Latest / Wired to Build / Clarity Starts With Reality | Matthew Byrd

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Clarity Starts With Reality | Matthew Byrd · Wired to Build

• 0:00
  Hey, what's going on everyone? Welcome back to Wire to Build,
• 0:03
  the podcast exploring how owners, operators and builders
• 0:06
  harness technology, data and real world insight to shape the
• 0:09
  future of the built environment. I'm your host, Nick Caravella,
• 0:13
  and I'm excited that you're here as we kick off season 3.
• 0:16
  If you've been following the show, you know we spend a lot of
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  time talking about clarity, clarity and data clarity and
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  process and clarity and decision making before any design is
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  drawn or any shovel fits the ground.
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  Clarity starts with understanding the world exactly
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  as it exists today. And that's why today's episode
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  is such an important one. We're joined by someone who has
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  built a global community around that very idea, reality capture
• 0:40
  networks very own Matthew Berg. Matthew has been a champion for
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  the practitioners, innovators, and creators who are pushing the
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  boundaries of how we capture, measure, and understand the
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  built world. From scanning to photogrammetry
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  to the workflows that tie it all together, he's been at the
• 0:57
  center of the movement, shaping what reality capture really
• 1:00
  means for construction, infrastructure and the future of
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  digital delivery. In this episode, we're going to
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  explore the evolution of space, why the industry is rallying
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  around better, richer, and more accessible data, and how Matthew
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  sees the ecosystem maturing as technology accelerates.
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  It's a conversation about connection between disciplines,
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  between technology and people, and between what's built and
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  what's possible. So let's get into it.
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  Season 3, episode one starts now.
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  Here's my conversation with Matthew Byrd of the Reality
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  Capture Network. Season 3 is officially underway,
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  and I want to start this episode with a quick update on where the
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  show is headed. Over the past two years, Wire to
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  Build has grown into a space for honest conversations about how
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  the built world actually works, the systems, the people, and the
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  technology shaping how we design and deliver the infrastructure
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  we rely on. This year, we're expanding that
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  lens. You'll hear more voices from the
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  field, more voices from innovators across construction
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  in tech, and more behind the scenes perspectives on what it
• 1:56
  really takes to build with clarity at scale.
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  Our goal isn't just to highlight tools, it's a highlight rogress,
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  mindset, and the craft behind the work.
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  In today's episode, we're going to set the tone for that.
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  We're driving into one of the most fundamental challenges in
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  our industry, understanding reality before we try to improve
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  it. And so whether you're an owner,
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  an engineer, or someone on the job site, clarity in the field
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  is clarity and decision making, and clarity is how great builds
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  start with that. Let's jump into today's
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  conversation to help us dig into this.
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  I'm joined today by someone who has become one of the most
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  impactful voices in an emerging tech space of the built
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  environment, Matthew Burt. Matthew is an entrepreneur,
• 2:37
  storyteller, and community builder.
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  He's the founder of Reality Capture Network, a global
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  platform dedicated to elevating innovation through storytelling,
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  events, and media. He leads the Arkon Conference,
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  where he hosts the Matthew Byrd Podcast, and has built a
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  thriving worldwide community for professionals exploring reality
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  capture, field technology, and the future of digital workflows.
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  Matthew, it's great to have you here.
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  Let's start at the beginning. What first pulled you into this
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  world? Thanks Nick, great to be with
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  you. So my journey started, but
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  actually back in land surveying, my father was a land surveyor
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  his whole career. And when I was younger, I
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  actually really had no career aspirations.
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  I was really into sports and music coming out of high school
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  and found that I wasn't going to make a career out of either of
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  those on the journey I was on. And, and actually, like many
• 3:31
  people in the surveying profession, if you ask most
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  surveyors how they got into it, it was, well, I was in high
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  school or maybe college age and someone offered me to come work
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  on a field crew. And it was a decent job.
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  You didn't really need to have experience.
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  And most people in that field, they started that way.
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  They had a relative or a friend's dad or somebody invited
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  him over and then they just never left.
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  And that was kind of my journey is is not really having a goal.
