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Efficiency in Construction Leadership: How Collaboration Drives Innovation · Activating Curiosity® | Leading Change in the Construction Industry

0:58
Brian: It's like, yeah, why can't we just use the model?
0:59
Brian: Let's push it to get to that stage.
1:01
Brian: And sure, there's risk and there's, you know, all this other stuff with it, but I don't think we're that far from being able to, you know, actually realize that.
1:09
Brian: It's a huge opportunity once we can take advantage of it.
1:12
Brian: And that leads into the whole industrialized construction thing.
1:15
Brian: You know, seeing that end of it, that's huge.
1:18
Brian: Companies who can take take advantage of that integration are gonna see value.
1:54
Ryan: I am Ryan Ware, and really excited about this conversation that we're about to have.
1:59
Ryan: It is an area that from my career focusing in architecture and construction was a big part of what I wanted to achieve.
2:08
Ryan: So today we're having with us Brian Scrippak with the Design Build Institute of America.
2:15
Ryan: Hey Brian, how are you doing?
2:17
Ryan: Good.
2:17
Ryan: How are you, Ryan?
2:18
Ryan: Doing good.
2:19
Ryan: Thank you so much for being willing to participate in the conversation.
2:23
Ryan: I know a little bit about your history and we crossed path a few times, but I want you to tell a little bit about yourself before we dive into activating curiosity.
2:32
Brian: Yeah, no, sure.
2:33
Brian: And and first off, thanks for having me.
2:34
Brian: I appreciate the uh the invitation to be on your podcast.
2:38
Brian: I'm looking forward to the conversation.
2:40
Brian: Yeah, my my background uh currently now at the Design Build Institute of America, I really started um architecture by education and practice for about nine years.
2:52
Brian: And then in 2005, um I took the I took the BIM tangent.
2:57
Brian: I I left the world of practice uh in a traditional architecture role, um, you know, working on healthcare, higher ed projects, which is really where I spent most of my career.
3:06
Brian: Um, but then I started um, you know, I started working with technology and implementing it in different firms.
3:14
Brian: Um I did that for uh really a short time, uh about two years.
3:20
Brian: And then I went back to the design firm that I left to become a BIM manager.
3:23
Brian: Um and I was in that role uh a couple different firms since then, um, you know, starting in architecture, and then in 2012, I had the opportunity to join a firm here in Pittsburgh, Astorino.
3:35
Brian: Uh the first project I worked on, we were a uh about a between 100, 100, probably like 125-person AE firm that also had this construction management group.
3:47
Brian: And the first project that I worked on was a healthcare facility where we did it in what we called design-led design build.
3:53
Brian: So we were the architect, the engineer, and we were also the design builder, the you know, the the construction manager executing on this project and being able to see this kind of continuation of what we were able to do as the single entity to deliver the projects was pretty exciting.
4:10
Brian: Um, we had eventually been acquired shortly after that.
4:13
Brian: We were acquired by Canon Design, and they were really interested in this this kind of design-led design build thing that we had built out, and you know, we had a similar you know, market segment profile uh that we were working in and had the opportunity to work there for till 2021 when I joined DBA DBIA and working on a lot of different projects.
4:34
Brian: Um, you know, a lot of design build work, whether we were doing it internally, we may have just been the architect or just the engineer, but really seeing all these multiple facets was interesting, and then you know, looking for for somewhat of a career change, uh, you know, happen to be in the right spot at the right time when uh DVIA was looking to really advance the technology conversation with and design build.
4:58
Brian: So I had the opportunity to take on this role and lead the conversation about you know BIM VDC and you know all of the what now is becoming you know anything tangential to that.
5:09
Brian: You know, there's so many other technologies that are evolving how we design, construct, and operate the built environment.
5:15
Brian: It's it's really exploded beyond that.
5:17
Brian: So yeah, that's uh that was my my winding career path to DBIA.
5:24
Ryan: Well, I you know, that thank you for sharing that.
5:26
Ryan: I think I first heard your name, yes, when you were focusing and transitioning into the to the BIM world.
5:33
Ryan: Um, you know, and that was that 2005, 2006 kind of area.
5:38
Ryan: Yeah, we are starting to look at it, you know.
5:40
Ryan: You know, most people know my background as an architecture as well.
5:43
Ryan: And it is, you know, your name was kind of coming out as that leader in that that BIM area.
5:50
Ryan: Fast forward 20 years later.
5:52
Ryan: And like you mentioned and talk about it a lot on the podcast, is this industrialized construction area and this convergence.
6:00
Ryan: So I'm sure we'll get into a lot of that as it relates to, you know, one being a uh really a delivery model and process and how that's evolved, and then accepting of this, you know, technology within the industry um throughout that delivery model.
6:18
Ryan: So I'm glad you shared your perspective, what you enjoyed about it inside of a firm and how the firm started to kind of gravitate uh towards that.
6:28
Ryan: So you know, I always like to kick off, you know, the first question really being around knowing that that most people who who have a career like yours where you've you've transitioned right throughout, you know, whether your role was traditional practicing architecture to I see an opportunity here, an opportunity here to help kind of solve a problem.
6:49
Ryan: So and you could take this in a couple of paths because I know one, the DBIA versus yourself, but that you know, the really that problem that you were like, you know what, this might be an opportune time, but like this is what I've really been passionate about solving.
7:05
Brian: Yeah, I I I think it's just efficiency, right?
7:08
Brian: And I I can remember um, you know, working on projects, you know, detailing things, and okay, I'm gonna change something in my floor plan.
7:17
Brian: You know, this is going back to 2005.
7:19
Brian: I gotta update my floor plan, I'm gonna update the elevation, I go update this.
7:22
Brian: Wait, there's a tool that I can just do that once.
7:24
Brian: Why am I not using that?
7:25
Brian: Oh my gosh, why that is there's such efficiency?
7:28
Brian: I just think about the the kind of the unfortunate mundane nature of the construction document process, the traditional construction document process.
7:39
Brian: And if, like, wow, if there's things in the if there's technology-driven solutions that can take this away so I can focus on other things, how much better would I be?
7:48
Brian: And thinking through the detail, not worrying about updating something in seven different spots and trace going down the rabbit hole of updating it everywhere.
7:56
Brian: Um, I think those were that was just the basic, you know, insight.
8:00
Brian: Um, you know, back in 2005, seeing that, be like, wow, I could do this so much.
8:04
Brian: Oh, wait, I can get a rendering out of something that I'm building my construction documents from, and I don't have to go into another platform and do it.
8:11
Brian: And wait, I can get my door schedule here.
8:14
Brian: I don't have to update it, my my plans, and then go over to Excel to do it.
8:18
Brian: Oh, wait, I don't have to do it.
8:19
Brian: It was all of those things.
8:21
Brian: And for me, you know, having that opportunity, leaving practice, going into, you know, working in that Autodesk reseller channel and having this, you know, getting my hands on this new tool and going back to my peers in the industry was like, look at what we can do.
8:34
Brian: This is amazing, this is great.
8:36
Brian: And then I very quickly realized I don't want to be selling this anymore, I want to go do it.
8:40
Brian: Right.
8:40
Brian: Now I went back and did it and implemented it in our firm and you know, really tried to drive all of these experiences that I had and you know, try to move it forward.
8:50
Brian: So and it seems kind of simple, but it's just efficiency, right?
8:53
Brian: We all, you know, design, you know, design firms, there's an efficiency there.
8:58
Brian: We we do stuff in one platform, we do redo it again, another platform, we do it again another platform, then we send it and share it.
9:04
Brian: And it was just like there, there's a better way to do these things.
9:07
Brian: I can be more efficient using this building information modeling tool that's out there.
9:13
Brian: Um, and then you know, moving beyond that, it was how we collaborate.
9:18
Brian: And that was, you know, just aside from you know, design build, you know, I wasn't thinking about design build back then, but I can remember a couple of projects in like 07-08 where you know the whole the use of Revit, which is what I was seeing in the market I was in, there's other tools out there, but you know, was the architects were gravitating towards it, and then we saw the engineers start grabbing toward it, gravitating toward it.
9:40
Brian: We had a in Columbus, we had a large courthouse project where we had, I can remember by that by the end of the project, we could barely open the model to print out the record drawings, you know, for our final deliverables for PDFs.
9:53
Brian: It was so big.
