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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
ICBA Generals 2024 E4 | LIVE IN THE CROWD | Balancing Tight Timelines and Workforce Wellbeing in Construction with Brad Stevenson, COO at Unitech Construction Management
Together with Brad Stevenson, COO at Unitech Construction Management, we discuss how the construction industry can successfully balance the demands of high project volumes with the needs of a diverse workforce. We delve into Unitech’s commitment to enhancing local communities with projects such as schools, RCMP facilities, police stations, recreation centers, and affordable housing projects.
During our conversation, we share our unique perspectives on remote work, balancing the expectations of different generations of employees, and how we foster a flexible and cohesive work environment. Reflecting on our leadership and adaptability during the COVID-19 pandemic, we explore the transition to hybrid work models and the enduring challenges of achieving work-life balance. Gain valuable insights into the pressures of tight project timelines and the importance of valuing and protecting our workforce.
Tune in for an engaging discussion that offers practical solutions and a forward-looking vision for the future of construction project management.
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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Hello, hi, here you are on the site visit. Yes. What do you think of this event? It's great. I can't believe it. It's just jammed in here.
Speaker 2:You know, we did this last year and it was probably half the size and there was probably about a quarter of the people. It's just been busy ever since one o'clock. It's crazy.
Speaker 1:We've got 1,400 people here. Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, they're not here all the same time.
Speaker 2:I've never talked as much in my life. I don't think.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Site. Visit Podcast. Leadership and perspective from construction.
Speaker 2:With your host, james Faulkner, live off the show floor at ICBA's Meet the Generals 2024.
Speaker 1:So what's it like being over there right now? You're just getting hammered by people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you are really just, it's just constant, mostly trade contractors. I see, okay, Right, so Subtrade's coming and meeting you guys trying to get the deals and all that kind of stuff, trying to get business and actually Do they need business right now?
Speaker 1:They're all kind of turning stuff down, are they not?
Speaker 2:For us when we go and tender work, we're finding it difficult to get enough coverage on things like doors, frames and hardware. Mechanical trades are super busy and it's hard to get pricing in for mechanical trades. So we've met a few trades here that we might, you know, actually reach out to and sort of say like hey, are you busy, can you bid on this work? And we'd be interested to have you on board.
Speaker 1:It's a cool setup for an event because it's like typically you know a GC would go around to see other stuff, like a, a world of concrete or something like that. It's the opposite it should really be.
Speaker 2:This is like flipped on its head. It should really be meet the subcontractors, but I think there's so many of them that it's just like hey, generals, go set up a booth. And you know subs can walk around and introduce themselves to you, don't?
Speaker 1:want to be like getting BC Place. Yeah, that's what you would need, I guess. All right, so you are a chief operating officer of Unitec. Okay, so in the construction management company we're saying before this that sometimes you're operating on a pseudo-GC basis. So let's just talk about what kind of projects you guys do. Sure, Just take us through that a little bit.
Speaker 2:Sure, so we're mainly in the Like size of projects.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're mainly in the ICI side of things, so we do a lot of schools, new builds, additions, seismic upgrades, as well as RCMP facilities, police stations, fire halls, rec centers, pools that sort of side of things, we have a few affordable housing projects on the go and we have a few First Nations and a few health projects, but the majority of our projects right now and then another 15 or so in pre-construction. So we've got a lot of work going on, you're going to be busy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no wonder you've got a booth here. You're going to get all those trades.
Speaker 2:Our projects range from like a million bucks to 150 million bucks 150 million dollars.
Speaker 1:You've had a project that big.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we actually just got awarded a uh, a pool and recreation facility uh, for the city of delta that's up up in that area that's quite the 30 million.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a big.
Speaker 2:It's a big project yeah like a big indoor, like olympic kind of pool, kind of yeah, as well as uh, there's going to be a full-size gymnasium, there's going to be ancillary spaces for workout spaces and yoga facilities and Boys and Girls Club and various other ancillary requirements for the city, and it's great because our office is three blocks away from it.
Speaker 1:Ah, it lowers the cost a little bit. Less fuel.
Speaker 2:Less fuel. You know, at Unitec we're all about enhancing the communities that we live and work in, so this one's a real passion project for us, because we have a lot of our staff live in the local area as well, so we're really excited about being a part of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so a lot of. I mean the commute to downtown projects etc. Is just such a pain for a lot of staff. It seems to be like such an issue these days it is. Is that traffic, that highway one? Like how much that that that adds? What hour? Two hour, two and a half hours per everyone's day it's yeah. So do you guys have to pay through the nose for that?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, what we're finding right now is we've grown from when I started with the company about 17 years ago. We've grown from 10 in our office to 35. Right, and about half of that staff lives in either Tawasin, ladner or North Delta. Okay, that's lucky so. But what we're finding is we're still trying to slowly grow and it's really hard to find more people in that local area I see, and to come from Vancouver or Burnaby or Richmond into Tawasin with that bloody tunnel.
