How 4D Tech Can Improve Your Delivery With David Hernandez

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Greg: welcome to the podcast everyone. Really excited to talk to my guest today, David Hernandez. David, great to have you on the show.

Dave: Yeah, thanks Greg for having me.

Greg: Awesome. I’m glad we managed to coordinate time zones in the end. A little bit awkward with me in Australia.

And where are you, David?

Dave: I’m in Texas. Houston, Texas.

Greg: Yeah. Awesome. Okay. All right. So we’ve we’ve really gone global today. We’ll have listeners in us, UK, and Australia. So David, would you like to give us a bit of an introduction on what you do, who you, what your company is, all of that sort of stuff?

Dave: David Hernandez. I am the managing director of North America for e Oof LLC and Loft. Our parent company is actually based outta the uk parent company is ko, but we provide software for basically the built environment. So our primary software is is core for planning and scheduling, but we offer estimation tools.

 

 

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We offer asset management. So there’s a. There’s a plethora of things that we do, but my core focus in the US is growing our construction planning and scheduling. And we have a little bit of ma assets and maintenance as well. But perfect. Build the company about two and a half years now.

Yeah.

Greg: Good stuff. Yeah. Really look forward to diving into what your company does and some things we can learn for construction. I love tech. I love the way AI’s going. I think it’s like a really exciting place to be at the moment with the way things are moving. So I. To have a conversation like this is is exciting because I just think sometimes we can be a little bit like dinosaurs in construction where we’re a little bit slow moving on the tech side and it’s just all there, isn’t it?

To make our life a lot easier. We’ll we’ll jump into all of that. Maybe, first of all, David, tell us a little bit about your story, how you got into construction, what got you into this space? ’cause I think it’s always interesting to hear someone’s background.

Dave: Yeah, so I grew up in a family of blue collar workers.

My father actually still to this day, still works does HVAC and refrigeration uncle who was a carpenter.

 

 

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So I very young was on the job sites free labor. Fell in love with carpentry. So my, so kinda a little bit of a journey through. School where my brother and I would do some side jobs, and we actually turned that into a little side company doing some remodeling.

But of course my parents were go to school, don’t, we want you to be a doctor lawyer. It’s not my blood construction, I just enjoy it. So I didn’t go into the construction sector early, but I did sell to, it started in sales and marketing helping construction companies get their message out.

Then through that actually. Met a gentleman who was trying to grow a residential construction company here in Houston. I had a commercial, a lot of commercial construction contacts, so he was trying to get into that sector. He and I joined forces and we actually grew our company exponentially over about a two year period.

It’s right before Hurricane Harvey hit Houston. So we had a residential and a commercial sector. We fell into a sweet spot in the commercial piece. It just really. We just really started exploding, but, so we’ll talk a little bit about that challenge because it, I didn’t have technology.

 

 

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It, we didn’t have the right stuff and right processes in place and we I joke kinda said we made mistakes with zeros I ended up selling my partnership and thought I would retire and go fishing. My wife said, no, you’re going back to work. So I actually fell into the tech side. Went to work for viewpoint, who was later purchased by Trimble which is, well known in the tech world.

From Trimble, moved to a small startup and did some safe. I was head of sales for a startup safety app and then now running North America for really good stuff. So

Greg: Fantastic. Yeah, a little bit of, a

Dave: bit of a journey.

Greg: Yeah, it is a journey and I think it’s really interesting to hear that because you are coming at the tech side from someone who’s experienced the pain of having a business that’s grown, rapidly and not had the tech in place.

So has that shaped your decisions to to get into tech? Is that, why, is that what moved you into that space?

Dave: Yeah, so when I, so when the opportunity presented itself, I thought it was brilliant because like you said I saw some of the things that were lacking now.

 

 

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I got into tech, I just, I wanted to dive right in and understand the technology, but my director at the time was like, David, you understand the industry?

Go talk to the people. Go talk construction. And I was actually one of the first hires within that organization that hired from construction because they, typically hired tech sales people and. So it was, the conversations were just fluid. It was, I understand the pain that you’re dealing with.