9:54
Brian: Um, but we had all of this, and then the next project I was working on, we were starting to see the contractor work on it.
10:00
Brian: Um, and you know, we had the opportunity, there was a large, large healthcare project here just outside of Pittsburgh we were doing with Turner and seeing what they were doing and how the information that we created as designers could be utilized in construction.
10:14
Brian: That was another, I was like, hey, we got to break down these walls and collaborate better and you know, see how we can share this information all the way to working with Ohio State and being one of the authors with my you know colleagues from Messer, uh you know, writing the Ohio State BIM project delivery standard and understanding how this went downstream to owners.
10:34
Brian: So, you know, the challenge is really one of this connectivity and life cycle management of a project and you know producing quality deliverables that can be taken advantage of the entire life cycle of a project to deliver better work for our owners.
10:52
Ryan: I mean, there's so many good things there to kind of dive into.
10:55
Ryan: I I I want to pick on the first word that you said, which was efficiency.
11:00
Ryan: And and I think you know, when I we think about tools and all the technology, I mean I saw I actually saw an image on your VDC primer from the DVIA, and there's a um um off to the side is the digital pad.
11:16
Ryan: I'm like, I bet most people don't know what that is, but a digitizing pad was a mouse that you would you would look at or onto the side.
11:25
Ryan: There was no toll bar on the screen.
11:27
Ryan: So that's how I'm dating myself, but that's how I'm gonna do it.
11:30
Ryan: I remember those, yep.
11:30
Ryan: Yeah, and CAD from from hand drafting, but okay, let's go back to the efficiency.
11:35
Ryan: Um there it's a business, right?
11:40
Ryan: Architecture firms are a business, and I think a lot of times that efficiency can relate to the success of the business and the bottom line, but it also has a human cost to it of like, yeah, who wants to keep opening Excel to do you know door schedules, you know, and updating it, and it's not automatic.
11:59
Ryan: So you did recognize that very early on that this intelligent system, you know, which was at that time Revit, everybody using it, was about the human not having to go through something repeatedly, you know, not have to go through something that brought just you know little value, if anything, to the other side.
12:21
Ryan: And then you started recognizing like, hey, there's there's something here where not only from a a design but a construction side to to an owner side of linking all of these things together better so that you know we're all delivering a better project to the client, but also experiencing something different.
12:47
Ryan: So is that is that something that you felt as you went through it?
12:51
Ryan: Like, hey, we're we all seem to be enjoying this a little better.
12:55
Brian: Yeah, I mean, I I I think it was, right?
12:58
Brian: And people were I I can remember doing product demonstrations, and people are like, oh, you just did that that quick.
13:03
Brian: Oh my goodness.
13:04
Brian: And you know, I can remember taking experiences that I had on projects and pain points and showing other people, be like, this is the opportunity that you have.
13:12
Brian: Um yeah, I think that was big.
13:15
Brian: Uh, I I think the other thing was one of the things I was always interested in, even in my my early days of modeling and and working with our project teams, or just, you know, don't do things twice.
13:26
Brian: You know, that that's just a direct efficiency.
13:28
Brian: But it was a balancing act too.
13:30
Brian: At the early days of Revit, I mean, I think we people were excited about the availability of information and they were doing all these other things.
13:40
Brian: And I think there was a little bit of a bump in the road of like, oh, well, it's just making, we're making us do more drawings.
13:46
Brian: It's like, well, no, people are you're making yourself do more drawings.
13:48
Brian: You're like, oh, I can cut a section every five feet, so I'm gonna double the amount of wall sections that I have on my sheet because I can.
13:55
Brian: It's like, well, no, that doesn't, you know, no, no stop.
13:58
Brian: Just because you can doesn't mean you should, was uh was a huge rallying cry back in the early in in the in my early days.
14:06
Brian: It's like, well, should I model this?
14:07
Brian: It's like, no, why?
14:08
Brian: Why would you do that?
14:09
Brian: You know, you're you know, and I think it's interesting, even back then it was, do I model something?
14:14
Brian: How do I model this for the sake of getting in on the construction documents?
14:20
Brian: And I think, you know, not to go on a I'm gonna go on a tangent here, but you know, this is that that's one of the things that I that still pains me about, you know, construction documents and shop drawings really being a existing hurdle to you know the full embracing of what we can do with these models because we have to spend time modeling something, but 99% of the time our contract is that paper set of deliverables.
14:48
Brian: So people deviate from the model to get it looking right on the drawings.
14:50
Brian: And that was always a historic challenge, but you had to get past that.
14:54
Brian: But now we can we can build things now that everybody, you know, people know how to model efficiently.
14:59
Brian: It was always like, why would I model something half-assed?
15:03
Brian: Yeah.
15:04
Brian: Just so I can overdraw over it and two-dimensional stuff.
15:07
Brian: It's like that doesn't that never made any sense to me.
15:10
Brian: And that was always like uh, you know, the kind of people side of you know, transitioning that culture and the workflow of people to think about like do it here so you don't have to do it here.
15:18
Brian: Yeah.
15:19
Brian: If you do it here, the structural engineer can take advantage of it, or somebody else can take advantage of it.
15:24
Brian: And you know, how are you gonna utilize it?
15:26
Brian: I think now that's where we're getting at in the industry.
15:28
Brian: The you know, the accessibility of these models now becoming expected deliverables from project teams.
15:34
Brian: We have to have higher quality um, you know, skills and output that we're doing.
15:40
Brian: And I think what it's really gonna flip is when we start, you know, being able to rely on a model as a useful deliverable and not having to detail things like you know, how many times we have to say hot's on the right, cold's on the left?
15:52
Brian: You know, the this little symbol means it's a brick unit as opposed to a 45-degree, you know, dash.
15:58
Brian: My my boss at Astorino was like ringing that bell in you know 2012 when I when I joined them, he's like, why can't we just use, you know, and that that always stuck with me, right?
16:08
Brian: It's like, yeah, why can't we just use the model?
16:10
Brian: Let's push it to get to that stage.
16:12
Brian: And sure there's risk and there's you know all this other stuff with it, but I don't think we're that far from being able to, you know, actually realize that it's a huge opportunity once we can take advantage of it.
16:22
Brian: And that leads into the whole industrialized construction thing, you know, seeing that end of it, that's huge.
16:29
Brian: Companies who can take take advantage of that integration are gonna see value.
16:34
Ryan: Yeah.
16:35
Ryan: I mean, it's yeah, flashbacks to uh to practicing, but that idea of, like you said, the model.
16:43
Ryan: What was the model when we first started in Revit?
16:47
Ryan: What was the model meant for right versus those documents?
16:52
Ryan: Like, what is a permit set versus the construction document set?
16:56
Ryan: Um and and figuring that all out and the level of model that you were going to go.
17:01
Ryan: And at that time, we were not talking LODs, right?
17:04
Ryan: There was no level of design, it was just yeah, yeah, it didn't exist.
17:08
Ryan: And you mentioned it's like, hey, people were hiding things in wall sections to you know, in in an effort to speed things up.
17:16
Ryan: But like you said, there was a lot of over documentation of things and working with younger you know, designers, it was always like, what are you trying to tell the trades?
17:30
Ryan: Which trade are you telling what in this wall section and this detail?
17:35
Ryan: So this connection, you know, in the end, it has got to be enough information for someone to build right from a document set.
17:44
Ryan: But that said, we're we're going back to this.
17:49
Ryan: I'm gonna pull back to the humans for a second, because as we're going through this transition, um there is a level of resistance inside firms in 2005, 6, 7, and even hear it today from a BEM modeling standpoint, which there there is, you know, that piece of it to those levels of design and a misconception of what a lot of these things mean.
18:14
Ryan: But when we think about that, you know, resistance or those barriers or those obstacles as you fast forward now, like what have we maybe have learned about the human piece, because people's a big part of it for you, that human piece to help them see okay, the model is an opportunity.
18:38
Ryan: We may have always done it with documentation and paper documents, but how does the team see the model utilize it?
18:47
Ryan: How do they know that there's been a change, that there's been some sort of update, right?
18:52
Ryan: And uh through a normal bulletin process and things like that.
18:56
Brian: Yeah.
18:57
Brian: Oh, go ahead and finish.
18:58
Ryan: I mean, no, I'm just gonna, yeah, no, you could dive in.
19:00
Ryan: I was just gonna say, like, how what have you learned or seen that you're now, you know, from your perspective, starting to help teams apply to get to that resistance?
