The SiteVisit
Leadership in construction with perspective from the job site. A podcast dedicated to the Construction industry. Construction professionals, General Contractors, Sub trade Contractors, and Specialty Contractors audiences will be engaged by the discussions between the hosts and their guests on topics and stories. Hosted James Faulkner ( CEO/Founder - SiteMax Systems ).
The SiteVisit
Open-Book Management and the Great Game of Business with Justin Bontkes & Ian Baird (Caliber Projects) | EP93
In this episode, Christian is joined by Justin Bontkes, Principal at Caliber Projects and Ian Baird, Director of Construction at Caliber Projects. The trio starts off with some banter about the official sport of construction and the current state of construction costs. Justin and Ian quickly jump into the importance of transparency and their commitment to building people and the real “meat” of their conversation, implementing Open-book Management and thoroughly studying The Great Game of Business. The challenges and benefits of this type of transparency in building a business within the construction industry are addressed. The importance of teaching employees about financial literacy, understanding the "why" behind the numbers, and the impact on employee retention are also covered. They highlight the significance of building a highly engaged culture with complete trust and ownership and fully empowered employees. The episode concludes with a reflection again on the importance of transparency and building people as well as a genuine care for those on the team at Caliber Projects and the stakeholders, subcontractors and owners they engage in each of their projects.
Caliber Projects is a Fraser Valley-based construction management company that has delivered quality builds with speed and precision since it began in 2008. Back then, owner/operator Justin Bontkes began by acquiring three lots, building and selling homes on each lot. He repeated the process several times, and by 2011, Caliber had partnered with another company, and their growth exploded, along with the Lower Mainland’s housing market. Since 2012, they have delivered projects in excess of $125 million. Over recent years, Caliber has scaled its business and galvanized its purpose of "Building People and Process".
EPISODE LINKS:
Justin Bontkes LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-bontkes-2b4836120/
Ian Baird LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian-baird-2898b52/
Caliber Projects Website: https://caliberprojects.com/
Caliber Projects LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/caliberprojects/
PODCAST INFO:
the Site Visit Website: https://www.sitemaxsystems.com/podcast
the Site Visit on Buzzsprout: https://thesitevisit.buzzsprout.com/269424
the Site Visit on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-site-visit/id1456494446
the Site Visit on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5cp4qJE5ExZmO3EwldN1HH
FOLLOW ALONG:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thesitevisit
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesitevisit
It will. We've been having a lot of fun this morning. already. Right smile. All right. All right. We usually end with questions. And this is because this is just random banter and having a good time. I want to start with a few questions. Before we get going. It's do no one knows who you are. This is totally anonymous. Okay. What is the just first thing that comes to mind? Okay, what is the official sport of construction? Or unofficial?
Ian Baird:Probably UFC.
Christian Hamm:Okay, okay.
Justin Bontkes:I was gonna say soccer.
Christian Hamm:Whoa, okay. I was thinking for sure. Golf or hockey.
Justin Bontkes:Okay, okay, those are good ones. But the reason I say soccer is because half of our crew is limping around right now. Because a league that a bunch of them belong to they're all they just finished their playoffs and
Ian Baird:The problem. They think they're all 20 years old. But now they're 28 or 30 years old, and they're getting those hamstring injuries. They're not. They're not actually stretching beforehand, or
Christian Hamm:That's true. I feel like I don't wake up many days where I don't hurt. And I'm like, is there ever gonna be damaged gonna feel good this morning? I don't know.
Ian Baird:Yeah. Well, when you get my age, you get sleeping injuries, where you like, wake up, and you're like, What the hell happened was like, do my wife go three rounds with me? Or oh,
Christian Hamm:yeah, no doubt. Oh, man. That's hilarious. Our construction costs rising, lowering, or the stagnant right now.
Ian Baird:Stagnant to lower it? Yeah. Yeah. I think our trades right now are feeling the same thing that everybody has in the industry, which is they got to keep their machine rolling too, right. So they got all these projects finishing and they gotta find, find work coming up. And so the prices are getting a little more competitive because of that.
Christian Hamm:Yep. 100%. Okay. Open Book management, is it's obviously industry agnostic. But is it the way for future construction management?
Justin Bontkes:Not for everyone, not for everyone? No, no, it, it works well, for us because of the the culture that we have, and sort of the transparency that we have created within the organization. And I think for us, it works well to just because of our commitment to building people, right. So our true purpose as a construction company is to build people. And you don't build people by keeping them in the dark and not sharing, you know, the why and how we make money and, and so much of what we do transfers over to their, to their personal lives as well. Right? So we want to see people doing really well, not just at work, but also in their personal lives and the fulfillment that they that I think most people get, and I hope they get through the open book management carries through to their lives.
Christian Hamm:Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, and we're gonna unpack all that in just a minute. Dave, hit the Intro Music
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 hitting the reset button
Justin Bontkes:You read all the books and read the E-Myth and you read Scaling Up you read Good to Great, you know, I could go on
Sebastian Jacob:We've got to a place where we found the secret serem we found the secret potion we can get the workers and we know where to get them
Cam Roy:One time I was on a jobsite for quite a while and actually we added some extra concrete and I poured like a broom finished patio out front of the site trailer
John Reid:A guy just hit me up on LinkedIn out of the blue and said he was driving from Oklahoma to Dallas to meet with me because he heard a Faber Connect platform on your guys's podcast.
Zack Staples:Own it, crush it, love it, we celebrate these values every single day. Let's get down to it!
Christian Hamm:All right. Okay, well, we this is long awaited. And we've had some fun already this morning. But long awaited conversation. We have returning guests. We have site visit alumni Jessen, bonkers from caliber projects. Justin, it's great to have you this morning. Good morning. Thanks for having us. Absolutely. And also, we got a real special guy in the room. We got Ian Baird saying that correctly. Your director of construction, yep. At caliber projects as well got the tag team from calibre this morning. And we're diving into a specific topic but it will bounce around a little bit. But we want to get a we got to get a Coles notes update on the life and times adjustment Bacchus that that sounds like a I don't know. Life and Time Life and Times just a life up to date. Lots of time left. Yeah, yeah. And then we'll get to Ian. But Justin, why don't you just give us a bit of a background? For those that haven't heard about calibre projects or yourself in the industry?
Justin Bontkes:Yeah, so So real quick on me. Got into construction from an early age. My dad was in, in construction and development. It was pretty much what I was born to do. What went to BCIT did the architectural building engineering diploma the Construction Management degree I think half the guys in our industry now I've done that went from there always thought it was gonna be a framing contractor realized that didn't like the cold weather and getting wet in the rain. So I got into project management and worked for a number of different developers over the years and eventually started my own thing and started caliber in 2009. Started doing single family homes doing some randos put my own house eventually got back into doing the larger projects. And as land values continue to go up as housing becomes more and more expensive. densification is just something that's naturally happening and saw that coming long time ago. So got out of doing single family homes, started doing townhomes, even townhomes were becoming harder and harder to come by, and then got into doing the larger multifamily wood frame buildings. We did a our first four storey wood frame building and thought that I could build it the same way that I built a townhouse. So it was myself and a bunch of other guys that were all fairly new at what we were doing and realized that that's not exactly true. They're much more difficult to build than I thought they were. And we finished the building and we finished it. And I said to myself, I'm either never doing one of these again, or I'm gonna double down on this because of how hard it was. And that's where I'm at in. So en came on board a couple years later, but you know, and I kind of joke it was we started dating, probably two years before we the funny thing is how we met actually, we were at a master builder conference, a two day course. And Ian and I were chatting and I think, yeah, I think we met in the urinal. Actually, it's pretty funny. We were both going to the bathroom during one of the breaks. I'm like, Hey, man, how's it going? Yeah,
Ian Baird:it's like, you know, there's break time and all of a sudden is this random guys following me to the bathroom. And then there's like eight urinals. But he comes in does the one right beside me. And he's like, Hey, so his opening line was hey, you're Christian, are you? And I'm like, yeah, how do you know that? He said, Well, I don't know just the way you were talking in the class or and so. So that's literally how we met in the bathroom. That was his opening line. Your Christian Are you?
