The SiteVisit

Construction Market Expansion, Youth Entry, and Future Challenges in the Industry with John Reid, Co-Founder at Faber Technologies

• James Faulkner

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Get acquainted with John Reid, Co-Founder at Faber Technologies, and learn about the highs and lows of scaling a business while keeping strong team connections. Faber is an online marketplace that connects construction firms with a diverse range of skilled labour resources.

In this episode, we shine a spotlight on the evolving landscape of Vancouver's construction sector, particularly focusing on youth entry into the field. With a market driven by employers due to an oversupply of workers, we discuss the challenges in attracting younger generations to construction and the key role of visibility and training. Discover how gig economy platforms can serve as a gateway for unskilled laborers to gain valuable experience and build meaningful industry relationships. We delve into the career development potential within this model and examine the age range of new sign-ups, primarily between 18 to 28 years old.

Finally, we explore the future challenges in the construction sector. From identifying required skills and accessing training resources to recent updates in workforce management tools, we cover the advancements that are shaping the industry.

Don’t miss out on this informative and engaging episode packed with industry insights and captivating stories.

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Speaker 1:

Out in Yaletown, that's tonight. You're going to take one of your reps from Calgary out.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we're taking. We obviously just launched Calgary a couple months ago and have been building that market out since and kind of expanding with some customers. So yeah, it's been great and yeah, we're going to bring the rep out to Yaletown and kind of show them around Vancouver, which will be great. That's pretty cool.

Speaker 1:

I was in Toronto last week and we have a customer support rep there and we had to do the same thing, except no, we had her come our way, but then we went her way. Nice, yeah, we took her out and did the whole thing. That was great. Yeah, to be in their own town too.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think that's cool, like getting them to show you around the city and vice versa right, it definitely gets people excited, right, and that's kind of the startup dream, right, of getting people excited and doing that. So in two weeks I'll go to Calgary and probably be the same thing and maybe I'll get on a horse this time. A horse, yeah, really, you know, I didn't know you were much of a rider Get the full Yellowstone experience in Calgary.

Speaker 1:

Yellowstone. Yeah, the Yellowstone. Is it filmed there? It's not filmed.

Speaker 2:

No.

Speaker 1:

I don't think it's filmed there.

Speaker 2:

But uh, yeah, trying to take credit for uh Texas or something like that, is that where?

Speaker 1:

that is, I think it was filmed in.

Speaker 2:

Wyoming, I, you know Wyoming, or somewhere, somewhere, you know, north of the border. So nice, yeah. I actually did get on a horse for the first time, though that was part of uh. I recently got married and that was part of my vows that I I promised my wife, who's a big horse girl, to uh to go riding. So I went out to Millerville, alberta, and got on a horse for the first time.

Speaker 1:

And that's like Western saddle though right, yeah, western saddle. But I tell you, Western saddle looks sketchy right.

Speaker 2:

Man I got on the horse, horse started moving. Someone didn't tell me how to stop, so that was a funny experience, but yeah nonetheless, a great time, nice.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome. Welcome to the Site. Visit Podcast, leadership and perspective from construction with your host, james Falkner. Business as usual, as it has been for so long. Now that it goes back to what we were talking about before and hitting the reset button. You know, you read all the books.

Speaker 2:

You read the emails. You read scaling up, you read good to great. You know I could go on. We've got to a place where we found the secret serum. We found the secret potion. We can get the workers in. We know where to get them.

Speaker 2:

Once I was on a job it took quite a while and actually we had a semester concrete and I recorded like a finished patio out front of the psych show I was down at dallas and, uh, 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 the favorite connect platform on your guys's podcast. And we celebrate these values every single day.

Speaker 1:

Let's get down to it All, right, Mr Reid John, how are things going?

Speaker 2:

Things are great Seven years into building Faber. Some of the listeners who don't know what we do. We're a two-sided marketplace that's fixing the labor shortage in the construction industry right now by providing a simple mobile platform for construction companies to connect with construction workers. And, yeah, it's been great. Lots of insights into the where the labor market's going, uh, what we see in the labor market and you know how we're trying to fix it yeah.

Speaker 1:

So I mean, I've been watching you guys over the years. We were like neighbors on the same floor for quite a while in a building here when we started, which is kind of cool. I was like Faber who the hell is that? He's like Cymax who the hell is that? Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, things change over the years. I'll just give you an example. I read an article in Vancouver and specifically when it comes to home building, it seems like there are more employees than there are new builds happening. It seems like it's almost flipped the other way, like there's too many people for too little projects because we don't have a lot of infrastructure projects here, do we?

Speaker 2:

people for two little projects, because we don't have a lot of infrastructure projects here, do we? Yeah, not a lot, but I think down the pipeline we're definitely going to see a lot of stuff come online, you know late 2025, 2026, 2027 sort of timeframe. But yeah, definitely post COVID we've definitely seen a bit of a shift into more of an employer environment opposed to the, you know, worker employee environment. But yeah, I definitely think there's still a huge gap for finding the right people, you know, and that's kind of where we fit in.

