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Scaling a Construction Business: Lessons from the Field with Dean Dixon · Contractor Business Builder Podcast

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Welcome to another great episode of the Business Builder and
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Contractor Business Builder podcast.
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We have the honor of hosting Dean Dixon today.
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He is the cofounder of Smart Struck.
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I has 20 years of experience in construction, running his own
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businesses and in the construction field for Co
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founding Smart Struck. It's powerful all-in-one
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platform designed to fix inefficiencies and the silent
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killer contractor profit. So things to watch out for.
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In this episode, we dive into how Dean turned years of boots
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on the ground frustration into a scalable tech solution that's
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helping builders take back control of their businesses.
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Be tired of chaos, burnout, and broken systems?
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This episode is for you. Welcome here Dean.
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How you doing today? Yeah, great.
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Thank you, and thank you for helping me, Derek.
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Yeah, excited to dive into all of this.
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Can you give us a bit of a background on yourself in the
0:45
construction industry and and what how that led to the
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creation of of smart? Struck yeah absolutely yeah so
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we're based over in the UK as required right said have had
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more than two decades in construction started originally
0:56
in modular construction so portable buildings, modular
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structures education office custodial MOD and has suppose
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I've been through you know all the elements of managing
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construction and I've never been a trade personally my hands are
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way too soft for that. So I've always had you know
1:13
managing side from site manager to project manager to commercial
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to operations and you know spending 1520 years working for
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somebody else that decided that it was a right time to start a
1:23
development company. So in residential and it's been
1:26
going 10-15 years, we tend to build kind of high end exclusive
1:30
properties. You know, for me, not spent so
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long, you know, working with teams on site and seeing all the
1:36
inefficiencies on very data and process led.
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So, you know, I'm always tinkering on how we can make the
1:42
business more efficient. And, you know, for our
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development company, we'd started off like every normal
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development company or builder and, you know, spreadsheets.
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And we, we quickly, quickly realized during the build
1:56
process that's, you know, spreadsheets are great and, but
2:00
ultimately you've got no connectivity the site, you know,
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spreadsheets essentially just capture a starting point of
2:06
cost. But beyond there, you know,
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it's, it's a game on site. So we started as a business to,
2:12
to look at construction management softwares and we was
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working with one for about 3 years.
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That was kind of 5-6 years ago. And very quickly we identified
2:23
that, you know, having the ability to have a platform that
2:26
implements those processes within our business to be able
2:29
to capture, you know, every stage from estimating all the
2:32
way through to the stage of the build and, you know, managing
2:35
all the trades, you know, budgeting, snagging, you know,
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it transformed our business very, very quickly.
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We So what led me on to Smart Structure is having looked at
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many, many different construction softwares, there
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are quite a few that do small sections.
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So whether it's estimating or take off, whether it's snagging,
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whether it's budgeting or team management, there are actually
2:56
very few in the marketplace that you can go to that provide a
2:59
full suite. And, you know, it's quite
3:01
difficult because we actually looked at, you know, individual
3:04
softwares and we felt that, you know, to encourage adoption
3:08
within our own team. But then beyond for the
3:10
subcontractors and site team, when we're asking subcontractors
3:14
to dance and jump from software to software, app to app, you
3:17
tend to lose the adoption of all the trades.
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And unfortunately, whenever you lose, you know, users of your
3:23
software, you don't get the information or data that you
3:27
need. So kind of the whole thing
3:28
collapsed us. We spent, as I say, a good few
3:31
years with one full suite software, but I think they've
3:35
been operating for quite a while.
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And as customers are quite rightly given feedback that
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bolted on and that it was plugging in, plugging in API
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from other different softwares. And, and it, it got to a point
3:45
where it starts to feel counterintuitive in, in, in how
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we moved around the software and, and from a workflow
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perspective, it, it wasn't that easy to transition from one
3:54
stage of bill to the next, but then also managing teams on
3:58
site. So we, we knew, we believe there
4:00
was a better way. And so we set out to build
4:02
smart. So you know, rather than Pelican
4:05
over years and years and ended up like a rabbit Warren, we
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believe we've gone straight and game.
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We've learned from all the other software companies out there.
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We've essentially taken all the best bits and and improved some
4:16
of the worst bit and we finished up with what is a great product.
4:19
Yeah, wonderful origins. There's so many great product
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softwares stemming from exactly those issues.
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You you've used the software, you had the issues, you've seen
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the deficiencies and and you figured I can, I can build a
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better one, right. And then the world's been been
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better ever since the smart track.