Christian Hamm:Well, that's hilarious, because we we I mean, we did meet in the urinal, but it was definitely sitting beside each other. Yeah, just had a breakfast. Not random at all. But just the fact that it was like, a very quick connection point and boom, started the relationship. And so it's something about you, Justin.
Justin Bontkes:Yeah, I'm very intentional about relationships, my wife.
Christian Hamm:But anyways, so usually pick a urinal a few over
Justin Bontkes:enough of the internal talk. Now, from there, we saw, built, finished our first condo project realized that we needed some serious help, if we're going to continue to do this. It was at that time that we got an opportunity to work on the Latimer heights map masterplan community and just off 200 on Highway One. That time that I reached out to Ian and said, Hey, come join the team. We need someone who really knows what they're doing. Ian came on board. And from there, we've been working doing primarily most of our work has been in the township of Langley and in Surrey. And the work that we've been doing there is is a lot of wood frame, gotten into doing some concrete as well. Just finished 110,000 square feet of concrete office building there as well. And yeah, we went from what were we doing Ian? 17?
Ian Baird:Oh, I think. I think, when I started in 2019. We ended up doing around 18 19 million that year. And this year, we'll do $168 million in gross construction. So fairly significant growth. I just hit my four year anniversary in March. Yeah.
Justin Bontkes:Yeah.
Christian Hamm:Well, that's awesome for context for listeners. Serene Langley, you said so that's greater Vancouver. This is talking 45-60 minutes outside of the actual City, metropolitan area of Vancouver. And at a very impressive interchange in what we call the Fraser Valley, the outskirts of Vancouver with some really incredible growth, population growth and and also just densification multifamily housing, and then the commercial product, you're talking about a lot of really cool stuff. And you guys were have some of the newest stuff out there on the market. And it's beautiful.
Justin Bontkes:Yeah, thank you. Yeah, really well done and good. Yeah. Yeah, I, you know, it's one of those things, I'd be remiss to say if if this was something that you know, we were completely in control of ourselves. But, you know, we talked about the connection that we have as as, as believers as men of faith, and I do honestly believe when I see that especially with our people and what's happening in our business, that there's a there's a much higher power that's looking out for us and it's taking care of us because it's the growth has been incredible. The journey has been Incredible, like, we've just been incredibly blessed. And Ian's a whole lot smarter than I am. I'm not that smart. So there's no way that this could have happen with if it was just on my own. Well, I'll tell you that.
Christian Hamm:Well, no doubt and like, we'll talk a bit about that I'm sure as we uncover the team that you've built and the people that have assembled, there's a lot of intentionality. And of course, there's a lot of other things at play that brings such a great team together, which is fantastic. Just are we talking any more about you? Are we going to jump over to jump over to Ian, in case this is really cool, because when we were getting talking beforehand, and you introduce them as if like, Oh, yes, yeah, clearly, I found this great, perfect construction guy, and, and obviously are, but in terms of the background that you took to get to where you are, is totally atypical.
Ian Baird:So I I'm completely opposite to Justin, I did not grow up in construction. I grew up in a logging family on Vancouver Island and, and then we moved over to the side of the island and my, my dad did a big career change too. So this there's, there's background with this as my dad went from being a heavy duty mechanic for a logging company to a real estate agent. So you couldn't be any different from this rough and tumble redneck guy to this guy who's needs to be relational and really good, but he was really good his job. So had the background on the real estate and housing and that kind of stuff in my family. But no, I went to school, I went to university, eventually to become a doctor and went through UBC got my degree in chemistry and then actually went in, decided to stay in the research and got my PhD in chemistry at UBC. And did a whole bunch of research with the, with the BC Cancer Agency. Yeah, and developed a few drugs there for some radio imaging of of cancers of aggressive cancers. And then from there, I actually went into the pharmaceutical industry. So I worked for a company called an ER Med, which, ironically, was I get actually throw a baseball from our head office at caliber projects to where I worked in Langley at NRA. So probably at some point, Justin and I crossed paths, we just never knew it. So I worked in Langley for almost 10 years doing drug design development. And unfortunately, or fortunately, we were too successful. And we ended up having a couple of drugs that got approved by the FDA. And so we got, we ended up being bought out by a big pharma company down in the States. And so two weeks before Christmas, young family, I had a what a six year old and a three year old and I had to come home and told my wife that I lost my job. Because they closed the entire company down 187 People lost their jobs that day. So
Christian Hamm:in somewhat dramatic fashion.
Ian Baird:Yeah, yeah, yeah, we basically did like right out of the movies, called us all up to the boardroom. Walked into the boardroom, saw three unfamiliar faces standing with the CEO at the front of the room, and knew right away, or I did anyways that we were done. They did some exit interviews in January after Christmas and, and offered about 35 of us jobs to move to Boston. Oh, so big decision for my wife and I to make and decided, nope. We love BC or families here. VCs are our outdoor playground, everything we love to do hunting, fishing, camping, all that stuff. So we made the choice to turn that offer down and stay here and pounding the pavement try and find another job.
Christian Hamm:Crazy. And that so how did that all take place then? Because I mean, that's quite the life change to be able to continue in the pharmaceutical industry. But
Ian Baird:yeah, literally you would you would think right, so you put nine years of university in, you think you'd stay in, in, in pharmaceuticals and I did end up getting a few offers. But I also got an offer to go and join a construction team MetroCount construction by the owner of the company, Don Voss and dawn I had known from church for many years, and we had been come good friends and friends with the rest of his family and his kids. And we were on the board of directors at our church together. And so Don had heard that I had lost my job. And he says, when one evening after a board meeting, we were in the in the parking lot and he's like, Hey, so you're pretty smart. So you could probably figure out construction if I if I offered you a job I he's like we got this small project that we just signed the contract for called the Olympic Village. And I'm gonna need some more talent. And I think I could use Yeah, would you be interested? I'm like, Sure, why not? Right now. I needed to provide for my family and, and then kind of over the next probably three to four weeks, we ended up working out a deal. It was actually I had four offers. And the lowest offer I got was from from Don construction offered financially. Yes, of course. But the reason I chose it while we pray to my wife and I prayed about it. So there's two reasons number one is the legacy project of building the Olympic village and being involved in something like that, just that sounded cool. Didn't really know what I was getting into. And then the second one is I had an opportunity to now go and work with my Christian mentor, oh, cool, and be trained and learn and glean business from him and learn all the other stuff that he knew that I didn't. So the Crossroads I chose, right and ended up in construction.
