Greg: [00:00:00] So today’s podcast, we’re speaking to Paul Hemming from the company C-link. If you’ve ever struggled with subcontractor procurement as a main contractor, tons of documents that end up getting lost and you get all different tenders back, and you’re struggling with the signatures and everything else, well, Paul Hemming, who is a QS, has got the answer for how to streamline procurement We’re going to be diving into some software that he developed and how it might be able to benefit you if you’re scaling your construction business.
So have a listen to this, you’re going to find it fascinating.
Greg: Paul, great to have you on the podcast today.
Paul: Glad to be here, Greg. Glad to be here. Despite the fact that you’re in sunny Australia and I’m in miserable UK. But there we go.
Greg: Never mind, mate. Yeah, it’s well, we have got some sun today, but it can be a little bit unpredictable. Yeah, here in Sydney, you do get the, and when it rains, it really rains.
You get some big storms. Yeah, we’re all good today. I’m sitting in the sun. So Paul, thanks for coming on. I’ve been wanting to get you on for a while actually, because you’ve actually been mentioned [00:01:00] in our community as a name that kept popping up for a number of reasons, which we’ll go through as we explore this podcast.
So I’ve been wanting to get you on for a while. So Paul, just to maybe introduce yourself and what you actually do. Do you want to just let us give us a very summary of who you are?
Paul: Yeah, absolutely. So, Paul Hemming. I’m a Quantity Surveyor by qualification, experience, and founder of a software business called C-link.
In short, my background is, like I say, Quantity Surveying. I came out of school and went straight into Quantity Surveillance and Training QS. My best mate actually told me not to do it. I, I, I asked him what is a basically I wanted to be a sports writer, and then I didn’t really want to go to uni, so I decided just to take a job.
Found a job for Training QS. Asked my best mate, what’s this? And he said, don’t do that, you’re gonna be counting bricks for the rest of your existence. Anyway, in short, I then started working at a company called Alimet Systems in the Midlands, where I’m [00:02:00] from, like small family run company, SME. 15, 20 million at the time, was an amazing company to work for.
Worked there for five years and then went down to London and worked on the walkie talkie, the Shard, Battersea Power Station, all these big dream jobs, if you like. Again, I was a QS, at a subcontractor, but this time like a big multinational subcontractor called Permaster Lisa. So yeah, hopefully that’s a good enough start for you.
Greg: Yeah. Wow. So that is really interesting. I didn’t realize you had that vast experience. So you’ve really seen a, I guess we talk about a small company. I mean, the first company described wasn’t exactly really small, but I guess small enough to be able to employ a QS all the way up to huge projects in London.
So you’ve seen a wide range of how construction businesses work.
Paul: Yeah, I mean, I think I was really fortunate at Alimet Systems in that, so the company was, like I said, turning over about 20 million, but I initially started in [00:03:00] the VELFAC installation department, which might, it doesn’t sound very glamorous, and it wasn’t particularly glamorous, I tell you, but what was really good about that is you actually ended up on projects of, like, 50 to 100 grand, and you’d be on, like, 10 or 15 of them, in any given quarter, right?
So you can’t like, at the start of my career, if you like, within a year or two, I’d been through notice to commence to final account 20, 30, 40 times. And it really just gave me like a really great understanding because whether it is going to sound a bit stupid, whether it’s a 50k job or a 50 million pounds skyscraper, obviously it’s different.
I’d be ridiculous to suggest that it isn’t, but the process and understanding the process, the psychology, the dynamics of. Both sides through those different stages was really, really fundamental. Felt it really accelerated my learning.
Greg: Yeah, that’s awesome. So you started this show by telling us you now run C-link.
So what is, what’s [00:04:00] C-link? First of all, we’ll dive into the real details of it, but just give everyone an idea of what that platform is. Yeah.
Paul: Okay. So I mean yeah, so in 2015 after 10, 11 years in industry, I set up a company called C-link with good mate of mine. And basically we’re a software company that digitizes the procurement workflow between subcontractors and main contractors.