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So with construction, there's so many moving parts, there's a lot
4:39
of efficiencies that happen. What are what are some of the
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biggest efficiencies that you see contractors facing kind of
4:45
on a daily basis with the the operations of their business?
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So beyond the kind of the, the daily process, estimating,
4:51
budgeting, generally it's it's connectivity between office and,
4:55
and site. And you know, there's always
4:57
that stigma attached between their them and us office and
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site. And trying to deliver the
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information and to site and making sure that it's in real
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time is probably one of the biggest areas where we see
5:12
inefficiencies within construction is just that
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connectivity from office to site and making sure that the
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information that they need to be working from is is up to date
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and accurate. Yeah, definitely communication
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so critically important and, and something contractors are always
5:26
known to have the best communication from time to time
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because you're busy, you got 1,000,001 things to do and
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there's so many people, so many suppliers, trades and
5:35
everything. And keeping everybody up to date
5:37
and informed and knowing what's going on is, is definitely a
5:40
challenge and a challenge that, you know, good software like
5:44
smart struck and can help with what, what are some maybe tips
5:47
that you have as far as that information like obviously
5:49
having the right processes to have that raw data for people to
5:53
view. But as far as between the
5:55
company or trades and and sites and how do you communicate or
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some tips and tricks to to better communicate with all the
6:01
different team members and and get the right information to the
6:03
right people. About making sure that we have
6:06
workflows within the platform that relate to both site and
6:10
office. And that isn't always easy
6:12
because the way that they look at things is completely
6:15
different, the way the office team look at things.
6:17
So, you know, making sure that it is in places that are, I
6:21
suppose, make make sense. You know that the, the
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terminology that we use in the office is the same as what's
6:27
used on site. And therefore if they need any
6:29
level of information, it's easy to find within the system.
6:32
They're not spending, you know, hours, you know, countless
6:35
minutes on, on, on the mobiles trying to find the right
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specification. Yeah, makes a lot of sense.
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So at some stage in every business owner and, and you
6:43
know, general contractor, you know, you want to grow, you want
6:46
to scale, you kind of want to get up, you know, typically
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you'll, you'll plateau somewhere.
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Often I find it's, I mean, it depends on the annual revenue.
6:55
But typically you've reached a point where the business owner
6:58
can only handle so much. And maybe you've got some help,
7:01
but you need to be like, in order to kind of get to that
7:04
next level and get a team in place.
7:06
There's a lot of challenges there.
7:07
What what do you what do you see as you know, comma mistakes or
7:10
challenges from contractors? Maybe going more is like an
7:12
owner operator managing everything to building a team
7:16
that can kind of run and and manage the business.
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What do you find that challenges?
7:19
There in terms of, you know, business trying to scale up, you
7:22
know, without using a cliche in construction.
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It's about having the right foundations in place to build on
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foundations is in this example is having the right systems and
7:32
processes. And very quickly, you know,
7:34
people, teams, firms can assume that it's easy to just go and
7:38
employ 10 more men and therefore 10 more, you know, team members
7:41
equals more profit. It isn't always the case.
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And ultimately you need those processes to be able to manage
7:47
those team members, not just in terms of, you know, their
7:49
workload, but documentation and quality standards.
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And quite often, you know, teams will believe that they can just
7:57
rein in a load of additional contractors and manage all those
8:01
by phone and nothing else. So we find the biggest, you
8:04
know, issue that people have scaling really is, is having
8:07
those processes in place to be able to manage all those
8:09
contractors step by step. Yeah, if, if you're already kind
8:13
of overwhelmed or stressed out and you, you had 10 more people
8:17
to your, to your organization, it's just, you know, the wheels
8:20
are going to fall off and things are going to get more chaotic.
8:22
If you don't have those processes and systems in place
8:26
to, to be able to, to manage things and, and think as well.
8:30
You, you kind of level up as a leader because you have to
8:34
improve your leadership and communication, your ability to
8:37
kind of manage not being, as you know, first person, I guess on,
8:41
on sites and talking with people.
8:42
You you need to be able to to manage by using systems and
8:46
processes and leadership with inside the organization.
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And systems processes definitely add a level of professionalism
8:53
to the business as well. If you can demonstrate to a
8:56
customer that you know you're not managing everything by a pad
8:59
in your van, it's you know you've got a full process manage
9:02
the teams on site. You know, quite often when
9:04
businesses are trying to scale up, usually you've got that
9:07
business owner that is quite often on the tools.