Christian Hamm:Well, clearly, yes. Not not a typical path at all to where you currently are. But one, obviously, that you have approached with a lot of intention as well. And it's neat to see that people, a lot of great people lining up when they're pursuing things with a lot of intention and consideration in their life. And get to the places that they are as a result of that kind of look. Not how they started out in the beginning, right, totally different path. But clearly, you know, you guys, you guys did a nice little two year courtship and figured it out. But then you go
Ian Baird:Oh, I think, I think the real key so, you know, I talked about the decision of why I went to metric n, right? So Christian leadership. Yes. Right. So that was another key deciding point. So then Metro Ken got sold. But that was another key deciding reason why I went to caliber projects, right is because of Justin was the same as Don in that in the way he led people. And not only that, but when I went in, I went to an app re work. So calibre has this thing called outbreak Fridays. So, you know, it's all part of Justin's master plan to enroll people in his EA, why don't you come and have a drink with us, right? So anyways, I got to meet all these guys that we're working with, and just started chatting with them and realize, like, over 50% of caliber was Christian. Right? Yeah. And that was a big deal for me. So that was definitely one of the deciding factors for me coming over to calibre. And the other thing was, over the course of the two years, when Justin would come and visit my job sites and walk around and ask me questions, he was just doing that. So you can figure out how to build the Belmont. But it's like, I got this problem with me. Let's go look at your building. I'll ask you a few questions. But anyways, the the the other thing that I figured out over the course of those two years, is we actually had the same key passion in life, which was building people. Right, right. Yep. It like, from day one, I've always been, that's been my DNA and who has been a part of me, and I realized that I was, that was Justin's purpose. That's, that's the top of our, our one page strategic plan is we build people in process, right. And so having that alignment, I just knew that it was going to be a good fit.
Christian Hamm:You know, I gotta say, cuz a lot of this resonates in in his very consistent in the first conversations that we even had some years ago. And having you on the podcast for the first time is a lot of these, these are the same things that were communicated right below people and process and stuff like that. So in the process that we get into later in this conversation, but the build people part. And that is, it's neat to see because that's not just something that gets thrown around. It's not like a buzzword. It's not like a culture thing. In terms of a buzzword and culture. It's a legit deeply held belief, right. And then all of a sudden, you are building a team and scaling a team around those deeply held beliefs. And they permeate, permeate and resonate with all those that join and continue to stay on. You got a really strong team as a result. And obviously, you said the growth of the business clearly indicates there's a lot of people pulling together in the same direction.
Justin Bontkes:Absolutely.
Christian Hamm:So the build people part, do we want to do we want to unpack anything there or the build process part was kind of the whole I feel like this is like phase one, phase two of the caliber podcast conversation because we did talk a lot about the culture stuff in the first one we did and I think that will come out and all the things we're talking about, but the process part and then there's so much that's relevant because we're dealing with a lot of the conversations always around material costs construction costs labor you know shortage of people having the right people retention, and now economic pressures, where are things going backlog of projects etc? Well, I think process and the way that teams do those things address a lot of those but let's let's unpack this there's there's a particular thing we joked about it, kind of played around with it in the in our cold open about open book man sprint, but why don't we, this is gonna be a free flowing around this whole concept, but who wants to open it up and break it down and and kind of give an introduction as to what it is and how it applies to the business you're currently doing.
Justin Bontkes:Yeah, thanks, Christian. I'll intro all intro are open book management. So today 1019, something like that spring in 2019 was reading all these different books and there's this book called the great game of business of like love games. I like playing games, you know, business that sounds good. So I read the book. Initially, when I read it, I was like, I don't know like this is this is a lot like to try to adopt this philosophy and bring it on and sat on it for a bit. And then we had a strategy session with our coach at the time Trevor thrown us. And he had been involved in implementing great game of business with WNBL and nurseries out in Abbotsford. And so I asked Trevor, just to speak on a little bit. And so he came to one of our strategy sessions and talked about it with our administrative leadership team, which includes Ian and a few of the other guys there. And I think we all left that session thinking like this, this is pretty cool. Like, let's figure out some more and so went from there. And so Jack stack is kind of the pioneer of the great game of business. He's written a couple of different books. And he's also the founder of I think it's called Springfield, remanufacturing center src, out in Springfield, Missouri. And so he implemented at the time, they just, they just call it open book man's, but I don't think they had coined a great game of business yet. And this was back in the 1980s. So he's written a couple of books about the story. And so we got involved, read the stories, and then went to a conference in Springfield, in November of 2019. Left that conference, pretty excited about, you know, what this could do for our company and started to implement it ourselves. And did did okay with implementation, but struggled with certain aspects of it. March 2022, came along, sky was falling. And most companies were thinking, you know, what, we need to buckle down. And we need to just make sure that we do everything in our power to just keep the resources that we have hold on to the cash we have. And it was at that point that we realized that we really needed to buckle down and hit it hard with our open book management. And we hired a great game business coach, so shout out to Kevin Walter with tasty catering. If you hear this podcast, so you're big or what have you. Okay, yeah, you're a big part of our journey. And that, you know, everybody, you know, honestly, one of the reasons why we love great human business so much was because of the people that we met that were doing it, right, you guys are all awesome people. And it just made so much sense. Like there's value alignment with the organization and the operating system.
Christian Hamm:And it's totally industry agnostic, right, like any type of company in any business can be doing open book management, the great game of business, all that kind of stuff.
Justin Bontkes:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So SRC, they re manufacture engine parts, vehicle parts, so anything from tractors to 18 wheelers, and all sorts of different things. And so, today, you have manufacturing companies, you have pharmaceutical companies, you have construction companies, catering companies got all sorts of any business that that, you know, has an income statement and a balance sheet, can can do open book management. So we got involved in it hired Coach K 2022, rolled around the whole COVID thing. We did the coaching virtually, we did implementation virtually, took us until I want to say you can correct me if I'm wrong, October of 2020, for us to officially launch it.
Ian Baird:And when we first launched it,
Justin Bontkes:Yeah, we went up to went rafting, real rafting up in, I think I remember us doing that, yeah, went up there launched it there. It was great. It was really neat. And, and you know, since then, we've been practicing open book management, we've been learning how to do it, it is not simple. It takes a significant amount of effort. But it's so worth it. Like we've, we've really, we've learned so much about our own business, like as the business owner, for myself to be able to bring on a team of people to help run the business. And ultimately, you know, Jack will say, you know, it's it's easy to stop one person but it's, it's a lot harder to stop 100 people totally right. So
Ian Baird:it's so countercultural from our most businessmen thing to right. So, you know, I remember when we did that launch, and people were coming up to us afterwards and, and they're like, you're showing us how we make money. You're showing us exactly how much everything costs. You're showing like you're completely being transparent with us and telling us all your secrets. And we're like, yes. Why? Because we trust you. Right. And so there's, there's instantly like, for me, the great game of business has has created and galvanized trust with our employees, right? By having this open book management system in it. And it's also allowed us, you know, like Justin said, it's been really hard, like, as we've implemented and whatever, and train and teach people, but it's like, it's allowed us to get everybody pulling in the same direction. Yeah. Right, because now we're all focused on on one clear goal together, right. And we huddle around the numbers every month. And we tell our employees how we're doing. And we have discussions about how can we, as employees from the guy pushing the broom to the project manager to the General Manager? How can we influence those numbers, and give each individual in our company line of sight on how they can impact a lion in the income statement, right? That is very powerful, when an employee now feels that they can impact not only the outcome of the company, but ultimately their own gain share, of course, right.