Oh, actually, I had a superintendent that had the owner walk on a job site and they did a change order that cost us 25 grand, and we didn’t get a record of it. So it’s I, so we lived through that. So it was it was a way for me to still help an industry that I love without, wearing the hard hat, but really have an impact.

Just, you don’t realize how much it impacts a business across all employees when things fail. Yeah.

Greg: A hundred percent. Yeah, for sure. In your experience then, obviously you’ve one had your own business and now you are working with multiple construction companies and seeing some of the things that they’re going through.

Tell us what you think the core problem is in the construction industry today. What are you seeing time and time again?

 

 

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Dave: Man. There there’s a couple I think that stand out. And so we talk about from our, from my perspective when with my sales team, I talk about three things.

People, process, technology, so those take technology completely off the table. And I think people and processes are probably the most important things and processes is probably the one of the places where things get disconnected and. I think in construction it’s mainly reactive versus proactive. And so it’s how do you get ahead of a problem?

And I think that’s where, for me, I saw an opportunity for technology to come in and start, like helping people make decisions versus chasing fires. If when you walk onto a job site, regardless of the size of your business, you’re it’s like constant chaos, right? From the time you step on the job site to the, even sometimes even if you leave the job site, your phone still rings and so I think so. I think if I had to, if I had to do the, if I had to pick two, I would say processes, react, being disconnected and reactive, and then data. So that’s the, you mentioned ai and I’m sure we’ll kinda get a little bit deeper on that.

 

 

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There’s so much information that we have, but it’s everywhere.

It’s disconnected, it’s in silos, it’s in a folder on my superintendent’s desk, or the PM has it in the spreadsheet. There’s no way to bring it all together. And then you have an industry that even if you and I worked in the same company. Maybe our terminology is different, and so you have different terminology.

So it’s just so many different things in that, in silo data that it’s a, it is a challenge, but I think we’re trying to fix it, and I think people are recognizing it. So I do see it be a, see a shift. Sorry.

Greg: Yeah, for sure. I think it’s definitely being recognized. I think most people who have tried to scale a company up realize very soon that if they don’t have those processes in place you’re scaling chaos, aren’t you?

And that’s really tough to deal with as a business owner. And then you just lose money and the team gets disconnected. It can be pretty, pretty painful. Really. Why do you think. Just from a personal perspective, why do you think some are really slow in adopting technology and construction?

What, what do you think the problem is?

 

 

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Dave: So I’ll challenge that thinking a little bit only because I agree to an extent, but I, what I saw around 20 15, 20 16, from friends of mine who were in the industry and even what was happening, they bought a bunch of technology. They were buying stuff.

Now the problem was they were buying point solutions that didn’t really talk to each other. So they weren’t necessarily not adopting technology. They just, they didn’t understand the right technology. And so construction, I think what happened is they bought all this technology and now they’re like, what do I do with it?

They’re hiring, directors of innovation and directors of technology are coming in and trying to figure out how to connect everything. So I think they, they’ve been trying to sort through that mess. Now they’re like, so now they’re, now it’s coming back up. So now I think you’re seeing this acceleration in technology and construction, not only on the buying side, but the development and what’s happening with some of the tech out there?

So I do agree that there, there are some that are slow. You definitely have your early adopters and you have your laggards because people wanna see okay, how’s this gonna work out? But I think it was, they’ve been burned and so you get tech fatigue and and.

 

 

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Not to get long-winded on you, but, so I was at the DCW, which is a, the tech technology show there in London.

And I was there with our CEO and some of the other leadership team, and I said, so I want you to look around and what do you see? And, it’s, it was busy. It’s like people, I’m like, but it’s a lot of people, right? You have a hundred or more vendors here. You have a thousand people walking around.

As people walk by, vendors are saying, Hey, look at my technology. Buy this, buy that. And it’s just chaos and all this stuff. I said, this is what our customers are facing every day. Every day they’re getting phone calls, they’re getting emails, they’re, what technology do I buy? So I think, and I said, so as a software company and as a developer, like we, we need to help bring that noise down and some of, and it’s not always easy.