9:10
When you've been recommended to another person, you know they're
9:13
expecting to see Dave the builder on the site all the
9:17
time. And therefore if Dave isn't on
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site, is it going to be the same job or quality standards?
9:22
It's about reaffirming to the customer that you know it's
9:24
still Dave the business behind the scenes.
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It's just Dave managing teams and through a work process.
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So he's managing the the construction project is still
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going to be done to their quality standards.
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It's just not that person physically on the tools anymore.
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Yeah, definitely identified a good point there as far as
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clients come to expect, especially through referrals
9:45
that they're going to be, you know, very involved with, with
9:48
business owner, the contractor and and as you grow, you need to
9:51
as to be more your your brand, you're still there and and
9:54
you're, you know, driving the culture and the business
9:56
forward, but you're not going to have as much face to face and
9:58
and be as involved with with every client for sure.
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So one issue that definitely comes up as you want to scale
10:04
the business, it's profitability, because you know,
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typically you want to scale to make more money.
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But as you scale, your profitability generally goes
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down, which is, you know, counterintuitive maybe to some
10:14
some extent, but as you know, larger team, a little bit looser
10:18
management or whatever, profitability can can definitely
10:21
be be an issue. How does Smart Smart Struck help
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with profitability or or what have you seen help with
10:28
profitability for for builders? So generally the estimated and
10:32
tall is slick and straight forward and simple to use.
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It allows anybody that's not even particularly tech savvy to
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be able to do a very quick, simple take off, giving them
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essentially a full detailed bill of quantities, you know, without
10:46
them being a quantity surveyor. Now what that means is, is it's
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when they go into a project, either from an estimated
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perspective, they can feel comfortable that they've
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included everything that's necessary.
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But then that has, you know, knock on effects of positive
11:00
knock on effects that they can see by a detailed bill of
11:03
quantities have identifies the phases of the bills, if you
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like, all the stages. So it gives them a clear path
11:09
of, of the process to build, which which helps now beyond
11:13
estimating, then it turns into budget.
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You can capture costs, you know, every second if you like.
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So again, it's fully transparent.
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And I'll use an example really that's where a lot of builders
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and trades and contractors fall short is having that ability to
11:27
be able to do something about. So the example is if by the time
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you've, you know, realize what you've spent, you've either
11:36
received an invoice or you've received an invoice and paid
11:39
that invoice. Now that could be 30 to 60 days
11:42
after the material has physically been installed into
11:45
the property. So you can't do anything about
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it. That money is done, bin got
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spent. So having, you know, a system
11:51
where you can accurately show a budget, a live budget.
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So you're allocating costs every day and it, it kind of changes
11:58
the process from managing your costs proactively as opposed to
12:02
reactively, you know, where a lot of contractors and teams
12:05
fall short in terms of losing profitability lies and all the
12:09
areas where they can't see. So, so kind of making the
12:12
intangible tangible. Now you know how often the
12:16
builders, you know, they'll stand on site and they'll go
12:19
when, when I estimated, I thought, do this or no, you
12:22
know, a joiner will get a piece of wood and write all the
12:24
materials down of what he needs next.
12:26
Then he'll go into the builders merchant, you'll get all the
12:28
materials loaded in and he's waiting queue.
12:30
Then he'll go in the queue itself inside and then he'll be
12:33
waiting at the checkout counter. And then before you know it,
12:36
you've lost two hours of the day.
12:37
But quite often you'll need a hand so he doesn't go on his
12:40
own. They'll take is mate with him
12:42
and and these are all costs that you could never allow for.
12:45
And and that's the intangible for me is the time wasted in
12:49
managing that element. Now picture a scenario where
12:51
you've estimated properly. You can see it outlined in the
12:54
bill of quantities. You know what materials you need
12:56
well in advance of you even starting the project.
12:59
But when you're actually on the job, you can see it clearly from
13:02
your phone. You bring it up and you go, I
13:04
need these materials. You can send that to the
13:07
merchant and say kind of have these materials delivered today,
13:10
tomorrow or whenever you need them.
13:11
All of a sudden from you know, cost leakage perspective or
13:14
losing profitability, you've now gained that two hours back doing
13:18
what you should be doing and earning the money.
13:20
Yeah, I love that analogy and it I'm a big proponent of get your
13:26
materials delivered and get an order together or even just
13:29
phone in an order and have a guy go pick it up, have a, you know,
13:32
one of your rookies and take the truck and go grab stuff if
13:36
really needed to. But yeah, being proactive with
13:39
materials and, and just put some delivery into your budget if you
13:43
know you're going to need, you know, 5-10 whatever deliveries
13:47
on a project of materials. It gets guys thinking ahead too,
13:50
like, hey, we're gonna do a delivery tomorrow.
