But construction, I feel like we have so many conversations, just like very real conversations all the time, oh, this happened, or this person is doing this again, or whatever. And it comes on both sides, all sides, whatever side it's happening, but Okay, so here's this one here. In the US, they have something it's called E verify. Now, not a pro on this, have heard about it for sure. I listened to some political podcasts, Canadian American. So I hear these things come up, you know, you hear maybe the digital ID thing in Canada, you hear either a verify in the state's similar concepts, probably different one appear that digital ID thing banking related, whatever, but could be used in a similar way, I guess to E verify in that it's basically verifying, and I'll read this here, just because, again, this is more of a conversation just outlining what it is, and just kind of objectively looking at it, but it's used by the Department of Homeland Security. So the US Department of Homeland Security. So website allows businesses to determine the eligibility of their employees. Okay. This particular article here in construction dive is focusing on Florida. Floor Florida, Florida law law, you know, they're all over, they're always in the new Hot Topic, news, whatever, for good for bad for worse, or whatever. They're always in there. In sports, and sports, lots of good sports in Florida, these days. Florida Panthers, hope they pull it out. I don't know, I could go further. I could go for the seeing the piece when I could have a funny story about a ex Florida panther. Maybe I'll share another time. After they got swept in the I think was 90 something 90 Something playoffs anyway, I digress. And the Miami Heat, obviously just last to Denver. Sorry, all the heat fans. But in Florida, here we go. E verify. So where this relates to construction. And this also ties into of course, and this is a whole other breakout conversation on immigration, on those that are coming in to a country that maybe are not coming through proper channels, or aren't verified in a sense, which of course is you know, its controversy and things in itself. But these men and women, big for agriculture, big for construction, big for the trades, we've seen in Canada to quite a bit in terms of certain demographics being really great for certain certain trade designations. While in Florida, this article here is just not it's not really painting Florida in any sort of a good or bad light is just basically saying this is what the verify is, and this is the problem is that you have a lot of these individuals that are going to be displaced potentially from their families, because some are there and have been for a while and have their proper registered. Yeah, so the negatives here are families is just quoted right out of the article, families leaving Florida right now with some of their work, and some of their families members who are legal, some of them who are not. And they're deciding whether or not they're going to split their families up and live in different states, because some states have this and enforce it more. Particularly. And so it's causing problems in agriculture, construction, tourism, just happens to be where the most jobs are in Florida. Up in Canada, construction could really be number one. I mean, I think it's, it's gotten a little waste, some pockets are quite hot. And yeah, so what's the message here, with E verify being strictly enforced in a state like Florida? Well, here, it's saying stay away. Stay away to unauthorized workers. Okay, so just looking at this again. I mean, it's interesting, that, you know, certain pockets again, like I was saying, certain states are following this, and maybe there's no mandates, there's no federal mandates, there's nothing like that around it. But it's interesting. They're saying here, this is gonna have a lot of negative consequences. It's tough, you know, with construction gaps in labor, with jobs, with people coming into countries that you have certain skill sets. Meaning there's lots of different ways to get people working. And I think that people come in with certain skill sets, they should be able to and this doesn't just apply to construction, this could apply to medicine, and that's the conversation in Canada, right? Doctors coming from foreign countries, other countries that immigrate here, you know, and they don't have the same accreditations or sorry. They have you know, their doctor in one country but they don't match the criteria for being in Canada and I was listening to that again that real estate podcast their single, you know, doctor comes over from in Yeah, let's say, I think that's what he said. And full time Uber driver. And it's like, well, they're a doctor. Is there some sort of up? Test? Oh, well, they're he's a lawyer, your friend. He's a lawyer in construction. Oh, lawyer, Mexico, eight. Oh, no way. Okay. Well, bar transferring stuff. Yeah. And I get it like, I get it like, there's always going to be not just hoops to jump through but legitimate things that you need to boxes, you need to check things that you need to bring that are required that you need to fulfill in terms of education, terms of experience in terms of skill, I get it. But when it comes to construction, you have hard working men and women who want to be part of an industry. Again, this is no opinion one way or another. But there's got to be a way to figure out how you can fill certain jobs and get people going. And so but I understand, you know, this, this potentially does weed a lot of people out when you have particular things like this E verify. Mandated not mandated, enforced, maybe use a little more little regimented a little bit further, that it could cause complications, or change things around? No, I mean, is there anything really, it was just more just throwing this one out there. And it seems to be that way, with more of these and third topics that we do in the weakness report, we just kind of chuck them out there, food for thought. We'll get to more of this stuff. Breaking out. I'm sure that we'll have guests that come on that want to discuss certain things here. But I think that kind of tidy things up. I think that brings it all together. That's a weekly site report. That's our third one. Again, James, he'll be back. I hope that was good. I feel like I listen to a lot of podcasts that have guys. Or hosts that just rant. And they go on and on and on. And they're usually opinion pieces, but or there's some objective ones do that just kind of lay out details and cover them and just provide both sides of the story. It was fun. It was fun. Had a few sips of water mouth a little dry. But I think they went okay. Anyway, be sure to hop on YouTube. And, and like these clips, these reels that all come from the weekly site report. And be sure to subscribe. We're enjoying them, let us know just comment, just throw comments out there. Man, I sucked, he sucked. He was terrible. Or that was really fun. That was great. It was good to cover these things or just topics and things like that. But thank you for joining you for for joining me. And for those that will be at the meet the generals. We will see you soon and look forward to an upcoming week. We got a couple episodes recording next week. Gonna be a full schedule coming right out. Yeah, but thanks again. And yeah, we'll do this again sometime. Actually, you know what, when it comes to construction management software, and an all in one job site management platform, you gotta try SiteMax, whether you're consolidating multiple apps or streamlining construction workflows, or simply just eliminating manual process, you got to try the all in one job site management platform built for construction. There are presenting sponsor of the Site Visit podcast, and you can check them out at sitemax.cloud.

James Faulkner: 48:25

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 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.