So we have to make, we have to make buying technology, not even just our technology. I think we, we have to play nice with others. Easy and it sounds easy, but it’s, it’s a difficult process. But anyway, my point was like. It’s just very, it’s a lot of information out there.

Greg: Yeah, there are, there, there really is.

I think you, you said it right earlier when you said that, some people have been burned.

 

 

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Especially the early adopters because I think you, you get a lot of companies that invest. Thousands into putting a piece of technology into the company and then no one follows it or or they don’t, they don’t integrate it the right way and then it works for a little bit and then it breaks and doesn’t work anymore.

And, it can be really costly if they, if the wrong choice is made. So I think you’re right there with the people getting burned and,

Dave: yeah. Sorry. Is that, they said a process piece, right? That, information in is information out. So if you have a bad process. Just ’cause you digitize it doesn’t make it a good process.

Like still a bad process. And sometimes technology highlights even how bad the process is, so

Greg: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you’re completely right. Yeah. So this is something we, we talk about all the time actually, is that get the, if before you implement the tech, let’s make sure your process is working right first.

Have you actually got a process at all that technology can then automate or replace? So yeah, without a doubt that’s important. I think even more so at the moment that the confusion is arriving because of AI and some of the tools that are coming out now we are just, it’s just this bombardment of we can do this and we can do that.

 

 

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How are you finding that space at the moment with with some of the AI tools? Because. I dunno how you find it, but I’m finding the more we’re testing, the more I’m real. Realizing some things are okay, but it’s not quite what it promises to be often. And you can go, waste a lot of time going down a rabbit hole and you think that’s not actually delivering what I was expecting it to.

How are you finding that in your space?

Dave: So that’s, yeah. The AI world is becoming that the kind of the new integration bad word. It’s so everybody wants talk about ai. And I was at a conference in Austin, Texas at the end of end of January.

It was the AI and data transformation, but they had some executives from large construction companies and small construction companies. The one thing that was interesting, and I did, I was a presenter there and there were other presenters there. One thing that was interesting is nobody’s an expert.

Nobody has this figured out. And so that was actually pretty enlightening. Like even some of the e and r top 25 they’re still trying to figure it out. Now they have processes and things, and they have resources that they’re throwing at it.

 

 

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But what, but my point to some of these executives and even some of the team leaders over there, I just asked a simple question talk to me about your KPIs.

Like what are you measuring on a day-to-day basis for project delivery? And some, most of ’em could answer it, but there were some that couldn’t. So I’m like, okay, so we can’t even figure out a KPI question. So if we could get that solved. That would at least give us a starting point to then move to maybe business intelligence, which then becomes your data trends and history and that kind of stuff, which is a good place to be.

And even maybe generate some machine learning off of that, that not necessarily is an AI predictive piece, but it definitely would give you some more insight. And so right now the problem is, we talked about the complexity, the kind of the segregated data. They don’t have that visibility and that, that is really.

The biggest challenge. And the biggest frustration, but honestly, and it really, it was the, I think everybody came there to that conference, like thinking they were gonna solve the AI world, and what they came out was like, oh, we don’t have this. Figure it out.

 

 

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And so I do think that, I do think there’s a place for AI and construction and only, it’s not gonna replace the world.

We’re already doing it. We’re already doing quite a bit with technology and robotics and some other stuff, but it. I shared with them, I said, AI should be, and technology in general should be very similar to autopilot in an airplane, right? The pilots still have to do the critical task of taking off, landing and handling any emergencies in flight.

The technology will do its work on these mundane, routine tasks that need to happen over and over. So that should be your technology. Take that off of your superintendents and PMs, and so they can get back to critical thinking, building projects, worrying about their people. I think that solves a lot of stuff even on the people side.

And so when you can step back and think about, can we do that without ai? I think we do. I think we already have some solutions in place. Part of that is, like I said, know what you’re measuring, then get into some type of BI type of reporting and data, and then you can start looking at what that, those next steps.

 

 

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But I think we’re a little further away than people thought we were. And people will badge things, ai, so I would just would caution your listeners to like. Really understand the difference between what machine learning is, or even business intelligence. Data versus what AI is.