13:52
What do we need in the next week or, or or whatever, instead of
13:55
being all we can run to the store and, you know, kind of
13:57
bugger off for for an hour or two and you know, every day.
14:01
It definitely, definitely adds up.
14:03
And I totally understand too, that it's really an eye opener
14:06
once you start having, it's never 100% live as far as your
14:11
expenses and budget, like your live costing or what have you,
14:15
but it's, it's pretty close. You can get there.
14:16
And I found projects often look good till about maybe 7080
14:21
percent, 90%. And then you start to see where
14:24
you start, you know, you start going over on costs and, and,
14:27
and things like that. And it just creates a, a great
14:30
feedback loop for your estimating.
14:32
Once you have that job costing up to date, you can see, you
14:35
know, we over overestimated or underestimated on, you know,
14:38
this part of the project or that part of the project.
14:40
And it just makes it much, much more efficient and, and more
14:44
accurate, you know, financial health of the business as
14:48
essentially with getting all this stuff set up.
14:50
And I know it can be very overwhelming and you know,
14:55
people can feel stuck with everything that's going on,
14:57
especially if you've been in business.
14:59
I had a contractor comment on one of my videos the other day
15:02
of, you know, he wanted to give up the building game and get out
15:05
of it because he had had enough and it was, you know, wearing
15:08
him thin, I guess. And he'd been in it for 10 plus
15:10
years and kind of felt stuck. What, what would be your advice
15:14
or how would you think about it if, if a builder out there feels
15:17
like stuck or kind of fed up and and just can't, can't move
15:20
forward and can't get ahead? Usually builders, contractors
15:24
get overwhelmed like everybody in everyday life when there's
15:27
you have too many things to think about and you know, it's
15:31
about breaking those individual tasks down 1 by 1 and just
15:34
ticking boxes. And, and where, you know,
15:37
generally, you know, people feel overwhelmed is, you know, during
15:41
the day, you've already got enough to think about just in
15:43
terms of the build process, but you've got clients ringing mural
15:46
there on site there over your shoulder, asking questions and
15:49
sending you emails, all that kind of stuff.
15:51
And all of a sudden it become, become the straw that breaks the
15:54
camel's back. And, you know, so many people on
15:56
the job are, are trying to manage all of that information
16:00
in the mind. And you know, how many times
16:02
have you said do something or I must do that?
16:05
Or yet when I get around to it, you know, it's all those kind of
16:07
stuff. But by the time you've spent a
16:09
full 8 hours doing the things that you're supposed to be doing
16:11
is difficult to remember all the things that you said you was
16:13
gonna do. And running into the van for a
16:16
pen and paper sometimes isn't that convenient.
16:18
So having the ability to just, you know, pluck out your phone
16:22
and just add yourself a task. And you know, that task could be
16:24
assigned to a particular person or, you know, at any particular
16:29
stage in the bill. But it's about capturing all
16:31
that information and then certainly self reminders to make
16:33
sure those things are done. And, you know, it could be tasks
16:36
that are set by just a general to do thing, or it could be a
16:40
certain stage of build. It could be building control
16:42
coming into the warranty, coming to sign off that you need to do
16:45
certain things. It could be capturing post those
16:48
meetings things that we've discussed.
16:50
What you don't want to do is get too far down the the building,
16:52
trying to remember what he asked you to do to make sure that you
16:55
compliant, you get certificate and then you're spending
16:57
countless hours trying to ring him up and panicking.
16:59
And there comes the overwhelming really.
17:01
So if if you can just very quickly, conveniently document
17:04
those tasks and then at your convenience take them off 1 by
17:08
1, it just breaks it down and just prevents you from getting
17:10
overwhelmed. Yeah, as you said, I think a lot
17:12
of overwhelm comes from being more reactive, getting, you
17:16
know, things just kind of getting left or unorganized and
17:20
you get decision fatigue sets in.
17:22
Everyone's, you know, you're the bottleneck in the business,
17:24
Everything runs through you and, and of course you get overloaded
17:27
in, in that regard. And I know it's not it's easier
17:30
said than done obviously, but being proactive, trying to plan,
17:34
schedule, think ahead. And I find if you're dealing
17:37
with the same problems again and again and again, then that's,
17:41
that should be putting off alarm bells in your head.
17:43
I, I need a system, I need a process, I need some way of
17:46
doing this, some sort of standard to, to go upstream.