Speaker 1:

So where is that weighted now? So, obviously a two-sided marketplace. Obviously you have supply and demand, depending on which one it is. So which is? Is it people wanting to find better work or is it employers trying to find? Get some people anyone Like? Has it flipped or is it still pretty even? Yeah?

Speaker 2:

I would say it's like, definitely, like I said, an employer market. I definitely think we're seeing, you know, more people kind of being a little bit more picky and choosy about who they bring up. There's definitely a huge appetite for construction workers to pick up jobs, I think. Still, you know, it's an industry that people aren't necessarily, you know, jumping into and wanting to get into the construction industry. And you know, I think that obviously starts with, you know, visibility, training, those sort of things in order to make it more approachable, especially for the young generation who, you know, frankly, is going to be what's going to be driving the construction industry in the next five to 10 years.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Especially as people start to age out, retire and move on from the industry, we're definitely going to have to have a subset of people come up and pick up these jobs.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, Do you think that the younger generation will be able to live out their sort of gig economy desires? That's going to be difficult to do early on. They might be able to do that after they've gotten the experience right, but it's difficult to do before that. You can't really just pick and choose. You've got to work full-time for a while to be able to be a knowledge base where you're useful. Otherwise you can't really get there. Is that right?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think we look at our platform and the gig economy in the way of like hey, you know, construction companies are currently using temporary labor agencies to find construction workers.

Speaker 2:

Picking up the phone calling the agency, they're kind of getting whoever's at the front of the line or you know, whoever raises their hand on the list.

Speaker 2:

What our goal is obviously to go out and say you put a request out for a labor, find someone who's super local to that job site, connect them with that job. Our age range is probably a lot younger than most of these agencies, because we're technology focused first, and ideally we connect you with someone who doesn't have a lot of skills. If you're just looking for a kind of a sweeper general labor guy and he learned something on that construction site that day or he gets inspired to work in the industry, right, and that for us is a win. Right. Taking that person who maybe doesn't have any skills and over time, as they work more and more jobs with other contractors, you know they actually build up some type of skill. That's all reflected on their profile and then, you know, maybe they end up getting hired full time by one one of those construction companies, right um and trained up, and that's how they enter the construction market well, that makes sense.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so I guess that the the uh, the less technical jobs, just the general labor stuff. It's pretty easy for sure. Are you seeing um like kids coming out of high school and signing up with you guys at a university? Let's see what's it. What's it what? So what's the new cohort age range of, like new signups you got?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I would probably say it's around like that 18 to 28, kind of that range, right. Kids either just getting out of high school, or kids just getting out of university, or someone who maybe did an extended degree to get that degree for their parents and then realized I don't know if I want to go and Gotta pay their debt. Yeah, ah, I don't know if I want to go and Got to pay their debt, yeah, exactly right. So then they're like, oh well, maybe I should jump into the trades and go down that route, and so we've definitely seen a mix of that and it's exciting, right. For us it's really exciting and we know there's a huge appetite for people to enter the industry.

Speaker 2:

It's about making it approachable, right, today, I was a 19-year-old kid and I didn't know anyone in construction and there's a lot of jobs on a lot of job boards these days, right, and to pick an industry, the nice thing about us is you can just dip your feet in and if you don't like it, at least you tried, right, yeah, and that's the great thing about the gig economy, right? Well, an Uber driver? You're just an uber driver, right. Or a doordash driver? You're just delivering food, but at least with favor. There is an opportunity to make a career path in it.

Speaker 1:

Well, and relationships too. Exactly, yeah, I mean, uber driver, you're not gonna be like your rides, you're gonna be like so let's get together after this. Yeah, exactly for sure. Well, who knows, maybe, maybe, maybe there are some sometimes, depending what the drivers are like. Yeah, I guess. Um, well, that's pretty cool. So how has the business? We don't have to get into specifics, obviously there's disclosure things, but how has the growth of the business been? Has it been exciting? I know you went to the States for a while. Are you back there now, or are you across Canada? Where are things sitting these days?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, we're. Obviously we operate in Dallas. It's kind of our stronghold just in the US. It's just such a vast big market. We're just kind of doubling down on that market and making sure that we can, you know, figure out all the things that work and the things that don't work before we expand to the U? S. But, um, most recently we obviously launched Calgary, alberta, uh, which has been going really well. It's growing 200% faster than Dallas is actually. So, um, yeah, we definitely seen an appetite for a marketplace like this and you know, part of it, I think, comes to a lot of our customers based in Vancouver who work in Calgary. So, over the next little while we do plan on kind of expanding out east and kind of growing our market share in the Canadian market.

Speaker 1:

That's actually a pretty interesting aspect of you know once they're like so how much? What about Toronto? Is that pretty a busy market for you as well?

Speaker 2:

We don't operate in Toronto currently. Oh, you don't Okay, no.

Speaker 1:

Okay, okay, so just BC, dallas and Alberta, then Correct, so Calgary, specifically Edmonton.