AI should give you scenarios like, Greg, if you continue to do this path, if you don’t do X, Y, and Z, this is your outcome. So right now that’s being done by your project delivery team or your project management team. All they need is that data, and they can make the same decisions.

Greg: Yeah.

Yeah, that, that’s right. So yeah, gathering the data is the, the foundation for all of it, isn’t it? If you’re getting the data in right then then the AI can then interpret that data and give you the scenarios. You can see how valuable that is gonna be going forward, but it’s just yeah, making sure that the input’s right.

First of all, if you get the input wrong you’re gonna, you’re gonna spit out rubbish, aren’t you? Okay. Tell us a little bit about how you make this easier then for the businesses you work with. So tell me a little bit about the technology that you recommend people install and think about for their business.

 

 

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Hey, can I just ask a quick favor? We are constantly trying to bring on the best guests on this podcast so we can deliver as much value as possible, but the only way we can do that is if we get more subscribers, more likes, more comments, and more reviews. So subscribe to this channel and click notifications so you know, every time we’ve got a new video coming up, give us a review if you’re getting any value from it, and give us a thumbs up.

We’d really appreciate that.

Dave: I won’t self plug very much, but I will share maybe some of the process and what we’ve we’ve discovered. And part of that is, so our data capabilities manager, who is driving our AI piece for us in our business. He had a mic drop moment because he shared about, he having a hard time talking to him ’cause he makes me feel, he’s super smart.

So I’m like, okay, I need to go back to school. This kid’s super smart, but he just said, listen, if you want to get to your data, start planning in 4D And so like that.

 

 

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I was like, okay, sounds simplistic. And then you talk about 4D people get a little nervous ’cause they’re like, okay, is it bim?

What is 4D? And 4D is basically just 3D modeling with time. So you basically have scheduling and we’re trying to position our product because we have an integrated 4D Part of our planning scheduling tool is when we talk about it, people say we’re thinking about 4D.

We just haven’t really gotten there yet. Or we’re gonna hire a BIM specialist. Our tool is designed where you don’t need a BIM specialist. Like you can you, your planning team, your project delivery team can utilize it ’cause it’s integrated. But we’re trying to change the mindset from a visualization tool where you would use it to show this really spectacular model that’s finished to a production tool where we can all start with a 4D model.

You and I now. ’cause if we’re sitting in looking at 2D plans and we’re talking about this project, you are seeing something and I’m seeing something like our, we’re probably close, but it’s not the same visual. But if you’re looking at the same model and I’m looking at the same model, now we’re starting with the same vision in mind.

 

 

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And now we can plan with a little more, a little more ity. And then you also have the data in the 40 D models is typically more standard than we talked about, like your terminology and my terminology will be on the same company in two different project teams and have different terminology before D starts to force some of that standardization.

Then you, now you’re getting the data across all of your project teams and even maybe across, across other co companies as well. So I would encourage, builders, whether you’re small, medium and large, you looking at play like checkout 40, it’s not as, it’s not as scary as you think.

There are some very complex tools out there. I’m not saying, I’m not saying dive into Revit and try to design something that, but pull that. I’m talking about pulling that file out, putting it in a. In a program. So for us, we can actually take an IFC file, import it into our software, and it’ll actually create a start to finish schedule within a few minutes.

Then the scheduler gets come in and do their magic. And so we don’t need you to necessarily understand how to design it. We just need to under you understand how to build it. And if you understand that, then you can schedule it. So get wind on this. I think

 

 

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Greg: No, that’s good. Let me just break that down a little bit more.

’cause I just wanna be really clear for our listeners what it is exactly that it does ’cause it, because for 4D might be a new concept for a lot of people listening to this. So I’m just gonna come back one step and talk about it again. What we’re saying here is that a contractor or a buildup when they receive.

A 3D design from an architect to price or a job to that they’ve won created by bim. They can put that into your software and it’s gonna do the entire, an entire programming schedule. Is that what you’re saying here?

So it’ll it’ll be based on the data that’s being built in that model.