17:49
Like if you're getting the same type of complaints from clients
17:51
or your guys are constantly not showing up, you know, anything
17:54
that's reoccurring, any kind of problem, reoccurring problem,
17:56
it's an opportunity to, to build some sort of process or system
18:00
or even just communicate and, and let your people know that,
18:02
hey, this, this is an issue that we're dealing with.
18:04
I can't be, you know, fighting these fires every single day.
18:07
We need, we need to to get some clarity around around this
18:10
problem or whatever the issue may be.
18:12
Everything about, you know, smart structure or just
18:15
construction management software in general is, you know, yeah,
18:18
absolutely. It helps you manage at the
18:20
beginning, start and end. But you know, what people have
18:23
to realise as well as is that, you know, there's a lot of data
18:25
that's collected all the way through the project.
18:27
And therefore, you know, you can learn from that.
18:29
You know, you alluded to earlier where, you know, allocating
18:32
costs to a particular build. If you know you've
18:34
overestimated, underestimated, you can, you know, react to it
18:38
proactively. But if you are employing
18:40
subcontractors and for example, you can see at the end of the
18:43
job that that that subcontractor has had more snags than anybody
18:47
else and they took longer to react than anybody else.
18:51
You know, unfortunately, you're not gonna be working with that
18:53
contractor anymore because they're just not supporting your
18:55
business in the way that you want.
18:56
So, you know, all of the the processes through smoke
19:00
structures, collecting information for you to be able
19:02
to review the project afterwards and then just help you evaluate
19:06
quickly, you know, rather than that, you know, finger in the
19:08
air, hand on heart, you know, I'm pretty sure it's clear, you
19:12
know, you can see it light of day where the issues that's only
19:15
shows there's some positives in there as well, things that you
19:17
could use again, for example. But yeah, identifies that what
19:21
good looks like, but also where where you can improve next.
19:24
Time, Yeah, really having that that data as you mentioned and
19:27
just knowing the numbers of a project by the numbers, there's
19:31
no interpretation needed. Essentially, you know, are you
19:34
over, are you under, you know, and then figure out, you know
19:38
what, what the reason is for that.
19:39
So we talked about processes, systems being so crucial and and
19:42
having, you know, a good project management software like
19:44
Starstruck essential to well run business.
19:47
Can you tell us maybe a bit more about which specific systems you
19:51
think are you find are the most beneficial or critical for for
19:55
builders kind of implement early on or or when they kind of get
19:59
started? Estimating this key you have to
20:02
everything starts with an estimate.
20:03
If you're not, if you're not building your estimates
20:05
properly, if you don't have the right method of festinating, if
20:08
you're not capturing all the the right costs, if it doesn't, you
20:11
know, break it down for you in the right way, you're not
20:14
necessarily going to think of everything in that project.
20:17
You know, for for teams, for contractors that are looking to
20:20
potentially scale up, maybe look at that project that that's just
20:24
slightly larger, slightly more out of their comfort zone.
20:27
And, you know, just looking at an old fashioned drawing on the
20:29
table and trying to assume, you know, everything that's needed
20:33
within that project is impossible.
20:34
So, you know, estimating software is he that's the tone
20:39
for the rest of your project. So I'll absolutely say
20:42
estimating and you know, and then moves on to the budget
20:46
element really, you know, within smart structured estimate
20:48
convert straight into a budget. So then you can start accruing
20:51
costs immediately. So every time you raise an
20:53
purchase order or a commitment to a merchant or subcontractor,
20:56
you're accruing those costs. And I think if you haven't got
20:59
my method of packing costs, you're getting trouble quite
21:02
quickly. And you know, accountancy
21:04
softwares are great, but accountancy softwares are, you
21:07
know, for accountants are looking at your numbers well
21:10
after you've already spent and that's for year end stuff.
21:12
But that's where you need, you need a contract budgets, you
21:16
know, day by day, and that's absolutely critical.
21:18
Estimating so primary to everything else that that
21:21
happens as far as budget efficiency, profitability.
21:25
If if you're out on your estimate, doesn't matter how
21:28
efficiently you run a project, you can't make that money back
21:31
If you've forgotten things or or you know your your margins are
21:34
too low or and, and things like. That document storage is a big
21:38
one and you know, quite often you'll tenders which are made-up
21:42
of a million different pages, you know, quite often some
21:45
things that aren't even relevant to you.
21:47
So having the ability to be able to store the documents in a
21:50
place where you can find them easily.