Speaker 2:

We've had some appetite there, but yeah, currently just focusing on Calgary.

Speaker 1:

Because it's just kind of interesting where people can kind of move around with your app if they wanted to right. Sure, if you've got somebody who's single and they don't have a lot of ties to Vancouver or what it is and they're like you know, I want to live in Calgary for a little bit, they could do that. They know that they can go pick up jobs with you and be able to afford to live there.

Speaker 2:

For sure, and I think one of the big ones that we look at and we do see that, like when we launched Calgary, we had carpenters that were based in Calgary, that we had used or had been, you know, gone through the platform in Vancouver, who now we're picking up jobs in Calgary and the great thing about that is, you know, they don't necessarily have to put in a resume or anything like that they can get connected to these jobs.

Speaker 2:

All the data that we have on them is already all tracked, so they have a track record with us. We know they're going to be a good you know user of the app, unlike a resume, right? If I live in Quebec and I work for James's Framing Company and my reference is you know, yada, yada, yada, and then I go and I move to Vancouver, you know that street cred might not necessarily be there. So you know, it's almost kind of like the LinkedIn of trades, from moving from Vancouver to Calgary or Calgary to Toronto or vice versa.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, just get a Hawaii office going.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the Miami Florida office. I'll go down there.

Speaker 1:

Six months a year. Palm Beach office yeah, avoid the rain, right, that's pretty cool. So what about the? You know, people talk about women in construction. I mean, are you seeing on your platform a? What's the sort of gender? Did I say gender? Can you even say that anymore? What's the? What's the sort of gender? Did I say gender? Can you even say that anymore? What's what's the mix? Hot mic over there.

Speaker 2:

It's a really hot mic. I honestly don't have that data in particular like off the top of my head, but yeah, I definitely think it's something that we could easily pull up and track. I know, you know, we're working on a couple of things right now when it comes to labor data and insights and that sort of thing. So, you know, look out for an announcement in a couple months.

Speaker 1:

Oh, cool, okay. So where do you see things in terms of like culture, differences between like Alberta and Vancouver, like work ethic, people showing up. Do you see less problems? More problems Like what's the vibe Like when you get to Calgary and you do presentations or you talk to people, your sales people talk to companies? Do you find it more progressive there, as in people want to get stuff done quickly, as opposed to Vancouver? What's the business appetite difference in terms of culture there?

Speaker 2:

I would say it's definitely a little bit more of a yes or no market, opposed to Vancouver, where it can be a little bit more wishy-washy when it comes to new innovation. It's either a yes or a no, very similar to kind of Dallas. That's what we noticed there. In a market, you'll get a pretty much direct yes or a direct no, which is obviously nice. But, yeah, we obviously don't have too much data on the market. We're only like four or five months in no-transcript, for instance.

Speaker 1:

Like you're, you're obviously going up again, so it was just like you did when you started here. Is that? Um, do they still have a pretty good stronghold on that and you guys are just biting their heels? Is that how it's going right now?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, for sure, I definitely think that's, um, you know, relationships are such a big driver for the construction industry and you know, I totally agree, I think that's important to obviously have relationships with, you know, um, people within the industry. But uh, you know, obviously that'll evolve and that'll change. But yeah, there's still super outdated, um, you know temp staffing companies out there that are still triple carbon copy timesheets, sign off at the end of the day. You know, just very mundane lineup at the front of the door for these workers at four in the morning and get dispatched for a 7am shift and, like I understand from the construction company superintendent who's been doing it for 10, 20 years, but like you got to think about the worker, like if I was a construction worker and I had to get up at 3.30 in the morning to get to the site office for four, to get dispatchedatched for seven and then work a whole day and then come back to the office to get my check, that doesn't work. No, it doesn't work.

Speaker 1:

It's 2024. Right, so you're completely getting those bookends gone, so you're just going straight to site.

Speaker 2:

Totally. Yeah, you put a booking in our app. Our app sends it out to our database of workers and pings them on their smartphone, kind of like an Uber driver. You're able to go and either allow our system to book the person for you or you can go in and look at the profiles and then, yeah, once that person is accepted on the job, yeah, they get the job details and go to the job for the start time, work the day and then all those hours are approved electronically and, yeah, you get a simple invoice at the end of the week. So, again, it's super streamlined. We're taking a lot of the paper process out of it and, again, just trying to make efficiencies not only for the construction company but really for the construction worker. That's where we put a lot of time and effort in when we started designing the software, just because we know how hard it is to find really great people.