Chris’s background, my business partner was a main contractor, mine was subcontractor, so we kind of have both sides of the, of the industry and really the idea is to create a workflow that allows both to have like a world class experience through Tendering prequalification and contract execution.
And yeah, so we’ve been going for almost a decade now and having great success. That’s
Greg: awesome. So how did that come about? That’s a big shift in focus from QS working on the tools. If you like, you could say that as, as a QS to run in a software company, where did that shift come from?
Paul: Well, it’s it [00:05:00] probably actually largely came from Chris, to be honest with you.
So, Chris and I as I said, we actually both went into trainee quantity surveying. We didn’t know each other until we met at university, where we were doing like a day a week quantity surveying course. Fast forward 10, 11 years, we’re sat in a pub. As you do in London and we’re talking about, this is really sad, but we’re talking about quantity surveying, obviously, and we’re talking about subcontract procurement, main contract procurement, right?
I was talking about the misery of being a subcontractor and tendering for main contractors, which honestly, I think, needs to change. C Link or otherwise must be a lot better, right? And main contractors can do a lot better, as can subcontractors. And Chris was talking to me about the misery of being a main contractor and how difficult it was to procure at the time.
I think he was on a high end residential job. Four or five million, but it had something like 45 to 50 subcontract packages, including, I don’t know why this always sticks with me, leather wallpaper as a package. It was for some like Rich Shake or something like that, who wanted leather [00:06:00] wallpaper. Anyway, so we were kind of talking about that and in fairness to Chris, it was very much his vision and his idea to take the kind of like analog 1980s Microsoft Excel Word, Microsoft Word 97 email approach and digitize it, which is what we’ve now done.
Greg: Yeah, that’s amazing. So it’s interesting. Over a few beers, everything sounds possible, doesn’t it?
Paul: Yeah, little did we know
Greg: that’s just such a huge jump. So did any of you have a background in software? Like, how did you have the experience to even get this going? Apart from the US,
actually.
Paul: Yeah, I mean in in some respects, our Absolute strength as a business is domain expertise, right?
We can talk to anyone, whether they’re subcontract or main contract, and we’ve been through what they’ve been through multiple times. We’ve suffered their pain. We fixed their pain, right? So in that respect, it’s like a world class experience. We’ve done a really, [00:07:00] really good job. What definitely was difficult at the start, and if anyone’s thinking of founding a business, you know, one of the things that was difficult for us Chris and I were both quantity surveyors, neither of us were tech people.
So initially, kind of, we contracted in for like our minimum viable products and so on and so forth until we kind of had some product market fit at which point we then brought on a team and then a couple of rounds of investment and kind of like the rest is history to be honest with you. But it definitely was a challenge not being, running a software company and not being a developer or having that in house, if that makes sense.
Greg: Yeah, that’s fantastic. I think actually coming at it from that angle, rather than just being a software developer that thinks, Oh, I’m going to create a product for QSs or procurement is, is a much better way to look at it. Because I think the best ideas come from frustrations, don’t they?
Paul: Yeah, I mean, 100%.
We really, really [00:08:00] believe in that, you know, we’re like an RSCS accredited company. It’s, Like we’ve walked in the shoes of our clients, right? And a lot of the tech that is out there is built by people in San Francisco or wherever, all very intelligent, clever people, don’t get me wrong, but do they know what it’s like to receive a tender as a subcontractor?
Do they know what it’s like to receive a price back as a main contractor? Do they know the dynamics of the back and forth and, and what you can actually do to kind of critically create. a far better experience because you’ve done it right. What do you think of the current way of tendering? Like it’s painful, isn’t it?
Greg: Yeah, extremely painful. Yeah, there’s, there’s, there’s multiple challenges with it. And I, and, and that’s why I just wanted to dive into is what, what was the problem you were fixing? Like what, what, what did you feel the main frustrations were in this process?
Paul: So how long have you got Craig? Strapping. I’ll talk about it first kind of as a, as a, as a subcontractor.
Right. And I was a [00:09:00] subcontractor working for a 20 million pound company and then a 2 billion euro company, right? So I was working with what you’d probably describe as tier three, tier two and tier one main contractors. Now I wasn’t an estimator, so I wasn’t necessarily the person directly receiving the tender, but I was involved in the tender process and pricing and so on.
