Construction Brothers

Yup, it’s another baseball analogy.  Catchers are seen as the capital–almost a quarterback–because they have the whole infield in front of them. They’ll tell the pitcher things he already knows.  More than anything, this extra communication is intended to train the players’ brains to be able to respond without thinking. It’s a group rehearsal of what needs to happen reflexively.   In business, deliberate communication is equally beneficial. If you’re the leader, it’s your job to keep the important stuff in the forefront of your team’s minds. Make sure they’re preloaded for the thing that you know is just around the corner.  You may feel like an old man repeating himself, but that’s a heck of a lot better than dropping the ball on an project.  This is not to say that you should ramble. Be deliberate. Be concise and repetitive about the essentials. A team that communicates in this way is much more prepared for success than a team that assumes everyone is clear on the expectations.  For those of you who are less baseball-literate, Tyler wraps us up with a parallel from The Office.  Find Us Online: BrosPodcast.com - LinkedIn - Youtube - Instagram - Facebook - Eddie's LinkedIn - Tyler's LinkedIn If you enjoy the podcast, please rate us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to us! Thanks for listening!   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

(Scroll to see loads of links to videos of the tech mentioned in this episode.)   Tyler Williams is an innovation man. Within the first couple decades of his career, he worked as a union carpenter, estimator, project manager, and superintendent. Then he reached the point where he felt like he was losing passion for his work. He wanted to make an impact.   This drive to make a difference prompted him to set a goal of making it onto DPR’s innovation team. It took a couple years of proving himself and pitching the decision-makers, but he eventually got there.     You can imagine how satisfying it would be to test equipment in the field and then advise the maker on improvements. That’s one of the things Tyler gets to do.    But when Tyler shows up on the worksite, he’s not trying to keep his boots clean. He gets mucky. He’ll grab a rake and help a concrete crew. He knows that you have to show what you know in order to get the trust of your audience.    We ask Tyler to share about new tools in the field. He’s ready with a list. Here are a few we discuss: Smart Tag trackingThe exoskeleton suitThe JaibotDusty the layout robotVita spin control, which has gone from… helicopter rescue applications to construction cranesMilwaukee’s battery-powered trowels, and concrete vibratorsJLG’s self-leveling boom lift (not quite as new as some of these others but still interesting.)Hyperframe metal studsLive-Dig Radar (It’s as amazing as it sounds)   Tyler shares about the importance of having street cred when introducing new technologies to the people who might be able to make use of them. Eddie recalls how the Dusty (layout robot) team needed to put eyes on the robot in order to keep workers from getting annoyed and angry and kicking the robot on the worksite.    We discuss the massive benefits of industry crossover, starting with a conversation about a helicopter-rescue technology that has now worked its way into construction cranes. (See link above)   He shares about a skeptical boom-lift foreman who reluctantly tried a VR training program and literally fell off of his chair before calling it the best thing he’s ever seen.    These technologies open a door for prospective employees who might not otherwise think about getting into construction. They both lower the barrier of entry in some respects and bring greater diversity to the forms of work to be done.    Tyler touches on some QR-code-based information/instruction that can dramatically increase the ease of information-sharing. We also discuss the possible intellectual-property tensions that arise with this sort of tech.   The last technology we discuss is live-dig radar. (See the link above.) Some municipalities are already requiring all excavators to use this technology.   Tyler’s Megaphone Message: Let’s partner as an industry–even with competitors–and work together to adjust the direction of construction. Let’s work together to help people see that construction is freaking cool.    Find Tyler Online: LinkedIn    Find Us Online: BrosPodcast.com - LinkedIn - Youtube - Instagram - Facebook - Eddie's LinkedIn - Tyler's LinkedIn   If you enjoy the podcast, please rate us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to us! Thanks for listening! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We could have called this episode “Leave me the heck alone!”    If you’ve ever… Well, if you’ve ever had a job, you’ve probably gotten tired of a manager breathing down your neck. Nobody wants to work for a helicopter manager.    Then again, if you’ve ever worked as a manager, you’ve probably dealt with employees who don’t know what they’re doing–at least at first.   The secret is to provide guidance thoughtfully and then check for understanding. Remind yourself what it was like to be in the newbie’s spot–both in the need for guidance and the need for autonomy.   Be deliberate in your leadership in order to build a solid, competent team.   Find Us Online: BrosPodcast.com - LinkedIn - Youtube - Instagram - Facebook - Eddie's LinkedIn - Tyler's LinkedIn If you enjoy the podcast, please rate us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to us! Thanks for listening!   