Speaker 1:

That's cool, so people are enjoying. Like, what kind of like? Do you have any success stories that you can share in terms of you know, people have said to you wow, this app's amazing, blah, blah, blah. Like, what kind of things have you heard over the years?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I definitely won't say any names, no for sure, construction companies. But yeah, we definitely have going to be using this. You know, saves us a ton of time, a lot of headache, you know, having being able to have the track record on the people, being able to re-request the same people for jobs, being able to take a guy from one site that we really like and move them to site two because we know we have a need there, right it just, it just becomes like such a simple tool to have at your fingertips and you know, that's, I think, why our customers really like it and gravitate toward it. And then, on the worker sides, our net promoter score for the listeners that's, you know, the score on how we do against the industry. It like is 200 and something percent higher than most temp staffing companies. So the workers love it. They're very, very attached to it. I know even just today we put an offer out for I saw an offer come through is for a general labor position for Monday, which is obviously unskilled, but it had 78 people interested.

Speaker 1:

Wow, 78 people are interested in doing it.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

Wow.

Speaker 2:

So I struggle a little bit. You know, when we talk about labor shortages and we talk about you know, oh, I can't find anyone. I understand that there is a very big training and skill shortage. There obviously isn't a million red seal carpenters out there, but there's 78 people that are putting their hand in line to go sweep floors on a job site that maybe one out of that 78 could be your carpenter if you put the time and effort in to maybe train that person right.

Speaker 2:

And we're bridging the gap in order to get those people into the trades.

Speaker 1:

See, that's the interesting part. Like the devil's in the details when it comes to this stuff and this is exactly an example of what you just said 78 people want to do that, but when you get to the more sophisticated types of positions, they just don't have the skills for it. There's still the people. The want is there, the demand is there and the desire is there. It's just that they just can't. Obviously is there, the demand is there and the desire is there. It's just that they just can't. Obviously there's the skills bridge they have to cross first in order to be able to do that.

Speaker 2:

So how do you think that we fix this skills shortage then? Yeah, I think you know, definitely, on-site trainings, I think a really great thing. I think, if you have an opportunity, whether it's through us, whether it's through anyone but if you have that young person who doesn't know how to do something and you're asking them to do, to show you know, show them something like spend two hours on site showing them how to do it, right, like I. I understand everyone's busy, the world's moving really fast nowadays, right, but just spend the extra time to do it. Um, and I think you, I think doing that on-site, hopefully more people pick up skills and can learn that way, let's just say the 77 people that didn't get that job that day.

Speaker 1:

Do you have suggestions for them in terms of what the next strata of jobs that they could do that would only require maybe six months training that they could do? So the next time it could be a job that they would get picked up right away.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's a good question. So, yeah, workers can see jobs if they don't have the skills for them. But when they apply to the job, it basically has a pop-up saying, hey, thanks for applying to this job, but you need to get your scissor lift ticket in order to go and work this job. And basically we can tell that that person's attempted to basically try to accept that job and our operations team will reach out to them and they automatically get the resources in order to get trained for that position.

Speaker 1:

That's pretty cool.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so it's a good feedback loop on that, and I think one of the great things about the worker app that we have is we obviously have 24-hour support for all the workers. You know a lot of general laborers who work for construction companies, you know. Do they have 24-hour access to someone in the office to voice their concerns?

Speaker 1:

too, so you have 24 hours. Yeah, yeah, how does that work?

Speaker 2:

We have a team in the Philippines that actually manages our operations for the workforce chat and, yeah, they basically chat to them and create support tickets for our team here in Vancouver and that just helps us stay organized and on top of any issues that the workforce is facing.

Speaker 1:

Cool. So what's next for Faber? Like, what do you guys? Are you working on anything that you can share? That's kind of interesting.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we have a couple of pretty interesting tools. We just released, kind of like a workforce management craft worker tool where construction companies can kind of move workers around site to site Right now. Currently, you know, if you want to move a carpenter from site one to site two, for the most part it's over text, email, call that sort of thing, and there can be a lot of things lost in between. So we obviously have that small feature that we just released and a couple of really interesting features around kind of you know, labor data and labor insights that teams will be able to pull from. So, you know, hopefully project management teams get a better outlay of what's actually going on on their job sites when it comes to, you know, cost coding and things like that Cost coding, oh there you go.

Speaker 1:

Cost coding, there you go, yeah Not just 001.

Speaker 2:

That's just the buzzword there, but we'll see, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's pretty cool. So what do you? Do you see this labor? We talk about the labor shortage. You said you're going to have 78 people looking for. Do you see this getting better? Or do you see more people coming into construction? Like, what's your sense? Like we? Just I just keep hearing that you see more people coming into construction. Like what's your, what's your sense? Like we? Just I just keep hearing that no one wants to go into construction. That's what I keep hearing all the time. No one wants to go in, no one wants to go in it, and I don't know.

Speaker 2:

I mean, I don't know if I the data doesn't say that I had a LinkedIn post a couple, maybe two months ago where I shared, kind of the I'm interested button. So we have workers, when they onboard to our system, we ask them you know, what skills you know and basically also what they want to learn? Yeah, and there's a lot of people. I'm interested in electrician, I'm interested in becoming a plumber, I'm interested in this, I'm interested in this, these are the people with no skills.