19:10
Brian: I mean, I think that resistance is based on risk, right?
19:13
Brian: There is a risk to I don't I don't know what may be wrong in the model or what can be assumed in the model, but I understand what the drawings look like and read, and I understand that I've done my job to document that.
19:28
Brian: I think that's I think that is still the prevailing issue for the industry, right?
19:34
Brian: There's still that there's some, you know, black box, you know, concern going on about what's in the model, or you know, oh, I have this, I have a design option, or I have this other thing that's in there, and I don't want somebody to be concerned with this, but I think it all goes back to communication, right?
19:51
Brian: Using technology doesn't alleviate the fact for us to communicate and collaborate with one another.
19:57
Brian: And you know, something you mentioned earlier, LOD.
20:00
Brian: I've been part of the the LOD committee, I think I back in 2012 when I started uh here in Pittsburgh at Astorino, my my boss Ron Delaria was on the committee and I got engaged in that.
20:12
Brian: And to today, I it is the most valuable tool to mitigate just that.
20:17
Brian: You know, being able to have this kind of pool planning effort on a project and say, this is how we're gonna evolve our deliverables, this model-based deliverable.
20:27
Brian: These are the individual components, these are the level of development that they've advanced to and what they can be relied upon, and mapping out for people to be able to tell for a structural engineer to have a plan to say that my you know, structural columns and all of my steel framing is gonna be at this LOD to be relied upon by you, the architect, and the rest of the team at this stage is valuable, right?
20:52
Brian: It's not I'm gonna wait till 100% or 75% CDs.
20:56
Brian: Yeah, I got it.
20:57
Brian: Well, what are these incremental milestones?
20:59
Brian: And yeah, maybe I don't have all the documentation done for that submittal, but it's been defined and thought out, and now I know where my ceiling's at.
21:06
Brian: Now I know where the bottom of that steel beam is, and now the str the mechanical engineer and the plumbing engineer can understand how much space they have and where they're gonna route things through, but I don't need to wait until a set of construction documents come out and it says a W whatever on it to stand it and see it.
21:21
Brian: I think that starts to accelerate the ability to collaborate and communicate.
21:26
Brian: Um, I think the other challenge is having that knowledge and understanding at the outset of a project.
21:31
Brian: Um, and this is so at DBIA, one of the documents that that our committee actually just published, not you know, it was in October we published it, we just presented it a couple weeks ago at our conference, is the VDC project leaders' roles and responsibilities on design build project.
22:57
Brian: And we break it out into um you know a DBIA primer field where we you know have three major sections, right?
23:04
Brian: It's people, process, and technology, and we have 16 different implementing techniques um throughout the document.
23:10
Brian: And you know, this this engagement and understanding about what people are gonna do needs to start at the outset of a RFP and RFQ review.
23:19
Brian: This is what our deliverables are.
23:21
Brian: Um, some owners may have very robust deliverables, like I talked about you know, working on Ohio State standards and say, hey, this is what we need to address.
23:30
Brian: We need somebody on the team to manage through this.
23:32
Brian: Other owners may not have that, and that's fine, but somebody on the project team needs to say, this is how we're gonna use technology to meet our deliverables, which may be a stack of paper at the end of the day, but technology can be more efficient.
23:45
Brian: How are we gonna communicate?
23:46
Brian: How are we gonna collaborate?
23:47
Brian: How are we gonna integrate as a team to deliver this project successfully?
23:52
Brian: And I think that's another big important part of the people side is who's leading that charge, having somebody that's skilled to be able to do that on a project and work with a team.
24:01
Ryan: Yeah.
24:02
Ryan: Yeah, I think you know, you talked about risk.
24:05
Ryan: It's any new thing we as humans, we we all think like the worst case scenario.
24:13
Ryan: Like so, so fear fear is the first thing that comes in.
24:19
Ryan: And you know, clarity is what we're all what we all want.
24:24
Ryan: And by having you know what you're describing as as the LODs and kind of mapping things out, it'll bring enough clarity and setting those expectations, but even pulling back to that human piece of hey, you've never done this before.
24:41
Ryan: Yeah.
24:41
Ryan: It is going to feel like you are in a relearn stage.
24:46
Ryan: It is going to feel slower.
24:47
Ryan: It is going to feel it is new territory.
24:50
Ryan: Um, I always like Amy Edmondson, and that's what she focused on that new territory piece of learning, you know, learning to understand like you will struggle in this new area.
25:02
Ryan: And I think the construction industry, because of the I always think, you know, we do have low margins.
25:09
Ryan: There is that low um kind of net profitability that anything that is a risk is like, man, I could lose the business.
25:17
Ryan: And we talked about it on another podcast before.
25:20
Ryan: So you focusing on, hey, that human piece, like you're going like this is different, but here's the opportunity and advantages, which is where you you kind of ended, where design build is meant from a collaborative, um, I want it's not even alternative anymore, right?
25:40
Ryan: There's so much percentage being used with uh design build now, it is almost a majority.
25:46
Ryan: But this delivery model is about solving things sooner, and that we don't need to be 100% complete with it, which means clarity, 100% clarity will not exist, but it'll there'll be enough for you to to learn um as you're evolving through it and have enough information to be able to make concise decisions as a team.
26:13
Brian: I think that's important to understand, right?
26:15
Brian: Yeah, and and design build is no longer, you know, alternative delivery model.
26:20
Brian: Our you know, last FMI report, you know, showed that nearly 50% of projects are being you know delivered as is design build, and that you know, traditional design bid build model, you know, that hard bid is is declining rapidly because people know there's a better way to do things and and having a collaborative team under that that single contract structure is is advantageous, right?
26:44
Brian: There's no there's no blurry gray area, right?
26:47
Brian: It's not I'm the design professional, and I'm my job is to give the owner a set of construction documents, and that owner is gonna take that, put it out to bid and do it, and somebody's gonna go build off of it, and I'm gonna answer questions when called upon.
27:00
Brian: And but my my duty is to the owner, not the builder, and you know, the all the finger pointing that inherently comes from that.
27:06
Brian: So having that design builder have that contract with the owner to provide design and construction services with the team underneath them in whatever form that design builder takes, um, you know, is you know, drives clarity in what the objectives are and how they get achieved.
27:26
Brian: And, you know, I'm a big I know there's there's oftentimes apprehension, well, the you know, that's a general contractor and they're gonna beat me up or whatever from a design professional, but you know, looking at different the same way technology evolves and has innovation, you know, or the organizational structure of firms does.
27:44
Brian: And I I you know the the way that the firm I was at was set up and having that single entity, that design-led design build, um, drove significant value on the projects that we had.
27:56
Brian: Those were really great teams.
27:58
Brian: The the opportunity to, you know, sure, once you, once you got past the friction of putting the you know, the cost estimator next to the designer and this person next to the other person, once they worked out and figured, you know, my boss said one time, he's like, you know, stop complaining.
28:13
Brian: He's on your team.
28:13
Brian: He's like, your check comes from the same person, work together.
28:16
Brian: If it's gonna take you two hours to save him 20, that's a win for the team.
28:21
Brian: Like, go, like, let's let's work through it, right?
28:23
Brian: Um, you know, it's a it's a different mindset, it's a different culture.
28:27
Brian: Yeah.
28:27
Brian: But once you can bridge that, there's a huge opportunity.
28:29
Brian: And I know I've even seen that a lot on the engineering side where you have these you know integrated firms that'll, you know, you might have a mechanical engineer, a group of mechanical engineers embedded in a you know, sheet metal fabrication shop, you know, and I, you know, seen some of those firms across the country when I'm out doing presentation stuff, and it's amazing what they're doing.
28:49
Brian: They're like, they're like our shop drawings come right out of the you know, construction documents.
28:54
Brian: Our engineers are using fabrication ready parts from our thing.
28:58
Brian: They plug it in, we hide all the other, we turn off all the visibility of all the other extraneous stuff that they don't need for their construction documents.
29:05
Brian: It goes out, boom, we hit it, and you know, we finish up a couple things and we're going direct to FAP.
29:10
Brian: Yeah.
29:11
Brian: And that is that is efficiency.
29:13
Brian: That is leveraging technology and an innovative workflow to be more efficient at the work you're trying to accomplish.
29:20
Brian: And I think that's really interesting.
29:22
Ryan: Yeah.
