The SiteVisit

Market Recap: Pricing Volatility, Permitting Timelines and Employee Retention with Bryan Reid, President of Kindred Construction | EP92

• Andrew Hansen, James Faulkner, Christian Hamm • Season 4 • Episode 92

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In this episode, James and Christian are joined by Bryan Reid, President of Kindred Construction. Together, they discuss challenges the current housing market poses, including pricing fluctuations and issues with permit processing. Bryan shares his insights on improving the industry, such as prioritizing employee retention, offering fair compensation, and leveraging the right technology, at the right times, for increased efficiency. All throughout, Bryan uncovers the exciting future ahead for Kindred Construction in new markets and offers a positive outlook for the construction industry as a whole.

Bryan Reid is the President of Kindred Construction, initially joining the team in 2011 as Vice President and later assuming the role of President in 2018. In this role, he uses his analytical and collaborative approach to set the company's strategic direction and help Kindred achieve positive and consistent growth. His responsibilities as president include building and maintaining relationships with consultants, trade partners, clients, and industry associations to ensure the company works closely with them to achieve mutual success and positively impact the communities in which Kindred operates. Bryan enjoys seeing the benefits that well-thought-out projects and construction activities can bring to the greater community. With his background in real estate acquisitions, law and commercial brokerage, Bryan can work with Kindred’s clients to ensure projects are delivered on target, approaching them by evaluating their key objectives and priorities.

Founded in 1980, Kindred Construction Ltd. is an award-winning, full-service construction services partner with expertise in construction management, general contracting, and design-build projects. They started the construction industry by focusing on the single-family home market. Over the years, they diversified their expertise by expanding into the institutional, commercial, mixed-use and multi-family sectors. This diversification has continued to enrich their technical knowledge and grow their portfolio across multiple sectors. Today, they deliver expertise through two distinct service offerings: Kindred Construction and Kindred Custom Homes.


EPISODE LINKS:
Bryan Reid LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryan-reid-1117a69/
Kindred Construction Website: https://www.kindredconstruction.com/
Kindred Customes Homes: https://kindredcustomhomes.com/
Kindred Construction LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kindred-construction-ltd/
Kindred Construction Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kindredconstruction/?hl=en

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

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James Faulkner:

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

Jesse Unke:

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:

You read all the books you read the e-myth, you read scaling up, you read Good to Great, you know, I could go on

Sebastian Jacob:

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

Cam Roy:

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 of the site trailer

John Reid:

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

Zack Staples:

Own it, Crush it, and Love it, we celebrate these values every single day.

James Faulkner:

Let's get down to it.

Christian Hamm:

Well, we always like bringing site visit alum back into the fold. This has been a couple years, I think great COVID pre COVID It was yes, it absolutely was. Yeah. I went back and check. This is episode 92 as it will air on episode 26. We had Brian reed, president of Kindra construction and he's here again joining us.

Bryan Reid:

Thank you guys for having me. ecstatic to be back. Did you also have the beard? It comes in and goes. Yeah, shell hair day. It is.

Christian Hamm:

Yeah. Where's your beard? If you've ever grown a beard,

James Faulkner:

Hunter? No, I probably I'd probably be divorced if I did. I taught us like all about the clean and clear. I don't know what

Bryan Reid:

my youth was my youth was spent in sport. And so I've developed these superstitions and facial hair is actually one of them. So if things are going great, I stick with what I've got. If things are going poorly, I tend to either grow on or shave it off depending on where it started.

James Faulkner:

Okay, so you're doing well, right. Things are going okay. Yeah, you can see the beard is getting long.

Bryan Reid:

Yes, it is. This is about as big as it's ever been. Yeah, so you get quite the runt. Yes. Yeah.

Christian Hamm:

So if we schedule again in like two weeks and you're clean shaven? Yeah, yeah, something's happened.

Bryan Reid:

Somebody monumental will have happened. Yeah.

James Faulkner:

Just positive either way, or just to change either way just to change. Okay, so if you get like a massive project, and yeah, we'll come over the bourbon. Yes, exactly. Okay. Yeah. I'll give you guys a shout. Okay, cool. No, that's

Christian Hamm:

awesome. No, that resonates with me. I've been doing I've been getting the flow going, but I think I'm gonna cut it all off. I think. I think I've had enough I think looks good. Oh, what really? Everyone's at Yeah. pulls back too much and just want to be really cautious of the whole hairline thing, you know? Yeah. So, anyway,

James Faulkner:

I got a question. Are you I went to your office years ago. Many like start OSI Max. Right. Like your dad. I met with Yes. Back like way back. Right. Go still in the same office on Broadway. There.

Bryan Reid:

We are not. No, we've purchased an office building over on Penner and

James Faulkner:

McLean. And East van Pender. And McLean. Yeah. Where's McLean?

Bryan Reid:

So it's like a nine iron removed off of Clark and Hastings. And yeah, bought a building there, renovated it sort of soup to nuts. And we've got our tool rental business that operates out there and satisfies the archaic guy to zoning requirements. And then we've got the rest of our guys, guys and gals up in there. Where we run operations out of Okay, wait,

James Faulkner:

so tool rental business, you guys always have that.

Bryan Reid:

We've had it for the last number of years. It's a it's an internal group that satisfies the needs across our sites. It's not anything that we do externally yet, I think that we might get there. But it is a good thing that we did have it because of the zoning requirements for us to satisfy the industrial need under the ITU zoning, we needed it. And so it was something

James Faulkner:

that ended up working out. Right. So you needed like some kind of a retail industrial kind of deal there. Yeah, so

Bryan Reid:

contractor doesn't fit the industrial billing under the zoning requirements, but a tool rental business does

Christian Hamm:

NetSuite so it was fun to work your way around things and get in there and make it happen.

James Faulkner:

So so just to be clear here, so you basically rent to your own projects then. So you have a number of companies and you rent to them correct? In and out. Okay, so so no other under the no one outside of the Kindred umbrella. No, it's It's enough tools. I guess it's not a going concern enough to have multiples of everything. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Yeah,

Bryan Reid:

we're we're doing as much as we can just to keep up with the needs on our own sites, just for now.

Christian Hamm:

That's awesome. All right. Well, for those that didn't catch episode 26 Why don't you give us a brief Coles notes of how you got to where you are right now currently, so yourself in construction. You've got a great background as well. But then also what does kindred do but start with yourself?

Bryan Reid:

Sure. So I've been at Kindred now for 12 years. Prior to my time at Kindred I spent my time growing up up as a product of this industry, my dad started kindred 40, just shy of 43 years ago now. So he and my mom sort of bootstrapped it from their attic at the time. And we've grown from there. Both my brother and I, who are now business partners at Kindred. We're, you know, encouraged not to get into the construction space for a variety of reasons. And so I went off and I did law and my brother went off and did finance. My experience in law was short lived, the goal was actually to be in professional sports, I would have loved to be in general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays, as you know, failed failed athletes. But that that didn't shake itself out. And so I ended up taking a job shortly after law school, actually, when I realized that practicing wasn't necessarily going to be long term for me, with a real estate developer, down in Dallas, a company called Jefferson properties Incorporated. And so I shot down there and worked in the acquisitions group. And over the course of a couple of years, we then entered global financial crisis. So a really good time to, you know, leave school and get out into it. And the company, a company at the time, we were just shy of about 1500 people, if I can recall correctly, and by the time that I left, we're around 35, or 40. And so a pretty precipitous decline. And so either a fabulous learning experience or a really terrible couple of years, it depends on how you look at it. And with the world being in a relatively soft spot, economically, there wasn't really anybody out in Dallas that was going like gangbusters. So the opportunities, there were few and far between, I was ready to move back to Vancouver and get my roots back sorted in the place that I've always known as home. And my girlfriend at the time wife now wasn't necessarily keen on doing that just yet. And so we ended up shooting over to Asia, we identified Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai as three cities that we would have liked to entertain as places to live for a little a little bit. And we both fell in love with Shanghai. I ended up meeting a fellow named Chris cough there through introduction from a Colliers guy here, Kelly, he'd and I took a role. They're working in their brokerage group, primarily in tenant representation in some modest experience in the commercial side, doing some investments for international client groups. And China wasn't going to be forever for me. But it was an amazing experience. It was cut a little shorter than I thought it would be. I was home for the Olympics, I had a conversation with my dad who was going through succession planning at the time, and his approach sort of fell flat with the staff. Everybody was very keen until it came time to actually have to buy the shares. And so people thought it was going to be gifted, my dad didn't. And when we were sitting there having lunch up in Whistler, I was like, Well, why don't I buy it? And that was sort of the start of about a year long conversation that saw me move home in February 2011. And I guess the rest is sort of history. When I joined Kindred at the time, it was there was no really definitive role. It was just with the understanding that there needed to be somebody who was going to help support the transition of Deke out of the business. Try to see what we wanted to do next. Kindra 2.0, if you will, and 12 years later, here we are. And it's been it's been a good ride for last 12 years.

Christian Hamm:

That is even we are unpacking it again, there's so many details in there. I know that I had completely forgotten about he was like you're 80 years old. Oh, there's so much experience out there. It's crazy.

Bryan Reid:

Industry and kids. I probably look at, yeah.

Christian Hamm:

Quick, OK. Two quick questions. In Dallas 1500. Down to 35. Yeah, you did you make it through some of those guts?

Bryan Reid:

Yeah, I think that they had a misconception on how extensive my legal background was. And so I was asked to stick around to help with some of the dismissals. And so it was an uncomfortable role. I was there to help acquire properties, at least initially. And that wasn't exactly what we did. I think we bought one site while I was there. And I was there for about two and a half years. The 1500 people were spread coast to coast. And so from Miami through to LA, we had people that were doing certain things that you were reading about, you know, at the tail end of that massive collapse. So cross collateralized debt, just going abscissas

James Faulkner:

Oh, 809 kind of thing. Yeah.

Bryan Reid:

And so we had some cowboys in certain areas of the country that were, you know, having riding high on some really good times. And then when the music stopped, they were left holding the bag. And in the southwest, we'd had a pretty stable approach over the last few years because we hadn't bought anything. And we hadn't had that massive ramp up that then had that responsive ramp down. And so our group sort of stayed intact and while the rest of them sort of fell to the wayside. As there was nothing else happening, banks came calling for keys. Or they would ask us to manage assets that they couldn't sell, because they didn't want to take the loss just yet. And so we stuck around there for a little bit. My boss was awesome about it. And he said, you know, do you really want to be a part of this for the next little bit like, we can keep you here for another year or so and see if things change? And I was like, Well, I don't know. And I don't know what else I'm going to do. And he's like, Well, why don't you know, you just take a couple bucks, I ended up playing a bunch of golf for a few months and hope that things would turn around. And they didn't. And then at that point, it was just time to move on.

Christian Hamm:

We'll be back when you gotta fire a bunch more people. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Oh, my goodness, that's quite the ride to be along for. Okay. And then there was it? Was it never in the cards ever to take over the family business?

Bryan Reid:

I don't, I don't know. I don't think so. Like there was never that conversation over dinner or anything, was not something that deck are my mum, Brittany actively encouraged, they wanted us to go and do the things that made us happy and live elsewhere. Both Matt and I had an interest in being international for a little bit. And so I think that, that made it pretty challenging to think that the eventuality would be us both working at a very localized company that we grew up with him. It was also a modest undertaking, like the business that my parents built was awesome. And it was this fantastic, tight knit family, wholesome group. But it wasn't necessarily a group that could support what three families wanted to do, perhaps in different areas being my folks, my brother and his family, and then my wife and ours. And so we just hadn't really put it all together. But then when the opportunity arose, and I was sitting there not necessarily in love with what I was doing, it was something to chase and see if there was something to it.

James Faulkner:

So the we talked about this on a couple other podcasts about, you know, labor shortage, trying to get people into construction and all that. And one of the sort of recurring themes is that you have to change the mindset of the parents of the kids to say go into trades. You know, you don't need to go to university to get$100,000 debt under your belt or$200,000, that or whatever it is. So did your parents was there this, we want you to have something that we weren't able to have? Is that like, what, what was or what was that?

Bryan Reid:

I don't think so I think that

James Faulkner:

was there was a self imposed stigma to the thing that they built?

Bryan Reid:

Well, I think that the stigma is that construction is tough. Yeah, right. I don't think that there was anything other than that, okay. Like, a forever memory of my dad is that when he came home from work, he sat in his chair, he had scotch, he opened up his newspaper, and he left him alone. Like, he needed that 30 minutes, whatever, to decompress. And he was the most engaged awesome dad ever. But you came to appreciate the level of stress that he was going through on a day to day basis, you know, a staff member that's not doing what they have promised that they would or a client that's not paying or municipality that's giving you the runaround, whatever the case may be. And he wore all of that, because it was a small company. And so every single problem became his. And I think because of that he had this lens that said, if you can do something different, that might be better and more enjoyable, and something that you really love and are invested in then chase it. Probably part of the reason that I ended up back is because I didn't find that I didn't find it in law. And while I did enjoy my time in the various other areas of real estate that I was a part of, there was nothing that really sang to me, it wasn't like I came home from day one, working in the brokerage side or in the development side, and I looked at Michelle and I was like, That's it, I've got it like this is my passion forever and ever. I felt that much more kinder than I ever did before. And so it's been nice to know that that feeling is now here and I'm invested in something and perhaps it would have been sooner had we had those conversations as a family about a legacy. And you know, what we wanted to do with the second generation of the business, but for Tuusula, it seems to have worked out.

James Faulkner:

Is there a gross revenue uptick since the boys took over daddy's business? Yeah, as a little bit? Yeah.

Bryan Reid:

When we were and there was sort of fits and starts with how a small business responds, you land a big project, your revenue changes on a year to year basis, but they were around 15 million a year or so. And we're comfortably over the nine figures now. And so that's where we're, we're sort of sitting in aiming. Awesome. Yeah. Well,

Christian Hamm:

that's awesome. was really cool. was Matthew, did he come around at the same time as well? It was the same lunch in Whistler.

Bryan Reid:

No, it was he he wasn't at that lunch. So Matt worked for JP Morgan in Hong Kong, and that was his, he loved Hong Kong and then I think we sort of saw what he happened with the Gilded Age of the financial industry there. And with that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow sort of dissipating at the tail end of the GFC he started to consider what life might be outside of banking. Him and Cena were thinking about starting a family, I think that they look to Vancouver as an option that made a lot of sense there. And the business was growing to the point that I'm not a back of the house guy, like, I don't have a financial background. And I put my hand up and I was like, this is something that I could use a lot of support with. And you know, would you be interested in? And yeah, sort of one thing came in came after the next and he showed up about six years after I did.

Christian Hamm:

Oh, okay, so it wasn't it wasn't even right away or anything. Wow. You know, that's, that's a kind of, it's an interesting family business story. And especially in construction, usually, these things are just it's it's not like it's a de facto, you're succeeding us. Yeah. But like, oftentimes, it's just like, one generation to generation three generation. It's just,

James Faulkner:

I think, a year ago.