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  I didn't go to college. I didn't have a career path in
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  mind. I just started learning CAD and
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  doing some field survey work with my dad when I was younger.
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  Throughout a couple year period. I was just doing it as a job I
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  did. I honestly did not love it.
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  You know, working out in the oil fields in the heat with Fr
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  clothing, doing traditional survey work as a young person
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  who was into like music and sports and maybe gaming at the
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  time, it was just a job, not something I was super passionate
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  about that I really loved and wanted to do.
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  But what really changed my career and, and honestly my life
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  was while doing surveying, getting introduced to a laser
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  scanner. And that was that was about 2010
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  and we had someone come in and show us the scanner.
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  Like have you ever heard of this?
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  No, what the heck is a laser scanner?
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  It sounds like a sci-fi movie or something.
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  And after getting a demo, the company that we were at, the
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  team and the, the owner and, and director survey, you know, was
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  like this actually looks like a really valuable tool for us as a
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  survey practice. Survey is all about measurement
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  and precision and layout and capturing information and, and
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  collecting true data on the real world.
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  Really, that's a simple way to put it.
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  And what a scanner was, was a way to do that.
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  Only it was kind of mind blowing because most traditional
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  technologies are capturing 1.1 measurement.
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  But this scanner was like this mix of gamification and 3D
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  environments and the real world in a way that it was actually
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  going to help a profession in an industry.
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  It's really, I like that you kind of started your story with
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  the high school journey because I I don't know if you're did
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  your hi, were you doing just this with your, your father or
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  was there a high school program where you were doing service?
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  No, it was just, it was just with family.
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  It was, you know, just getting into an internship at, you know,
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  at a survey firm. That's cool because I think my
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  high school had either like a trade partnership.
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  And so every once in a while you'd see some people and like
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  protection vests and like going and getting their one dot at a
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  time. And then to hear how far, you
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  know, we've come in just that world of being able to bring the
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  LIDAR out in the field and scan everything.
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  It's just been such an advancement.
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  And it's, it's, you know, cool to hear your story of like, you
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  know, didn't go to college, you know, work with your dad kind of
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  and started to find love in the new way and what's possible.
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  A big theme of last year's season was we talked about like
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  a lot of workforce enablement and how to bring folks into the
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  trades and into the construction space where we need people to be
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  up and build. And a joke is like the if people
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  knew how many laser beams and robots we had in this
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  profession, like I don't know if we'd have as many struggles as
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  we do. There's so much cool, cool
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  stuff. So maybe let's jump, You know, I
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  like to jump around a little bit.
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  What are some of the new things that you're seeing in the space
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  that you think are just so exciting and maybe
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  groundbreaking? I mean.
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  I get asked that question a lot and there is a lot of new
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  technology and a lot of change. But my answer to that question
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  is still, it's not that there's something that's come out in the
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  last year that's just mind blowing.
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  And I mean there is. But what I'm actually most
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  excited about is just the continued growth and expect and
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  expansion and adoption of the tools that have been around for
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  even 5678 years, right? Laser scanning, drone mapping,
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  you know, bringing point clouds into design process to
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  construction to 360 photos. A lot of these technologies,
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  they're not brand new and mind blowing.
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  But the adoption curve, you know, 10 years ago, almost
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  nobody even knew what you're talking about.
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  Now it's starting to be integrated into a majority of
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  large scale projects and making its way down into small scale.
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  So what I'm most excited about is the the growth of the
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  ecosystem of those technologies. And a lot has changed, you know,
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  10 years ago or however long it's been.
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  Yeah, 10, no, 15 years ago when I first got into scanning, it
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  was very expensive. They were huge scanners, they
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  were slow, they took forever. So the fact that now you have
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  such a variety of like you can wear a scanner, you can walk
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  around with one in your hand, you can do it mobile, you can,
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  you know, there are so many options and price points and
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  quality and speed, they have drastically changed.
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  But the underlying technology of, of how we're using them and
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  how we're applying them is kind of the same.
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  So, so for me, it's really the basics still.
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  It is applying it to solve problems where people are still
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  out there with tape measures and notepads and taking photos.