21:53
And you know, we've all got OneDrive and Dropbox and all
21:56
that kind of stuff. But if you're not setting your
21:57
folders, oh wait, you know, this is away from a construction
22:00
management software. But if you have or subscribe to
22:02
these documents storage and quite often you can just have
22:05
this absolute, you know, 1 folder with a massive documents
22:09
where you can spend ages and ages just looking for the right
22:12
piece of information. And where we found in past is on
22:16
what we've evidently built into smart structures, you know, the
22:20
revisions of drawings. And quite often, you know, you
22:24
see so many printed drawings on site and we've seen it in the
22:27
past where, you know, just seeing an old set of drawings
22:32
floating around in a bricklayers van, for example, Oh my God,
22:35
you've brought you're built to the wrong drawing.
22:37
So, you know, having ability, which we've got in smart
22:41
structure is every time you drag and drop, it recognises an old
22:44
drawing and immediately creates A revision.
22:46
It archives the old super seeds with the new and it's in a
22:49
particular place you create your folder setup that's foundations
22:53
or masonry, all that kind of stuff.
22:55
You drag it through it in. So you know that when you want a
22:58
specific drawing for a particular phase of the bills
23:01
become very quickly within seconds arrive right drawing.
23:04
Notice that the right revision, so you're building to the right
23:06
side drawings. So documents storage is king.
23:09
Yeah, always an awkward conversation when the client is
23:12
asking why something's in a certain spot and it's due to
23:15
someone just having an old drawing or, you know, the
23:17
specification was a little bit off or what have you.
23:19
So yeah, file storage super important.
23:22
And it's actually fairly simple to to get set up.
23:25
I mean, you just have a standard folder structure for every
23:27
client and every client has their own folder and inside that
23:30
folder you're going to have different folders, plans,
23:33
finances, budgets, photos, what you know, whatever.
23:36
It just create your folder structure and and have it
23:40
consistent for for every new client that you have for every
23:42
new project that. Everybody help.
23:44
Go ahead. Yeah, we have folder templates
23:47
or structures. So if somebody wanted to use a,
23:50
a document template, stories, then essentially there is a
23:53
preset template for every stage of the bill within residential
23:57
or commercial. But absolutely you can set your
23:59
own folder structure up. So it's it's, you know, more
24:02
specific to you. Yeah, perfect.
24:04
No, with technology comes implementation.
24:08
I mean with systems comes implementation.
24:10
Contractors been doing it one way for 5 or 10 or 20 years.
24:13
Not easy to to you know, to move over and change habits and and
24:17
get people out of what they're used to.
24:19
How would you approach, you know, implementation or adoption
24:22
of of new technology or new new software systems with inside,
24:26
you know, construction business, especially at the kind of the
24:29
field site? Level, I think for for smaller
24:31
teams that aren't necessarily familiar with construction
24:34
measurement softwares that are trying to scale up, I think to a
24:37
certain extent they know they need it and you know, they
24:40
believe that, you know wholeheartedly that it would be
24:43
a benefit to their business, but they worry whether they've got
24:47
the time to implement the software.
24:49
I would argue the fact that you can't afford not to spend that
24:52
time because you know you'd be losing time hand over fist,
24:55
whether it's tangible or intangible, you know, you'd be
24:57
wasting time and that's why you're looking at construction
25:00
management software in the 1st place.
25:01
So I would say for somebody that's going to go from nothing
25:05
into construction management software, I think you just gotta
25:07
RIP the Band-Aid off and just get on with it.
25:09
And you know, from our perspective, we we have an
25:13
onboarding which you know, shows you through the entire software
25:16
is training and it teaches you step by step at every stage of
25:20
the the management software itself.
25:22
So we have a structured 8 to 10 software onboarding session.
25:25
So we can send you templates for your to populate and then they
25:31
drag and drop with an import. So if you are running budget,
25:34
some current jobs wanna learn Excel, we're just importing to
25:38
our template and all your budget information could be transferred
25:40
over in minutes and save folders.
25:43
So we can show you how and what good looks like in terms of a a
25:47
folder structure. But yeah, there's an element of,
25:49
you know, you're here for a reason and therefore, you know,
25:52
it's just gotta go through and enjoy and just get on with it
25:56
and implement it with your business.
25:57
So, but guarantee taking from me from my experience, feedback
26:04
from our customers, you know, however, smaller regionally have
26:08
one man bands up to Tier 2 and tier 3 contractors.