And so that data is getting more and more rich because designers know that this is probably being used with some type of software. So they need that, that data, the data sets there. And so that’s also part of our education, but yes, you’re absolutely correct. Yep.

Fantastic. Yeah, that sounds amazing.

So that would make things a lot easier for sure.

 

 

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Tell us more about that, the impact of that then when someone does implement 40 D software and that, maybe they’ve never used this before and now all of a sudden they’re using it, how does that make the business run a lot easier and smoothly?

What’s the day-to-day impact of that?

Dave: Yeah, so we shared this with a few a few a actually a few architects because they’re the ones usually typically specing. We’ve shared it with some builders and some events and some presentations and. Most of the time they’re like, we’ll ask the question like, how long would it take your planner scheduler to do that?

And they’re like, A couple days easily, and so you, I said you just watch this, do a start to finish schedule in about three to four minutes. And and now obviously the larger, more complex, it’s gonna be a little bit longer. But the point is, if you get to that point, it’s pretty quick.

The other piece was what I shared we talked about if you get your project teams, especially pro especially. When you start talking about from design to pre-con to when you start to build, like all of them working on kind of that same mindset of having that model you’re starting to align and limit some of that chaos and the handoff that happens between departments, even in construction.

 

 

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So that imp obviously is gonna improve efficiency, it’s going to improve time. The other dilemma we have in construction is reliability. And most project breakdowns happen before they even get started. And and that is, whether it’s. I’m, we’re going off 2D and maybe I missed something.

Or, and, or I would, I really, I’m a subcontractor and I really want this project, so maybe I will say, okay I’ll short I’ll take a little bit le less money and something gets circumvented in the project. That never happens. But so there’s like certain things that happen in that pre-con, that buyout phase that may get missed.

And when you start looking at how can you, we talked about that process. How can I make this process a little more seamless? That happens? If you’re looking at it from a smaller builder perspective, you’re looking at, okay, how do I start to get my name in the hat for some of these more complex projects?

 

 

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We grew pretty quickly, and part of it was we had an in-house designer that could easily just whip a 3D, 3D model for us on, and Revit and it, he was acting and they were in, he was, he just got outta school. So we a really good guy. But it separated us from some of the other companies of our size because we weren’t very big.

And so I would say if we’re trying to you’re trying to take that next step, like that’s a way to start differentiating yourself from your competitors as well yeah.

Greg: Yeah. Just explain that a little bit more then. Just so I understand the software fully.

So let’s imagine you receive a 2D. Project is your software able to turn into 3D and then program it or do you need 3D from the designers first?

Dave: Yeah. You would need a 3D design. So yeah, that is now that might be something down the line for us that we look doing that.

But you would need to bring in a 3D design.

Greg: Bring in a three design first. Okay. So just explain to me the, how you are differentiating yourself once you’ve got that 3D design. How are you different then from a company that isn’t potentially using your software? What would make you different?

 

 

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Dave: So first of all, you’re you, if you’re gonna, if you’re coming at it from what we call active 4D, that production piece your data standardized, you have more clarity. Our tool is already, one of our USPS is ease of use. So you have a tool that now you can bring this file in. You have a tool that’s pretty easy and complex.

You can do a one custom home or a multimillion dollar project, but. But it’s also the visibility to the owner or the stakeholder or your customer, whoever that is, they wanna see. They don’t necessarily care about the tool. They wanna see the progress and being able to share that information.

So within our tool, we have the ability to share that, share progress to deliver, whether you wanna give them access to the schedule, which a lot of people don’t, or you just wanna deliver them some, just some, just. Intelligence to show ’em here’s some information. So that for us, that is, that’s probably one of our biggest differentiators, but we’re putting that in the hands of all builders, whether you’re an ER contractor or a single, single custom home builder.

 

 

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One, build one or two homes a year and everybody in between. And we’re not trying to price anybody on the market as well, so we want we want to be able to provide a tool. Bigger you get, the more we charge you. That’s not how’s how it works. So information to your team, to any other stakeholders are.

Greg: Fantastic. So when you say the tool will initially help with the programming how deep is that going? So are we just talking about timelines and project schedules here? Are we talking about material takeoffs and like what, how deep is the tool going with this?