Christian Hamm:And you can see the mean, now you guys have done it for a couple years, and you see the tangible benefits and everything. And we'll talk about that the challenges and the downsides. And then obviously, the eventual upsides of everything. But you can see the set, it's countercultural, like, so many people are used to being left in the dark, and these things that go work for a big business, that don't know necessarily decisions that are being made. And you know, what, okay, sometimes at certain levels, some decisions, obviously, they're done in certain ways, in certain rooms and everything like that. But when it comes to the success of a business, to have people pulling us in the same direction, is obviously going to be the most beneficial way to see whatever it is at the top, maybe they have their goals and whatever. But to share them all, is a big thing. I know from experience of going through. So he went construction company, Construction Company, whatever, prior to doing software construction, and getting into or construction software for construction. But getting into the software world, it's very common to like, even before companies IPO to have certain numbers that are out there, your customer numbers, your user numbers, your you know, your top line revenue, because it's all you know, oftentimes subscription based, so we do this much annual recurring revenue, etc, etc, right? And people will throw these things around. And then it becomes very common that your whole company kind of starts to learn things without you even really being all that intentional that you just oh shoot, and then people kind of catch themselves and realize, Oh, our people know a lot of stuff. And then they might stop at a certain point, right? And not go any further. But there's no there was no plan, there's no, there's no way to uncover that or unpack it.
Justin Bontkes:Well, so two thoughts. The first thought on that is everybody just makes assumptions anyways, right? So everybody just assumes that, you know, the business, the business owner is making gazillions of dollars, and he was keeping it all for himself. And, you know, Jack stack tells the story, he says, you know, they were making, they were making decent money. They're there a few years into it, and they're rolling out this program, and they're getting everybody on board. And they asked, they polled the people in the company and asked them how much as a percentage of what they asked them what their margin. They asked them what they thought their margin was, like how much money they made. And when they pulled everybody. The results came back to 30 to 40%. So 3030 to 40% of their revenue, the employees thought was going directly to the owners pocket. And when Jack shared with him that it was actually between three and 5%. The people were like, why are you even doing this?
Ian Baird:Why take all that risk?
Christian Hamm:Yeah, yeah.
Justin Bontkes:So and I think, you know, especially in construction, the numbers are so big, right? We throw these huge numbers out there. And people just automatically assume that, you know, we as contractors are taking a huge piece of that. And I think most people would be pretty shocked to know what the actual margin at the end of it is. We call it profit before tax and sort of how we come up with it, but it's much smaller than most people think. And I think, you know, most businesses like so if you're a subcontract company, most businesses are probably trying to operate around 10%. And then when you get into the larger scale companies, it's even less than that. Right? So I think it's pretty common in construction for contractors to be to be between two and 5% of of your your gross construction volume as a percentage
Ian Baird:Oh and I'll never forget when we polled our employees when we first launched the Gob and then we came back from our rafting trip and whatever and then we did the following month we did our first huddle or were for our first you know, two Teaching event there. And we actually asked our employees what they thought. And I think the average came in around 15 to 17%. I think there was one person in the room other than myself, Justin, who, I guess the right numbers is one of our employees. But it was, it was a very humbling thing for everybody to understand. Right. So then it was kind of like, okay, well, now that, you know, right, Let us teach you how we can still stay in business and what we do and why this business models still work, right? Earning three to 5%. Right, right. And so it's allowed us to do so much financial literacy training with our employees, where they actually now understand the numbers, right, it makes my project managers and project coordinators way better at their job now, because they understand when they're monitoring their budgets, and they're doing this and that they know, the why behind all the numbers. Right. Right. And, and, and then, you know, further to that, you know, it's it's, it's yeah, it's just given everybody the, the, not only the financial literacy within the company, but we you know, I think, you know, Jack, Jack shared this story of this one lady, who was working on this line, or whatever, and they did taught her about financial literacy. And they taught her about how to manage her personal finances as part of this, right? And although this, because we, we always have, every time we huddle, we have, we have a teaching moment where we teach about stuff. So like, we've had one guy get up and teach about RRSPs, and how do you do RRSPs, and stuff like that. So we're also equipping our employees for the life challenges of understanding the numbers and playing the game, within their own personal finances. And anyways, this lady, she had worked for 15 years or whatever, and she had become mortgage free, she was a single lady had paid off her house, and said, it was the great game of business and everything I learned at src, that gave me the mindset to save the money to pay down my mortgage and stuff. And that's powerful stuff, right. And we showed that video when we launched our G gob. And everybody was kind of blown away, right?
Christian Hamm:Well, ultimately, in business, I mean, you want to be building something sure, that could make some money and provide and but you want people's lives to be enriched that are along for the journey, right? And if all there is, is you talked about the assumptions point of view and people being left in the dark, right, it's very hard to do that and go out then and enrich people's lives. If they have no tangible way to be in the process, then, of course, they might not be an owner. But if they can actually take command of something like their personal finances as a result of something the business is doing, to empower them and give them process. It's applicable. It's, that's quite life changing.
Justin Bontkes:Yeah, so one of the things that we talk a lot about is wi I fm, what's in it for me? So whenever we're making decisions, we're always thinking about, well, how does this affect those that are, that we work with, you know, the people that are actually making it happen every day? How does How do our decisions affect them, and with the open book management in the way that we do it, we call it as opposed to a bonus, we call it a game share, right? So most companies, the bonus programs are this sort of pie in the sky, you know, you're lucky if you get a bonus, when you get a huge bonus, or maybe you don't get a bonus. Like it's it's really, it's arbitrary, and no one really knows how it works.
Christian Hamm:or it's different for every employee and what they negotiated when they came in.
Justin Bontkes:And typically, those that are, you know, in entry level positions wouldn't be eligible for a bonus at all. And it's usually just a senior management that we get one. Yeah. So with what we do with great game of business in the open book management, everybody knows at the beginning of the year, what their total bonus could be. And then we basically have what we have, we have profit, target projection, so PBT projections for the year. And so we do what's called forward forecasting. And we forward forecasts of what the profit projections are going to be month to month and month. So everyone knows, based on how profitable the company is, how much of a percentage of their bonus they're going to get. And so the way great gaming business is set up as it actually pays out those bonuses and quarters. We found it a bit hard to do it that way. So now we do a bonus at the end of June. So end of the first half or q2, and then we do a bonus at the end of q3 and one at the end of q4. So you're getting your your bonuses throughout the year. Right and you for the most part under have a pretty good understanding of where you're going to be at the end of the year already halfway through the year
Christian Hamm:and is everyone's individual contribution. Does that impact that number? or is it collective? Because you said that everyone kind of takes ownership in the Great Game of Business and open-book management. Is it then dependent on everybody coming together and saying, OK the company acheived 75% of the number, therefore you all get 75% of the number. Not, oh Ian crushed it, he gets 100% of his number and Justin got 60%
Ian Baird:No, so everyone gets the exact same. So you get zero bonus, or you have a ton of slush, or whatever, yeah, you have a ton of slush, and you look like a hero. Exactly, yeah. Whereas here, we all share together. So we're gonna have wins, we're gonna have losses, we support each other. But at the end of the day, we're all in it together. And we talk about caliber family, like we are a family, right? Where we all pull together, and we support each other. So what does a family do? When somebody's going through a crisis, the other person steps in and supports. So that's we try and structure it that way.