Frustrated our businesses no end was that, let’s say you were one of our clients, Greg, and we’d worked with you for. Five years, and there was two QSs in the office, sending out a tender to our company on the same day. And they, one would look like an apple, and one would look like a can of beans, right? And they’re, like, completely different, which means that when it gets, like, felt in our business, what do we do?
We go, okay, that one, right, what are they actually asking us here? And it took you, it would take you a long time to work it out. Second one looks completely different, [00:10:00] takes you a long time to work out. So. Like, firm believers in, standardise what you send out, and then you’ll standardise what you get in.
Because how often do main contractors complain about sub Es? Oh, sub Es always send stuff in different, it’s never lined up, and it’s a nightmare for me to do my equalisation and analysis. And in exactly the same breath. They’re issuing out documentation in completely different formats. So as a subcontractor, absolutely.
That was like the feeling of pain, if you like. And the challenge that we wanted to solve for the subcontractor price thing, then help the subcontractor to price better. And then as a main contractor and, you know, I was working myself at a 2 million pound company on a 50 million pound project, for example, Battersea power station, and I was still doing sub sub procurement, right?
So I was almost like a, Big ma a small main contractor in some respects. So, this is something that Chris felt. This is something that I felt. And, again, it’s, it’s all very paper based. And people will say, no it’s not. It’s Excel. It’s Word. But that is [00:11:00] text from the 1980s and it’s wasn’t it’s great. I’m a QS.
I love Excel, right? But it doesn’t suit the challenge. And again, it talks to that point of we’ve gone through that process. So if you have really automated, simple documentation that creates consistency for the subcontractor and creates a lot of consistency for the main contractor as well. So every time you’re sending out a tender, Okay.
Every single time, it has payment terms, retention, it has the drawings, it has X, Y, Z, it has everything standardised. It’s super quick for you, and it de risks you as a main contractor, and then it will return a quicker tender return from the subbie, and it will return a more comprehensive, etc, etc, and, you know, that quicker tender return thing, if If I am a subbie, and I, this has quite happened and we’ve worked with loads of, even the smallest subbies, right, what you will get is a subcontractor will get [00:12:00] to Friday, they’ll have three or four tenders that they’ve received over the week.
They’ll look at them, and they’ll go that one’s from Greg. I get it. No problem, I’ll price Greg’s. They won’t go, what’s this junk from miscellaneous random person x in a completely random format? So like, it really does matter, and again, I’m very subby. Focus in my psyche, if that makes sense, but so much can be so much more efficient if you engage that subcontractor, that specialist correctly.
So that’s a big thing. And then for the main contractors, you know, you want to have an audit trail. You need to have an audit trail. You need to have tenders, contracts, digital contracts. Another frustration of mine was always getting a contract signed. Why does it take you a month to do it, when it could take 10 minutes, right?
So, all of these different things really, and and then I guess my final point would be, and, This is me, working for a 2 billion Euro company. Not a small company, right? On Battersea Power Station, I’m [00:13:00] almost a bit embarrassed to say this, right? On Battersea Power Station, we had like an acoustic ceilings package which was completely new to us.
What do you think my approach was, Greg, when I got told, I need to procure a 2 million pound acoustic ceilings package? Looked around the office and said, Lads, anyone ever procured a acoustic ceilings package? What’s the scope look like? Do you know any subbies? Like, why is that the way we’re procuring 2 million quids worth I like to think I did a decent job of it, but it was a long and winding road, it was a mess.
Why didn’t I have a supply chain of subcontractors that I could look at who’ve done similar work? Why didn’t I already have like a scope of work approved by my company? So all of these things and you can quickly see why projects are late, right? Because I’m there asking around for any subbies, any knowledge, it’s ridiculous.
And that’s just a microcosm of the wider industry challenge. And I think we’ve got to be honest about it.
Greg: Yeah, that’s that’s [00:14:00] really interesting. So I can see the massive benefit, obviously, for the main contractors to get the prices back. And obviously, the subcontractor is going to be easy for them to use.