Dave: So it would so it’s gonna be.

So we’ll do the takeoffs for you. That would be the estimation. We do have an estimation software that helps with that, but the planning and scheduling is a hundred percent planning, scheduling, and we do differentiate between planning and scheduling because planning is broader and longer.

So you can everything from, from the beginning of a concept to close out of a project.

 

 

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But then everything within project delivery, so resource management material, if you need to look at, if I wanna look at resources across multiple projects, maybe I need to move some things around.

Quick and easy visibility there. You want to connect your field team, obviously with your planning teams, if it’s not yours. So we have some, we have field, we have a field app that allows you to record progress and send it back to the office. And then, yeah, so we wanna make sure that it’s very easy, but everybody that’s involved in that has access to it as well.

Greg: Yeah. Brilliant. So we started this conversation initially talking about there’s no point implementing tech without actually having the right processes in place in your business first. So how do you work with businesses then? Let’s imagine, ’cause each business is gonna have their own processes, how they do things.

Is this like a, one, one size fits all? Or is it are you bespoke, is this software bespoke for each business that comes to work with you? How do you navigate that?

Dave: So we do pretty much, it’s outta the box. It’s big. So you have the, you get it all.

 

 

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Now, whether you util utilize it all or not, but our process, we, because I come from this industry, like I said, I wanna make sure that my team we’re doing our part.

So we talked about the three, three, the three prongs, right? People, process, technology. So we’re gonna do a call with our prospects and talk about, okay. Let’s talk about you have the right people in place because we can sell ’em a technology and they’re missing the, any one of those two, it’s gonna fail.

So yeah, got a good team. Perfect. Then we’ll start talking about processes and the way the field does things versus the way the office does things sometimes are very different. And so we want to align on, on that and talk to them about how the tool will help, kind, help standardize some of that.

It, you don’t want to just, you don’t wanna push workflows out and say, this is the way you have to do it. So we do have some customised, some customization in there, but we have to have that conversation with how they’re doing business we’ll do that and then if everything fits, let’s do a personalized demo based on what you need.

So we’ll show a demo and then, so we wanna align it.

 

 

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Once they buy the product, we don’t wanna just lead them. So we, we have a, our support staff professional services, she comes from the industry. We’re trying to hire people into our team that understand the construction world.

So we partner, we try to partner along with them, but ultimately if we find out in the first stage that, this is gonna get fit, ultimately, we’ll, hopefully we talk to ’em something and maybe they taught us something. And we’re still helping the industry. We want them to buy something, but ultimately at the end of the day, help them as well.

Greg: Yeah, sure. Yeah. Long term it’s gotta work for both years, isn’t it? So Yeah, completely get why you take that approach. Any examples, David, that you, that come to mind of maybe, smaller businesses that you’ve worked with that have implemented this software and managed to scale up or anything?

Any case studies?

Dave: So we have some case studies on some companies that have, basically a couple different sizes. We have small, medium, and large. And what’s interesting is you find that no matter the size of the company, they struggle with some of the same, some of the same challenges.

 

 

[00:26:00]

And so obviously the bigger the company, probably have a little bit more resource you can throw at it. So we, we have a couple smaller companies that recently just joined with us and they actually went, so they bought, so they have the data and analytics. They were having a hard time ’cause it’s a BI data, so they were having a hard time kinda understanding what they wanted.

So we said, okay, let’s do this for 30 days and then we’re gonna check in with you 45 and 60 and see what things change. And so we helped walk them through some of the things based on some of the conversations with like Megan, who does our support and comes from the industry. Some of our other experts that we have within the company and our head of innovation, spent 30 years in the industry.

He actually had a conversation with him as well, and so within the first two months they were up and running. They saw the efficiency of approving and now they’ve added, I wanna say they’ve added, another 10 licenses. They’re growing. They’re specializing in commercial fit ups and now they’re moving to some more ground up construction.

’cause now they have a tool that they’re comfortable with the complexity of ground up.