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“When one door closes, another one… Well, it doesn’t necessarily open unless you have it programmed that way.” This is the kind of portal-related wisdom that Benji Bolick and Mia Merrel bring to the table, and it’s why we asked them to join us today.   People don’t generally think about doors unless they fail to function properly. Doors are just 1-3% of the construction cost, but they cause a huge percentage of the construction headaches. There is so much involved in the way doors play into security, access, and design.   Benji shares the backstory to his door doorkdom. He discusses the school-guard glass demo video (similar to this one).   We discuss the peace of mind that doors give us (although, as Tyler points out, it might not be quite as much as a 20-gauge under your bed).     The door fails that stand out most to Benji are the ones that disregard or violate building codes. He shares about the events that led to the requirement for egress doors to be open outward.     Mia and Benji list some recent trends in doors:  Single-occupancy restrooms with vacancy indicators Wireless doors on short-term rentals Smart garage doors that enable owners to check door status from their phonesIntumescent foam as a fire-prevention door filler Blast-rating requirements on military bases   We explore the central role doors play in the path of egress from any building–something which of course becomes incredibly important in the case of a fire or other emergency.    Benji explains the importance of doors in preventing building damage from tornadoes and hurricanes. Mia refers to tests like this one that simulate the forces of such storms.     Mia talks through the testing procedures, and Tyler tries to persuade her to take a demotion to return to her job in the testing lab.    ADA compliance is arguably the most significant factor in doors over the last few decades, so we discuss its effects on door design. Although these measures are required by code only on public buildings, Mia explains the benefits of considering ADA design features in homes.    We discuss the fact that architects are sometimes annoyed by doors but that door-design must be considered very early in the process in order to ensure full functionality and code compliance. Benji and Mia have whole teams who consult on these issues with architects, designers, and contractors. Benji mentions the Norman door. (See a journalist complain about it here and then track down the original Norman.)   Benji shares a nightmare story about the Luxor hotel that incurred a million dollars in extra last-minute door-related cost overruns due to a single error repeated a couple thousand times.    Megaphone Messages:  Benji: Contractors, if you value-engineer something, please don’t value-engineer the hardware. There are a lot of design and accessibility issues involved there. You want people to have a strong handshake with your building.Mia: If you have questions about how to install something, call somebody who knows what they’re doing.   Find Benji and Mia online: The Door Hardware Nerds Youtube Channel - Benji on LinkedIn - Mia on LinkedIn    Find Us Online: BrosPodcast.com - LinkedIn - Youtube - Instagram - Facebook - Eddie's LinkedIn - Tyler's LinkedIn If you enjoy the podcast, please rate us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to us! Thanks for listening!  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

JFK knew the importance of alignment and clarity. When he set a vision for how the US would beat the Soviet Union in the space race: put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Not all leaders are so clear. It’s easy to assume that your team has the same clarity you do about your goals. It’s essential to communicate clearly and often about your vision and the goal.  Tyler shares the Belgian draft horse analogy that you’ve probably heard but that is still a very powerful one. A team that is clearly focused on a shared goal can be substantially more powerful than a mere group of individuals. Eddie discusses macro-alignment and micro-alignment as it relates to picking and cultivating the right people for your team.  Find Us Online: BrosPodcast.com - LinkedIn - Youtube - Instagram - Facebook - Eddie's LinkedIn - Tyler's LinkedIn If you enjoy the podcast, please rate us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to us! Thanks for listening! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Millions of tons of lumber goes to landfills every year. Eric Law is out to change that. Eric and his team at Urban Machine have designed a machine that automates the removal of nails and screws from reclaimed lumber, making that lumber usable again.      Eric explains how he settled into this niche. He spent 20 years working in various parts of the technology and construction industries. He was leading a sustainability initiative when he noticed that steel and concrete get recycled but the lumber was all going to the landfill. What kept it from being reused or recycled? Well. It was the nails, of course.    He approached Andrew Gillies and Alex Thiele about using automated robots and computer vision to address this problem. The three of them decided this was a solution worth pursuing, and they launched Urban Machine.    