And Would a subcontractor, what, like, what would be the benefit of a subcontractor signing up for this? Is it that they’re on the portal to be sent documents? Like, why, why would, what is the benefit for the subbie apart from it being easy for them?
Paul: Yeah, so, I mean, couple of things, right? You do one pre qualification.
On our system, you can download it. You can send it to anyone. So how often does it? So we get asked for a prequel once a month, once a week, who knows? Right? Depends which way the wind is blowing. So that is one big thing. You do that once and you can use that anywhere. The other, the other point being, if you’re looking to grow your business as a subcontractor.
You have access to potentially some very warm leaves, right? So if I’m, if I’m Paul Hemming procuring on Battersea power station, that acoustic ceilings package, and I’ve just said, you’ve segwayed me nicely for this, Greg. I didn’t mean it, but, and I’ve just said, lads, does [00:15:00] anyone know any acoustic ceiling contractors?
No, but if I could go and search on a portal, look for acoustic ceiling contractors who’ve worked on similar projects, look at their prequels and say, those are the three that I’m going to go out to because of X, Y, and Z. The subbie. has got a great lead. They’ve got a warm lead and it’s someone who actually is trying to do the procurement on that specific package.
Right. As opposed to you know, going out to an architect or going out to a main contractor saying, have you got any acoustic ceilings? Well, I know that’s quite a niche example, but hopefully that kind of gives you the color.
Greg: Yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s fantastic. So I guess for a subcontractor, it’s a, it’s a no brainer.
If you’re trying to. level up and approach these main contractors are trying to win tenders off these main contractors, you can literally just be on the portal. And if you’ve got the experience, they will, they will come and approach you for potential work.
Paul: Exactly.
Yeah. So it’s kind of a warm connection both ways.
Greg, if you think about again, me being that QS back then and going on Google or whatever I was doing at the time saying acoustic [00:16:00] ceiling contractor, central London, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you’d call them up and say, are you guys interested in this? And they go, yeah, maybe send, send me the tender.
Then you’d send them the tender. radio silence, right? And then like, as opposed to if I could just go and look, say I’m interested, are you interested in this package? They say, yes, we’re interested. It’s a warm connection both ways, as opposed to that cold, inefficient, unproductive way of working that we currently have.
Greg: Yeah, I like that. So with the main contractors then with all the tenders that they have that they want to send out is that on a big portal for maybe a subcontractor to try and pitch for it. So let’s say, let’s imagine you’re the subcontractor that wasn’t sent that tender. Have you still got a chance of going for, for some of the bigger stuff?
Paul: It’s kind of completely at the behest of the main contractor. So again, I’ll take it back to me. I’m about to say, if I had gone out, if I’d said, lads, anyone got any good acoustic ceiling contractors, or I already had three in my supply chain that were approved and were vetted, and I could go and look at my supply chain, I might say I’m not going to go out on the acoustic ceiling package or I might say, Oh, you know, I want to get four.
I’m comfortable [00:17:00] with four prices, but press a button and get interest from one or two extra contractors. So it’s completely at the decision of the main contractor, which, you know, is what you want. My view, and I’ve talked about this, we’ve done quite a lot of research as to what, The ideal amount of prices back is right as a QS and there’ll be people who are subbies saying, ah, that’s not right.
That’s not right. But you know, our research shows that generally QS is once somewhere between like 3. prices back. I know it sounds very precise, but my honest opinion was always to get four. The reason I wanted to get four was I would typically be doing procurement over, say, four, six weeks and each.
You’d never knew if, if someone was going to win a job and drop out. And then you, cause I always kind of wanted to have three. So it was kind of like my insurance policy. But I do think that some main contractors, I’m going a bit off pace to who are going out for five, six, seven, we know some who would want to get [00:18:00] like 10.
It’s no good to anyone that it’s not even any good for them because they can’t get into the depth and the detail of that tender. So Yeah, I’ve gone off piste a little bit, Greg. I forgot what your original point was.
Greg: No, that makes sense. So I’m just, again, just coming back to the subbie then and, and the benefit and how they can win these tenders.