Christian Hamm:We've got like the family and the team dynamic kind of happening at the same time, right? Because there's a lot of not competition, but that's a competitiveness amongst the team, right? Or, you know, fruit towards that goal to win, not necessarily against the person next to them, right. But collectively, okay, I got like, a lot of things are popping into my mind in terms of just everything you guys have shared so far. The big thing that stood out right away, and then you guys both address it was the bonusing thing. How does that impact because you said typical construction bonuses, like people moving from one company to another. So if you're trying to attract new talent, per se, superintendents, project managers, whatever, when they jump in, and they go, and initially, they have no idea what breakeven businesses, because they probably wouldn't, why would they? How would they know about it necessarily. But when people hear about it for the first time, to they get excited about it? Or do they kind of go a little head scratcher and be like, Well, I don't think I can, I don't think I'll be able to make what I what I was hoping to make or or I don't think it'll pay out like that pays out. What's the initial response when people hear about it for the first time?
Justin Bontkes:It's a good question. I don't think as an offering, it's as powerful as we might like it to be. I think, rather than it attract more people, I think it retains more people. Absolutely. So once people begin to understand it, and I'd say the the onboarding process, and that's something that we continue to work on. And we just hired somebody new. In the role of what do we call Tim?
Ian Baird:He's the people and culture guru.
Justin Bontkes:I don't know, HR, he's HR HR.
Ian Baird:We don't like HR, though. Yeah, no, no.
Justin Bontkes:Anyway, so he's his, his role was really to focusing on onboarding and bringing people on board with how the great game of business works and how it impacts them. And so so as a hiring tool, I think it's okay, as a retention tool. I think it's awesome, right?
Christian Hamm:And that wasn't trying to like poke holes in anything. That's literally just looking at it. And it makes a lot of sense that as a retention tool, once you get into the mix of it, and I'm sure your employees would attest to it.
Justin Bontkes:Well, I think it's important that like, we don't blow smoke, like this isn't a simple thing to do. And it's it's not always easy. And it we have failed in different aspects of it. And we're continuing to work on it. And obviously, we believe in it. And we look at our turnover, our employee turnover in an industry where turnover is just like it's people leave for a couple of bucks. Yeah. It's, it's crazy. And for the over the last, you know, two to three years since we've implemented it, all things considered. I mean, I think last year, we were in correct me if I'm wrong, but we were under like 5%, for for turnover for the year of 2022. Like, I think one or two people leave total. Like it's actually crazy. It defies the industry odds dramatically.
Christian Hamm:For quick context. You guys did talk a little bit about top line revenue growth, but in terms of the company itself, like how many employees are we talking five years ago, three years ago versus today?
Ian Baird:I'm I'm employee number 22. In 29, march 2019. And at that point, I think there was 16 of us 17 hours, so maybe five had left. And now we're in the employee over 100. But I think we have 75 employees right now. So over the course of four years, as long as ever, some people have come and grown, but we've got tons of girls, so 16 people to 75 people 16,000,260 8 million, right. So
Justin Bontkes:I think what's important to note with that number, as well as we have no desire to be really big as a company. Right. And I think we talked about this in the last podcast, but I just want to reiterate the fact that, you know, so we talked about a purpose of building people and process, our vision for the company is to be a small giant in the residential and commercial construction industry in the Fraser Valley. And I mean, small, so we are doing everything in our power to not grow more than we are by adding headcount, we're looking at becoming more efficient. We're looking at making sure we, you know, we talked about a big thing for us is, is having a culture of engaged a players. I'd rather hire someone who's an absolute stud, who can do the job of three people. You know, then hire three people and say, you know, we've got 100 plus employees, like we're not looking for any
Christian Hamm:Oh, there's vanity metrics in all these things, for sure that you don't necessarily need to run a really efficient, high powered small giant of a company Yeah, totally get that. That's just more of a context in terms of when you say your turnovers really low. And it's like, oh, we saved half a person. No, you guys are saving, like, those are meaningful numbers for employee retention. So dealing with a bigger amount of employee base, right.
Justin Bontkes:So we, we were trying to get to the point. I mean, it's not, it's not doesn't work all the time. But you know, when we have an opening for a position, we typically have multiple people that are applying, and we're not just taking the first person that comes in off the street, right? Yeah, we're trying to make it so like, Hey, you want to you want in like, you know, you got to prove that you belong here. And, and so our interview process, like it's, it's, it's pretty intense, right? We got the we got the who interview? So, you know, figure out, you know, the WHO before the what, yeah, you know, then we go through the process of making sure that they know what they're doing. There's little all the reference checks. There's the we do personality profiling, we, it's a pretty rigorous process we've had a lot of people are like, what, like, what kind of job Am I applying for that you guys are doing all this, but like, it's so important that we take care of the culture that we have, and not let people in that don't add to that culture or belong?
Christian Hamm:Well, it's really interesting, because in a market that, you know, we've talked so much about the tightness of labor, right, not just labor, but the tightness of really good people. Right? In terms of getting out there and finding them. You said that you do a reference check. I saw somewhere, somebody posted again, this was in the tech world, but still, I mean, it kind of applies. People are starting to do reference checks again. I'm just like, chuckling to myself, I'm like, there's a period of time where people were so hurt, and just to get somebody it's like, oh, great, you know, I can I won't downplay you know, the importance of a person or unimportance of something, but oh, great, you apply for the job. Excellent. We'll take you you can leave when we need you to you can join when you join, you know, and that just building a team of what you said highly engaged a players. Again, that sounds not just something to say that takes a lot of work and a lot of intentionality to actually bring that together. That's no easy feat. And you're not doing that without doing a proper rigorous hiring process.
Ian Baird:Oh and I think, having those employees especially like when we're hiring, like our project managers and superintendents, that people that are going to have a lot of influence, that are going to be training and mentoring and teaching and doing all that building people stuff. Yeah, we really try to suss out if that's a passion of theirs, right? Or if it's like, are they all in it for themselves? Or do they? Did they have a bigger purpose? Right? And so, yeah, our interview process is arduous, but it's like, we, I can teach a person how to do the construction job. No, if you can teach a, you know, a PhD chemist how to run a construction company, you would most certainly teach a guy how to build, right? So we, you know, culture, and culture fit would be our number one hiring criteria.
Christian Hamm:Yeah, I mean, we could get into that an awful lot. But again, these aren't just words that are thrown around for cultural buzz things to actually identify people that have an ability, so much can be taught in a specific space. Don't that you can underrate the quality of someone's character and the drive or the integrity that they bring to the table?
Justin Bontkes:Well, we we talked about, we say you gotta wanna, like, you gotta want to be part of this, because it's not for everyone. And when we implement a great game of business, redrafting there, I would say within the first three months, before the end of the year, yeah, three months, we probably had, like, we haven't had a lot of turnover in recent times. But after we implemented, we probably lost 20 to 30% of our staff. Okay,
Christian Hamm:that was the one thing I was going to ask. It's good that you guys bring that up? Because I would imagine there would be some initial resistance. It's almost like a bit of a pruning process of refining, right? When you implement something like this, and people self select,
Justin Bontkes:Some people think it's a joke, like, what are we doing? I don't want to do this. Like, I don't really care. Just give me just pay me and I'll just do my job. And I'll go,
Christian Hamm:That is true, though. Yeah, that is how a lot of people operate. There's lots of that. Yeah. Tons. You talk to you in about collaboration. I think we had we had Ryan Stewart from RJ s on a couple episodes ago. And he talked about blocking block scheduling. You talked about scheduling, how important is his point was when they were able to kind of bring it across organizations, something really clicked and changed. You talked about subs, and you talked about other people, vendors, maybe even customers, and you guys can both speak to this. How do they play into the great game of business? Maybe not open book management, but just this overall, very transparent, collaborative process?