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  And so I'm excited to see that transition where majority of
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  people know this exists and majority are starting to use it
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  in one way or another. And I think that's a good tease
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  to like what we're going to dig into like as we continue our
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  conversation. And so maybe let's wind back to
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  your, your early experiences and, and start to paint that
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  picture of, you know, how you grew through your adoption
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  journey, explored new tools and started to see those connections
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  between, you know, how you were you doing it before drones,
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  right? Like and and when did you start
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  to maybe fly one around? Sure, sure.
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  Yeah. So back to being in the survey
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  firm, getting introduced to a scanner.
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  At that time, nobody knew how are we going to use it?
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  How does it really integrate into a workflow?
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  What does it look like to go out on the job site and scan the
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  whole thing? What softwares do we need to
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  bring the data back and draft from it to make the same type of
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  deliverables that we're used to making and clients need?
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  So I became the, the person who got put in charge of like,
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  you're young, you're techie, like everyone else is busy doing
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  their normal job. Why don't we put you in charge
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  of like explore this, test it, demo it.
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  And that is what got me super excited.
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  I was taking that scanner and I was going around the city and I
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  was like, what can I capture? What can I scan?
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  I found a, a bridge, a clock tower, you know, all these
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  things and started to build these workflows and build this
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  understanding, you know, Fast forward a year or two, we were
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  starting to integrate that into oil and gas facilities and into,
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  you know, typical topography projects.
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  And, and the career path for me changed from, you know, a $13 an
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  hour survey tech that was just barely like doing some CAD work
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  to in a couple year time span. I had a large corporate company
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  hire me for a six figure management position to build out
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  a department. And that is what really opened
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  my eyes to like, OK, this is not just a cool technology, it's
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  very valuable and people need it, but there's also not a lot
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  of people doing it or figuring it out even from there.
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  I ended up starting my own business as a practice because I
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  started using the technology across a lot of industries.
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  And I do have to input here, part of what I also attribute my
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  growth to was getting on LinkedIn and getting on social
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  media and taking screenshots of data or taking pictures of the
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  scanner out on the job site and, and not in a sales way or even
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  really thinking about it of marketing.
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  I was just so excited about what I was doing and I thought it was
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  so cool that taking a picture was like, you have, you know,
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  look at this device and I'm at this really cool looking
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  building. You know, what I'm doing is 3D
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  mapping. I've this is a really cool
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  technology. And then I would show a
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  screenshot of the point cloud and go like this looks like a
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  photo, but it's not. It actually is measurement data
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  Doing that over the first couple years of getting into scanning
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  started spreading and people started reaching out or sending
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  me messages of like, how is that working?
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  What are you actually creating? And then I would get interest of
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  like an architect would reach out and say, I saw what you
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  talked about and we have this building that has all these
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  issues. Could you use that to scan this
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  building? And then I would get an inquiry
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  from a forensic project. And then someone in New York and
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  I, I started flying around the country working in all kinds of
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  industries. I've been in nuclear facilities,
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  I've been in fishing boat boats in Alaska.
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  I've been in high rises in New York, I bet.
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  And I and this growth period for me started to open my eyes to
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  this is just one piece of technology and there's a whole
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  ecosystem of technologies from the actual drones to the survey
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  integration to 3D models you create from the data to XR
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  headsets to how it'll be integrated to robotics.
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  And that's what led my journey to where where I am now with RCN
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  is I said, how can I use the influence I've built and the
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  audience I've built and the awareness I've built to actually
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  better the whole industry instead of me just build a
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  scanning company. O my initiative now became, I
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  want to help people learn about the technologies.
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  I want to bring awareness to what is new.
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  I want to bring awareness to the use cases across different
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  industries and help that grow. I, I love that you said that
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  because I think there's, there's some real power that I want to
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  unpack and I want to unpack it in a way of like going back to
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  the firm that you worked at. And there's an aspect of where
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  that I think they encourage you to be curious and they encourage
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  you to explore what was that environment like?
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  And how should firms be thinking about empowering young
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  professionals, old professionals, everyone in
• 13:18
  between to actually get out there and explore the better
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  way? Yeah, I think it's, I think it's
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  huge. Sometimes things it's happened
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  in your journey that are by accident.