So are there any tips on, let’s say, the acoustic ceiling contractor? Let’s say you’ve got 20 of them in the, in your system, but only three are going to get chosen. How does that subbie maximize his chance of, of getting chosen for, to be sent that tender? Is there anything they can do to sort their profile out or anything like that?
Paul: Yeah, I mean, first and foremost, have a fully dedicate and commit to having your profile done, completing your prequel and making sure you’ve got references, right? If you had references from Chelsea Power Station, another, do you see what I mean? That kind of, and I looked at the, oh my God, they are perfect.
Then that would make sense. [00:19:00] And. You know, we’re a digital platform, but for both main contractors and subcontractors, we’re kind of a means to a better connection. We’re not the removal of the personal connection. So we’re firm believers both ways that if you’re the main contractor, And you’re going to send a tender.
Do not send that tender until you’ve picked up the phone and said, Hi Greg, how you doing? I know you registered interest on this. Work with you on blah, blah, blah. I’m going to tender Battersea Power Station with you. I’m going to send you this document. It’s about 10 pages long. Look at page 9. That’s where all the links are.
Go and have a look at there. Really want to work with you because I saw you worked on Chelsea Power Station. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Give me a shout if you want to come on site. I’m going to do a mid tender meeting on, I don’t know, the 10th of January. Bye. You, you then all of a sudden as a subbie, you’re like, Oh God, I feel quite important now.
I actually feel quite, I definitely want to work with Craig. Actually, when can we go to the site? Blah, blah, blah. And then as the subbie during that interaction, it’s, if you, if you’ve just received a tender cold, [00:20:00] which quite often happens, right? In, in life is don’t do anything with that tender. Until you’ve spoken to Greg, right?
Hi Greg, what, what’s this tender? Thank you for sending it to me. Talk me through the job. If you’re not willing to talk me through the job or have a conversation with me, I’m not particularly interested in working with you, I don’t think you should, don’t think you should be. So, for a subbie to maximise and win work, Build the relationship, force yourself to site, talk your way through the process with the main contractor.
Understand what they want. Like, what’s your driver? Is it, do you need to be on site on time? Are you focused on a particular product? Are you focused on budget? It’s usually all three or at least budget’s always in there, isn’t it? But it’s understanding that and extracting that from them. It’s a sales process.
It’s not, don’t consider yourself a commodity is what I would say. Because you’re not a commodity as a subcontractor. That’s it. You’re a specialist and you can bring value to that main contractor. And that’s, that’s my view. [00:21:00]
Greg: Yeah. Fantastic. So, so that, I guess there’s probably more features than this, but that sums up the, the, maybe the tender inside of it.
But what about after that? Let’s say you tend to send back from the subcontractor, you as a main contractor, I’ve got the ideal subbie, you want to sign them up. What other benefits has Sealing got from there?
Paul: Yeah, so I mean we have like a tender analysis feature, so you can say you’ve got three quotes back, you can equalize those quotes.
Just this very week as well, we’ve just launched our smart tender AI analysis tool as well, which will allow you so getting into some QS geekery here, here Greg, so do bear with me. But, if you when you send out a tender, you kind of have two options, right? Option one is you send out a pricing document and say price my bill and then hopefully all three subbies price the bill, you line it all up and you go okay this is the one and then you do your analysis and so on.
So we already have that feature ingrained and inbuilt. Option two in terms of pricing is you know what we would call as QS’s like spec and [00:22:00] drawings right, where you haven’t got a bill and you just say Mr Rufa can you do my single ply here’s the is the drawings. You receive then back. three different quotes, because 3 all do different things.
So our AI tool, which has literally just gone out this week, is really, really exciting. That will read the three documents, it will compare the three documents, and it will say on number one, you need to think about this exclusion. this inclusion, this inclusion, this inclusion. Here’s a value engineering opportunity from option two.