Speaker 1:Oh, the tunnel yes. Is atrocious. So you're in Tawasin as well.
Speaker 2:We are in Tawas tunnel. Yes, is atrocious. So you're in Tawasin as we are.
Speaker 1:We are in Tawasin, yes, as in like near to up the hill from the. What's the big mall that's there? Tawasin Mills, oh, tawasin Mills, yeah, so basically up that hill there.
Speaker 2:Up that hill there. Yeah, Crazy, okay, yeah. So that's where our office has been since our inception in 1988. And and we are considering expanding our office breadth in other areas because we just can't find people who want to come to Wausau.
Speaker 1:What about the hybrid thing? You guys aren't into that? Oh yeah, we're doing the hybrid thing for sure. What do you think of it? Is it good?
Speaker 2:I think it is successful. Yes, I do. I think that, well, it's funny, you know there's always details. I think there well it's funny, you know there's always details. I think there was a bit of information handed out, you know, of the things that we were going to talk about here, and I really think it's kind of crazy right now that we have five different generations working in the industry right now. So there's a varying amount of opinions in regards to working from home and, you know, I think a lot of maybe the older generation's opinions is it's just because it's not what they're used to. Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 2:So if you really step back and really analyze the productivity that's happening and you analyze, you know you're still able to. If you're not fully working remotely, you're still able to make that, make those connections and ensure that culture is there and, you know, make sure that you know your staff are living in your core values. If you step back and you really it, it is reality that that it is being successful. So I think when we talk about it as a senior management team, there's there's comments here and there like, ah, this stupid work from home stuff, and it's like, well, just hold on a sec, think about it. Is this being successful? Is the work getting done? Are our clients happy? Are our people happy? The answer to all of those questions are yes.
Speaker 1:Because that's all relative to the environment too. I mean, the productivity numbers are relative to lower mainland productivity numbers. Correct, which is they may not be United States productivity numbers, because we know, I don't know if you heard that statistic. It's like way down. Yes, Like way, way down.
Speaker 1:Canada's like in trouble and that's probably not necessarily construction but in general. So yeah, the work of home thing, it's kind of it works for if your policies are good, I think, and your I think what's hard is it works for a players yes, but you shouldn't have any d players on your team anyways. I said A Sure Okay, but you went straight to D Well yeah. But what about B plus?
Speaker 2:B-plus. It works for B-plus players as well.
Speaker 1:What about for Bs? Bs as well when you go to Cs?
Speaker 2:Come on, brad, where's the cutoff when you go to Cs. It doesn't work for Cs, but really we're all about ensuring the right people are in the right seats, Jim.
Speaker 1:Collins.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's EOS right, You've got to have the right people in the right seats.
Speaker 1:Did Jim Collins come up with that eos? Uh, he was a part of it. Yes, was he? Yes, he was a part of it.
Speaker 2:He helped it out. Good to great action, yes, um, and eos talks a lot about jim collins and good to great in their, in their books and their writings. But in reality, if we have c and d players on our team, that's our fault, right as?
Speaker 1:as a senior team.
Speaker 2:that's our fault, Right, as a senior management team. That's not, you know, that's not their fault. We shouldn't have them on our team.
Speaker 1:I see.
Speaker 2:That makes sense.
Speaker 1:So that's the way I look at it. So let's talk about this. Five generations, shall we? Sure? So what other? So work from home, obviously a point of contention. I'm right in that middle generation, I know.
Speaker 2:So are you tugged both sides? You kind of see that you can see it from both ways. Oh, absolutely. And that's why I kind of laugh, when you know, when I hear both sides, uh, because they're both right. So when were you born? In the eighties.
Speaker 1:Uh, I was born in 77, 77. Okay, so you're kind of right in that weird spot, yeah, yeah. Cause you're kind of entitled, but not quite Kind of entitled.
Speaker 2:How old are you? A little bit older than that, not much, and that's why you think I'm kind of entitled.
Speaker 1:I'm just kidding, no, I'm joking so. But there is the because Gen X or not? No, not quite right, because you're just at the end of it. I would be considered Gen X. Yeah, you would be. Yeah, yeah, so you grew up totally responsible like you're. When I say responsible, I mean you were given a key to the, to the, to the house.