Ian Baird:I think it goes back to what I said at the beginning when we're introducing what Gob is all about. Is Like, what it created when we launched it the very first time with our employees is it instantly created additional trust? Right, right. We were opening up our hearts basically. Right? You know, it's kind of like being on the second date, and you're telling or your entire life story and all your dark secrets like, we were opening up and being completely transparent. Well, it's it's one of our brand promises. But it's like, you know, do you live out your brand promises of being transparent, right? Building on relationships and what have you. So we actually share with our key sub trades. What what grade game a business is about, we've had multiple sub trades like owner, who we've told them about, we've got a couple of our sub trade companies. Now we're in the midst of like, launching or putting in implementing great game of business into their companies now, because they've seen what it's done for caliber. They also see how our caliber employees operate on site and how they think, and the questions they ask, because of that line of sight that they have to the end goal. And so they've just seen, like, what we do at caliber, and they're like, I want to drink that Kool Aid. What's that Kool Aid? You guys are drinking, right? So now we have our sub trades, also asking questions about it. Some of them are looking at implementing it. And and I think at the end of the day, it it aligns with our brand promise. And really, you know, we tell our sub trades, right? Like, you guys are our lifeline, right? You guys are our bread and butter. And if you guys are successful, so goes cow, right. But if you guys aren't successful, we're not successful. So we'll do everything in our power to try and put all the systems and processes in place to make your time here as efficient as possible, so that you can make the most money. Because at the end of the day, we're in business to make money. And so our trades would say, because of how Cognizant we are in schedule, and cost and all this stuff, which the umbrella is the great game of business, it really aligns with what they want to see. Right. I got nine projects going on right now. I have every project is on or ahead of schedule, right? There aren't a lot of other general contractors that can make that statement. And I actually think that it has to do with building people in process and how the great game of business aligns with all that.
Justin Bontkes:Can I add that? Yeah. 100%. I also think, in this is something we also talk a lot about people support what they helped create, oh, yeah, yeah, so we have nine projects, which is a lot. But we didn't do that, like Ian, and I just didn't decide, oh, we're gonna go and take on these projects we actually brought. So we call it our admin team, which is our, which is sort of the head office team. Then we have our production team, which is all of our superintendents, all of our project managers, estimator, HR Accounting has, like, probably missing some people, but it's a pretty big group of people. I mean, we're well over 20 now. And we said, hey, here's what the current economic situation looks like, here's where we could be in the next 12 to 24 months, here's the work that we can take on. If we take this on right now. It's going to mean, you know, extra stress for you guys, it's going to be more work. But here's what's going to happen. Here's the result. You know, as things change in our economic climate, you know, there's going to be added job security, we're looking at our gains here, plan, you know, you guys, you should be able to do very well. And so we made we put all the information out there. And the team, we voted on it. And and the whole team was like, Yeah, let's do it. Let's go, right. And like, you know, rah, rah. And I don't think it's any coincidence that we are doing as well as we are from a schedule, budget and a quality perspective, because these guys made the decision themselves to take on this work. It wasn't just us.
Ian Baird:And it sure makes my job easier as the director construction to hold these guys accountable. And like, Well, hey, you said you want to do it and you're committed, and they're crushing it right? So and the nice thing was when when we did that vote like it was everybody. There wasn't one person that says I don't know about this, it was like everybody was all in so that really affirmed to Justin and I that and our and our leadership team, that we did have those A players that we so desire, right? Because in a player you gotta wanna right, you got to be humble, hungry and smart. And these guys were all hungry. Right? And you know what it's positioned us well, to weather the storm are going through right now.
Christian Hamm:Totally. I mean, that definitely is a testament to the work that is put into it because you did share a little bit when you first implement something. You have the people that maybe you don't get everyone putting their hand up to vote for something right, but But over the course of time, when you build a highly engaged culture, to be able to have that, I mean, to think that you don't have to sit around for two weeks trying to convince people of that sort of decision is a meeting, it was one time, Hey, guys, this is kind of where we're going. When everyone's buying into it. You don't you take ownership of the things you're creating, when you can make decisions really fast, you can move, you can be really nimble, but still big, or do big things rather?
Justin Bontkes:Well, I think it's really important. And, you know, we talked about an industry that starved for talent. You know, from our perspective, we look at our superintendents, and our project managers, like they're the gold, they're the ones that are actually getting the work done out in the field, they're the ones that are putting up with the, you know, the challenges every day. And so we really need to respect that. And we need to make sure that, you know, what we're providing them for work, and what we're providing them for resources is aligned. And, you know, if we can do that, you know, we get that ownership all day, it's when we start to fail to see, you know, what's needed to complete the jobs. And so, you know, as much as we're communicating to the team, about what we're doing, we're providing them with an opportunity to communicate back to us, right. So I think, you know, it's got to go both ways, right? And we constantly stressed to the guys, right, that you guys are responsible for the direction of this company. Like, if you want something different, you know, we're giving you the opportunity, we're giving you the platform to speak up and to talk about it, do it, tell us tell us what you really think,
Christian Hamm:totally? Well, you can't build a really great feedback loop without trust and ownership, right. And when you have that, you're right, it does go both ways and kind of goes around.
Ian Baird:And we've created that right down to like, every single employee, twice a month, has a goal setting review with their manager. Right? So and that's not just where the manager is saying, This is what your goals are, for the next two weeks. It's the employee coming to their manager and saying, these are what my goals and desires and where I want to take my career and what do I what education do I need in order to grow and write. So there's constantly like, every two weeks, there's this communication with your managers, and it feeds back up, right. And so the key thing is, every single person has a voice in caliber, right? Everybody has a voice and everybody is heard. And that's, that's really key. The people people want to be heard, they want to know they have a voice and they want to know they can influence and impact. Right?
Christian Hamm:Absolutely. I think it's really cool. There's a lot, there's a lot to even continue to unpack from this. I was gonna say I didn't want to cut you guys, that was really good conversation, David, even take some some video, we can, you can use that in some good content as well. The one thing I was gonna say from you were talking about, and this just resonates with some of my past experience with subcontractors is there's a lot of companies that take good care of their subcontractors. And they might even have really nice job sites that, you know, are really attractive for people to be working on clean, safe, etc. You start getting good relationships going with subs, and they might become a preferred trade, they might do really well start making a lot of money working for you, because they're getting a lot of work. But to say that you guys are influencing downstream, or even across laterally, to have subs that are implementing processes that you guys are running, so that they just can't go and say, Oh, great, we do a lot of work with caliber, we're going to make a lot of money, this is great that they can actually do similar things to what you guys are doing, and implement that in their business. And who knows who's influenced or impacted by that. But there's an awful lot of influence that comes out of running a process like this, that's beyond obviously what you guys are doing as a caliber team, with the people that you're building.
Justin Bontkes:There's a there's a story from Jack's book, Great Game of Business, and they do a poll internally of how many people within their organization are working in nonprofit or volunteer organizations within within the company. I think that at the time, they had 290 employees or something like that, and over 100 of those employees, were doing some sort of volunteer work. And I look at caliber as well. And we haven't done a official or unofficial poll on this. But I look at the amount of volunteer work that comes from, you know, what we're doing, whether that be being on school boards or, you know, coaching different things. I mean, you're you're on the run part of the rod and Gun Club in Abbotsford. You know, and a lot of what's interesting too, is a lot of the people within the organization are taking up positions, you know, in sort of the finance area, and they're not accountants by any means while they're becoming but you talked about that downstreams influence, right. And so, you know, I couldn't, couldn't dare to guess we'll kind of influence the education and the impact aren't that we're providing our people is providing downstream. Like, it's it's really neat to think about that.