Speaker 2:

Right, that's what I'm saying. Like there's people that have no skills, that are saying I am interested in learning X. I see okay, right, so it's. And it's all around skilled trades, I see okay, so how do we capitalize on that audience? Capitalize might not be the best word, but move those people into a position where it's like here are all of the current plumbing apprenticeships in BC, here are all the electrical apprenticeships options in BC, right, and push people in that direction.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think the point I was getting at is all I've been hearing you know, being a part of these associations, et cetera is just you know how, in the next number of years, there's going to be this big hole and we're not filling it with the amount of people that are retiring. It's basically just that math. We're not filling it with the amount of people that are retiring. It's basically just that math. So, but there are I think it's probably not just on the frontline worker side of things that specialized skilled experience is probably where it's going to be a bit of a mess, when something takes like five or six years. I mean, you could be trained to do something, but you might not.

Speaker 1:

Anybody can do something the first time. It's like how you fix it when it's going wrong. It's like anybody can build something when it's sunny. It's how you build it. When it's thundering, yeah, and it's mostly something that was going wrong on site. And it's the years of experience that allow people to be able to like, pivot and be able to like oh no, let's just do this, because I've done that 15 years ago and that worked.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

That kind of stuff. Yeah, I think so that gap of time, I think is you might have all of these new people that want to come into that. But it's like how do you, how do you get that going?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think you touched on a good point is the oh, I did this 15 years ago so it worked. Yeah, right, like I get it. I understand that right. But, like you know, I think that's why construction technology is slowly seeping through to help the construction industry in somewhat of a way right Like, because sure, you did it that way 15 years ago, but it took you a week. Well, what happens if you could do it in two days? Right?

Speaker 1:

So maybe you need to have less specialization. As we you know, bring technology into the fold, so what?

Speaker 2:

do you think are the next? Are the challenges for the next 10 years in construction? Definitely, obviously you know the training shortage and getting people into the construction industry for sure. I definitely think change management that's obviously a huge blunder is, you know there's a lot of people that don't want to change the way they do things, and that's obviously one of the big ones I see. And then, yeah, I guess just you know growing house prices, right, how everything's so expensive now in order to build. That obviously puts a damper in it. But again, if we can bring in technology to make things cheaper, then hopefully that'll help. So I think there'll be a paradigm shift here eventually.

Speaker 1:

Do you think that? I just don't think anything's ever going to go down. It just seems as though everything has gotten more expensive and it just Labor in general has become more expensive. It just labor has. Labor in general has become more expensive. So we want materials to be less. Well, the minimum wage has to be less in order to manufacture those materials. That's not happening. So everything's just like. We've seen promises, you know, even in some of the political stuff right now. You know prices. We're going to price fix. Things are going to come. It's never coming down, it just won't. Yeah, butter's not going to go back to five bucks. It's just not happening.

Speaker 2:

It just can't yeah, especially with the rail strike.

Speaker 1:

That doesn't help either the good old rail strike. Yeah, one of our staff today was like, yeah, I can't on that side of the pressure of building and how expensive it is, etc. So what do you think of the? I always ask this question what do you think of the dovetail between that feeling that people can't afford to live in the stuff they build, even if it's modest? I can understand if you're like in the west side near Chip Wilson's house or something you're like well, I built this deck and I can't afford to live here.

Speaker 1:

Obviously there's a miscalculation there. But if it's just a condo out in the suburbs, that person who built that should be able to kind of afford maybe a studio there. And they can't even do that. So do you think that there's a morale issue where it comes to the transfer of purpose people have and the projects they're building? They don't feel really connected to it because they feel like they could never have it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I don't know. I can't necessarily comment too much on that because I obviously haven't really seen that, but yeah, I still think people are pretty inspired if they're building something pretty amazing. You know, for example, we did a project on Alberni Street where I think the price a square foot was three to $4,000. And you know, I think that team was still pretty excited to be able to build. But that's a cool place though, right? Yeah, so you're talking about like some cookie cutter sort of thing.

Speaker 1:

They still can't get that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, you know it's hard to obviously bring in inspiration probably to a project like that in general, even if they could afford it, I imagine. Right, if they're a skilled person, they probably want to be building, inspiring, exciting things, right. But yeah, hopefully obviously with maybe some of this modular stuff that's coming into the fold I obviously don't know too much about it, I see it in the headlines all the time for cheaper housing. You know, some of the CLT kind of mass timber stuff is interesting as well and maybe that moves into making things more affordable. But yeah, I definitely agree with you a little bit on that. You know I don't see the prices necessarily stopping but I definitely see maybe a bit of a plateau coming.

Speaker 1:

But Is the um. Can you talk about wages a little bit? Sure, okay, um so baseline like um sweeping the site is that it's. What's the difference between here and Calgary? Is that the same?

Speaker 2:

Uh, it's maybe like a two to $3 variable in difference. It's a bit cheap. It's a bit cheaper in Calgary and a bit more expensive here, probably because of housing prices. Okay, and what is that starting typically, I would say around $18 in Calgary and maybe $20, $21 here in Vancouver $21,.