Speaker 2:Your parents were probably both working I was the, I was the second son of the family, so by about grade five it was like, okay, see you later. I see yeah, so lots of, lots of my own responsibility and my own freedom right, so you weren't pandered to, you weren't taken care of so no you are a school of heart knocks guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah I was uh, I was cooking, uh, you know you learn cheese cheese on bread for lunch uh, often at home, for sure, but it but it was a great experience and I think it actually helped me get to where I am today.
Speaker 1:really, Okay, I take back the entire thing. So with that in mind, though, so being in between the generations, so I guess your founder is a boomer, or?
Speaker 2:how old is he? He is 72. So yeah, he is a boomer. Or how old is he? He is 72.
Speaker 1:So yeah, he's a boomer. Yeah, Late boomer, a late boomer? Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah. And then you have what's the youngest person on your roster.
Speaker 2:Well on the sites.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, talking 20, 19, 20.
Speaker 2:On the, sites we have this summer. We have 16-year-olds working for us?
Speaker 1:Wow, okay, yeah, so what is the intersection of culture and expectations, and what you expect me to do, what, and et cetera, based on how you are, how your founder is all the way down the line?
Speaker 2:So I think I'm in a lucky position because, um, I understand it from both sides. So my approach is really just talking it out and like having some deeper conversations.
Speaker 1:You can do that with a smile, though, so this is one thing I've learned about people like this, like 144th episode and then multiple years in business. Instantly when I meet you, I know you can deliver not so great news with a smile. You're good at that. I appreciate that. Has people told you that before?
Speaker 2:yes, yes, okay it tends to be a skill I have. I do just always smile. I'm not sure why, sure why, but it is a skill. But, no, it's about deep conversations and, at the end of the day, coming to a solution that hopefully fits everyone's needs. And sometimes it doesn't work out Like we have a young project coordinator actually leaving us at the end of this week. He lives in Vancouver. He commutes to our site.
Speaker 1:Was that part of?
Speaker 2:it Three days a week. That was all of it.
Speaker 1:Okay, that was the reason, and he got a job in Vancouver.
Speaker 2:So you know, sometimes you can't satisfy everybody's needs. But as long as you're open and honest about it and you know, everybody walks away from the table understanding why something's happening, I think it's okay, so what is the work-from-home policy now at your company? Two days from home and three days in the office.
Speaker 1:Okay, and is it consistent? Do you allow Fridays and Mondays?
Speaker 2:We do. That's a bone of contention, it is because it's like a long weekend. But it's well, you see, you can't look at it that way, I know Right. Like it's not.
Speaker 1:It's human nature.
Speaker 2:It's well, it's boomer human nature is what it is.
Speaker 1:No, it's human nature to think that it's like starting a weekend, because okay, I'll give you an example so you can do your laundry, you can do a whole bunch of stuff while you're working. That's the thing, is that where it integrates the private life with the work life. It's true.
Speaker 2:It's true, but here's what I think you've got to consider in that Sure. Maybe you're going to chuckle a little.
Speaker 1:I'm a voice of the public. Okay, you keep pointing at it like it's me.
Speaker 2:No, it's not you, but public. Okay, you keep pointing at it like it's me. No, it's not you, but it. On that, let's say, on that friday, or even if you don't even know how old I am, I haven't told you, I know, you haven't. It's frustrating. Even if it's a tuesday or thursday, you're throwing a load of laundry in. Well, that's really just replacing the chit chat at the, you know, at the water cooler. Fair situation, right. So who cares? Really, people are getting from. What I can see, depending on the person, people are actually getting more things done at home than they are in the office. What about what? Okay?
Speaker 2:so this is they're not getting, but they're not. Their doors aren't getting knocked on every five minutes, that's true. There isn't a constant, they don't have to go out for lunch. Yeah, they can make their lunch at home.
Speaker 1:So one thing that I think is a good policy to have is to have a home office environment audit, meaning that they take their laptop. Let's say that when they're at the office they plug into dual screens, for instance. They got like an ergonomic chair, they got a proper desk, etc. Etc. Etc, and they come home they're working off the coffee table on a laptop. You're not going to get as much done, so it's the setting up the home just as good as the office. Have you guys gone through that? Our policy includes that.
Speaker 2:It does Okay.
Speaker 1:So take me through that. How's that work?