29:22
Ryan: No, I uh now you're talking my language, uh having spent a lot of time in direct digital manufacturing and prefab.
29:29
Ryan: I mean, I back when I was running that digitizer pad right off to the side, it was directly running to a cam, uh, you know, part of CAM and machines actually making things.
29:39
Ryan: So that was the 90s.
29:41
Ryan: Here we are, what, 2025?
29:44
Ryan: I'm so excited about that piece of it, you know, for me to say, like, hey, that efficiency piece could come so much quicker utilizing an and you have design build, but we're talking about design assist in some of these areas where fabricators can now come in and we're we're doing shops during the design so that we can speed up the build, right?
30:09
Ryan: Which is when I think about some of the big challenges that we're facing, is we tend to speed up design, like in our industry.
30:18
Ryan: We want architects to go faster.
30:20
Ryan: Well, contractors make um revenue and our revenue be when shovel hits ground, right?
30:25
Ryan: As soon as that shovel is in the ground, like that's when they can start invoicing.
30:29
Ryan: That's the world that I think a lot of people came from and think about.
30:34
Ryan: And it's like we need to actually look at design as a really huge opportunity to bring those specialty subs up, general contractors, as you said, and learn from one another.
30:48
Ryan: Like, know from an architectural standpoint, like you get to detail things that are really important to detail while other things that, you know, they're not replacing you or taking work off.
30:59
Ryan: It's making, it's rising all ships, right?
31:01
Ryan: It's like bringing everybody's opportunity for not burning through fees, not losing fees in certain areas where you know we we looked at came from architecture, we know what that's like, by over-detailing, over-designing, not even having the right person in the room to ask the question.
31:19
Ryan: So you're doing it two to three times, as you kind of alluded to earlier uh in the podcast.
31:24
Ryan: So I think that's a huge opportunity.
31:29
Ryan: And I looked at it when I was, you know, started a construction company that progressive design build was our opportunity to bring in more innovation, prefabrication, speed those things up.
31:39
Ryan: So I I'm curious what um you know, what makes this really critical for the construction industry that if we're at 50%, right?
31:53
Ryan: That and it's not every sector, it's not every type of project that people are looking at design build and what it can mean, but like what could it mean to the industry as more people start to adopt it?
32:07
Ryan: Start to accept it and change, you know, understanding this is new, but like from a mindset standpoint, I'm I want to go back to relearning.
32:17
Ryan: I want to hit reset.
32:18
Ryan: I want to get out of default mode with just design bit build.
32:22
Brian: Well, I think, you know, and you're right, it it's not for every market segment, right?
32:26
Brian: Um, you know, if you're doing a one-time project, you're not building again, you're probably don't understand the pains of what you had in design bid build to uh to be able to move forward.
32:36
Brian: And, you know, I think it's it's having the right culture and the right fit, but the the opportunity to do that, I mean, from an owner standpoint, I mean, there's a there's a risk management, there's a shift of risk, right, for an owner, which is an immediate win, right?
32:50
Brian: They're not taking on you know the the whole spear indoctrine aspect of it.
32:54
Brian: That shifts directly to the uh you know, directly to the design builder.
33:00
Brian: Um, you know, so there's an immediate win.
33:02
Brian: But you know, I think the big things we look at, you know, speed to market being an opportunity, you know, achieving budget, higher quality projects, um, you know, the opportunity for innovation and how you procure teams, those are all significant wins and opportunities that people are are documented successes that we're seeing from design build projects.
33:24
Brian: Um, you know, and then there's also, I think if you're a repeat builder, which was, you know, the segment I was in, right?
33:30
Brian: You know, healthcare, higher ed, there's a lot of uh, you know, there's always work going on those projects.
33:35
Brian: You had historical knowledge on projects that you're able to, you know, go back and and pursue work on, you know, having that familiarity of teams and how teams work, having a qualifications-based selection process, uh, not a low bid selection process, really changes the game, right?
33:51
Brian: Right.
33:51
Brian: That familiarity, the execution, knowing that a team may have worked together.
33:55
Brian: Hey, we're coming together as this design build entity, and this is what we bring.
33:58
Brian: We've done our last 10 projects together, and we've worked with you on three of them.
34:03
Brian: And, you know, those are all things and opportunities that you have.
34:06
Brian: Um, I think it also brings, you know, opportunities from a from a quality standpoint, um, I think is big.
34:13
Brian: And I think there's a win on the design side too.
34:15
Brian: Um, you know, the the first project that I worked on, the this this healthcare project, we had, I can remember sitting in, you know, in design meetings and you know, having the designer sitting next to the metal panel fabricator and the curtain wall fabricator and saying, Hey, I'm looking at this, and you know, them both looking at him and going, stop detailing it.
34:41
Brian: Tell us what you want the the this profile edge at the at the slab edge where the two were transitioning.
34:47
Brian: Just tell us what you want it to look like.
34:48
Brian: Stop detailing.
34:49
Brian: They're like, You're you're not doing we're gonna change it all.
34:53
Brian: If you tell us that's what you want, and that's what we have to build to, we're gonna, once the drawings come out, we're gonna tell you it's not gonna work and you're gonna have to change it, you're gonna be mad at what it tell us what you want, let us go back, we'll figure out a detail, bring it back to you.
35:04
Brian: He's like, Oh, there's an opportunity for design.
35:08
Brian: He was able to achieve design intent without having to do some dumb detailing thing or crappy blocking, trying to hold something up that was never gonna work, it was ultimately gonna change.
35:18
Brian: You know, we saw those type of things over and over again.
35:21
Brian: I can remember our our millwork and casework fabricator going, please don't give us 10 sheets of of your standard casework details that you pulled off the shelf and don't apply to this project.
35:33
Brian: They're like, and this was in this was in Revit.
35:36
Brian: They're like, you know, drawers and doors, model the box, tell us how many drawers and doors you want.
35:41
Brian: We'll get in and then we'll add to the model and we'll show you the stuff, and then we'll do the details and do this.
35:46
Brian: Just tell us what you want.
35:47
Brian: Your spec tells us what what quality standards you're adhering to.
35:50
Brian: Don't waste your time on the details.
35:52
Brian: So I saw that as an opportunity for what got me excited was with the designers that they were able to spend more time for, like, hey, I have this expert on my team who's gonna help me figure out this part that I'm probably not I have an idea of what it's gonna look like.
36:07
Brian: I have experience, I have knowledge, I'm a professional.
36:10
Brian: They do this all day, every day.
36:12
Brian: They're gonna help me figure this out, they're gonna offload that part.
36:15
Brian: It's gonna be in the shop drawings.
36:17
Brian: I just approved it with them, and I can go focus on this other design part.
36:21
Brian: Or I could have been focusing on sustainability outcomes or optimizing, you know, the site or optimizing how doctors and nurses move through the space before I ever get to that.
36:32
Brian: I have more time to do that stuff, which is where if I'm an architect, my highest and best use of my time is doing those things and working with my collaborative team to figure out the minutiae of these details with the real experts who are doing it.
36:45
Brian: Yeah, and I think that's where you know you talk about margins and trying to, you know, so much of the traditional construction document process was about quantity, not quality, right?
36:54
Brian: I have to get all the scope documented for somebody to budget.
36:58
Brian: But if I can be sitting next to somebody and say, hey, we're gonna have this, oh, okay, cool, I got that.
37:02
Brian: Yeah, noted.
37:03
Brian: Yeah, well, you know, you're gonna have it in two weeks.
37:05
Brian: Okay, great.
37:05
Brian: I don't, you know, then it's not, you know, the finger pointing of, well, I never saw it, so it wasn't in my scope, and now you got to pay for it, all that stuff.
37:14
Ryan: Yeah.
37:14
Ryan: I mean, it's such such a great story and kind of reflection that you just had because I it everything starts bouncing back in my head as you're talking through it, you know, having practice.
37:25
Ryan: And yeah, I mean, my, you know, first you started with it's not for everybody.
37:31
Ryan: And I, you know, I think I think there is opportunity, and and maybe we don't even know this because I came from a small firm in a small city before moving to Columbus.
37:41
Ryan: And I was using Design Build.
37:43
Ryan: Now, was it called that?
37:45
Ryan: I was using definitely Design Assist, but using sub-sub, you know, a subcontractor to do, you know, MEP work alongside me.
37:53
Brian: You were collaborating.