Christian Hamm:

It's very cool. How you guys camera came back around?

Bryan Reid:

Yeah, I think that it's, it's great. And it's not? What's the not part? Yeah, I think that it would be nicer. In certain instances, if Matt and I had that construction pedigree. And so while we grew up with it, it's different. And you come with a different level of credibility when you sit in there, and you're like, This is all I've ever done. So I'll ever know, I see. And there's good things and bad things to that, I think that I take an approach to business that is different than someone that may have, you know, gone to BCIT, joined as a project coordinator, turned into a PM, under the ownership of the business and then eventually grown into an executive, my approach is gonna be very different than theirs. It's just how we grew up. But there's certainly parts of me that goes, you know, what, if I was able to tell everybody the building that I built when I was 26, and working for company XYZ, that it might mean a little bit more, but who knows.

James Faulkner:

But I would say that there's your approach as business guys, your your curiosity for possible mitigation of risk is probably a different perspective than others, too. So yeah, you know, you can always you can always rent the knowledge to so yes, I can't rent the MISC, the risk mitigation mindset. Yeah, I

Bryan Reid:

think that the wrong person sitting here, actually, Matt, mitigation guy more than me. I'm a glass half full, that tends to be flowing over. I see the positive and almost everything. I find that I have to. But yeah, like, it has made us very, very aware of having to hire and retain the absolute best and make sure that there's an exceptional level of comfort and confidence. Because our VPs and our directors and our PMS and our supers and everybody on down through the line are doing things that we need to trust them implicitly with him. And so that creates a kinship with ourselves and our staff. And I think that that shows and how Matt and I approach things, simply because we need that.

James Faulkner:

The kindred kindred spirit kindred spirit. Exactly. Yeah. Team built. Nice. Okay. Well,

Christian Hamm:

you probably have some long standing employees with that carry that construction experience that goes always back. What is the longest standing employee?

Bryan Reid:

Chico audio? Chico has been there since day one.

Christian Hamm:

Watch. Really? Yeah. So what was the first role? What's his role now?

Bryan Reid:

Well, I don't know. So when the door open, there was like six of them. And so I think they were all doing the same things. They probably had their pouches on and we're out on a house. Yeah. Chico was a PM. Or I guess he would have been a site manager, construction manager, whatever the term would have been when there wasn't a definition of roles between site and office for homebuilding. But his role has effectively not changed. He's still our our most trusted senior residential project manager.

Christian Hamm:

Well, there's all that construction knowledge and know how and experience that you need jumping in. You got your guy? Yeah. And many others, I'm sure.

James Faulkner:

Yeah. What's the biggest project you got going on right now?

Bryan Reid:

We are working towards completing a 350 condo project for the panache group in Port Moody. It's called safety electronic Avenue. So phase two should be occupied here early this

James Faulkner:

fall. Okay. And then the smallest you're doing high end homes. So

Bryan Reid:

yeah, our homes are not our smallest. They are some of our biggest actually. We seem to have developed a niche after going through rebranding and some of the most bespoke largest homes in the province. But we don't know what's the smallest one we're doing right now. A couple million dollar retrofit of heritage buildings. Okay. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. So we we crossed the gamut.

Christian Hamm:

Yeah. Really quick then for our audience and updating us as well the full scope of kindred and the projects you guys do? Sure.

Bryan Reid:

So we remain pretty broad spectrum. As I just said, we were doing a repositioning of a heritage building in New Westminster from a fairly decrepit space into this really nice, lively small apartment building. We're doing a our first automobile dealership for delivery, which is really exciting for us. It's awesome to be growing that relationship. We're working on three or a century old office building done in gas town doing a renovation for allied properties. We're doing some modular construction for him housing and Scotch First Nation. We're doing a bunch of, I guess I would term it boutique, mixed use and multifamily work. And so anywhere from 40 units to 358. Some high end townhome projects, some of the Sunshine Coast, some here locally. And then under our customers homes banner, we're doing several high end bespoke homes as well Whistler university endowment lands and then Spanish banks.

James Faulkner:

Have you bifurcated those two business units? Completely brand ones?

Bryan Reid:

Yeah, we have. So about. Actually, I had a conversation, I think about 11 years ago, when my dad introduced me to James Chang. And James was kind enough in saying that there was a marketing disconnect that people that are his clientele on the high end, single family side don't necessarily want to work with a builder that is broad based. Okay, I want to work with somebody who's a specialist. And so even though we were internally, we suffered a marketing disconnect externally. And so anybody that was a superintendent or pm on the single family inside, never really jumped into that commercial space. It's just an entirely different approach. And so we realized that we needed to do something about that. And so led by Sistina, Shinku, Tei, we went through a rebranding initiative about five years ago, four and a half years ago, we started and right prior to COVID, I think it would have been the tail end of 2019, we'd completed it. And it allowed us to recognize that there needed to be that very definitive space for the single family side. And so it's now kindred Custom Homes, the rest of our commercial work, so like anything outside of that we would turn commercial remains under the Kinder construction flags. It's

James Faulkner:

still the the 3d Kay, it is yeah, so it's a different color or something. Yeah, it's black. Oh, nice. Yeah, black and

Bryan Reid:

white. And so it'll say kindred Custom Homes, I should have brought some logos here and showing you guys but yeah, it's, it helps create that definition that we need. And it allows the people that are working within our office and that space to know that they're valued and appreciated, and that they're focused on just like anybody on a commercial side. And I think that at times, there's this get lost in the wash just because the commercial vehicle is bigger. And we'd like to appeal to some of these newer, really fresh, modern architects as well. And they needed to see that that we had changed. We were modernizing and getting ourselves towards the groups that they wanted to work with.

James Faulkner:

That's nice. Yeah. Pull that mic for a little bit closer. Sorry. You can just pull the arm in there. The so is there in in the office. Is there a different tribal difference between the between the blacks and the reds? No, I don't think

Bryan Reid:

so. I don't I don't think so. We've got we're pretty checkered. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we're, we're a pretty tight knit group. There. Yeah, the space is all open in our new office. There's no real definition to it. So it's a it's a pretty tight knit, tight knit

James Faulkner:

group. No, no ping pong. Team. No, we're

Bryan Reid:

getting a ping pong table on a pool table coming soon.

James Faulkner:

So with one over there for you. Okay. Yeah, there you go.

Christian Hamm:

Pretty sweet. Well, one of the cool things that we can do, or we get to do when we bring people back, is we can do a quicker recap of who everybody is, and get into some nitty gritty issues and things that are really facing us in construction. But maybe really quick, before we get into that you're also venturing into some new territories. Yeah, a little bit.

Bryan Reid:

So we are somewhat location agnostic, and always have been based on following client relationships. And so we've had experienced in the past, we've gone down to the United States, or through almost anywhere in the province of BC out until Alberta and Ontario, but they'd been one offs and not sort of planting roots to see if we can establish a presence in that market consistently. So we've changed that narrative a little bit recently. So Sunshine Coast is becoming an area of focus for us. And so we've got a large project underway there with kind of elements and are working through pre construction on a second one with a group called PCRE. They call themselves the largest developer you've never heard of. And so it's a client that we're super excited to be working with. And then super exciting for us is we are planting our flag in the Alberta market. And so we were afforded an introduction to a gentleman that gave us the opportunity for a five project portfolio. And what that did is it created a bit of there was enough weight to the opportunity that we could support growth within the market. So you can hire a director, you can hire multiple site staff, you can get a project manager and estimator, get an address. Those are all things that we hadn't had the opportunity before we chased the Alberta thought a couple of times previously have been falling short. It was too transitory. We were, you know, me flying back and forth at pm flying back and forth. And that just proved unsuccessful. And so we've taken this opportunity, we've got a site coming up next year in spruce Grove, Alberta, where my lovely wife and all of her family are from and so that's something that's near and dear to me, which will be exciting. And obviously, we've got eyes and ears everywhere. So I can be a little bit more assured of its success. And then we've got four projects in in and around greater Calgary. So that first one is either starting September ish, and if not, then probably spring next year as well.