26:11
So we see a full spectrum of how people implement it into into
26:16
their business. And you know, even if they're
26:18
currently using existing software to be able to transfer
26:20
over form 1 to another, again, we have specific in plate
26:24
template imports that we just export that data from one
26:27
software and within minutes, their whole previous system is
26:30
an hour. So, you know, actually people
26:32
already not quite to transfer over to ours is is easy, you
26:37
know, contractors that are looking to get on board with the
26:40
new construction management software, new process to start
26:42
off with. We've got all the guarded
26:44
support that they need. Beyond that, we have a learning
26:47
portal where you know, they can do some quizzes, watch some
26:50
videos and then at a later date, if you need to be heard back,
26:53
then you know, they can quick search and then within a few
26:56
seconds they can learn how to do a particular task.
26:58
But generally speaking, you know it, it's pretty self intuitive,
27:01
intuitive. So to navigate around these
27:04
simple and straightforward and and you pick it up pretty
27:06
quickly. It's designed for fat thumbs on
27:09
site. So definitely, yeah, for, you
27:11
know, build by, you know, contractors and, and with the
27:14
experience of contractors and like anything new, it's, it's a
27:17
matter of getting in there, making a go of it and just
27:21
realizing that it's gonna take a little while till everything is
27:24
100% smooth, especially when you've got a, you know, a larger
27:27
team involved and things like that.
27:28
But just of course reiterating kind of the reason why you're,
27:32
you're, you know, putting this new initiative in place and
27:34
create efficiencies and better communication and make people's
27:37
jobs and lives easier and, and strengthen the business and, and
27:40
all those good things. And from there, it's just a
27:42
matter of maybe being a little bit, you know, I find there's
27:46
just, you gotta kind of remind people a little bit more and
27:48
just kind of support and coach them through, you know, using
27:51
the, using the software and, and typically speaking, some people
27:54
pick it up very quick with new software.
27:56
Some people need reminders and they take some month or two till
27:59
they, you know, in the habit of using it.
28:01
But then once they get a hang of it, it's it's just becomes
28:04
another day day on the job and another, another thing to do
28:07
that they can use another tool to utilize essentially say.
28:10
That the thing with the small structures for people that
28:13
haven't necessarily used construction management
28:15
software, you know, we've set up all the templates within folder
28:18
structures or estimating. So you know, for anybody to get
28:23
started, they could pick it up quite easily and use all our
28:26
templates. Now bear in mind that these
28:28
templates and structures and estimating processes been
28:30
designed around construction companies.
28:33
So you know it, it forces good process.
28:35
But yeah, I've been to pick it up quite quickly.
28:38
Everything is in place for you to be able to use from day.
28:41
One yeah, perfect. Can you give us like a, a real
28:43
life example of, of a company or business owner that's started on
28:48
smart struck and, and kind of a bit of a journey and, and how
28:51
it's influenced how they build and, and their business?
28:53
Yeah. So I'll give you 1 quick example
28:55
that I give you slow. So we've got a very small
28:58
contractor looking to scale up and received a tender for a
29:02
project based on recommendation, but the project was four or five
29:06
hours, OK. And he realised that it would be
29:10
a great step forward for him for this project, but he just didn't
29:13
know how to manage that kind of level of finance and you know,
29:18
number of trades on site that's from a distance.
29:21
So he implemented smart strips and he managed to go out to
29:24
tender to all the subcontractors and you know, it estimated using
29:29
part of his own estimates and then using some of the
29:31
subcontractors quotes to import, which formed budget was able to
29:34
raise margins on quite easily send it over on the project.
29:38
And then he was able to instruct an issue contracts to, you know,
29:41
all the trades essentially that is not worked with before.
29:44
And you know, as part of the process, he and his contracts to
29:48
to the subcontractor, he requested that they take photos
29:53
which they just uploaded on a daily basis at the end of every
29:56
day to show progress. And it allowed him to manage
29:58
this contract 4 or 4 four or five hours away quite easily.
30:02
You know, the he went once every two weeks to site, he said and
30:07
the the customer was overwhelmed by, you know, the quality
30:12
standards and how the project was on, on target time wise and
30:17
also on cost. You know, there wasn't any
30:19
extras quoted. And you know, he gave the client
30:23
a login into smart structure. So we can set certain areas that
30:27
you can show the customer, you know, only the things that you
30:30
want them to see, but ultimately the customer a few times to
30:34
start off with. But then beyond that, he said
30:36
that once that trust was developed, could log into
30:39
software, into smart structure and see the photos being added
30:42
every day, so we didn't need to go.