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  Sometimes it was unintentional that someone helped push.
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  And I think this became this beautiful recipe of I was very
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  interested in technology and gaming and 3D environments.
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  And I just so happened to be at a survey firm where someone came
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  and pitched a scanner. And so this, this beautiful
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  situation happened where the owner of that company saw the
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  value in the technology, saw the interest in me and, and helped
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  empower me to say, why don't you like look into this and run with
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  that. If if that never happened, I
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  probably still would have pursued the traditional survey
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  route. Not really passionate, not
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  really loving what I was doing, slowly kind of growing in a
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  normal traditional route. So I think it takes it takes
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  leadership, creating opportunity for people, younger people or
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  not even older people who are maybe interested in it, creating
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  opportunity to say, pose ideas, pose questions, look into
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  things. The thing that I look back now
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  and and say is we are lucky that someone came and pitched us that
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  scanner. What I was not doing before that
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  was being online, looking into things like how, what
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  technologies are out there, how could we improve?
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  And, and I would attribute me starting to actually do research
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  and talk to other people and go to events and meet other people
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  who were in similar roles and start to build this
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  communication with other innovators.
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  That is also what helped really grow, because if you work in a
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  silo by yourself, you'll have no idea what else is going on out
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  there. That's so important and it is,
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  it's we get lost. It's the phrase one of my OPM
• 15:07
  just say is like can't see the forest through the trees.
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  And when we're on projects focused on being deliverable all
• 15:13
  day long, you don't get to look up, you don't get to look out.
• 15:17
  You don't get to say, man, if I had a couple extra minutes, I'd
• 15:20
  do this this way because it would save me so much more time
• 15:23
  the next time. And it does come down to really
• 15:26
  strong leadership creating room for that.
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  Because I remember even in my own career in architecture, it'd
• 15:31
  be like, hey, can I get 4 hours? Let me just try for 1/2 of a day
• 15:36
  to hack a better way together because I really don't want to
• 15:39
  do it. The Old West theme and having
• 15:41
  someone who's open and curious and a partner with you on that,
• 15:44
  that journey is so important. And it, and it, it does take
• 15:49
  knowing that you have to take two steps back to take 6 steps
• 15:54
  forward, like to research, to innovate, to try technologies.
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  It's an investment, it's an investment in time.
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  It's an investment in, you know, money to buy technology or rent
• 16:05
  technology or test things or send people to events.
• 16:09
  There's a certain level of investment there.
• 16:10
  But I think what people have learned over time is we have to
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  put attention and time and money into in, you know, R&D and
• 16:20
  innovation in whole to improve processes to stay up with what
• 16:24
  is expected in the industry. Because what happens with
• 16:28
  companies who don't focus on that at all, they have the
• 16:31
  blinders up. They're working on exactly what
• 16:33
  they're working on. They're like, we that's going to
• 16:35
  be too expensive. We don't want to change our
• 16:37
  process. We we know what we're doing.
• 16:38
  We've been doing it this way forever.
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  And then 2345 years later, everyone else has adopted the
• 16:45
  new technology. They're faster, the deliverables
• 16:47
  are better. And now that company who had
• 16:50
  those blinders up is going to start being behind.
• 16:53
  They're going to start lagging. They take too long to deliver.
• 16:56
  They're not available. You know, when you set submit a
• 16:58
  project, your, your field time's going to take 4 weeks instead of
• 17:02
  two. And now you're going to start
• 17:03
  losing opportunity. And so you realize the time and
• 17:07
  investment into innovation and R&D and testing and, and looking
• 17:11
  at always trying to improve your process.
• 17:14
  It is cheaper to be on board with doing that constantly at
• 17:17
  some level than to only focus on doing your work and realize
• 17:22
  later it's too late because innovation and adopting these
• 17:27
  technologies and things like that.
• 17:29
  I have seen firms who have waited way too long and then all
• 17:33
  of a sudden it's like a requirement and they're, they
• 17:35
  want to get caught up and they're, and it's like it
• 17:37
  doesn't, it's not an overnight thing.