James Faulkner:

Wow, crazy. So in, let's say in the fall, how many projects you have gone at once, from the residential custom homes. And

Bryan Reid:

so we probably have? Well, on the home side, we have two or three going at any given time. It's a modest undertaking from a project volume perspective. And then on the commercial side, we fluctuate anywhere between eight and 12. I think coming up on this fall, we'll probably have 10 underway in the commercial side. But I should probably Schedule A follow up with you guys for October, because we've got four projects that should start between now and Halloween. But as we've all seen, this market is anything but reliable, whether it's finances, permits or otherwise. And so we'll see. But yeah, it should be a busy next few minutes.

James Faulkner:

Wow, crazy.

Christian Hamm:

Well, that that's that's impressive. And it does seem like you guys move fast, you get a lot done in a short period of time. So we try the updates will be always welcomed. That's a good segue. You just said permitting. How fast people go municipalities, everything, everything like that. You also talk about a little bit, taking on more projects, getting into new types of projects, new markets, efficiencies, investing into efficiencies. What do you what do you want to dig into here? What which one? Which one is a good place to jump to here? First?

Bryan Reid:

I don't know. Man, you tell me. I'm just I'm just the guest. Yeah, you got it. You guys. I'm happy to jump into any of those. I think that all of those are really pressing topics for construction right now.

Christian Hamm:

100%. Okay, well, let's, because it's fresh in our minds, permitting municipalities just slow moving, bureaucratic stuff, whatever it happens to be. Let's jump into that in terms of how that's slowing down projects, putting products out there, all that kind of stuff.

Bryan Reid:

Yeah, I think that anybody that is that I know, in this industry, the only thing that we ask for is reliability. It's not even necessary expediency, or for somebody to do something faster than we expect. It's just to meet a deadline that's provided, and we don't put our hand up and go, we need this in six months. We let them tell us how long it's going to take. And it's almost uniform for that from the municipalities down through to the trades, like we established schedules based on the information that were provided. And so municipalities are just coming up short when it comes to meeting the deadlines that they provide. There's too many voices in the room, and are actually perhaps there's too many voices in the building, and they never get into the same room. And so one of the things that would be nice, is if there was a point of continuity within any district, municipality, township, whatever the case may be, so that you had somebody that was accountable for the entire duration of your project, and not just to get through permitting, but also to see it through to occupancy, like how invested would they be if they could actually have a tangible benefit to the community in which they're serving to go, I saw this from A through Z. And they're not provided that. I think that secondary to that is that there's just too many rules and not enough areas for people to be constructive and trying to get to where we all want to get like we all know, like for us, we deal in housing, almost exclusively, if not primarily, and we all know that we need more of it. And yet, we seem to put obstacles in play, to make it exceptionally challenging to get there from municipality perspective. And so you've got every single party that will tell you that their goal is to deliver more housing, and then yet you submit something and planning just stops it. And so it's a bit of a mess. So reliability would be great. Transparency would be phenomenal. And accountability and ownership of a file, I think is what helps you get there.

James Faulkner:

So what can Sims like, saying it's going to be having some sort of AI for permitting? Yeah, no rabies? Yeah,

Bryan Reid:

yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he's

James Faulkner:

saying that he wants to implement this to speed things

Bryan Reid:

up and he's gonna hire a Director of AI. I think that it's so the thoughts are all good. I think that implementation takes a lot of time for something that is new. Like we we have problems that can be solved just by people being intelligent and approach and What we tend to do is, we just add more people to it, or we try to create this really weird, unique solution. It's like, well, so landscaping is holding up a permit, because they don't like what you've picked out of their schedule of trees. Like what a total joke. Yeah. Get them into the room with planning or with permitting and go, what trees? Do you want the let the developer will say, yes, we'll say yes,

James Faulkner:

but typically what's happening on all of this, this time between, you know, the, the date that you say they blow by all the time, then you'd like, you want that predictability? If they say it's going to be X amount of time for until you're gonna you get your approval, or whatever that is, that whole leg is the wait before they could look at it. And the look at part, sometimes they've bitten off more than they can chew, and they realize, you think you're gonna get an approval that day. And they go, Oh, we have some questions on. Yeah,

Bryan Reid:

I think that one, yeah. So it can be very prescriptive until it gets to be overly burdensome. And if the architect or whomever it was, that was responsible for submitting the entire package knew that there was 10 boxes that had to be ticked. And immediately upon submitting it, there was some form of technology that said, You've missed one box and spat it out immediately. It would be really nice to have that that's attainable. Like that's there that technology,

James Faulkner:

I say, I think that could be quite cool. Technologies listeners was looking for

Bryan Reid:

it. Because you're exactly right. What will happen is that you'll submit that, and nine months later, someone tell you, you missed the ninth box exam, what I'm saying and that's brutally frustrating. And then you say brutal.

Christian Hamm:

Is that one of them?

James Faulkner:

No. There was there was that to their brand and shout things you can't say brutally remember?

Christian Hamm:

Oh, yeah. Okay. Yes,

James Faulkner:

I'll send it to you. Okay. Yeah, total outside joke.

Bryan Reid:

So I think it would be, I think it would be nice if there was that prescriptive nature of submissions. And then so there was transparency within the submission, I was invited to a conversation with Burnaby. And so ICBA facilitated this dialogue with Mayor and some of people within planning, and that's what we spoke about, really, let us be able to log on and see the submission and see that if we've missed something, we know what we've missed. So we don't have to wait nine months, and then it's our fault. And I'd be more than happy to be held accountable. If we didn't get our, you know, traffic plan in as part of the submission. And that was on us. If there's something that I can turn around and go, Well, you know, it's with Steve or Jennifer whomever, and let's make sure that they understand that rather than waiting nine months to be told, it's gonna save a lot of time and a lot of money.

James Faulkner:

Yeah, and also weeds out the people who suck at it and keep providing terrible plans.

Bryan Reid:

Very true. Very true.

Christian Hamm:

There's, there's a ton to unpack in this one. I did a lot of like end to end DP BP through various variants, all sorts of different things. And it really is you just have to be relentless about the details. And if you have a better submission package, and then someone else, you're gonna get months ahead of somebody else. But that's weird. And that's terrible. So, if that's the case,

Bryan Reid:

it is weird. And it's terrible that they require that level of fastidious detail for something that is early in the process. But you're right, I think that one of the unfortunate things is that that's become the case, as well as becoming like the squeaky wheel has become what's required. Yes, nobody wants to be that incessant, annoying person, but you get more attention, you. And so without the ability to hold people account to know where the issues arise, or who's at fault. You just keep yelling at the same person. Yep. And you go tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me tell me. And eventually, some was like, holy smokes, and they tell you, because they get so tired of it. But then at a certain point, they probably turn you off and you get no responses at all. It's, it's a difficult thing to do, and manage, but we have to do better.