And it would kind of give you an analysis on all three. So that’s the tender analysis process. And then when you’re at contract selection, we’ve got lots of different types of contracts that you can choose whether you’re an SMA or you’re kind of a tier three, two or one. So whether that’s like amended JCT, so on and so forth, or custom small works order, so you build the contract and then you issue the contract via DocuSign and it tracks it.[00:23:00]
And then it stores that contract digitally. And so it’s kind of that entire process managed. And what does that give you as. A business owner or a project lead, and this is going back to, I used to manage 10 QS’s, and one of them would come up to me in the week and say, I’ve got a bit of a dispute brewing with subcontractor X on Project X, and you’d say, alright, and you’d wince a little, and you’d say, can you show me the contract?
And then you’d just sit there, tapping your fingers nervously, thinking, what on earth is going on? Is there a contract? What does this contract look like? It’s done word or is it on email? What is it? We’d have a standard form of contract, but have they done it right? Or is it going to be highlighted? Or is it going to be not Battersea Power Station?
The last project kind of hacked to pieces. And so you’d always be worried about that. And so that contract creation process is all again about. compliance, peace of mind, so that at least I’m not going to, I might wince because there’s a dispute, but at least I know that I’m going to [00:24:00] be on good ground because I’ve got a contract that was written and was executed.
Greg: Yeah, that’s fantastic. So, okay. So it takes you right through to contract stage. Does it, does it then go beyond that as in when you’re actually managing valuations and payments?
Paul: It’s like you’ve been reading our roadmap, Greg. So at the moment we have some post contract tools. Over the last decade or so where we’ve been building this, we’ve been extremely focused on procurement, supply chain, pre qual, tendering contracts, and docu sign.
All of that is now done, still an ongoing process, and we’re now kind of looking at post contract and how you actually manage subcontractors, right? So you talked about payments and applications, we’ve got currently instructions, variations, like forecast file account tools, and we do have ambitions to kind of take it all the way through, and kind of the magic, if you like, of having, Not Word and not Excel and not email and having digital documents is all of a sudden [00:25:00] you’ve got all the information inside those contracts.
So rather than it being the 20th of the month and you think, God, when do I need to pay subcontractor X? Just going to tell you because you’ve sent a digital contract, right? And that’s why often, you know, when people say Word, Excel, it’s a bit, It’s more that the tech itself and the stack is disjointed.
And in being disjointed, how do you understand that? You, you go to a signed contracts somewhere in the office and look at it and go, Oh yeah, it’s this one. It’s the 20th of the month, as opposed to you’ve got that workflow all the way through digital contract signed bang. And then you’ve got the dates.
being extracted from it. So you can see I get excited about this nerdy stuff, Greg, but it’s all there. You can start to feel the efficiency coming back and it should be a lot easier. It should be a lot better.
Greg: 100%. Yeah, I love the AI feature that you’ve got just just going off track a little bit. I’d love your thoughts on on where you feel AI is going in this space because [00:26:00] a lot of people worry that Certain jobs like accountants and maybe QSs and, and the, those type of roles may be taken over by AI in the future.
What’s your thoughts on where, where that’s going in the, in the sort of the medium term, the next sort of three to five years?
Paul: Yeah, I mean, my, my view and I can, I can talk to quantity surveying probably it’s my only domain of expertise, if you like, on the topic for me, the, the role of the QS is incredibly diverse, right?
There’ll be people rolling their eyes. They’re going QS is come on. But we talk about this, this topic quite a lot on our podcast, right? Like what is the future role of the QS? And someone interestingly like Put it to me that, you know, as a QS, you know, your work is quite diverse in that, you know, one minute you might be doing maths, the next minute you might be doing contracts, the next minute you’re doing negotiation, the next minute you’re in the pub with the subbie and the client, like, there’s a lot of different [00:27:00] pieces to it, a lot of different facets to it, so, my view would be that QSing as a profession will linger on for some time, some people will be very upset by that but, That the components of Quantity Surveying that should have been automated a long time ago, they’re going to be automated.
We, we think we can save you about 47 percent of human endeavor during pre construction through automation on our app. So that. is definitely something that should be done. My view, you know, I studied as a QS, had to do measurement. I absolutely despised it, to be honest with you, Greg. I wasn’t particularly good at it.
It’s not something that came natural to me. So I’ve always wanted to get measurement off the face of the planet. And what, why is it? QSs are still measuring? Why is it that you’re going out on spec and drawings and then having to analyse three different drawings? Why is it not [00:28:00] automated? The architectural drawings all follow a similar code.