Speaker 1:

hey for sweeping. Yeah, it's crazy right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you know it's definitely not livable in Vancouver, that's for sure $20 an hour.

Speaker 1:

yeah, I mean, what's Tim Hortons?

Speaker 2:

Maybe like $15, $16. Yeah, but you get to work inside and probably get free donuts and coffee, right? So it's all worth it in the long run.

Speaker 1:

You still get free donuts and coffee on the job site now.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

A little depends, Maybe Wednesdays Depends.

Speaker 2:

Depends if you're, you know, on the top of the tower and the donuts and coffee come and you're running down. Well, you're not running, but taking the hoist down, you're the last guy down there. You're stuffed with the dry, old fashioned donut from Tim Hortons that's been knocked around the box a couple of times, while all the goodies are gone.

Speaker 1:

Wow, that's very graphic, John. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

I've been there before, so get it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so a difference of $2,. I mean, do you see that that's never going down?

Speaker 2:

No, I don't think that's going down. Maybe if you were to potentially go to the underbelly of the labor market and find someone know is undocumented or something like that, that might be able to get the labor price a little bit cheaper. But yeah, I definitely don't think that's going down and that's like the low, like that's the low end, I would say, on the labor cost.

Speaker 1:

Crazy, yeah.

Speaker 2:

So in order for that I mean, if that's what you can be getting on a job site at a manufacturing plant, you're going to be getting the same- Maybe a little bit less actually, yeah, yeah, I think a warehouse plant worker anywhere between $16, $17 an hour, I would say, for like picking, packing jobs, that sort of thing.

Speaker 1:

So I guess modular once that starts really firing up, you're going to be able to be placing people for that kind of work, or is that not going to be a temporary kind of situation? So why is the job site just temporary? Because the terrain's changing constantly and the needs are changing constantly yeah, you could have a huge influx.

Speaker 2:

Like you know, you need to do a big park aid sweep out, right? We see construction companies logging onto our system and booking 10 you know general labors for a week in order to do site cleanup, those sort of things. Or you know odds and know odds and ends. Scope gaps a big one, right? Like, hey, this isn't in the carpentry scope and it's not in the car um concrete scope. So you know, instead of me going out to make a contract and do all this paperwork, I'll just go on and, you know, book someone for four days in order to do elevator hoarding or something along those lines. And you know that obviously is a win-win for everyone. Is there?

Speaker 1:

a like. As you know, you've probably listened to me talk about robotics over and over and over. I feel like I love that stuff and I start to think of, you know, in a number of years from now, like the type of individuals that are going to be to run robotics. So, for instance, let's just say it's like a parking lot cleanup, like that you could just deploy like three or four robots to go and sweep this stuff up and you don't need the humans to do it, but you need humans to go run them.

Speaker 1:

So do you see a world where it's Faber, human plus robots, faber robotics. Well, I mean, it's a deployment thing based on the people who know how to run those, because I'm not sure that every construction company is going to want to hire that specific person to run that particular piece of machinery. And it seems like we see that obviously in large excavation, where large tools are coming on the job site like backhoes and excavators and stuff like that, and that obviously comes with an entire new type of thing. But there are lots of things coming down the technology route that need humans to run them. So it could be a very interesting. I know this is like super future, so it could be a very interesting. I know this is like super future, but yeah, the Faber Plus robotics could be very interesting.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, who knows down the line, right, I think the one great thing about robotics and machines in general is obviously, as they're still probably going to be hard on the person working on the job site, it's maybe, you know, maybe a little bit easier than having to operate like with your hands or something like that, depending on what the robotics are, right. But, um, you know, like if you look at, as you know, zoom boom lift that takes you up, you know X amount of floors, like opposed to having to climb a bunch of ladders in order to get up there and kind of get tied off. Obviously that's a old innovation, but you know, I think as we see robotics enter the market, we probably see a lot of changes too.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, what do they say? That robotics will do the dull, dirty and dangerous?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, dull, dirty and dangerous. I haven't heard of that one.

Speaker 1:

The 3Ds, 3ds.

Speaker 2:

That's what I was talking about, yeah.

Speaker 1:

I guess they're trying to get that because nobody wants to do that stuff anyway. Either it's super lame to do, it's it's dangerous, and no one wants to get dirty anymore.

Speaker 2:

So there you go. Those ones all build character, though a little bit. Maybe not the danger one, because you want to be safe on the job site, but the three other ones kind of are you want to get your boots dirty. Who needs character these days?

Speaker 1:

No one needs that. Yeah, you'll get canceled. Yeah, it's bubble wrap everywhere. You don't need any character anymore. You can just walk around bumping and stuff. You'll need any, any, uh, any character anymore.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you can just walk around bumping and stuff You'd be safe.

Speaker 1:

I don't know about that. Well, we'll see what we say, especially in Vancouver. Yeah, vancouver, yeah, interesting times. So have you seen um like, uh, the building starts here in Vancouver. You see that changing.