Here’s the process:  Humans take out the big, ugly fasteners.They polish up the remaining fasteners to help the machine spot them.A device resembling a bird beak removes those remaining fasteners.The piece goes through a metal detector to ensure that the piece is clean.   Eric shares about the first few iterations of the machine. After a mishap with the first large stationary model, they decided to make the unit mobile. It is now mounted on a 40’ flatbed truck.   Computer vision enables the operator to see a cross-section of the wood and provide several data points not usually available for individual pieces purchased from the lumber yard. The team is working toward the inclusion of a QR code that will share this info with the end user and take them to a website that shares the wood’s back story.    Eric explains that their equipment enables them to do extensive examinations of reclaimed glue-lam pieces in order to ensure its structural integrity.    We discuss Urban Machine’s business and pricing models. Sometimes they work with owners who want to reuse lumber during a remodeling project. In this case, they receive a dollars-per-board-foot rate to process lumber to be reused onsite. In other cases, they partner with demolition companies and then resell the lumber.    The machine has an impressive design volume of 2.5 million board feet per machine per year. That’s 16,000-20,000 board feet or about a truckload a day for each machine.   As the team handles more projects, they’re working toward formulas to more accurately estimate the amount of reclaimable lumber in particular types of buildings based on the building’s construction and age.   We discuss Urban Machine’s future. By 2024 they plan to have 12 trailers ready for different markets around the country. Beyond that? Well, it would take 6,000 of their machines to capture 50% of the wood that’s thrown away in the US each year.    We discuss the massive sustainability benefits of reducing dependency on virgin lumber that needs to be kiln dried. Then it needs to be trucked across the country. We also touch on the possibility of carbon credits. “Every metropolitan area is a forest for us,” Eric explains.    Eddie asks about how the demolition process needs to change in order for the wood to remain intact enough to be run through the machine.    We wrap up with some speculation about the ripple effects of this kind of reclamation into peripheral businesses for distributing and using reclaimed wood.   Eric’s Megaphone Message: We can create a circular economy for wood. And we can do it in a way that doesn’t just save money but also reduces environmental impact and includes the back stories and historical connections of wood.   Find Eric Online: LinkedIn - Urban Machine’s Website  Find Us Online: BrosPodcast.com - LinkedIn - Youtube - Instagram - Facebook - Eddie's LinkedIn - Tyler's LinkedIn If you enjoy the podcast, please rate us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to us! Thanks for listening!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today we welcome you to join us as we revisit some family drama. Tyler shares about reaching the point in the family company where he felt like he had no more room for growth. This resulted in him losing a sense of purpose.   This experience is not an unusual one. In fact, it’s almost universal. If you’re a leader, it’s important to recognize this reality and figure out how you’re going to address it.   Titles are a part of the picture, but title bumps and even pay bumps without substance can leave people feeling unmotivated. Most people want new challenges and new opportunities.    Talk to your employees–those who are joining your team and those who have been around for a while. Get a sense of the trajectory they’re picturing for themselves.   (And, since Milton was mentioned, here’s a highlight reel.)   Find Us Online: BrosPodcast.com - LinkedIn - Youtube - Instagram - Facebook - Eddie's LinkedIn - Tyler's LinkedInSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For several years now, the shift toward a design-build approach has been gaining momentum. Today we talk to Brian Skripac, the director of virtual design and construction at the Design-Build Institute of America (DBIA).   Brian’s training is in architecture, but he has worked as a BIM leader for almost 20 years now. He enjoys the opportunities to collaborate and share with the goal of increasing efficiency.    Brian lived through the shift from 2D with AutoCAD to 3D with Revit. He shares about a couple large projects that epitomized that shift and its effects on the relationship between owners and design-builders.    This shift is still underway, of course. You may have observed or experienced the array of concerns that people have when sharing designs. Sometimes it can border on paranoia. Eddie asks Brian to talk about managing risk, and Brian goes straight to a recurring theme from the podcast: trust. He shares his own experience in getting over the road blocks that slow the flow of information among stakeholders.   Brian talks us through an experience he had helping Ohio State University transition from 2D blueprints to BIM models for more than 40 million square feet of their buildings. OSU has tied in site information and a whole range of other elements, all of these linked into a spreadsheet. This required a change-management process that included a plan for converting native files.   We discuss the difference between design-bid-build and design-build. Brian says that design-build is targeted to be 47% of all construction projects by 2025. That’s up from 42% in 2021. This approach is quickly becoming mainstream.    