Christian Hamm:Not not pumping your guys's tires too much. But I do hear from not just caliber employees, but other people as well, because obviously we have lots of people on the podcast and connected through associations and customers, etc. But there's a lot of really cool stories and things that are told that are definitely offshoots or byproducts of the caliber process. It's really neat, it's really neat to see you guys don't have to respond.
Ian Baird:But it's, it's, it's exciting to hear actually, you know, you kind of look at, like, I remember way back when back when Don first hired me at Metro Ken or wherever. And we were just, he was talking telling me about like, his, his influence tree. Right, and his construction tree, right, and just talking about all the people that he had trained and mentored over the years, and how now they had trained and mentored people and how they had trained and mentored people, right. And he's like, Ian, like, if you just, if you just do this, if you have a passion for it, like the impact is far reaching, right. And it was a real testament, you know, when I don passed away last year, right, and went to his funeral and like, just to see how many people showed up to that thing, and like, and all the different people that he had influenced. And like Justin said, in so many different areas of his life to read, it wasn't just construction, people showed up. He was like, you know, involved in leadership of power to change Christian organization. He was involved in like, so many different other things, investments and, and training and mentoring of people. He he was involved in NASCAR, right? He had guys had NASCAR people come to that event, right? So it's just so cool to see. Right? You know, when somebody passes away, kind of like, what what was their dash, right? You got a beginning and an end and the dash, right. And he absolutely lived his dash to the fullest. Right? So we got one chance here. Yeah, live your dash to the fullest.
Christian Hamm:I love that. No, that's, that's really cool. And yeah, when it comes to, you've got this, you've got this really highly engaged team. It you see share the story of Don, life is and maybe this is even the product of the last few years, a lot of people did a lot of introspective thinking. I think they think about what they're doing, why are they doing, et cetera. But without that, just to have a company that would invest so much into somebody's input into something, but also to care beyond what they're doing day to day at a business. That's that'll be the story for a lot of people. Right? It's not just showed up to work did their job? Well, you know, and that's so critical that people can go and live a life that's full. Absolutely. Well, I mean, in terms of adding anything to this conversation, I think the only other thing I wanted to talk about with the great game of business was what's the what's the customer? Is there a customer or client interaction in the whole process? Talk about sub talk about your own team? But is there any when a customer sees Oh, I tell you guys run your business. So that's how you do your project, there's obviously going to be open book nature to every job in a way.
Justin Bontkes:Yeah. So so it's my job to go out and spread the word bow caliber, and keep the pipeline full. And I think one of the things that we tried to do in this process is, is communicate with our developer clients, how the knowledge that our employees have the value of the products that they're working with, right, so let's just say, let's just say 10%. So in development, if you have a project that earns you a 10 to 15% Return on cost, I think 15% is sort of what traditionally banks have been financing projects on right now things are a little bit tighter, maybe it's closer to 10 I use the number 10 Because it's an easy number to use. But if you think about what's easier, is it easier to create more revenue or to spend less money on something right so when I look at that and so if 10% is your your profit margin, if you have a $10.02 by four right so what's a $10.02 by four it's an eight foot two but maybe it maybe it's a 14 lumber is down right I think we've all five anyways if you have that piece of material and one of one of our guys you know takes off that that 10 foot two by four it's it's a brace of some sort you know he's got one nail and doesn't really feel like pulling it Chuck's it in the garbage can. Right. Right. Happens all the time. Like you wouldn't believe the waste on the construction site. Oh, yeah. What how much money do you need to make? What kind of revenue do you need in order to make up for that? $10.02 by four, right? So if you think about it, so timber percent. What's the number one, you're the math guy?
Ian Baird:Yeah, $100 in revenue,
Justin Bontkes:You need $100 in revenue to make up for that$10.02 by four. So if you think about it, and we so we try to communicate this to our developers, we're teaching all of our guys financial literacy. And when they're making the decision on, well, maybe I should not throw this in the garbage can. Or maybe I work the extra hour today to get this job done. So the subtree could show up tomorrow, instead of taking an extra day for that guy to get here. They're there, they understand the value that that provides to our developer. Right. So we're just working through that with them. And we're trying to communicate that to the to our developer clients and some of the contracts that we have actually have cost savings provisions in them. Schedule savings provisions as well. You know, construction management, depending on how you do it. If you're doing it based on a on a percentage of cost. It's a bit counterintuitive, actually. Because the more the more that project costs, often, the more the project management contractor earns, which is just a silly program to be honest with you. So we try to counteract with these cost savings in the schedule savings agreements. And just being able to communicate to our developers how we sort of filter that down to our, to the rest of our team is really important.
Ian Baird:Well, and we do spend a lot of time when we talk about teaching the numbers, having our project team. So we also do project site huddle. So we do an all company how to once a month. But also, each of our project teams huddle once a month, specifically on the numbers for their project. So that's where we spend time teaching our team, what impact their decisions have for the developer, right, because just as like the sub trades are our lifeline that developers, you know, we need, we need to be able to provide value to our developers at all times, right, so that we get repeat work. So we really want to have our people understand what financing costs are, and how one day of schedule impacts the cost of the developer and how it affects their net revenue. At the end of the project, when we start teaching those numbers, and they understand they're like, holy cow, I make that decision to stay an extra hour. Now the sub trade shows up, instead of showing up, it's not ready and leaves and we lose a day of work. Right? That one day on$100 million project financing. That's where 10s of 1000s of dollars. totally right. And when they understand that is super powerful. Well, it
Christian Hamm:comes back to that whole assumptions thing, right, if people don't have the consciousness of upstream downstream impacts of their activities. To buy for thing is a great example, right? And what it cost to replace that and to make that up, if you are left in the dark on that. So many people can just be like, want to nail on it before it goes in the bin cleaned up. It's a clean sight, right. But just a little step further and see how that translates.
Justin Bontkes:You hire people, for their hands like to work with their hands, like specifically on the construction site, you get their minds for free. Like you just have to engage them, like it, you know, like that psychic, the psychic power of engaging the mind, and you just have to people need to know why they're doing what they're doing. And if you can empower them, that way you will get results.
Christian Hamm:I think this is a really good way to tidy up the conversation, because you guys are saying a lot of good stuff, I'm not gonna add anything that's going to be this is a lot of really solid sound bites and things that will come out of this, that I think are going to be really helpful to our audience. As well as I believe your your team is going to listen to this. Is there anything that you would want to leave? Again, those people, our audience, potential customers, existing employees, those that are going to take a listen to this conversation?
Ian Baird:I think for me, it's it's about showing genuine care for people. Right?
Christian Hamm:Yeah, yeah.
Justin Bontkes:Yeah, I think if you understand what your fundamental purpose on this earth is, and why you're here, you know, these types of decisions to go open book. They're easy, you know, if you're the type of person that wants to, you know, I don't know build, build great wealth for yourself and keep it all for yourself. And, you know, if you struggle with with your own leadership capabilities, and you know, you need to be in a command and control environment where, you know, everyone needs to listen to you because you're the boss. You know, don't don't do open book management. Like it's, you know, you got there's a there's a pretty significant degree of vulnerability that comes along with this. You know, Ian talked about, you know, being like, to transparency and everything involved in it. And if that's not for you don't do it.