Speaker 2:

Uh, yeah, I think that there's a lot of stuff in 2025 coming and personally, from seeing like what we're doing and what we're getting dispatched out to, I think we'll see a little bit of a slowdown, kind of 2024 time toward the tail end, and then kind of ramp back up in 2025.

Speaker 1:

So Do you think we are? Are we ahead of Toronto when it comes to like they got a lot of empty condos over there? Do you think we're going to be there-ish?

Speaker 2:

Really hard, really hard to say yeah.

Speaker 1:

Because you live down here.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I live down here. I don't know, I live in a condo, but I don't think there's too many empty ones from what I see. But obviously they're not all finished. Yeah, they're not all finished, right, but I definitely see a lot of trends to what San Francisco and Vancouver are. You know, san Francisco is obviously way further along as a city, but you know, if you go to San Francisco today and you want to buy a condo down in downtown San Francisco, it's all high end luxury, right, yeah. And you're starting to see a little bit more of that in Vancouver, where, if you look at a lot of the builds that are happening in downtown Vancouver that aren't purpose built rental but are unit sales, they're all expensive, yeah, right, like they're, all you know, really cool, architecturally done and, you know, extremely expensive, very similar to San Francisco, right, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Manhattan, same. Thing.

Speaker 2:

Exactly so. I think major cities will start to see that and we'll just obviously keep moving out further and further and further. Yeah, and you're definitely seeing that. You know, just the other day I was looking at a place and it was like a two bedroom, one bath in Coquitlam for $2,700 or something like that. Yeah, and I was like wow, like I would have been living way out there. You know, when I first moved out of you know, school $2,700.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's a lot of money.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean that's crazy eh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

I mean that's crazy. Eh yeah, yeah, the. So when you have people on your application and they have to go out to, let's say, the jobs in Chilliwack, for instance, and they live in Burnaby, so what is that Like? The travel time, is that covered ever so?

Speaker 2:

how it works is when you send out a request on our app, we obviously take on a lot of data points, things like rating and reviews, location, past job history, endorsed skills that are on our platform all of these different data points in order to match you with the right person, right? Yeah, so if there was a request in Chilliwack, we're probably going to send that request out to the first 15 kilometers if you think about the site and just drawing a 15 kilometer circle and so that would get basically dispatched to all those tier one workers in that geo. So what does tier one mean? Tier one's like the top dog Okay, he's like your Uber pro, he's your, you know, uh, airbnb super host, that sort of thing. And then tier one is those are the guys that are like amazing, right, and then tier five is anyone that we don't have any data points, and then obviously, a waterfall is in between, and this entail obviously helps workers. You know, the ones that are really good and want to put in their best effort. They're going to get more jobs and more opportunities, right, and so we have that all in there, but it's really up to the contractor whether or not they want to cover the travel, pay when they put up the job.

Speaker 2:

But ideally our goal is to get the worker as hyper local as possible. That makes sense, you know, I know a couple months ago we got a guy who was like 700 meters away from the job site. Wow, yeah, crazy. Yeah, it's like that's amazing, right. Short sprint, short sprint. Yeah, can't be late. Can't be late for that one. That would be bad. Eh yeah, that would be bad if you no-showed that You're down in tier four.

Speaker 1:

Exactly, you went from tier one all the way down to the bottom. How many tiers do you have?

Speaker 2:

Five, five tiers, yeah five Brand new, tier one oh, okay, so what does tier five mean it's a brand new net new worker we have. They're fresh to the platform.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and they have no ratings. No ratings, okay, so a tier three would be been here for a while ratings are medium kind of thing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that sort of thing.

Speaker 1:

Okay, yeah, so sometimes a tier three is. You have more information on a tier three, obviously.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

Okay, interesting.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we bring a lot of gamification into our app so workers actually gain points and levels throughout the system. So the more jobs they work, if they get extended on a job by a contractor, you get 100 points. So really thinking about it like a video game and bringing that into the construction world and the construction worker world, and so people level up that sort of thing, they get access to a lot more things.

Speaker 1:

That's pretty cool. So people are really digging your app, huh.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, I'm obviously biased, but anyone who doesn't dig it can give me a call and try it, and if you've got problems with it, I'm more than happy to come down to your job site and fix those problems. So I'm very hands-on, which is great. I love going to job sites fix those problems. So I'm pretty. You know I'm very hands-on, which is great. I love going to job sites. I love meeting new people and getting feedback and insights into things that they think will work, and you know things that maybe we're doing that they don't think work Right. So I think that's how you grow. A really great business is listening to the people that use it.

Speaker 1:

So I see you on social media, mostly LinkedIn, quite a bit Yep.

Speaker 2:

Posting in there. Does that stuff work for you? Well, yeah, I think it's like it's a good way to, you know, obviously, help with brand and things like that. But uh, yeah, it's a good way to meet new audience, right, reach out to people, um, especially when people kind of engage with you that you might not know, it's a little more warm than just being like pick up the phone and finding their phone number online and giving them a call or cold messaging them on LinkedIn. I think that's kind of a nice thing and, you know, I think you get to know someone's character a little bit by what their social media looks like. And so, yeah, you know, I love going to job. Sites is one of my favorite things. If I could do it every day I would, but yeah, Do you get a lot of?