37:54
Ryan: So it was collaborating, right?
37:55
Ryan: And then it was um with those that were going to go build it, right?
37:59
Ryan: The team that was going to go build it.
38:00
Ryan: And that was the key for me.
38:01
Ryan: I fast forward, and I remember working on a project for a very large national GC in Columbus.
38:09
Ryan: And that is where it all started to kind of you know trigger in my head of like, wait, like we need to, we need to be using design assist a lot more, bringing these subtrades in.
38:22
Ryan: I remember bringing steel fabricators and other groups in.
38:25
Ryan: But I I think one thing that you said is most important here is a lot of times we go into a firm and you're new into the firm, and whether it's small or large, you kind of see how things were done before.
38:41
Ryan: And the industry has changed.
38:45
Ryan: And we tend, I always say default mode, we tend to repeat specs sometimes because it's easier.
38:53
Ryan: And I need, you know, we're a very time poor industry, whether it's architecture or construction side, because you know, we're we have a labor um force that is not meeting the demand and getting new recruits in and attracting more people into the industry.
39:09
Ryan: But we tend to, oh, well, that's how, you know, we grab an old set of drawings and we just kind of follow it, and that's how we learn to design and and build things as we come through the industry.
39:21
Ryan: And as you just described, it's like everyone out there who's actually building it and fabricating it's like, stop.
39:28
Ryan: Like, like this is how we actually do it.
39:33
Ryan: And I, you know, since it's called activating curiosity, I always tell people like, I walked out on a job site and asked the metal framers when I was 26 or 27, like, hey, what can I do differently with this set of documents to make it be to make you more efficient?
39:51
Ryan: Yeah.
39:51
Ryan: Because I thought if they became more efficient, then their cost, one, they'd feel better as humans, but two, that might bring the cost down because ultimately I felt like we needed to get the cost more in line, and I wanted to keep the things I wanted to keep as an architect, not use the the dirty word, you know, value engineering, which has no true value.
40:12
Ryan: That's where I think design build brings this opportunity of like you are going through a target value design.
40:18
Ryan: You are, you know, progressive design, you can you can get into that as well, and how that functions.
40:23
Ryan: Like there's huge opportunity to learn from one another, to ask questions.
40:30
Ryan: But that means, Brian, then that you're you're probably seeing in and talk as you're talking with you know people out there as well, or others from from the DBIA, like that's a culture shift.
40:42
Ryan: It's not only a mind shift, it is a leadership from from the person leading maybe the initiative to the leaders of the companies.
40:49
Ryan: Like the culture shift has to come into what's called a you know psychological safety area where no questions are are considered, you know, dumb or like, hey, you I can't believe you don't know that, and utilizing yeah, you know, people's you know development as an opportunity to to downgrade them because this is about exploration then.
41:14
Brian: Right.
41:14
Brian: I I think it's also about having those experiences.
41:18
Brian: And I think, you know, my you know, we we started this off with how did I get to where I'm at?
41:23
Brian: I think all the different experiences that I've had going from architecture only and you know, then being in this AE firm and then seeing the construction side of it, kind of the last aspect of it that I saw, which and I don't remember if we talked about this before, was on the the industrialized construction side.
41:40
Brian: One of the last cut the last there was like two projects that I worked on at Canon Design, which were amazing, they were both amazing projects and amazing learning opportunities.
41:50
Brian: One was this kind of this kit of parts medical office building that we developed, which really leveraged all these prefab templated standardized components to quickly assemble medical office buildings with Kaiser Permanente.
42:03
Brian: They were trying to, you know, really grow.
42:05
Brian: And our goal was to hit 30% efficiency, you know, to reduce our design and construction time, doors open by 30% by leveraging all of these prefab um elements, whether interior partitions, exterior walls, staircases, prefab staircases, structural systems, templated room layouts, and prototypical designs that you know they were these these assemblies instead of a traditional stick assembly.
42:29
Brian: So there was a lot learned there.
42:31
Brian: And then fast forward, we had a we had a project in Los Angeles.
42:35
Brian: It was a a behavioral health center um in downtown, just out just on the edge of downtown LA.
42:41
Brian: Yeah.
42:41
Brian: Uh and there was a series of five buildings, and it was set up like a little quad campus, but there were four buildings that were exactly the same.
42:49
Brian: That these were, you know, clinical, administrative, like kind of dormitory um houses.
42:56
Brian: And we were the project started.
42:58
Brian: It was a design build project that we were doing.
43:00
Brian: We were the design builder as well as the architect and a couple of the engineering.
43:05
Brian: I think we were just structure.
43:06
Brian: Um MEP was external, and they said, Hey, we want to start using our our prefab group.
43:11
Brian: We want to modularize this, but not doing it at the outset of the project.
43:16
Brian: Yep.
43:17
Brian: Well, while it was a great idea and the team wanted to take, hey, we have this great opportunity.
43:21
Brian: I I I somehow got interjected.
43:24
Brian: The the VDC guy, hey, work with will you work with our work with our new this new you know modular construction group, help start figuring out the process for how we're gonna do this.
43:36
Brian: But it quickly became that was the easy part.
43:38
Brian: The hard part was managing the conversation between what the builder wanted.
43:42
Brian: There was a team of people in Lawrence, Kansas, and a fab shop that were we were getting set up to build these units, put them on a truck and ship them to LA.
43:50
Brian: Understand the scope gaps of a traditional design project and having somebody in that transition from D the D D to C D phase, now building shop drawing level models of walls and components and saying, well, we have three equals, or yeah, here's the here's the you know, obviously the bathrooms were were easy to do because they were repetitive, right?
44:18
Brian: You know, oh well, you know, here's well, this doesn't work and this doesn't work.
44:21
Brian: And being alongside the construction team, seeing where their pain points were about a traditional delivery process of something that was going out to bid and really managing that interface was was really interesting.
44:36
Brian: I think having that experience on the other side, knowing what the other team wants makes you better at your core job and being able to disseminate, hey, yeah, they're gonna need this is how we need to do this, or this doesn't work, those experiences are invaluable.
44:49
Brian: Yeah.
44:49
Brian: Um, so being able to have that, you know, on a design build project, having that construction team member there, those shop, those trade partners there, and saying, hey, you know better for the next time.
45:00
Brian: And that's an opportunity for individuals to progress and learn, not only be successful on that project, but be more successful on the next one.
45:08
Ryan: Yeah.
45:08
Brian: And having those conversations early.
45:10
Brian: Like, hey, I experienced this part way through.
45:12
Brian: Man, if we would have had this earlier and we could have told the architect that we can't go past 10 feet because we can't ship, we wouldn't have had all these different unit sizes and had to re you know, relay out some certain things and like it just would have been so much easier.
45:25
Brian: But taking that knowledge onto the next project makes you a better designer, it makes you a better architect, engineer, builder, trade partner.
45:32
Ryan: Yeah.
45:33
Ryan: Yeah, and I think what you just described, I mean, I have been there where you know, my past, I came from prefab side, and people would want to bring it in way too late.
45:44
Ryan: Yeah, and and you and I got a chance to kind of work work on Kaiser.
45:48
Ryan: And I remember the first time I met with them and then flew to to LA, they were like, we're gonna flip this project to be prefab.
45:54
Ryan: How far along are you?
45:56
Ryan: We're we already have a contractor and the bed docs are done.
45:59
Ryan: Yeah.
45:59
Ryan: I'm like, that is too late.
46:01
Ryan: You are way past the point of changing uh a method of construction.
46:08
Ryan: Um, one, that you know, uh what you described and what I'm kind of talking about here is that is why I think a lot of people get this perception of innovation doesn't work, right?
46:19
Ryan: Like, well, I went through this project and then we utilized this solution or prefabrication or whatever it was, or well, it was too late, but did everybody recognize it?
46:32
Ryan: Was it maybe the wrong even delivery model?
46:35
Ryan: Because if you treat fabricators, you know, as a normal shop drawing process, well, this is not a product, it isn't a switch one thing out and you get something new.
47:42
Ryan: You're describing this opportunity of recognizing, hey, first choice begins with how can we deliver this project?
47:52
Ryan: What are our options available to to us as an owner?
47:56
Ryan: And it may, you know, or an architect sitting and talking with an owner who maybe only builds, you know, once in in their lifetime or in their business first, as you mentioned, you know, the Ohio State or a university or or a Kaiser where there's whole teams that do it.