Ian Baird:No, absolutely. And empower your people. Right? Like, like Justin said, like, every everybody comes to the table with a specific skill set. And sometimes if you don't ask the questions or you don't empower your people to think outside the box and and utilize their talent, you actually don't know what treasures you have. Right? You know, I use an example of this, this this, this girl, Mara that we heard. And she was just, you know, she was with a laborer company, right. And we saw potential in herbs. So we she, she wanted she actually came to us and said, I want to work for calibre. Right? She had worked on our sites as a general laborer. And then when she got there, we do this, this thing where we do all this preparation for jet Crete. So we've always like hired all these temp labor, and we've hired these companies, and we paid all this money. So she went, she went to Matt. And she's like, well, I can do this. Just give me a couple of extra laborers. And I can do this myself. And I can run this whole thing. And I can save us a whole bunch of money because of this GOP mindset right away. So she went and did that took that initiative on her own. And Matt said, Okay, I'll trust you. And in for building, she saved the developer probably $70,000. That's not a small number. No. And just by empowering one individual, right, so we don't have just laborers. Yeah, right. We have employees that we empower. And that we that we challenge to think outside the box. And the G Gob thing is created a foundation of of excitement, and different thinking, that is an X factor in this industry. And we're hoping that like, we don't want to keep this a secret, we want to see this transform the construction industry wide, right? We can all be better.
Christian Hamm:Couldn't agree more. I got to say like just chatting through this whole thing. And just, you know, you guys are all how things come out, emotions come out and stuff like that. You guys do genuinely care. I've seen it obviously over time and getting to know Justin and now getting to know you a little em. It's really cool to see. And I think that you will have that impact. And not just caliber, but those that'll hear this and that could implement stuff like this and the things you guys are doing building people building process. That shouldn't just be a caliber thing. That should be that could be an anybody thing.
Justin Bontkes:Absolutely.
Ian Baird:100%.
Christian Hamm:All right. Well, we always end with the rapid fire round Justin did a number of years ago, we'll keep this super tight. Okay. I don't know if he has thought about the questions at all. Or if this is going to totally blindside you, which is perfect. But I got asked three questions. And you guys, just first thing that comes to mind for both of you. You can just rattle off might even be a story. That's totally fine. Cool. All right, whoever wants to go first, what is something that you do? that others would think is insane?
Ian Baird:I will hire a plane to drop me off in the middle of nowhere, often, at least a month's walk from the nearest road with about 80 pounds on my back 12 days of food. And I will go hunting by myself. So I was just by yourself. So myself or one other buddy or whatever. And yeah, as much as I love people, there are times when I just like to Zen out and go connect with my Creator and present and I just yeah, just love being in nature. So
Christian Hamm:That is, but insane.
Ian Baird:Yeah.
Christian Hamm:Very cool.
Justin Bontkes:Yeah. I think I'd love to do it. And as maybe not all by myself for however many days you go, but what's insane for me, I think it's insane. Just because I'm living in it right now. But I've got five kids and it's super busy. You know, so trying to try to keep everything in the air do all the things. I know there's other people with lots of kids too. So hats off to you. But it is. It's a bit for sure.
Christian Hamm:Hey, five might not be insane to someone with six to seven kids. But for the vast majority five is pretty. That's pretty insane.
Ian Baird:I have no idea. Yeah.
Christian Hamm:That's crazy. Man.
Justin Bontkes:I got a great wife
Ian Baird:and his kids got energy. I don't know if he feeds them like tricks for breakfast, but they're just bouncing off the walls.
Christian Hamm:That's awesome. All right. non-construction, I've had to change this question to not construction related. If you were could do something other than what you guys are doing today crushing it a caliber. What would you be doing?
Ian Baird:I'd be living in Uganda.
Christian Hamm:Okay!
Ian Baird:Yeah. So I just just got back from Uganda a couple of weeks ago, was over there. Doing some missions work, trained, almost 200 pastors in three different cities in Uganda. It's been something I've been involved in since 2018. And we're building regional, regional pastoral training centers over there, through our partner with Word of Life. And I just got a huge passion for the people over in Africa and and spreading the gospel. So that's very cool. So my retirement plans will probably look like living in Uganda that my wife's listening surprise.
Christian Hamm:I spent a few weeks in Uganda to talk about that. That's, that's pretty cool.
Justin Bontkes:Good. I'm pretty sure I probably said this. The last time was on the podcast. It's pretty consistent. But I I'd be a farmer for sure. Yeah. Love to own like the couple 100 acres and you know, have some chickens and some some berries and all the things...
Christian Hamm:You'd have more than chicken and berries on that.
Justin Bontkes:No, I don't want just a garden. I want to like...
Christian Hamm:You could drop Ian off in the middle of that 200 acres in a plane.
Justin Bontkes:But that's, that's part of the appeal to me, is like you can be as busy as you want with that. But you can also just, you know, it's true. Pick a spot and do what you got to do there. And it's
Christian Hamm:Yep, no. Hey, I totally get that. All right, last one for you guys. What is your favorite or most memorable story? From the job site? Or past project?
Ian Baird:Well, I've told I've told this to a lot of guys over the years. And you know, we, Johnny and I, my General Superintendent, we always joke like, every time somebody you know, you meet with somebody and you know, an older guy or whatever. And, you know, they're set in their ways. And whatever is like, Well, I've been doing this for 35 years, you know, and Johnny's like in his, you know, he's 30 years old Chinese, like if I had $1 for every time. So anyways, Olympic Village, back in 2009, I think it was, it's up on the roof of this job site, and there was a leak in the roof. So I took this guy up there. And I was tasked with going figuring this out. So I went up there with a guy and we're looking at it, I'm like, Well, you've lopped this all wrong, and you don't know what you're doing here. And this and that. And I'm just some young guy, you know, what do I know? I'm a PhD in chemistry, right? Who by the way, it was a quick study and construction. So anyways, the guy turns around me, and he says, Look, buddy, I got pants older than you. And I know exactly what I'm doing. Get out of my face. Yeah. So I've used that story now that I'm 51. I've actually used that line a couple times.
Christian Hamm:I think anyone that's done any significant work on a job site would have similar stories to exactly that. So that totally resonates. And exactly you're talking about.
Justin Bontkes:I'm trying to think of a good construction story. That'd be funny that people would actually listen to but I don't really have a good construction story. I have a story. That's that's kind of funny, though. So, you know, I don't physically work with my hands anymore. And I'm not I don't spend a lot of time on the construction site, you know, mostly in the office and meeting with clients and stuff. And so we do the strategy events, and we're over at the Fraser River Lodge a couple of years back, and we're just having a good time. And one of my favorite stories is there's another there's young guy and I and him and I have we go back fairways. And anyways, we ended up I ended up challenging him to a fight and I absolutely got destroyed, it was pretty funny ended up rolling around in the gravel. And I think the reason I tell that story is because what we do in construction, I mean, as much as it's, it's hard work and you know, it is very rewarding, but it can be a ton of fun to write. And I think, you know, the the joking around and sort of the the boisterous attitude that construction lends itself to is is just is absolutely awesome. So
Christian Hamm:Oh, yeah, no, couldn't couldn't agree more. And that's the thing, the stories they could be. Both have exactly what you guys just share, but they're great and memorable stories from construction. Gentlemen, it's always fun to deep dive on a particular topic. But it's really good to just have some great genuine conversation, obviously a very heartfelt conversation around building construction companies and building construction teams. And you guys are two of the best around here. And I'm sure in the industry wide. Thank you so much for joining us.
Ian Baird:It was a lot of fun. Thank you for having me.
Justin Bontkes:Thanks, Christian. Yeah, appreciate it.
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!