It’s not rocket science, what a QS does. It just takes time. So, things like that as a, as a niche. example, there’s already tools out there which are doing a simple automated takeoff. And yeah, that should be long gone in my view. So hopefully that’s around enough for you.
Greg: Yeah, no, it’s fascinating, isn’t it?
So, you know, I just wonder if it’s not going to be long before you submit a set of drawings to some software, whoever manages to create it first, the takeoff’s done. The bill of quantity is done, but then obviously you’re still going to need someone to analyze things and check the prices that come back and you’re always going to have that side of it.
But yeah, I definitely think we’re going to see some big moves in this space pretty, pretty soon.
Paul: Yeah, I think we should be, I think we should be really excited about it is my take, because how inefficient is everyone? I would, I don’t see Many of the roles in construction being wiped out. I see them being made far far more efficient It’s like we should look at [00:29:00] this as a huge opportunity I think every contractor sub or main and everyone in the industry should look at it as how can I harness it?
We use it across our business to great effect and I know construction is a bit of a laggard in terms of having the energy towards change and research development, but my advice would be just go out and do it and see where you can harness it because you’ll, you’ll make great gains.
Greg: Yeah, fantastic. I imagine without, without you giving anything away, but I’m sure if you’re into development of of software, your, your brain must be on fire with the possibilities that are coming with AI.
Paul: Well, I’d be lying if I said my my brain was on, was on fire, you know, Chris and our development product team, they’re thinking about it all the time and you know, it’s, it’s, it’s in every facet, Of what we do, you can use it.
Even outside of the product. It’s like your internal process. How can you make it better? What can you do? Right.
Greg: Yeah, sounds awesome. So who is C-link suitable for as in company size? Have you got to be a [00:30:00] huge main contractor for this or a huge subcontractor? What, what sizes do you generally work with?
Paul: Really interesting question. And it’s a diverse pool, to be honest, when we started the business we, and as the kind of like the product was maturing, you imagine where it is today, isn’t where it was in 2020, 2015, so on and so forth.
So initially, We were very focused on kind of building a product for SMEs. We worked a lot with SME developers, worked a lot with SME main contractors, and we still do for a long time. Our average like project value was between one and 2 million. That’s now shifted northwards, but we kind of still catered very much for the small and medium contractors.
And we’re also now starting to work with some of the tier one contractors. So working on like a. 600 million pound project up in Scotland working on lots of other nice big projects as well, but to be honest with you we work with clients big and small because It goes back to that point I was kind of saying at the start, where I was working on a 50k project or I was working on a 50 million project, [00:31:00] had a lot of the same problems, still had to follow the same workflow, and it’s that workflow, whether you’re on a small business or a battery power station, you’re still doing the same thing, still Word, Email, Excel, anyone got any scopes, anyone got any, and it’s, it doesn’t really matter, just You can improve that workflow irrespective.
Greg: Yeah, fantastic. So I imagine, you know, if you’re a grand business, I mean, I obviously coach companies that are trying to grow. So thinking about that, if you’re a company that’s trying to grow subcontractor or main contractor, this sounds like a great platform because I’m just thinking from my shoes as I was a main contractor.
I think sometimes we could tend to for projects and even win projects that might’ve been felt a little bit out of our scope as in, I don’t, I don’t have the contacts to do this. I don’t have the subcontractors to do it, but actually if you’ve then can go into a portal and you know that you’ve got a bank of subbies there that are going to be able to price it the right way.
And you’ve got a pool of people that you can call on. I think that’s, it’s pretty powerful really. It gives you a little bit of confidence that you’re going to be able to deliver what you’ve [00:32:00] got on one.
Paul: Yeah, absolutely. You know, for, for the, for the smaller Developers, main contractors, we definitely kind of like sell the economies of scale of a, you can act like you’re a much larger business.