30:44
So therefore the customer felt comfortable that he could see
30:47
progress. So yeah, it allowed a very small
30:51
contractor to be able to take on that next project with ease,
30:55
managing from a distance and being able to manage quality
30:58
standards. But yeah, big one really is, you
31:02
know, I was chatting to director of a company that's a developer
31:07
that we had for over a year now and I just caught up.
31:10
CR is getting on and you know, he recognised that pre
31:14
construction management software, he he could just sense
31:16
that the, the cost leakage was just phenomenal.
31:19
And there was just so much firefighting And you know, when
31:24
people are generally busy, the easiest thing for any team to do
31:27
just to say we need more staff, we need more staff.
31:29
And we took the opportunity whilst he was implementing smart
31:33
structure, almost take his business back down to to Ground
31:36
Zero and look at every process and implement and build up from
31:39
there. Even though it's an established
31:41
yeah, he, his health and some of his team members was getting 100
31:45
plus calls a day and he just said there were so many
31:48
inefficiencies and all these calls was calls they had already
31:52
had three times before. He was duplication of content
31:55
and people asking for updated drawings.
31:58
And so, yeah, it was, it was quite overwhelming for me to to
32:03
see and to know how much of difference it made to this
32:06
developer. So he's been able to scale up
32:08
from one site to three sites in the in the last 18 months.
32:12
So it's nearly this turnover. And the one for whom, you know,
32:18
he could feel hand on heart that he had this cost leakage.
32:20
He's been able to physically see it now through his budget.
32:23
He's been able to capture it productively, do something about
32:25
it. Now he's actually, even though
32:27
he's doubled his turnover, he's been able to increase gross
32:30
margins by 18 percent, which is just.
32:32
Incredible. Yeah, that's fantastic.
32:34
Great to hear that success and it yeah, it shows like the
32:38
ability to make decisions are just so much better when
32:41
typically you'll have a feeling you kind of know maybe you're
32:44
losing money here, This is an efficient but you can't you
32:47
don't have numbers. You can't really see is it an
32:49
issue or is it just feel like an issue?
32:51
When you have that budget in place, you have the software, it
32:53
becomes very evident where there's breakdowns in the
32:55
process or the budget or, you know, where where money is going
32:58
and things like that. So very, you know, very
33:01
inspiring stories for both of those and A and a reason why to
33:04
get solution like smart struck in place before you, you try to
33:07
grow or scale or or do a new project that's a bit farther
33:10
away or what have you. So that's fantastic for people
33:12
wanting to get started with with smart struck.
33:15
You know, we'll put a link in the description below to to the
33:18
website. What what does that look like?
33:20
What should they do first? To To.
33:21
To? Check this out.
33:23
Yeah, simple, straightforward. So go to the website
33:25
smartsheet.com and there's a demo request page.
33:29
So just click on the demo, pick a date or to to suit you.
33:33
We have teams that work in a different time zone.
33:35
So if it's UK, America or beyond, you know, we can do
33:39
demos take about 30 to 45 minutes, which gives you your
33:43
real good flavour of every part of the the system.
33:46
And we try and have a pre call just so we can tailor the demo
33:50
to you. Just get an understanding of
33:52
flavour of what you're looking to achieve, some of the pain
33:54
points, and then we can show you how Smart Strip can really.
33:56
Help. Yeah, definitely wonderful.
33:58
So, yeah, if if you're not using a project management software or
34:01
you feel like maybe yours wasn't quite up to to, you know, the
34:04
standard that you'd like it to be, go click the the link in the
34:07
description there, get jump on a demo and and see what smart
34:10
trucks all about. So any last words of wisdom or
34:13
last kind of thing you wanted to mention to?
34:15
You, I definitely feel that if you are even a small business
34:18
that's looking to scale up, having construction management
34:22
software like small structs in in your Armory will definitely
34:26
help you have greater visibility.
34:28
Reduce stresses genuinely, you know, prevent the firefighting,
34:32
give you full visibility and it allows you to stick your head
34:37
above the parapet and actually run your business rather than
34:40
running in your business. And you know, that gives you a
34:43
clear view of of what's next. And so absolutely well worth
34:47
having. Wonderful.
34:51
Yeah. Thanks so much for coming on
34:52
here, Dean. It's, you know, a wealth of, of
34:54
insights from yourself. And contracting is hard.
34:57
The construction industry is hard, but it really doesn't need
35:01
to be. There are, you know, better ways
35:02
and, and working on the business and, and getting the right tools
35:05
and systems in place can really set you apart and and help you
35:08
get to where you want to go. So thanks so much for coming on
35:10
here, Dean. It's been a pleasure.
35:12
Thank you.