• 17:39
  You don't just go buy a technology or hire one person
• 17:42
  and now you're competitive with this whole landscape of people
• 17:45
  who've been doing it for five years.
• 17:46
  It's it's a complex ecosystem to what gear do you buy?
• 17:50
  How do you integrate it? There's only, and this, this
• 17:54
  also comes up around the workforce conversation.
• 17:56
  The amount of people who are very good at doing this type of
• 18:00
  work right now are very limited. Many, many, many firms right now
• 18:04
  are trying to hire laser scanning technicians, BIM
• 18:07
  modeler scan to BIM people, digital twin consultant and you
• 18:10
  know, these new innovative technologies.
• 18:13
  Everybody is now seeing the need and everybody wants to hire.
• 18:16
  Well, there's not enough people to hire.
• 18:18
  So you're stealing from each other and or you're having to
• 18:21
  now start from Ground Zero of getting someone interested and
• 18:25
  spend years training and learning and growing and.
• 18:28
  Yeah, and it's even gets more compounded because these one,
• 18:32
  you know, that one individual and that one role isn't going to
• 18:35
  solve the problem because this is a highly collaborative
• 18:38
  industry requires everybody to be working in the same
• 18:41
  direction, rowing in the same direction.
• 18:44
  And so a BIM modeler may understand how to put a model
• 18:47
  together incredibly well, but do they know what it means to put a
• 18:51
  model together so that it can be released for say, fabrication or
• 18:54
  that it can be released for a digital twin case?
• 18:57
  There's so many partners that need to be brought together.
• 19:00
  And I think this is where you know why your work matters to
• 19:03
  the industry. Bringing folks together in
• 19:05
  reality Capture network is this that's sharing of ideas is what
• 19:09
  happens when you bring the BIM modeler together with the
• 19:12
  reality capture person and you can start to talk about, well, I
• 19:15
  can get capture all this information from the field.
• 19:18
  What can you do with it now that it's in the model?
• 19:21
  Yeah. And I'll say, I'll say on that
• 19:23
  note that that is part of what my focus has expanded to be is,
• 19:30
  you know, my background and how I got started was really heavy
• 19:33
  around laser scanning because I was in survey.
• 19:35
  I got into scanning, I built a scanning company.
• 19:38
  But throughout that journey, I started realizing the need of,
• 19:41
  OK, the scanning people have to talk with the design people and
• 19:44
  the modelers and the modelers and you talk with scan people
• 19:46
  and the drones and the, you know it.
• 19:48
  You can't just do one piece of it and hand it to someone else
• 19:52
  because they're like, well, wait, you didn't capture it to
• 19:55
  the accuracy we needed for this type of use case or the model
• 19:58
  that someone created wasn't ready for the type of use case
• 20:01
  we were going to use the model for.
• 20:02
  The focus has expanded, which is even a little bit expanded
• 20:06
  outside of what our name even is.
• 20:08
  We don't just focus on scanners or reality capture, We focus on
• 20:12
  all of the technologies that can touch that ecosystem.
• 20:16
  How can robotics be used to do autonomous capture?
• 20:19
  How can AIE be used to extract better data from the captured?
• 20:23
  You know, it's any of the emerging technologies that touch
• 20:26
  that ecosystem. And it's, it's interesting, this
• 20:29
  isn't construction related, but I was with my wife at the
• 20:31
  dentist the other day and they're using AI.
• 20:33
  So they did the X-rays of the teeth and the AI was able to go
• 20:37
  and look and say, hey, here's the, here's all the things you
• 20:41
  should look at. And obviously, you know, we are
• 20:44
  still in a world of like verify and, and analyze and, and
• 20:47
  scrutinize AI responses. But the fact that we can get to
• 20:51
  a point where we're doing reality capture of 1's mouth and
• 20:56
  identified cavities, places to clean things you need to be
• 20:58
  taken care of is super, super neat.
• 21:01
  And I think this is a perfect way to kind of segue into like
• 21:04
  the workforce enablement aspect is when tools like this exist,
• 21:09
  more people can do more. And it brings people together at
• 21:14
  a level and a layer that was once a barrier.