48:12
Ryan: One, your first question out of the bat has to be, you know, what delivery model do we have?
48:18
Ryan: And I think, you know, I think a lot of people think design build only works with ground up, and I don't think that's the case.
48:25
Ryan: I think it can work with tenant improvement just as well.
48:29
Ryan: Yep.
48:29
Ryan: In fact, I think it would change the vicious cycle that I think we all end up in in commercial TIs of how the process feels exhausting for everybody.
48:39
Ryan: So, one, it opens up discovery of that delivery model sooner, going through collaboration, bringing in the right people into you know the design build, into the design assist, bringing the subtrades in, thinking about procurement process from a contractor.
48:58
Ryan: But you've alluded to it, there's a huge opportunity for innovative solutions that start to solve other issues we have, right?
49:10
Ryan: That we're struggling.
49:12
Ryan: Schedules are are lengthening, we're speeding up design, schedules are lengthening, we have rework, we have people that are burnt out, we have people leaving the industry, like all of those things are true.
49:25
Ryan: And I'm not saying this is a silver bullet, but it feels like design build collaboration is bringing it back in control of the humans to learn how to make you know, take these action steps, which is you know really what it is.
49:42
Ryan: It's like an action step of utilizing a delivery model, utilizing, you know, uh virtual design as a way to work with the group inside the model, um, as well as working with sub trades, specialty subs, um, manufacturers, prefab companies, and all of that area could that can get us moving to the right direction of solving some of the other issues.
50:08
Ryan: What do you how do you think about that?
50:11
Ryan: What is what other opportunities you see up?
50:14
Brian: Yeah, I think I think the important thing is none of these ideas are a silver bullet.
50:18
Brian: Standalone, there's opportunities for success, but it's when you aggregate these, right?
50:24
Brian: How do you you know reimagine how your team works together?
50:27
Brian: How do you how is that team procured through a different project delivery model?
50:31
Brian: How are you going to use technology?
50:33
Brian: How do you start integrating industrialized construction?
50:37
Brian: How do you start thinking about the way we share and use information?
50:40
Brian: You know, how is our contract set up?
50:42
Brian: I think these are all, you know, as individual things, there's incremental success, but when you aggregate them, it's very valuable.
50:49
Brian: You know, I look at it, you know, with some of the work that we're doing at you know, DBIA, right?
50:54
Brian: We already have design build, right?
50:55
Brian: We already talked about that.
50:56
Brian: We're promoting what the best practice is.
50:58
Brian: So I have the opportunity to come in and say, hey, here's all these technologies.
51:02
Brian: You're probably using these in just you know, disconnected ways because of the way your project's done, and you're just focused on producing construction documents and it's going out the door.
51:12
Brian: But if you're on a design build project, where are you going to host your information?
51:17
Brian: Now you're you're sharing information live and you're on the cloud, and your information that that latency of how you share information is no longer there.
51:25
Brian: Your contract isn't one about sign this digital release form that says you can use my model, but you can't rely on it and go to the construction documents because I have a VDC project leader at the outset, understanding the scope and expectations of what the client's looking for, defining a technology integrated plan to achieve those client and project goals, um, saying how we're going to collaborate, where we're going to collaborate, what you can use the models for, who's integrating in those, how are we creating our deliverables as a team, as opposed to a bunch of individuals at the end who just mash up a set of PDFs and say, well, here's the architect's drawings that start with an A, here's the structural engineer's drawings that start with an S, and maybe they didn't look at one another's stuff.
52:08
Brian: And having a conversation, hey, if we're using technology, we have some repetitious components that we're thinking about here.
52:17
Brian: How can we start prefabbing those?
52:19
Brian: How can we modularize those?
52:20
Brian: How can we be off-site and be constructing things over here while we're building and roll it in?
52:25
Brian: And oh, by the way, maybe the owner wants to use this information at the end of the day.
52:29
Brian: We we understood that from them at the beginning.
52:31
Brian: We can plan for that, embed that information and turn it over.
52:34
Brian: Those are all once those all start coming together, then it snowballs and you have these bigger efficiencies.
52:41
Brian: And then you learn for the next project and replicate, try to replicate that, right?
52:44
Brian: You know, hey, we did this on the last project.
52:47
Brian: We had our mechanical trade partner, and you know, we understood a heck of a lot more about how we're gonna build this.
52:52
Brian: When I had my curtain wall manufacturer, and I understood all this information that I didn't know before, and I would have done it differently, and it would have cost us time and money.
53:00
Brian: Right so how do we do all those?
53:02
Brian: Once you start combining all of these innovations from the in from the industry that's out there, that's where you see success.
53:08
Ryan: Yeah.
53:09
Ryan: Yeah.
53:09
Ryan: I mean, there's there's an opportunity to accelerate, you know, that that growth by you know, the exponential growth by hey, you try it once.
53:17
Ryan: I mean, we always tell I always try to tell everybody is like you the first your first try is never your best in anything you do in life.
53:24
Ryan: So it is going to take its time.
53:26
Ryan: We have been doing it this, you know, another way for a long time.
53:31
Ryan: Um, and and if you're new into the industry, like you're you're working with people who where that is true.
53:38
Ryan: And you may be seeing a lot of these new shiny things and and and sales reps coming in and doing CUs and everyone seeing it.
53:46
Ryan: And we get into you know, technology, again, fatigue or change fatigue, where we we bring a technology in and and and it didn't stick because we didn't have any sort of change management or human connection to it in an office.
54:01
Ryan: And then you layer on top of this, like, oh, I've got to go into a project and a different model.
54:06
Ryan: So they, you know, us humans, we do feel like everything's stacking on us.
54:11
Ryan: Like, I don't have time to learn.
54:13
Ryan: But you are, you know, you're talking about the opportunity for innovation there.
54:18
Ryan: And I I think there's also just, you know, I was having a conversation with a young designer, you know, la I think it was last year, about a project that we, you know, we were kind of talking about the challenge within the industry, and it came down to, well, the project was over budget because found out the labor crew was not available or didn't even exist, or or their labor price, they didn't have enough labor, so therefore their price went up.
54:45
Ryan: And it's like, wouldn't you have liked to known that ahead of time?
54:48
Ryan: Like before you selected it.
54:51
Ryan: Like, what if there what if there was a model that you could do that?
54:54
Ryan: And that's when I'm, you know, I work with young people to get them to understand is like if you get a sh if you get a chance, even on a TI or a new build or whatever it is, be curious enough to ask, like, or is there another delivery model we could look at besides this?
55:10
Ryan: Um but I you know I do want to see what your what your thoughts are on this.
55:15
Ryan: And I I know being that there's 50 states, there's 50 different rules around contract modeling.
55:21
Ryan: Yeah, there's a big push.
55:24
Ryan: I know within Ohio, and and you and I both know this, like how you know some of the hospitals were were built by the Ohio State University, right?
55:34
Ryan: Like, you know, alternative delirium models were being reviewed and are being reviewed.
55:39
Ryan: Um, so we can talk about the the private sector, but I feel like because of our infrastructure, because of a lot of the ways things are going to need to be built through public funding or other areas, like as a country, like what are what are we missing by not exploring?
56:00
Ryan: And I'm sure there's you know all kinds of people talking to policymakers out there in the states and things, but like there's real opportunity with our current approach to building for states to look at this differently.
56:14
Brian: I mean, I think you know, some owners think their opportunity is is is the low bid, right?
56:20
Brian: I got a low first cost, and then they don't realize until the end of the project that it wasn't the the overall cost.
56:27
Brian: And I think you know, there's a lot of things that you know that perception is you know commonplace.
56:34
Brian: It's also you know, you it's it's the devil that you know, right?
56:39
Brian: Like I know how this is gonna work, uh I know I'm gonna have these pain points, but I'm comfortable with that.
56:45
Brian: I I know how to deal with it.
56:47
Brian: I don't have time to take on a new new workflow or a new a new direction.
56:52
Brian: Um and I think you know, design build is one of multiple, you know, you have CM at risk is more collaborative than design bid build.
57:01
Brian: It's not as collaborative as design build.
57:03
Brian: Um, but you're still seeing that uh that model evolve as well.
57:08
Brian: Right.
57:09
Brian: You know, anything more collabor everything's more collaborative than design bid build.
57:12
Brian: We want the industry to go all of those.