Greg: Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. Yeah, that, that’s it’s great to hear I love a case study if hearing where it’s worked really well for someone.

 

 

[00:27:00]

So if you were given some practical advice to listeners on this podcast, maybe, maybe this software isn’t right for them, right at this point.

It may be, it’s gonna be something that’s for them in the next year or a couple of years, or it may be right for them now. What practical advice would you give. For a company, maybe even before they approach you and talk about implementing a technology like this what sort of immediate improvements should they be thinking about, even without the tech?

Dave: So I would definitely make sure that they have an understanding of what they’re looking for. And what I mean by that is a lot of times they’ll visit with a sales rep and, sales, we’re trying to sell ’em the world. So we’re gonna tell ’em all the things that they want to hear.

But if they don’t, if a cus if a customer doesn’t really know what they want to do first, and it goes back to that KPI and, conversation what is the most important thing for you? So if you don’t have your own processes in internally, right then how’s, how are you gonna know if a technology’s gonna help you?

I would say. Be leery of software companies that aren’t willing to help you through that process.

 

 

[00:28:00]

And I, and I like for us, I’m okay sharing what, what type of other technologies are out there, and, maybe a full CPM type scheduling tool isn’t what they need.

Maybe they need something more of a lean planning tool and that we don’t do. And so I’ll point them that direction. So I would say just do your homework. There’s so much information out there like that that they can do a lot of stuff upfront. I would also say don’t be afraid.

Don’t be afraid to like that you’re getting left behind. And, because I think that I, lot of times people are like, oh, I gotta buy this. I gotta be in technology. I do ai or I’m gonna get by. That’s not the case. If you’re going, especially if you’re scaling up. The sooner that you have things in place the easier things are gonna be as you get bigger and think about when you buy something with scaling in mind as well.

So that I would say that, do your homework and think about how I wanna scale in the future as well. Probably the two, two biggest ones I would say.

Greg: Yeah. Yeah. Valuable advice there for sure. Yeah no. Know exactly what you want out of it.

 

 

[00:29:00]

Get your processes in place and do your homework.

I think that’s some good advice there for sure. For anyone thinking about investing in technology at the moment. David, what would be next steps if someone was really interested in this, maybe they’re, this is the exact tool that they’re looking for and they’re listeners thinking, I need I’ve never heard of this and this is something I wanna explore.

Where would they go next to find out a bit more information?

Dave: So we have two really good sources one’s LinkedIn. We are a Usoft. We actually have multiple regions. So you search a link Usoft and they come up with one in the UK and then ours in the us. And also our website, which will be a usoft.com.

You, it’s gonna geotag you where you’re in the US or in the uk. Yeah, I would love to have a conversation with any, anyone as well.

Greg: Love it. Yeah that’s great. David, any any final words on anything you haven’t said that you think is important to include before we wrap up? Any any advice you’d give someone maybe when you were running your construction business, something you wish someone had said to you back then?

 

 

[00:30:00]

Dave: Yeah, I I adopted a a philosophy probably around 2021 was like, Control what you can control, right? And that’s a, in this, like I said, this world you’re. You’re in constant chaos prevention and no, you’re not alone, I guess in this industry I know that, it’s very relationship driven, but it’s very, sometimes it’s like we’re all kinda really like cuddled.

We don’t wanna share. I would say, I would encourage companies to talk to other companies, even if they’re competitors know you’re not alone out there. And, and, reach out to people and get, get more advice. Yeah, I, yeah, control what you control always is easy, easier said than done.

Greg: Yeah, for sure. That’s no, I think that’s really good advice. And just a good point about actually talking to your competitors. We actually run a community of, a lot of construction business owners that they’ll happily share what they’re working on, what’s working for them, what’s not.

’cause we all. We, we’re not smart on our own, are we? We need a combined, mastermind group, if you like of people to bat ideas off of. And we all help each other and grow together. So I think that’s pretty good advice, to be able to do that. Appreciate those those final words.

Thank you David, for your time on the call today.

 

 

[00:31:00]

That’s been quite insightful for our listeners. We appreciate it.

Dave: Thanks Greg for having me. Appreciate it.