• 21:17
  You used to have to know how to use some heavy, cumbersome
• 21:20
  equipment and capture one dot at a time.
• 21:23
  So I want to jump into workforce enablement.
• 21:26
  But before we get away from your origin story, I'd love for you
• 21:29
  to share like, what was one of the early wins, like where you
• 21:32
  figured something out and then shared it with your team and
• 21:35
  everybody was like, Oh my goodness, how?
• 21:37
  Why have we been doing it the old way?
• 21:39
  That's a good question. I mean there were quite a few.
• 21:43
  One that comes to mind is one of our one of our first big jobs
• 21:49
  was 1,000,000 square foot warehouse.
• 21:51
  You know, before that we were doing small piping jobs and you
• 21:55
  know topos and things. But this construction firm came
• 21:59
  to us and said, we keep having problems on these renovations or
• 22:03
  expansions or, you know, addition jobs inside this
• 22:06
  warehouse because what our tolerances are very tight and
• 22:11
  the drawings and the models and the things that we have are, are
• 22:15
  never accurate. We keep running into problems
• 22:17
  where we go to install something and it doesn't fit and, and
• 22:21
  scanning, not only does it improve some older workflows, it
• 22:26
  also creates things that were not before possible.
• 22:30
  So one of the examples of those is like the floor flatness
• 22:34
  within a, within a, you know, a concrete project, you used to
• 22:40
  take a grid of shots at a certain, you know, density and
• 22:45
  get a, an overall assumption of the floor.
• 22:49
  But a scanner captures, you know, dots every freaking
• 22:53
  millimeter. It's, it's so dense that when
• 22:56
  you're going to do something that is very, very precise, it
• 23:01
  captures the whole surface. And, and so no matter where you
• 23:05
  wanted to move your design or you're putting bolts in floor or
• 23:07
  you're fabricating steel, you have such more accurate
• 23:11
  information than was previously possible before.
• 23:15
  And that just became a whole new market that was like, this is a
• 23:18
  really important need for every type of of project.
• 23:22
  And most people are still doing it the old way.
• 23:25
  It's, and it's interesting because like this, the
• 23:28
  enablement conversation and even that story I think starts to
• 23:32
  highlight like the elevation of our work.
• 23:35
  I think many times people think technology, especially today,
• 23:38
  people think AI and like job replacement.
• 23:41
  And where I really see opportunity is job elevation,
• 23:45
  where I can do more with less. I started, you know, this
• 23:50
  podcast almost three years ago, 2 years I guess ago now.
• 23:54
  And I got into this really, I think our mutual interest of
• 23:56
  video games. I was streaming on Twitch.
• 23:58
  When I think about when I started Twitch, which is almost
• 24:00
  five years ago now, and I'm not doing Twitch anywhere.
• 24:02
  You can't find me thinking around our games on the Internet
• 24:05
  anywhere, unfortunately. But when I started, we didn't
• 24:08
  have the AI tools, we didn't have Riverside, we didn't have
• 24:10
  any of these other things. And the amount of effort it went
• 24:14
  into creating content was vast. It was fun and that's why I
• 24:19
  enjoy doing it. But today I can do so, so much
• 24:22
  more and which allows me to elevate my focus to other
• 24:26
  things. And so, you know, we talked
• 24:29
  about today a lot in all the markets and especially like the
• 24:34
  data center market, which I'm I'm focused in right now, it's
• 24:36
  like there's not enough electricians in the world.
• 24:39
  We can't be building fast enough.
• 24:41
  Some people are like, well, we just need more people to enter
• 24:43
  the trades, which I think is part of the equation, but that's
• 24:47
  not the whole answer. And I think the whole answer is,
• 24:49
  well, how do we enable, how do we elevate, how do we allow
• 24:53
  people to come into this world of reality capture so that we
• 24:58
  can get better information, so that we can do things right the
• 25:01
  first time so that we can move forward.
• 25:04
  And so, you know, what are, you know, looking back at Arcon and
• 25:08
  some of the conversations that your community has been having,
• 25:11
  where are some of the like big topics and big traction points
• 25:15
  for innovation in this industry that you know, your network is
• 25:19
  starting to see? Well, I think everything you
• 25:21
  just said is, is true, part of what is being discussed.