57:14
Brian: And if you you come off a design build project, take those lessons learned and apply to the next project.
57:19
Brian: I mean, that's that opportunity to, you know, to build it.
57:22
Brian: But I think it's, you know, it does come down, you know, to that culture change and management and you know, the the the risk side of it, which which gets people, you know, that's where people kind of tense up.
57:34
Brian: And I think it's whether it's project delivery or technology, you know, that's the that's the challenge.
57:41
Brian: And you know, one of the things I wanted to kind of respond to one of the things you said before about, you know, that change management on the technology side, the you know, the tech fatigue, there's so many new tools that are coming out there.
57:53
Brian: And I think one of the big faults that we have is is somebody acquiring a technology and looking for a problem to solve.
58:00
Brian: Yeah.
58:00
Brian: Instead of identifying a problem and finding a tool that aligns to solve that.
58:06
Brian: I think that's where tech fatigue has and will continue to come in.
58:10
Brian: Um, and that's a challenge.
58:13
Brian: You know, we talk about people process technology, you know.
58:16
Brian: Hey, you know, Ryan comes off a project and says, Man, we're dealing with this every time.
58:20
Brian: It's all these things.
58:21
Brian: This is our challenge.
58:22
Brian: What can we do?
58:23
Brian: You know, right?
58:23
Brian: Then you build a process and a framework to solve that challenge and bring in the tool to solve it.
58:28
Brian: So it just goes back to the people side, like you talked about, but that that's another aspect of it as well.
58:33
Brian: Yeah.
58:34
Brian: Um, so people get jaded once and then they're a little they're apprehensive, hey, I don't have time to bring something else on.
58:39
Brian: I just I I know I can get this done in this time frame with my old way.
58:43
Brian: There may be a more efficient way, but I don't have time to do it right now.
58:46
Ryan: Yeah, it it's such a common thing that I hear, and I think every time I do a recording or podcast with somebody, we end up into this area of uh under, you know, what I try to help people understand is like you need to understand your own relationship with change, how you see it, so that you can then see how other people react to it.
59:12
Ryan: Because you know, we're we're time poor because we we are more resistant to change, maybe no more than any other humans, but we tend to try something once and then immediately think, well, that didn't work in this industry because it is so you know, we look at risk as this, it's just a huge dollar amount.
59:35
Ryan: But there's billions of dollars that are, you know, all the studies show, like being wasted because we're not as efficient and effective.
59:45
Ryan: Well, you can't try something once and be good at it, as we've talked about, but also learning to explore, you know, it's a bigger thing than solving a result of a problem, right?
59:57
Ryan: Like if you were only looking at the result and you don't drill into finding out like what is at the core issue, like you said.
1:00:04
Ryan: So I I thank you for sharing that because I think that is fundamentally whether it's you know, taking on design build as an opportunity, you mentioned CMR risk.
1:00:13
Ryan: There's obviously other ones that are out there in that collaborative area, but there's huge opportunity to to look at it from a perspective of a small project all the way up to at least explore and ri recognize like, hey, it may not go exactly as planned this time, but I do recognize that right now is not where I want to be.
1:00:41
Ryan: Um current state is not that comfortable.
1:00:44
Ryan: So um thank you for sharing that because I think you know you and I aligned in a lot of ways from the the you know the technology and the innovation opportunity that exists.
1:00:56
Ryan: But I think because we're this is my personal view, because we're stuck believing that we don't have time, believing that that we just don't have time to learn or try that that obstacle in our own mind, and because it's one person in a team in a company within a project team, like we're we're impacting more than those in the construction industry.
1:01:24
Ryan: We're impacting every human that is in our community, in our state, you know, within the country, because this is our like we have to solve it sort of moment because 500,000 labor forces short every year, who's gonna build it?
1:01:43
Ryan: Like we can't, you know, we can't continue to delay.
1:01:48
Ryan: We all recognize it, but we may say that's a huge issue, and I'm just one person.
1:01:54
Ryan: How can I solve it?
1:01:56
Ryan: So my question to you would be, then Brian, like what does success for the industry look like from your perspective?
1:02:05
Ryan: Like what would that what would that success be that you were like, we we've nailed it?
1:02:10
Brian: I so I mean I think you know, being able to track success goes back to being able to, you know, measure what's important, right?
1:02:17
Brian: You know, we I I think we only tend to look at things at the end of the day or we don't have a lot of good metrics on how we do things, but from from DBIA's perspective and the perspective that I brought to it, right?
1:02:31
Brian: We want to be able to achieve design excellence.
1:02:34
Brian: We want to have increased quality and productivity on the job site, and we want to be able to improve the life cycle cost of the of the built environment for the owners.
1:02:44
Brian: I think one of the things that I'm excited about and we're having the opportunity to do is, you know, with our members, you know, through many different outlets that we have, whether I'm out on you know in our regions and chapters meeting and speaking and presenting with people, or it's certainly Our words program, we're seeing benchmarks now of where people are seeing success in leveraging technology and design build.
1:03:09
Brian: We're hitting ROIs.
1:03:10
Brian: It's not, it's not just the anecdotal uh we had less coordination issues, right?
1:03:17
Brian: Okay, everybody says that in a submission.
1:03:19
Brian: We're seeing dollars, right?
1:03:21
Brian: You know, we had a blog post, um, it was a food service project from Haskell.
1:03:27
Brian: They they tracked where they went through and found they spent like $200,000 in their labor hours in the trade coordination process, and they saved two and a half million on the project.
1:03:36
Brian: Right?
1:03:37
Brian: That's a huge dollar.
1:03:38
Brian: We're seeing small, small projects, 40,000 square foot healthcare projects that are leveraging prefab because they were planned out at the beginning.
1:03:47
Brian: Right.
1:03:48
Brian: Um, and showing that, hey, we did this 60% faster, we saved that we saved you know 30% on materials, we saved this.
1:03:55
Brian: Um, you know, we're starting to see all of these different opportunities for success where people are realizing these things by merging these different innovation opportunities, and it's becoming quantifiable because it's no longer, you know, success isn't, oh, we do BIM, right?
1:04:09
Brian: You know, back in back in 05, 07, you said, hey, we, you know, our office does BIM.
1:04:16
Brian: Oh, cool, you know, hey, let's check the UK.
1:04:19
Ryan: You won the contract.
1:04:21
Brian: They got, you know, they got those whiz-bang new software they're using, right?
1:04:24
Brian: That's what people say.
1:04:24
Brian: Here's a picture of a model we made, and that was it.
1:04:26
Brian: Now, I mean, that's table stakes, right?
1:04:28
Brian: Everybody's that's not a differentiator.
1:04:31
Brian: We use technology to design and construct our projects more efficiently.
1:04:36
Brian: This is how we do it.
1:04:38
Brian: These are the savings and opportunities that we're bringing to the projects to be able to deliver this for you.
1:04:42
Brian: So I think for us, that's where we see success to be able to have those quantifiable metrics around those three areas at the end of the day.
1:04:50
Brian: Um, that that's where success lies.
1:04:54
Ryan: Yeah, I I think you you know, you said something that's very intriguing to me.
1:05:00
Ryan: You said the data piece.
1:05:02
Ryan: And the you know, design builds, you know, DBIA started in the early 90s, right?
1:05:08
Ryan: Obviously, it was talked about before then, but so that's not new, but this introduction of all the technology throughout our lives is accelerating and constantly continues to accelerate.
1:05:18
Ryan: But and this is what I've seen, and I think you you you brought this up a lot of times, and this we want the data.
1:05:27
Ryan: Well, where did it how did it go last time?
1:05:29
Ryan: Show us some success, show us that you've done that, show us you know that data.
1:05:33
Ryan: Well, data follows execution, and it doesn't really flush out in two months, one project, right?
1:05:44
Ryan: And with an industry that is spread all, you know, take every state, every contractor, you know, the millions of people that are in it, we're all impacting that data.
1:05:54
Ryan: Like we're we all have an opportunity to impact it as a positive or a negative of how it rolls.
1:06:01
Ryan: But this goes back to that human piece of I want us 100% clarity that this is going to go exactly as you say it's going to go.
1:06:11
Ryan: And you've you made the great point of like, hey, we're now finally getting data and able to start showing it.
1:06:20
Ryan: It doesn't mean it'll go exactly that way for you because it is other humans getting involved.