Christian Hamm:

Yeah, okay. Well, what comes into play? It's all it makes a lot of sense, right? Because so many things are checklists, with submissions. So many things are based on, you know, bylaws, community design guidelines, urban design, whatever it happens to be just meeting certain requirements. Yes, you could feed that through a piece of software that then reads a digital set of drawings and goes through and says, Oh, you missed this, you missed that fix it. But personalities come into play within municipalities. Totally. Right. And you can get to certain things in the EU. And this is I mean, I don't really have anything to lose in the conversation but he's like a, like an urban planner or a landscape architect Yep. Or something like that. And you get sidelined you just totally it just Roblox the whole thing. But it could be anything in there. It just could be a personality. That just takes it totally off course. And we're talking months months.

James Faulkner:

Yeah, you're talking the someone flexing their muscle which is gets in the way of everything.

Bryan Reid:

Yeah, can become painfully frustrating for sure. I think that we're in a people business like construction is not product base. Did service oriented and everybody down the entire food chain needs to be rowing in the same direction, but we're just not. And I think that that's one of the things that I find frustrating is that people elect to flex their muscle when it's completely opposed to the goals that we all have. We all have. Somebody wants to nitpick on a detail that can be easily adjusted by an amendment, or done with the stroke of a key. And yet they elect to hold on to it and hold it over somebody and cost months towards getting towards rental housing. We've all got like myself, and all the other contractors that we compete against all have stories of rental buildings that we should have started months ago. And there's a tangible effect to what these people are doing. And I don't think that they're held to account. So one of the conversations I've had with my team about a portfolio of work that we're currently on right now is actually doing that analysis to go if we had started three years ago, rather than now, what is the incremental cost? That is the result of that delay? Because I think that that's what could facilitate some pretty good dialogue with counsel and planning to go look, this building that cost of $70 million today, had we navigated this better collectively, and we made mistakes, and the architect made mistakes, but you guys did too. Then 70 million could have been 50 million of construction costs. And the financing costs could have been halved, or whatever the case may be, and you had been solving a problem three years sooner. Any one of these things should be a part of a conversation. I don't think that we have enough of that sort of that lessons learned like every company does it internally, like how often do we go back and show people at planning or whatever, like unnecessary rezoning submissions, rather than going straight to DEP? What that impact actually is. And so I think that that's some lessons that we could probably help teach municipalities. Well,

Christian Hamm:

speed solves a lot of problems in terms of we're dealing with, we talked about earlier, is a huge influx of people in our country for one crossed over 40 million this past week, or month, or whatever it was. There's a huge requirement for more units, you know, faster rental properties, faster things out there, obviously means, you know, the quicker those can get tax dollars, all sorts of different things. But efficiencies mean, in some scenarios for your business is probably Money in Your Pocket. When you're efficient, of course, and efficiencies, maybe through a municipal process. It might mean less people. Yeah. Which is not a desired thing, necessarily for living just fell.

Bryan Reid:

No, no, I Yeah, quite often, the solution that we see with municipalities is more people. Yeah. I'm yet to see that be something that makes it faster? Yeah. But I don't know. That's a tough conversation to have. You're right. Yeah, I'll leave that to the heavyweights, the developers that are having the direct impact, you know, I'm just here to help.

Christian Hamm:

No, no, I hear you. And that's what it really can get down to is a conversation that I'm sure these things are happening, right, of course, but when a new mayor like Ken sim says, he's a tech guy, he's an entrepreneur, he's bringing in tech stuff, he knows the repercussions of that. Right full Well, well,

James Faulkner:

I mean, every every five new people you hire and you know, the manager, and the manager slowing everything down, right? Because yeah, so I mean, it's just it's like, it doesn't always doesn't always have a net effect of what you're looking for.

Bryan Reid:

No, I think that we've seen that in the tech tech space over the last, you know, nine months. You know, these companies aren't crumbling, and they're letting go of 15 to 75% of their staff. Yeah, it shows that there's probably some redundant roles there. And, yeah, I'm sure that there's the same things that can be said around a lot of the infrastructure and the employment base within a bunch of our government institutions.

James Faulkner:

Do you find that, you know, within the culture, your your company versus the, I guess, the sort of the the city planning departments? Is there? Is there this complete divide of they're this way were that way?

Bryan Reid:

I don't think so. I think that, as you guys were saying earlier, it is a personality driven thing. I think that there's some people that are phenomenal. You know, I think that there's people that want exactly the right thing to do it exactly the right way as quickly and as expeditiously as possible. Yeah. And they're motivated. But not all of them are aligned in that approach.

James Faulkner:

Right. Yeah.

Christian Hamm:

It's crazy becomes a game to play. Right. You know who your favorite or favorites, you know who the people are, that can move a piece of paper from the bottom of pile to the top of the pile, which again, months? Yep. Right. You know, hey, if I'm miss something, you're gonna send me an email back? And yes, I will. And they do totally right. So you find those little things. And it's basically connecting dots consistently. And making sure you join, okay, you need to hold that person's hand and then that one over there. And then things can get really done. But it's a baby. It's it involves a lot of time and attention.

James Faulkner:

It's really hasn't really changed over the years or anything about it. Really all it is, is the it's the Hey, don't worry, I know a guy. Yeah, it's kind of it kind of gets to that. It's always been like that. You can push someone through, push it through because you got an inside relationship with somebody. And it's not necessarily a nefarious situation that you became friendly with that person is just time time in the same room?

Bryan Reid:

Well, I think that it goes both ways, right? The builder, the developer has probably proven themselves to be a reliable partner of the people in planning or in counsel. Yeah. So if you ask for a favor, it's provided and then you execute what you say you're going to do, it becomes a lot easier for that person to assist you the next go. So groups that show that very real ability to continue to be successful, it makes it a lot easier if you're sitting behind a desk at City and someone calls and goes look like I need to push this through, they know that when they give you your permit, you're actually going to start, you're not going to flip your site, you're actually going to deliver the housing in the model in which he said you're going to do you're not going to try to change something around and make it so that the city looks bad. It goes both ways. And if they can rely on us as partners, then hopefully, they can speed things up.

James Faulkner:

Wow, I'd like to it sounds right for some kind of, like accreditation type of system that you're, you know, preferred builder for this.

Bryan Reid:

Now, the the accreditation system was the CPE program. I'm just

Christian Hamm:

gonna see that. Yeah, yeah. Cuz the whole concept of someone manages your file. Yeah, that you paid for the CPE. I remember that. Right? I don't remember what's called Yeah.

Bryan Reid:

So the city is effectively third party, the responsibility around drawing reviews and to make sure that things are supported, whether it's cold or whatever. And that is a good thought in practice, but you then need to give them that rope. So what it's done effectively is it's created a double review, because they give it to the CP and then the CP submits it, and they review it anyways. That's right. Yeah. It's like, well, what's, what happened? What's the point? So there's a cost associated with that, and then you don't even get the time savings? Yeah, I think that anybody would be willing to allow a third party to be responsible, like they're putting their letters up, it's their insurance on the line, like allow that to be the case, don't get in the way. And then all of a sudden, there's this, you know, muddy water that was at the city that approved it was at the CPE. What actually happened, if you're providing somebody that level of authority, then get them properly accredited, and when they are, trust them to do their job, and allow whomever the applicant is to support that cost and bake it into their project cost? Yeah. Because then it's just it's, again, it's what we spoke about, at the very beginning. It's reliability, whether it's timeframes or otherwise, like if that process can help that to happen.