• 25:25
  And the other thing to point out is who comes to our conference
• 25:30
  and what types of conversations we're having with these
• 25:32
  technologies. They span so many industries.
• 25:36
  You know, we, we have airports, we have oil and gas facilities,
• 25:40
  we have forensics, we have wildland firefighters, we have,
• 25:45
  you know, movie set VFX teams. We and that's one of the
• 25:49
  interesting things about a lot of these technologies is
• 25:52
  sometimes the workflows may even be similar, but the value that
• 25:56
  they create to different industries is different.
• 25:59
  Yet I, I, everybody still talks about the workforce problem.
• 26:03
  And I completely agree that I think the way to solve the
• 26:07
  problem is the combination of attracting more people and
• 26:12
  integrating more tools. You know, if you go to a, a, a
• 26:15
  surveyor and they say that it's a workforce problem, they can't
• 26:19
  find people and you ask if they're using tech and it's no,
• 26:21
  it's all the old ways. It's like you can, you can do
• 26:24
  twice as much work with the same team if you start using
• 26:27
  technology. And I, and I think all of these
• 26:30
  different companies and industries are seeing that of
• 26:33
  OK, using these technologies to capture a job site let's our
• 26:37
  team of five people from different states not have to
• 26:40
  travel to that location and spend 4 days taking photos.
• 26:43
  It completely shortens timelines.
• 26:45
  It gives us more data to use. It lets us focus our attention
• 26:48
  on the things that are important for us and our skill set.
• 26:51
  So I think on the workforce side, the the technology can
• 26:54
  definitely help solve some of that problem.
• 26:56
  And I think that every industry is still in this early stage
• 27:00
  where the technologies are starting to be used in all of
• 27:02
  those industries, but it is still 15% of what should be
• 27:08
  being used for. So everyone's conversation is
• 27:11
  still here's how we're trying to here's the problems we need to
• 27:15
  solve. How can the industry of
• 27:17
  technologists and these emerging techs, you know, solve some of
• 27:20
  these bigger problems? And we're, what I also think is
• 27:23
  starting to happen is all of those industries I mentioned are
• 27:27
  moving from this idea. I'll use oil and gas as an
• 27:29
  example. They've been using scanning for
• 27:32
  20 years, back when it was the earliest, because it was so
• 27:35
  valuable to them. But because it was so slow and
• 27:39
  so expensive and, and all of that, they would use it for one
• 27:42
  project. They would say, OK, out of this
• 27:44
  whole facility we have one tank that we want to go in and scan
• 27:48
  because we need to replace it and we need to know where all
• 27:50
  the nozzles are. Well, now the value has been
• 27:54
  seen long enough. The technology is becoming
• 27:56
  faster and cheaper. These industries are now moving
• 28:00
  from, we want to capture one piece of equipment to we want to
• 28:03
  capture the whole facility or they're starting to move from,
• 28:06
  we want to capture the whole facility to we want to capture
• 28:09
  every facility we own. Because we want to start using
• 28:12
  this data to plan ahead, to think outside the box, to get
• 28:15
  innovative with new designs and, and you know, enhancements and,
• 28:20
  and that's creating far more demand than I think that the
• 28:23
  industry is actually providing right now.
• 28:26
  Yeah. And I, I wonder what your take
• 28:28
  is on us because you you talked about it a little bit before
• 28:31
  about like tool adoption lagging behind.
• 28:35
  I think in some cases, because it's construction is often times
• 28:39
  trying to figure out how to move money from one bucket to another
• 28:41
  bucket to another bucket and eventually it gets where it's
• 28:44
  going so we can actually build what we want to build.
• 28:47
  And so you know how or what, what would be your take on
• 28:51
  driving this innovation? Because I think some folks, you
• 28:54
  know, I and I've even lived this on some past projects where like
• 28:57
  architect did not have the money for the laser scanner.