Speaker 2:All it says is that your home office should be of a similar nature than your work office. It should be a quiet space, a space where you can be uninterrupted throughout the day, a space where you can take meetings, where you can sort of do anything that you would be required to do at work. Okay, now the audit piece. Well, not an audit, I mean.
Speaker 1:We're not walking into everyone's houses going hey, show me your space, but they could take a photo of where they are. Yeah, yeah, I guess that's a lack of trust. We trust our people to set it up the way they they need to set it up to be efficient and effective. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I mean, a lot of your stuff is very, very screen heavy, though, yes, if they're working from home, they're obviously not on site, correct?
Speaker 2:so they're doing project management stuff. They're in and out of like well, that's. That's a funny thing that you mentioned is is we've you know there's been lots of conversation at our office about like, oh well, maybe we should just do 100%. You know work from home, and one of the things that I really disagree with that is we require our superintendents and our safety staff and our carpenters and our laborers and all of our trades to get to that site every single day, put their boots on and get to work. Are we really okay saying, oh, but if you're an office folk you don't need to?
Speaker 2:do any of that. That doesn't seem quite fair.
Speaker 1:The problem is it creates a tribal difference. Yes, there's an office tribe and a site tribe and there needs to be some equality there. And that's the thing that was annoying. We say the C word, the COVID word, because, when it came down to it, someone would say, well, I don't feel safe at the office. It's like, okay, well, do I feel safe at the job site? I still got to go build this thing Exactly that kind of sucked right. That was not a great intersection of behavior for people to have to make sense from.
Speaker 2:So I reflect on that, and the leadership of Rick during that time was really, really on point. So what did he say? He said our sites have to go to work every single day to make these projects happen. We're in this office and we never went home. Wow, we never went home. We were we. We did not close the office one day. So how did that work then? We have an office space that allowed us to.
Speaker 1:I get it, but I mean, how, like, how did you manage the? It's not so much necessarily the people that work for it, it could be their family or their parents, like I'll give you an example. So my parents would say to me hey, uh, you know, don't go, you can't come over for dinner If you've been at so-and-so's places. He's not vaccinated, like it was stupid.
Speaker 2:It was dumb, Right now vaccinated like it was so stupid.
Speaker 1:It was dumb. Right now in retrospect it's totally well. It was then too. But yeah, I know, but so there's no way that that you guys mandated a vaccination, uh no. So how did you stick handle that? Because that's tough and because you got, you're dealing with multiple levels of levels of dysfunctional.
Speaker 2:There was a lot going on at that time, and that's why I mentioned his leadership. He was very, very strong and very hard, fast of. This is what they're telling us that we need to do we're able to meet those requirements in our office. Sure, we had some opportunity to work from home during that time, but it wasn't like see you later for six months. Right, it was still a couple days from home and three days from the office.
Speaker 1:And he was really hard fast to set. That's what it was then, because you had hybrid before and he was really hard for us to say.
Speaker 2:That's what it was then, because you had hybrid before we just started doing hybrid before COVID came on Right, so we kind of expanded it more at that point, but still we were. I mean, I was in the office five days a week because I live 10-minute drive from the office, so that wasn't going to change.
Speaker 1:Do you know? I went to Tokyo last year. Everyone has masks on Everyone. Yes, it's weird. It's crazy, it's nuts. It's almost as though they don't like their face. It's that strange.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I really disliked it. I really liked the personal touch, seeing someone's face, you know, talking to them, looking in there. And it was really tough with those masks on. Yeah, it was difficult, I get it at the time. But I'm happy we are where we are and I don't think there's ever going to be like knock on wood I don't know where there's wood around here but I don't think there's ever going to be a situation where we're going to react so quickly as we did, to go so far away from what we do on a day-to-day basis normally. You know, I hope we're going gonna make decisions a little slower well, what if the next one's really bad?
Speaker 1:that's that would, that's when. That's when the big worry is if something's actually really bad, then it becomes the the wolf or the kid who cried wolf, right and I mean luckily.
Speaker 2:If that's the case, I think most companies like ours are fully set up to literally stand up, take your laptop and go home and it's like seamless, nothing has you know. It's like nothing's changed. It wasn't like that. You know, january, february 2020. That's for sure. No, no, no. We had to make lots of changes to make all that readily available.
Speaker 1:I remember I flew to San Francisco in January of 2020, and I went to Canadian Tire and I could not find the N95 mask. They're gone, really. This was before this was even out in the news. Yeah, that's early, that's really really early. And I had to call one of our customers SiteMax customers and be like can you connect me to a safety company? And then I got like 10. Yeah, but it was the only way. It was like you know.
Speaker 2:I remember we ordered.