Christian Hamm:

I think you noted here as well, the what was it like the community costs as well, associated costs, your development costs? Yeah. Well, I

Bryan Reid:

was, I was reading an article on the western investor just yesterday. Chard has a new development going on down on South West Marine. And they were saying that the sewer connection fee that didn't exist at the time that they went through permitting three years ago would have cost that project two and a half million bucks, I'm ballparking. Here as to something million. I was like, that's, that's a lot. And then on top of that, you've got your community, manatee charges in every other number of layers of fees. And these should exist, there needs to be an investment made to better the infrastructure and make the city a better place for affording you the ability to have such a massive business undertaking. But I think it speaks to, again, having a level of reliability around what those charges look like, and not making them so onerous that they cost you far too much. In the same article, there was a fellow at Brian ULC, that was suggesting that 30 something percent of the average rent of a one bedroom is attributable to costs associated that are government imposed throughout the development process. And so if you're renting a $2,500 a month, one bedroom, you're paying 860 bucks as a result of the cost that are allocated to fees. And, you know, that's not all going to come off. If those fees don't exist, the market will support the rents that they can charge, but it certainly has an impact. And I'm sure that we could do a little bit better.

James Faulkner:

That's really weird. In like, because there's obviously a there's a price per square foot ceiling, to some degree. I mean, we've seen it here getting crazy. Some of these new buildings are what 3000 4000 A foot? Yeah. I mean, this is getting bananas like this is New York prices?

Bryan Reid:

I know. So no New York incomes? Exactly. Well, I

James Faulkner:

mean, we don't need it here, because it's basically all the it's different kind of money, right. But but for the lower the lower scale there for, for properties to be, you know, medium sized stuff where like, I find it crazy that Metro town or like Wilmington, Burnaby, is more money than downtown. And if that's because of that, obviously, developers want to make money more than they should. But if a certain percentage of that is because the cities were slow as a 30%, that is really annoying, because that really should not be and so that means it's a self inflicted injury that the city is doing to itself to its people that it paid in this in the taxes pay those people. Yeah, it's doing it poorly.

Bryan Reid:

I agree. I think that it goes two ways. Like I am a supply side guy, I think that supply is going to be like our our best opportunity to cure the sickness that we have that is such an expensive real estate market on both the for purchase and for rent. But then from a fees perspective, yeah, you're exactly right, the amount of money that a developer is forced to cover on a municipalities behalf, they have to make sure their pro forma allows for that. Because then if if they don't, and if they're just doing it to be altruistic, then they're never going to get a bank to lend the money. So it's never going to work. The rents are a product of that.

James Faulkner:

That will be really cool. If there was a delay kickback percentage that went off your property taxes based on how poorly they got the city did it.

Bryan Reid:

So you pay your CAC or whatever. And if you don't get your permit by date x, then they give it back.

James Faulkner:

Something that holds some hold cities accountable for their delays. And if that's going into the ice,

Bryan Reid:

I'd love that sort of motivation. Get some people working past four o'clock.

James Faulkner:

Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, tow that line as tight as we could I think, yeah, no, thanks.

Christian Hamm:

No, it's good conversation unpacking a real issue that's impacting developers, builders. That everybody average Canadian. Yeah. Yeah. Right down to the consumer. Can we talk about costs, talk about efficiencies, maybe directly impacting kindred? Let's talk about the volatility of costs.

Bryan Reid:

Sure. So I think we're all still waiting for the skies to clear and that level of normalcy to come back that we all felt we had pre COVID We had hoped that it was gonna be 2022. And then rate cycles kicked in in May, and it threw everyone for a loop again, and it seems to just be relentless and unending. The analogy I use is you're surfing and you're just caught with as soon as you go out for breath of air, you just get smashed by another wave. Everything remains volatile, I think that one of the things that we could be more uniform about is how that's communicated to everybody within the market. We are a constant product of the narrative that we create. And so we tell everybody that things are okay, and that things are gonna get better. And that, you know, numbers are stabilizing, and everybody feels good about themselves, and they go about their business. And I don't think that I don't think that's the honest truth. And so we haven't seen any stability comeback. We saw it happen in certain scopes for certain amounts of time. But then something bizarre happens. And it's totally back to these sort of massive increases and volatile changes month to month. We did a Class B for a project 18 or 19 months ago, and we tendered it just close the tender two months ago, and the project was up 27%. And so we were probably like there was adjustments in Earth work and a couple things that had changed. That probably made like an apples to apples comparison about 15% But, you know, a year and a half ago, people were saying spinning the story that things were starting to get better and they haven't. Mechanical remains an exceptional challenge. Glazing still a bit of an issue. Concrete supply is crazy. We're going to be coming up on an aggregate shortage and it's going to get tougher. Wood remains volatile even though it's down right now. I don't think that people are betting on futures remaining at this level for the next three, four or five years when we're going to go through a ramp up and rental construction. Labor is very tight the cost associated with that remains expensive and it goes on and on and on electrical packages etc. And so we can find these very real examples that are positive, you know, cost of shipping containers from China's down. And so products should be less expensive, but it's not. You know, some of these larger projects, towers downtown aren't happening. So labor should be more available, but it's not. And as long as we're all aware of that, and, you know, saying the same things, I think that people can plan for that. And I guess planning for volatility is a bit of an oxymoron, but at least everybody's in the same boat. And so we counsel our clients to carry much higher contingencies, and we would have ever in the past, we carry very high contingencies when we're putting budgets in front of people for the first time, simply because I don't want to be providing somebody TERRIBLE NEWS A year from now. That's the result of us not making them aware. And so the market remains crazy. It's cost us a couple projects. We've had on our custom home site, we've had a couple clients that have peered at the volatility and the cost increases, and they're just unwilling to spend that sort of money. We've had a market driven condo project that no longer penciled and had that shattered, and we've had a couple rental projects sort of paused, entitlements carry on, things will continue to get designed and get to the point of starting. But it becomes really, really difficult for somebody to press go when construction costs is up, financing costs is up variable timing, unreliability around completion. And you're betting on the market continuing to trend the right way on both sales and a rental perspective. So lots of take on

James Faulkner:

prices never. And when we kind of know this, nothing ever goes back again. They just it just keeps getting more expensive, more end to end. It's like that the whole slippery slope of everything, the money just moves from one place to the other. And then the price is still stay highs, right? Who ends up getting it?

Bryan Reid:

Yeah, I have this conversation with a bunch of our clients like during the craziness that was 2021. And I guess right at the beginning of 2022, that you had a lot of very uncomfortable conversations with some of our clients, you know, here, Palmer's, a thief and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, well, he's still showing up in the same 2002. Silverado. Yeah. You know, like, he's not flying private jets. He's not going on expensive trips to Maui. And there's no Lamborghini in that garage. And so the costs, I think it's been difficult to determine where all this money went. And I empathize with developers that see that and they're like, I don't understand it. I don't either. Truthfully, I don't think that. I know, I can't tell you who's ended up with all the profits. It's wasn't us. And it wasn't all of our trade, but

James Faulkner:

it's always just a little bit off everyone. Yeah. Right. And it just, it amasses to a huge change. Yep.

Bryan Reid:

Yeah, the, we did a four storey wood frame and East van, nine years ago, like 208 foot. And that building now is like 400. You know, it's just, the numbers are just dramatically different now. And trying to rationalize that type of change over that short of a window is really tough to do. And so it ends up being this vitriol response, where you're just like, it can't be right, you know, check your numbers again, go and get a different quote, somebody's making too much money. And unfortunately, it's just a product of a really crazy market over a course of a very short timeframe.

Christian Hamm:

I was I was talking to a builder the other day, and he just threw on the comment of, you know, we're becoming known as the high cost builder. I'm like, dude, everybody is becoming an isolated thing here. No.