The main difference is that with the design-build approach the owner has a single contract with a design-build team rather than multiple contracts with architects, designers, and builders. This integration–at least when it works well–can streamline the process substantially.    There is an evolution that has to take place in individual roles with design-build. Brian presents examples of how this approach enables designers to spend more time designing rather than communicating. A good design-build team can more efficiently solve a greater number of problems. The cohesive we can function much more nimbly than a group of separate individuals.    We discuss project size and how design-build can work with small projects as well as large projects.   On the education/training side, DBIA is all about design-build done right. They establish universal best practices and then share those in a number of ways. They have a blog, webinars, and an annual conference.  The membership of DBIA is vast and diverse, so there is a rich flow of knowledge and insights.    Brian talks through some of DBIA’s upcoming projects, including exploration of AI.    Brian’s Megaphone Message:  Don’t continue with business as usual. If we can break ourselves from the way we’ve done things in the past, there is great potential for improved communication and increased collaboration. We have to transform.    Find Brian Online: DBIA’s website - DBIA on LinkedIn - Brian on LinkedIn   Find Us Online: BrosPodcast.com - LinkedIn - Youtube - Instagram - Facebook - Eddie's LinkedIn - Tyler's LinkedIn If you enjoy the podcast, please rate us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to us! Thanks for listening! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It’s critical in any organization. And it doesn’t come naturally for everyone. All it takes is just a few words. Just take a few seconds to speak up when you see someone do something well. Whether you’re an employer or an employee, your acknowledgement of others' contributions can make a world of difference in workplace dynamics. Let it be simple and organic: a sticky note here, an affirmative head nod there, a single sentence of encouragement after a meeting.  Do it today! Find Us Online: BrosPodcast.com - LinkedIn - Youtube - Instagram - Facebook - Eddie's LinkedIn - Tyler's LinkedIn If you enjoy the podcast, please rate us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to us! Thanks for listening!  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today we talk to Ben Patton of TreeCycle, a Vancouver-based company focused on helping construction companies use more repurposed wood.    While working as an arborist, Ben noticed that 90% of the wood he dealt with was either turned into firewood or wood chips or just thrown in a pile. He found himself wondering why more of this wood wasn’t being used as lumber. One day he dragged a log behind his van and milled it down himself in order to make a coffee table.   This experience and these concerns drove Ben to find some partners and start a company to facilitate the recycling and reuse of wood waste from construction sites. TreeCycle now recovers wood from demolition projects and repurposes it into structured lumbers, dimensional lumbers, raw timbers, siding, and more.   Sometimes Ben’s company handles the process directly, and sometimes they consult with companies who want to handle the process themselves. In those cases, TreeCycle will coordinate site-source separation, clean up the wood, categorize the boards by size and type, and store them for future use.    We explore the financial aspect of reclamation and recycling. An increasing number of customers are willing to invest in reducing their environmental and climate impact. To be sure, this requires some extra time, effort, and money. The cost can be reduced, however, with careful planning. TreeCycle aims to offset the time and expense by saving companies money on lumber.    We discuss how the 2021 spike in lumber prices added some momentum to their operation. Then Ben mentions a few specific products that his company produces:  Cross-laminated timbers (CLD)Dowel-laminated timbersGlue-laminated timbersSubstitutes for pressure-treated wood (including a non-toxic solution that is still being developed)We talk about LEED certification and other efforts toward documenting carbon footprint and discuss approaches that seek genuine change rather than just checking boxes for looks. TreeCycle’s business is aimed to take companies and projects beyond greenwashing and into authentic investment in reducing waste. It’s about sourcing something from 4 miles away rather than 100 miles away.    Anyone who has attempted to repurpose lumber knows that boards can be filled with nails and screws. Ben discusses how TreeCycle addresses these issues and talks about a pending partnership with Urban Machine.   Ben’s Megaphone Message: We need to look toward reducing as much waste as possible. It might take just a little more time and a little more effort, but it is a lot better for the planet if we start making these efforts.    Find Ben Online: LinkedIn, Treecycle Canada Find Us Online: BrosPodcast.com - LinkedIn - Youtube - Instagram - Facebook - Eddie's LinkedIn - Tyler's LinkedIn If you enjoy the podcast, please rate us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to us! Thanks for listening!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.