We’ve got 7, 000 ish pre qualified contractors across England and growing. And what that means is, you know, I was talking to a client the other day who is got a project in Berkshire. They’re usually over in Essex and they’re just saying, well, it gives us the flexibility now to be able to just pick up and move management team.
over to the new project, but you know, some key trades, some key sub is you want to get local allows you to do that as well. So absolutely. And it allows you, if you’re saving 47 percent of your pre construction professional activity, it allows you to, in theory, have one QS on two projects rather than one QS on one project or so on and so forth.
Greg: Yeah, that’s fantastic. I love that. So if someone’s thinking about using this tool and trying it out, how’s the practical side [00:33:00] of, of getting involved in this? Is there, are there trials? Is there a big setup process for them to jump on board? How does the sort of onboarding work for a new company?
Paul: So with everyone, we would, we, we kind of do a demo process, right?
So like it’s a discovery call. You meet with one of the team, meet with me, sometimes I’m doing them. And. We would kind of understand your challenge, understand the kinds of projects that you’re working on, the kind of tenders that you want to send out, the kind of contracts, the depth of your supply chain.
There’s a number of different facets that are unique to every business. Once we understand that, kind of showcase the products. We can do trials. We don’t do, we kind of like do limited trials for a period of time. And then, yeah, away you go. There’s, there’s also, at the moment, currently. A couple of free tools.
We’ve got a cost planning tool, which I think we talked about, didn’t we Greg, before and which talks to the data in our products and helps you over the course of like a 10 question questionnaire, build out an indicative cost plan for a project that’s coming up. And then we’ve also got our [00:34:00] SmartTender AI.
We’ve got like a standalone free tool for comparing quotes, which is like I said, just come out this week. And that’s also available for a free trial as well at the moment.
Greg: Fantastic. Yeah, that’s a great way for people just to dip their toe in a little bit and, and see what it’s all about. Sounds, sounds really awesome, Paul.
And I’d encourage anyone to, that’s thinking about using this and if they think it’s going to be a benefit to, to reach out to Paul and the team to see what that’s all about that demo. Anything that you haven’t mentioned so far, like a big feature that you think, Oh, I didn’t cover this or anything we’ve missed?
Paul: Not particularly. I mean, we’ve talked about. Scopes of work and non recoverables. I mean, one of the things that is an important piece of the puzzle for scale is having a system in place for, you know, you’re on project one at the end of that project, you reflect on it and you say, Oh, we lost a bit of money.
Didn’t we on that roofing package with the interface between, I don’t know, the brick work and the coping or whatever it is, [00:35:00] right. What’d you do with that information? Where does it go? How does it help your business to scale and move better on the next one? So. One of the things that we have in place is like, we will give you a bank of scopes.
So covering 25, 30 different packages so that. There won’t be a Paul Hemingway in an office saying, Anyone got a scope for a ceilings package or whatever, right? You’re just gonna have it. And then it actually encourages you to go back to that roofing scope in my example and say, Where did we lose money last time?
And then put in here a note saying, Next time consider X, Y, and Z through the tender process. So it’s also not only is it just like a way for you to save time, improve documentation, de risk, compliance, contracts, et cetera, et cetera, but also a way to think about your non recoverables, where did we lose money?
How can we improve next time? So on and so forth. So yeah, perhaps that one.
Greg: Yeah, that’s that’s really vital. I think if you can track that and do a bit of post contract analysis, I think that’s where a lot of people fall down. Actually, they end up being a little bit blind to where it’s gone wrong. And you know, they just hope it’s gonna work out in the next [00:36:00] one.
I think that’s a really clever way of doing it. That’s been really awesome. Paul, I think some fantastic insights into what you’ve created there. So Thanks so much for running through that. And I certainly wish you all the best for the future of C-link. It sounds like a really exciting tool with some of the developments you’ve got coming up.
What we’ll be doing at the end of this podcast is we’ll be putting all the show notes. You’ll, you’ll send all the links over to me for the different tools you’ve got and how to get in contact with you. So sounds awesome. Really appreciate it, Paul. And thanks for coming on this morning.
Paul: My pleasure, Greg. Thanks, mate. And yeah, I’ll share my, share my details with you and feel free to reach out.
Greg: Sounds good. Thanks, Paul.
Paul: Cheers, mate.
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