Bryan Reid:

Yeah, we're, we're a high cost town. Yeah, it's, it is sort of a product of where we're working. The projects that we're looking at in Calgary are at a minimum 30% reduction in what we would carry from a unit cost here. You'll have some builders who will tell you it's even more than that. Vancouver in the outlying areas are just expensive. It's nice to hear that it's not just me, that's being known as that, because we never want it to be known as the low cost builder. But you never want to be known as someone who's charging too much. Yeah, and I think that that's the balance we're trying to find.

Christian Hamm:

Yeah, and, and it's tricky because like you're saying it a little bit comes off of everything from everywhere. But we've gone through now three years of this trending upwards and not being able to set expectations correctly and it starts with Yeah, like what's going to happen from rate hikes and what to expect and you just kind of get used to it. You just kind of get a little bit numb to it.

Bryan Reid:

Oh, man, I hope not. I like I like I was saying earlier I really do hope that this guy clears it's 2020 fours now the year right? We're all gonna have good times in 2024. It's funny when we find ourselves in this city permits it because it is such an insular and very popular real estate construction market, like so many people of the people that we cross in our day to day work in our space, but people that are outside of it, they see our signs pop up, or whatever the case like, oh, man, you're doing great things must just be awesome. It's like, you know, like, show me your boat. And the response that I often have is like, you know, you, you haven't seen the work that's gone into it. But also, you just don't know what's actually happening on a day to day basis. I don't think that it's been as successful of a window as a lot of people that may not be in it have thought it's been a grind. And it's a challenge, whether it's the volatile markets, whether it's timeframes taking longer, whether it's a ramp up and labor costs. It's been really difficult for everybody from cleaning contractors, to mechanical contractors, drywallers painters, ourselves, and then of course, the developers. It's just been a tough few years. And once we get to a place of like, steady, reliable timeframes, cos that's where we can get back to meeting those expectations.

James Faulkner:

So this clear skies 2024. Yeah, what, just from a factor list? What are these things that would make loose guys, it from your perspective, what would make life easier in general,

Bryan Reid:

reliability of timeframes remains of paramount importance for us, we can't plan if we don't know what's going to happen, we, we used to be exceptionally adamant that we would only carry the work that we could satisfy based on the schedules that were provided by our clients. That may not be the best business model right now, simply because you can't rely on those dates starting. And so you'll have a group sitting stagnant for a while. So one thing would be reliability around timeframes, I think reliability around costs is exceptionally important. So some normalcy from, you know, you're never going to predict the fallout of a war in Ukraine having these massive impacts on the cost of steel, but here we are. And so having the ability to rely on the cost, at least back to a standard, call it three 4% inflation would be inflation, and cost would be nice. And then reliability around labor would remain really important for us as well. So like I've said a couple of times before, I think that retention is the new recruitment, you know, your ability to keep those that are with you that are proven valuable quantities, happy, engaged, motivated, is more important than going and finding the best and the brightest that's not currently within your walls, because it allows you to continue to sort of grow if, if not by project, by number of projects than by size of projects, lets you take those incremental steps. So those three things would be clear skies.

James Faulkner:

So with the with the labor market, specifically in the happiness and the cost of the labor, in general is going to be relative to interest rates, just well, because it's cost of living inflation, etc. So, I mean, what does 2024 look like for you, if you could? Do you think I don't? I don't really see an interest rate going lower?

Bryan Reid:

No. So as far as the cost of labor? Well, I think that people need to get paid appropriately. And so

James Faulkner:

then where does that money come from? Because it has to come from somebody, right. But

Bryan Reid:

if there's reliability around those costs, that makes sense, then a developer, whomever can plan for it. If a developer couldn't have planned for labor, jumping 15%, year over year, when 2021 happened, like that's crazy. But if they're able to go, this is what we're going to see on a year by year basis, then that should happen. I think that we've probably recaptured. We're probably a little bit behind. People weren't making enough money to afford to live in Vancouver, our space. In particular, I think that we've now caught up, there's perhaps some people that are a little over compensated, but now that we are where we are, if it can be stable, then I think that that's okay. Yeah.

Christian Hamm:

Yeah. So short of actually being the high cost builder and simply charging an awful lot more and still getting work as a result of it. Yeah, you obviously have to build some efficiencies into your business to combat all this stuff. And also, on the retention side, instead of saying, oh, there's a labor shortage shortage, we better find a way to attract people or, again, get really efficient with retention, and output of your people.

Bryan Reid:

Yeah. So training our staff has become exceptionally important. longevity of our staff remains exceptionally important simply so we learn who they are, and where their weaknesses are and how we can continue to allow them to get stronger in that space. And then I think that for us, an area that we'll continue to focus on as an investment in technology and making sure that we're sort of building the building before it gets built. And so everybody's doing BIM integration at this point. Now you have to, if you're not doing something that's going to allow you to model buildings, you're gonna get left and so on. That's super important for us. Time is money. And if we encounter something on site that could have been resolved by a model, like Good grief, I will lose my mind. And so that's something that we'll continue to invest in integrating it so that it's not third party reliability, but it's our own shot will continue to be something that we grow as well.

Christian Hamm:

What are you currently doing for you said training. But if you're not able to go and actually, you know, everyone's in the same, having a difficult time recruiting mode for retention, building up your staff? Do you do anything with? Do you do referrals internally? Like how do you? How do you retain your staff keep getting the best? Because what are you guys at right now?

Bryan Reid:

How many were about 115? Okay, people company wide. Yeah,

Christian Hamm:

so that's pretty sizable. So when you have a base like that, for one, presumably, they're a great staff, right? You're looking for a players, you're building something, every one of them lays all a boom. Okay, well, the A's that are there, they bring others with them. Right. So 150, it's a lot to draw from in terms of networking base.

Bryan Reid:

Sure. Yeah. So we've got two full time people in our people and culture, formerly HR department, led by Shelby Clara whew, and so she's fantastic, and does a phenomenal job of sort of canvassing the market to determine where candidates might be, but you're exactly right, it's referral based, it's the best employee that we could find externally is through a point of contact with one of our staff that's existing, they're able to say really good things about us. And then conversely, they're able to stand behind the person that they're introducing. So we do offer referrals. If a staff member brings somebody in, we absolutely compensate them for that. So a lot less expensive than a recruiter. And recruiters are, you know, they're people, brokers, they've got their business to work within, but they're not going to know who we are in and out. And as soon as they play someone, they're, they're emailing the rest of my people, I know that they are, it's just a product of their business. So we try really hard to make sure that we retain our staff, if we retain our people, then our company will grow, our projects will become bigger, Business Development becomes less expensive, because the same clients call us back. That's our path to success is retention. And then it's as we find ourselves in the areas where project may need a different area of expertise, we get into something a little bit taller, geographically different than that's where we look to go and supplement. And it's tough, the markets still really, really tight. You have to show them that you're a good group to work with that you pay not at but likely beyond market in order to entice somebody to leave. And that the opportunity is going to exist for them to grow. Nobody's leaving laterally, like that just doesn't exist, right? I can't go to a competitor and find a senior pm that wants to be senior pm with us. So the project needs to be phenomenal, or the opportunity to be more than where they're at.