Speaker 1:That was way back then, though.
Speaker 2:We ordered like 5,000 from China and got them shipped to us.
Speaker 1:They're like sure we've got those. Oh yeah, we've got some more of ours if you want that too. They hooked us up real fast. That's pretty cool. So what else? On the intergenerational thing, we covered the. Covid thing, we covered the work from home thing. What else? What else is like weird, oh work-life balance.
Speaker 2:You ever hear, you ever hear that, oh yeah, the teeter-totter of dysfunction.
Speaker 1:Oh man yeah that's a.
Speaker 2:That's a. That's a hot topic balance.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, how many construction people on site feel like they're balanced? They feel like they're gassed half the time. Am I wrong?
Speaker 2:no, you're not. You're not wrong. You know, we, we do an annual survey for our staff and one of the questions is about work-life balance and how. You know it's all about how we're supporting them in their approach. Um, and, and we we're gangbusters on all other nine areas. We like to be nine out of ten on every question, and that one, we're constantly under the nine mark. We're in the eight and a half.
Speaker 1:Well, who is ten? I don't know People who have a job, get paid and actually don't go. That's the people who are ten.
Speaker 2:But it would be nice if we could somehow structure this thing so our site guys were working eight-hour days, five days a week that would be.
Speaker 1:So how is that working now? So they're just not right Answering emails all throughout the night.
Speaker 2:Well, this industry, just you get behind one of your trades. It doesn't have the site forces that they thought they were going to put on and all of a sudden you're working a Saturday to get it to where you thought it was going to be at the end of the week, and it happens way too often. We're trying to implement things in our company to support that and to make it happen less. It's not never going to happen, but to help it happen less. And's not never going to happen, but to help it happen less. And there's some successes and some failures. We're going to continue working on it because, at the end of the day, all you got is your people. That's all you have.
Speaker 1:Does all of this downward pressure for all the stuff that the people that you, that work for you guys, have to endure working for a Saturday just so a developer can just make X like do you know what I mean? There's this top down pressure, this. There should be some kind of regulation at the top that just makes that not have to be the case.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Or or does that just then we become communist.
Speaker 2:I don't know so what I'm getting at, though, right, one of the great things for us is we we don't actually do any work for developers, okay so we're not.
Speaker 1:Well, it's true, we're not for me. I'm paying your taxes, I'm a developer.
Speaker 2:True, true but for developers it's all about bottom line and all about how much money they can make yeah whereas when you're working for a municipality, you're working for a school district. It's more about hey, how are we going to make this thing happen together?
Speaker 2:And it's way less top down. You know, hammer the little guy sort of approach, and that's that's the niche that we want to stay in. We don't want our staff, much like we talked about earlier. You don't want D's and C employees working for you. We don't want to work for D and C clients.
Speaker 1:That's great. We want to work for A and.
Speaker 2:B clients who want to collaborate with us and treat our people with respect so that they enjoy doing what they do every day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense. So I guess that the municipalities if you were to come to whoever is your key point of contact for that particular project and you're like, look, my guys are going to come in on Saturday because of this, do you think they would probably be like, don't. No no we're still going to do it.
Speaker 2:But it'll be a question from that client of okay, how can I support that? How can we help?
Speaker 1:make this happen, some kind of credit to these people later, or something.
Speaker 2:Rather than well too bad?
Speaker 1:Yeah, too bad, deal with it. Yeah, makes sense.
Speaker 2:Get it done. We need people in these units.
Speaker 1:Well, it seems like you're pretty switched on. You can probably navigate all this stuff pretty easy. Huh? Being a COO, oh, I don't know about pretty easy. Well, I don't know. Most of it's just basic human nature and you just got to make sure that you're working Like the mental health stuff around construction is a big issue, obviously, and if you're a company that has a pretty good hit rate when it comes to people being happy, it's a great thing.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, because, like I said earlier, you're nothing without your people. Well, that's all it is really, isn't it it?
Speaker 1:is Okay. Well, this has been great, brad. Thanks very much. Thank you, yeah, I'd love to have you on for a longer conversation one day. It'd be awesome, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Best of luck. I'd enjoy it too.
Speaker 1:Enjoy the meet the generals.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much. Right on, man Appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Cheers. 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 our monthly newsletter at sitemaxsystemscom slash the site visit, where you'll get industry insights, pro tips and everything you need to know about the site visit podcast and Sitemax, the job site and construction management tool of choice for thousands of contractors in North America and beyond. Sitemax is also the engine that powers this podcast. All right, let's get back to building.