Speaker 1:

does your LinkedIn just get like? I get so many inbound stuff on LinkedIn, do you?

Speaker 2:

It's brutal, brutal Even today, like I was on LinkedIn online talking to someone about the U40 construction leaders event in Toronto that's happening, yeah, and it was like Are you sponsoring that or are you we're not sponsoring, but I will be there.

Speaker 1:

Okay, we're sponsoring that one Amazing. Yeah, not sponsoring, but I will be there. Okay, we're sponsoring that one Amazing, yeah, yeah, that's great.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no, I think it'll be a really great event. That's September 24th, I think, yeah, yeah, that week there. So it's going to be great. I think Andrew and the site news team and everyone's going to put on a really great event. So, yeah, but yeah, it's like eight blocks of paragraphs. It's like I don't know whoever was on that marketing team clearly is not doing a great job. Or also, getting spam phone calls from cold callers from overseas. I've made tons of those. I think that is not a great way to try to grow any type of business that you're in or build any relationships with someone. If some random person in X, y and Z gave me a call and tried to sell me something, they don't even work for the company. Half the time they're a third party that they brought in. It's not a genuine relationship. And yeah, all our reps are local, which is great. They're all boots on the ground, right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean we have the same thing. We have our teams that call out to construction companies and talk about SightMax, but they know about construction. We don't have call centers that are calling out and then, oh yeah, just let me connect you to somebody who knows what they're talking about. We don't do that. Have you heard of that? I think it was called MySudo. I think it gives you a pseudo phone number.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, like basically a business line or something like that.

Speaker 1:

No, it's another phone number so you can route, so you don't get all this crap. It's crazy.

Speaker 2:

Maybe I'll have to check that out. Somehow they'll get through, though they're shifty, those call centers. They are.

Speaker 1:

Okay, well, anything more to talk about. What do you think?

Speaker 2:

What's up with you guys? Obviously you know enough about me, but, yeah, put the mic back on you. It was obviously you've been building this business for a really long time and having a lot of success with it in the podcast and yeah, kind of, what's the future of the podcast and SightMax?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's been interesting. Being a Canadian company is what I find that's been. The biggest thing is, like you know, the United States thing cracking that Now we've got a lot of United States customers, so it's like okay. Well, this is a bit different now. But now we've got to do the US subsidiary and all that kind of stuff and get moving on that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's. You know that was a big step for us, obviously going down to the US as well, but I think the great thing about that journey is obviously the learning was huge, right, like we're, technically can now work all across North America, which is really amazing. And you kind of touched on that human migration point about, like, workers moving city to city. Think about how much of that happens in the US and how much of that happens in Canada, and for how much of that happens in Canada, um, and for the construction industry, I think it's a great opportunity to you know, amalgamate this huge database of construction workers in Canada and the U? S and then, you know, being able to have these national contractors be able to pull from that database, I think is, um, you know, pretty amazing. So, you know, one step at a time, and, uh, yeah, we're just going to keep cracking the whip at it and one nail in the board.

Speaker 1:

That's cool. We've been doing quite a lot with the podcast in terms of advocacy for mental health and that kind of subject. I had some really good episodes recently on that. We essentially see articles coming through anything to do with that kind of culture side of things in construction and we reach out to those folks who are cited in those articles and we have them on the podcast and that's been quite a cool thing. You learn so much. I had the chief economist on from the Generals of Contractors Association of America.

Speaker 1:

I mean he was like wow, when I was talking to him I felt a little dumb. Is that? Who brought the fireball over there? No, no, he was in Virginia. Okay, he was from Virginia. Nice, yeah, so no, but it was a really cool experience to be able to chat with people who have just had so much breadth in their career.

Speaker 2:

And those are the people that need to. You know, like I always have this idea. It's like, okay, I should just buy a warehouse way out in you know the suburbs and just get a couple of really, really experienced people that have been in the construction industry for you know, 20, 25 years, that have seen it all, do it all, and then maybe some young person as well. That kind of is the new kind of wave of construction and just have like 80 workbenches there and just like I'm talking like pseudo crash course, kind of like what coding labs were, oh, yeah, yeah. And just like boom for carpentry, electricians, that sort of thing, and like crash course six weeks and then see ya, yeah, that'd be very cool, wouldn't it?

Speaker 2:

yeah, yeah, like the uh yeah, trades ranches yeah, like, yeah, trade ranches yeah, you can make it. Uh, make a tv show out of it too season one and everyone gets voted off and be inspiring. I'm sure you could do well with that, the faber trade ranch faber trade ranch sponsored by, you can ride a lot of horses.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, exactly, well, I think that winds it up, doesn't it?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1:

All right, john. Well, this has been awesome. Thanks, man. Thanks for coming by and good luck to you guys.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, vice versa.

Speaker 1:

Cool 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.