1:06:26
Ryan: But if we're able to again aligning the connecting the human to the change they're about to go through in the delivery model or new technology or a process and having some empathy in that piece, then the data will only continue to um increase our opportunity and return on investment for, as you said, the design team, you know, architects and interior designers, engineers to the construction teams, to fabricators and all of them, but ultimately also to the owner and all the occupants that are going inside of that building.
1:07:02
Brian: So yeah, I think I think we also need to plan for that, though, right?
1:07:06
Brian: I think the other challenge is you can't at the end of the project and say, well, how'd we do?
1:07:10
Brian: Right.
1:07:10
Brian: And all you really have is, you know, your budget and scope, right?
1:07:14
Brian: What contributed to that?
1:07:15
Brian: Being able to track and look and manage that at the outset to say, hey, these are the key, these are the key performance indicators that we're looking for on this project.
1:07:25
Brian: How are we doing?
1:07:26
Brian: It's not a it's not an end-of-the-day yes or no, it's not a pass sale type answer.
1:07:31
Brian: You you have to approach that, you have to be strategic about it, understand how you're going to aggregate that data that you're going to analyze at the end of the day.
1:07:40
Brian: And certainly every project's not the same, right?
1:07:42
Brian: You know, they all have their own challenges.
1:07:44
Brian: It's how you react and pivot and maneuver through those challenges to get to the end.
1:07:49
Brian: That's why you want to look at things in a cumulative nature, but you got to understand what the the actions and reactions were and what the root causes of certain things were to be able to look at it critically, look at that data critically at the end of the day.
1:08:02
Ryan: Right.
1:08:03
Ryan: No, it's it's a it's a great point to add on, um, because I do, you know, as you said, it's like we didn't know how to collect it in the first place.
1:08:10
Ryan: Now it's having a plan and an action that, again, that information that you're collecting is about you getting more clarity as an individual, but also as a team to kind of move forward and and improve.
1:08:23
Ryan: So um one last question then for you before we wrap up.
1:08:27
Ryan: Um we're sitting here having this conversation, someone's listening.
1:08:31
Ryan: Like, what's some what's some action steps that you would recommend, you know, if they're interested in InDesign Build, they'd never seen it, never heard of it, which which would be, you know, probably unrealistic, but maybe have never utilized it in a contract form, as well as anything within that VDC area that that you're focusing on in innovation.
1:08:49
Brian: Yeah.
1:08:50
Brian: I mean, I would, you know, we just we unfortunately we just had our our annual conference, which would have been a great opportunity to attend, but go to our website, right?
1:08:57
Brian: There's a ton of information that we have.
1:09:00
Brian: Um, go to the bookstore.
1:09:01
Brian: Um, we have a lot of, we have a series of of position statements and primers that you mentioned.
1:09:07
Brian: We have three different VDC documents that are already on there.
1:09:10
Brian: We're getting ready to start working on a fourth one.
1:09:12
Brian: Um, but just educational materials, learn what the opportunity is.
1:09:16
Brian: Um, there's uh, you know, how to choose a project delivery model.
1:09:20
Brian: You know, we have one that's focused on a progressive design build and the differences.
1:09:25
Brian: We have those that are tailored to different market segments, whether it's the commercial, you know, vertical building market, which we're talking about, or if it's transportation, aviation, water, wastewater, you know, if it's federal projects, where are all the nuances?
1:09:38
Brian: Learn more about it, understand how it could start to apply.
1:09:41
Brian: Talk to your owners about it, talk to your, you know, your builders, your designers that you work with, and you know, odds are they've probably done something.
1:09:49
Brian: Find that ideal project to get engaged in and just continue to, you know, continue to push forward and learn.
1:09:56
Ryan: Well, great.
1:09:57
Ryan: I mean, I think every uh opportunity starts with a little spark of curiosity, ask those questions and explore, like you're saying.
1:10:04
Ryan: Um, and I and I do think there's there's some great information out on the DBIA website.
1:10:10
Ryan: Brian is obviously a tremendous resource and has been in a lot of your shoes uh inside firms and practicing you know architecture to his whole career path and uh to now working through um through all this with the DBIA.
1:10:26
Ryan: So I'm grateful that you were willing to spend some time.
1:10:29
Ryan: I hope it wasn't um um too painful.
1:10:32
Ryan: I you are your voice is out there.
1:10:35
Ryan: I there there is a DBI podcast I know that they can listen to as well.
1:10:39
Ryan: Yep.
1:10:40
Ryan: Um uh which is another great resource and hear some of those stories, but um wanted to have the conversation because I think it is a you know, it does release an opportunity for innovation as you're describing and a lot of these areas that can get us more efficient, uh more connected as humans and a collaborative approach to delivering projects that we can all be proud of, but also feel less burnout, feel like we're solving beyond the construction of that project, something bigger for the industry.
1:11:16
Ryan: So again, thanks for your time, Brian.
1:11:18
Ryan: I really appreciate it.
1:11:19
Ryan: Thanks for having me, Ryan.
1:11:21
Ryan: I enjoyed the conversation.
1:11:22
Ryan: Yeah, absolutely.
1:11:23
Ryan: And so everyone knows uh what where is the next conference or the national conference next year?
1:11:29
Brian: The uh the annual national conference will be in Cleveland, Ohio, the first week of November.
1:11:33
Ryan: That's right.
1:11:34
Ryan: I'm looking forward to it being from Cleveland.
1:11:36
Ryan: Um, so that's great.
1:11:37
Ryan: All right, Brian, we'll talk to you soon.
1:11:39
Ryan: Thanks.
1:11:39
Ryan: Thanks.
1:11:40
Ryan: Bye.
1:11:41
Ryan: So that is our episode with Brian Scripack with the DBIA, Design Build Institute of America.
1:11:50
Ryan: Brian has a tremendous amount of experience around a lot of different areas within the construction industry, starting within architecture, working within um, you know, from a BIM modeling standpoint and transferring over now uh with the DBIA and focus on kind of that technology and innovation piece and how that relates to a construction delivery model.
1:12:17
Ryan: And I am passionate about this conversation because it relates to a lot of the things that I have done throughout my career and past, and where I've seen huge opportunity to gain that efficiency that Brian was talking about.
1:12:34
Ryan: And I know we talked about it briefly in the conversation, but efficiency doesn't mean that you have to just get everything out faster all the time.
1:12:44
Ryan: It literally means that you're doing the most important things that create the greatest results for all parties involved.
1:12:52
Ryan: And there's an opportunity through these delivery models and the DBIA or design build is not it's not an alternative anymore.
1:13:01
Ryan: It is 47 to 50 percent of all contracts are now kind of heading towards that collaborative approach, but there's still a lot of groups and people who do not utilize it or don't question it or don't think about it.
1:13:16
Ryan: And by not doing that, it's not allowing us to evolve and test some of these innovations that are coming at us.
1:13:24
Ryan: Brian also gave the warning sign.
1:13:26
Ryan: Don't you don't have to just bring something in because you want to, and you don't really have that problem just because somebody's trying to sell you a software or solution.
1:13:36
Ryan: You have to step back in your business and you have to understand what it is you're you you really want to achieve from a business standpoint, whatever wherever you exist in the construction industry.
1:13:52
Ryan: And you look at these softwares as the right tool that you would utilize.
1:13:57
Ryan: Does it solve more than one problem for more than one person, more than one time?
1:14:01
Ryan: And then you have to build an implementation process and a strategy around it, and have all of those things that Brian was kind of alluding to in the conversation.
1:14:11
Ryan: So I'm sure we'll be talking with others around similar conversations coming up in future podcasts.
1:14:19
Ryan: But I hope you all enjoyed it.
1:14:21
Ryan: I hope you follow up by looking on the Design Build website, downloading some of that information.
1:14:28
Ryan: If you are part of the organization and membership, go out, spread it around, talk to other people and help them understand it.
1:14:36
Ryan: If it is new terrifying territory for them, then understand you have to have the empathy to help them get through that as well.
1:14:44
Ryan: But if we all start to ask different questions, spark that curiosity, then we can begin to solve some of the larger challenges that we're all seeing and facing and get out of this time poor area and into an efficient, rich zone where we are actually all feeling like we are driving towards something better.
1:15:07
Ryan: So until next time, I hope you all stay well and I hope you all continue to activate curiosity within yourself and within a activate curiosity with practical curiosity, so next time deep leading with curiosity.