Christian Hamm:

I mean, that makes a lot of sense. And this is we've gone through three years of people reevaluating where they are and looking for the greener grass and making jumps for small little things, but never laterally like you said,

Bryan Reid:

yeah. Well, I guess. So an article that Shelby forwarded a bunch of us internally last week. So the great resignation is now being termed the great regret. And so they interviewed however many 1000s of people and 78% suggested that they'd be open to return to their former employer. And so that grass is greener thing I think will happen here. As the market does start to stabilize, I don't think that we can continue in this sort of frenetic nature of just people hopping back and forth. You know, you want to see what else is out there. But it's not always better. And I think that you're going to see a lot of boomerang employees that end up back where they were before that the opportunity was something that was more comfortable. The environment was something that they've proven to be successful with them. And then outside of that, you're going to need to be a pretty attractive shop to allow somebody to want to jump and stick.

Christian Hamm:

Yeah, no kidding. All right. So we've covered a fair bit. Some of that, I guess, it sounds not doom and gloom, but like, very challenging, difficult. What are you what are you most excited about? Let's say, Well, again, within whatever ability we have to, to, you know, know what's coming down the pipe here. Yeah. What are you excited about?

Bryan Reid:

So I'll address the doom and gloom. I think that I think that it's okay to be successful, but real. And so explaining that there's things that can be done better, doesn't take away from the success that we've had as a city to deliver certain product, the success that we've had as a company to grow and be successful, but we could do things better. And so I think that that's my typical mindset as far as what I'm excited about right now. I'm really excited about that. continued growth of our team, our people are getting better every single quarter. It makes us my brother and I primarily a lot more comfortable and confident in that risk that we're undertaking. It allows us to take steps into bigger project types be more comfortable with geographic expansion. And I'm excited about the fact that this city's never going to stop. This will always be our home base. The lower mainland is the area where we know every street and we know the neighborhoods and municipalities and the voracious appetite for construction here, the unbelievable need for housing will make our commercial sector successful, as long as we don't fall flat. And so we just need to mind your P's and Q's and work with good people. And then on the Kinder custom home side, I'm really excited to see that brand flourish under its own flag, I think that we have an opportunity there, because of the wealth that is in this city to do something that's amazing. It's such a different opportunity. And that spacers that are commercial side, like commercial side, you can have a very altruistic and humbled approach to know that you're solving a lot of problems that our communities encounter on a day to day basis. On the single family side, you're building masterpieces. It truly is like architectural. Yeah, it's just all jewels. Yeah, yes. And it's, it's a lot of fun when you can do stuff there where money is no object. Yeah. And so I think I'm excited on that, to see that, that brand flourish in its own right. And then the continued growth of us as our city, which are our business should capitalism.

Christian Hamm:

That's really cool. I'll add to that and say, you know, you have a great team. One of the reasons why we connected again to come back on here was because you've got staff primarily this was your marketing arm, who are out there looking to make connections to get the name out there, and to broadcast the great things that are happening at Kindred. So there's been a few people involved in the process of getting back on and having this conversation. Really good people.

Bryan Reid:

Awesome. Thank you for saying that. Yeah, we're very fortunate.

Christian Hamm:

Now that's really cool. Quick question Is there is are there any interesting unique pockets between here and let's say, I don't know like a Whistler where they're building some really funky crazy custom homes.

Bryan Reid:

I haven't built any there but I was at a friend's place in Britannia the other day and that blew my mind some of the houses that are going on there. So yeah, that was

James Faulkner:

I was seeing a profit. Yeah. Okay. Well, I mean, Britannia, they were gonna do a huge thing there and that just fell flat. Right?

Bryan Reid:

Well, yeah, there still is that piece of property register coming around the corner going sand. Yeah. So DERA and McDonald Development Corporation are doing that work and pretend you're right now that is building out the community, the townhouses and redoing all that community amenity space, sort of right behind mountain women, the best burgers on 99. And that's really neat to see but the houses up the hill, they're just phenomenal. Like some of those houses are bespoke modern masterpieces and I would have never ever guessed that seven, eight years ago. So that's been pretty interesting to see and Squamish continues to outperform what I would have thought on the single family side. So like the single family space in Squamish people are spending millions of dollars putting houses together up there.

Christian Hamm:

Yeah, the crazy thing about Britannia, this isn't just for Vancouver, is anybody listening this that particular little What is even a town or like, whatever? They've got this funky mine that's used in all sorts of movie series and movies and all sorts of different things. But yes, you wouldn't know it because you just go through and you see like, a couple little cafes, and you do see some of that a deer. Yeah, townhomes up. But if you drive through at night, you see all up in the trees, all the houses all lit up. And so you just never know that they're really crazy. And they're beautiful. Yeah. Cool. Well, this is a great place to tidy things up and go through our rapid fire round of questions. I think that I wonder if you have the same answers or if you if this is going to be interesting to compare them to the original ones. I can't wait. But here we go. Okay. All right. Do

Bryan Reid:

you have my original answers?

Christian Hamm:

I don't have your original answers, but we will. We'll try to find that somebody can go back somebody can go back and cross compare.

James Faulkner:

Soon as I hear it. I'll be like I said that last time. Yeah, no. Okay.

Christian Hamm:

All right, Brian. If you in this in we've refined this question. Not construction related. If you were to be doing something else, other than building a great team, a great company, Eichinger construction, what would you be doing?

Bryan Reid:

As like this based in reality, or whatever? Yeah, I don't know. I have such a emotional connection to sports. So I'd probably have to say that I'd be working in a front office for a baseball team somewhere. But I tried that and it didn't happen. So that's probably based in reality. I'd probably be down in the United States working real estate development in some form or another. somewhere warm and nice with far less onerous taxes.

Christian Hamm:

There you go. Got it. Got it. It means you're exploding in the studio. Would you ever in this, this is like a bit of a trend? Because there's so many different levels of sports teams. Let's say you got to the point where kindred you know, even more success or something like that. Would you ever buy into a piece of sports? Oh, man,

Bryan Reid:

of course. That's the dream. Absolutely. Baseball. That's what you do. Yeah. baseball, hockey or basketball.

Christian Hamm:

Cool. Yeah. Awesome. Okay. Love it. That's great. If you, uh, you know what, and I just realized I went to the second question. I skipped the best one of the best ones. Brian, what is something you do that others would think is insane?

Bryan Reid:

Continue to work in this industry based on the margins that we all make.

Christian Hamm:

that no one's ever said that?

Bryan Reid:

Yeah, I don't know. I live a pretty pretty normal, normal life. I don't do a lot of insane things. And so yeah, if I were to have a conversation with somebody that worked in stocks and bonds, and I told him what we did, he might think that I was insane.

Christian Hamm:

There you go. All right. Well, we're the site visit. We're construction podcast. You grew up in construction. Back in construction, what is your favorite, most memorable story from the job? So

Bryan Reid:

I actually think I remember the one that I mentioned when I was here last I think I spoke about friend of mine, Nick Patterson, we were on a project down in off of Davie Street. And yeah, we ended up getting into a fire extinguisher fight. And so that was a funny time that was palatable, I guess back in the 90s. But not necessarily anymore. But for me, I think more and more It's becoming experiences that I have on I've had had on job sites with my dad, that's, you know, developed a really different level of our relationship. And so those are the things that I've really started to cherish.

Christian Hamm:

That's really cool. Well, Brian, I gotta say, it's fantastic. Bring you back on here. There's so much new stuff to cover. And I would imagine that would be the same if we do round three,

Bryan Reid:

which I'm sure we'll do. I hope so. Thank you guys for having me.

Christian Hamm:

Right on.

James Faulkner:

Well, that does it for another episode of the Site Visit. Thank you for listening. Be sure to stay connected with us by following our social accounts on Instagram and YouTube. You can also sign up for a monthly newsletter at sitemaxsystems.com/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!