• 29:00
  So we worked off the as built docs and then the GC who's got
• 29:03
  the larger bucket of money to play with, rolls in with a laser
• 29:06
  scanner and finds out everything that was wrong about that as
• 29:09
  built documentation, which we know is always not 100% right.
• 29:14
  How do we in this industry where there's a lot of different
• 29:19
  people in charge and they're, and they're all responsible for
• 29:22
  different things and different value creation, how do we start
• 29:26
  to have that collaborative conversation of, hey, do you see
• 29:30
  you're going to be doing a laser scan?
• 29:32
  Can we move that maybe up to the design phase?
• 29:35
  Yeah, so that we can design around real world information.
• 29:38
  I think, you know, I don't have the answer on exactly how to
• 29:42
  solve the problem, but I think that what needs to happen and I
• 29:46
  think absolutely will happen in the future and I and I see it
• 29:49
  happening in some industries already, is to get the most
• 29:53
  value out of integrating these technologies.
• 29:55
  It has to happen at the very beginning, and that same data
• 29:58
  has to be delivered to everybody involved in the project.
• 30:02
  I have seen way too many jobs in the past, like you're talking
• 30:05
  about where the GC hired someone to scan because they wanted it
• 30:08
  for insurance purposes, but then they just archive the data and
• 30:12
  nobody got to use it. Or the GC didn't know anything
• 30:15
  about scanning and the architect was used to using it and knows
• 30:17
  the value. So they hire someone to do it,
• 30:19
  but then they don't share that with the mechanical or you know,
• 30:22
  it's so fragmented. And the whole point of using
• 30:25
  these technologies is to stop the fragmentation and to work on
• 30:29
  accurate information and to share that.
• 30:32
  And so the, what I, what I see as the best route and I do see
• 30:37
  it happening with certain clients or industries is the
• 30:40
  owner understands the value of the technology and they say here
• 30:45
  is a budget or a line item. We want these things done
• 30:48
  because it is, it helps us with, with the insurance information.
• 30:52
  It helps us with giving accurate information to all of the trades
• 30:55
  to reduce problems, to reduce conflicts.
• 30:58
  It improves the project schedule, it reduces clashes.
• 31:01
  It does so many good things, but it only does that if everybody's
• 31:05
  working from the same sheet of music.
• 31:07
  You know, you can't be in a music term, right?
• 31:10
  You can't, you can't have 5 different instrumentalists
• 31:13
  looking at different songs trying to play or it sounds like
• 31:16
  chaos. You, you have to have the same
• 31:18
  sheet of music to play from. So everybody knows what chord to
• 31:20
  be striving what you know. And that's what's happening.
• 31:23
  I think with this ecosystem of tech on a single job is people
• 31:26
  are using different software. People are familiar with
• 31:28
  different hardware, they're trying to mix technologies and
• 31:31
  they don't even really know how. And so they come out with models
• 31:34
  that don't work for this designer like it's, it has to be
• 31:38
  entire ecosystem conversation of what, what coordinate system are
• 31:42
  we using? How are we tying that technology
• 31:45
  to the coordinate system? What deliverable is coming out
• 31:48
  of that data that can work for everyone that's on the design
• 31:51
  team and how are we meeting to ensure that we're coordinating
• 31:55
  properly. If you if you follow that from
• 31:57
  the beginning with everybody on the same team, it is beautiful,
• 32:01
  but that is it is hard to pull off.
• 32:04
  It is when you said coordinate system.
• 32:06
  I had flashbacks of every time I got a new model from some team
• 32:10
  and it's the Z axis was never never ever.
• 32:13
  They're all wrong. They're always wrong and people
• 32:15
  don't know how to fix them or coordinate them or and that's
• 32:17
  why it has to start from the beginning, because if you try to
• 32:21
  start in the middle of a job and and you start trying to combine
• 32:24
  stuff, it's so messy. It's near impossible.
• 32:27
  It's, you know, it has to be from the beginning.
• 32:30
  Yeah. And I like that you come from
• 32:31
  like that oil and gas background because I'm finding a lot of
• 32:34
  similarities in that data center market where like these are
• 32:38
  machines. At the end of the day, these are
• 32:40
  true assets that are providing a service to a greater populace.
• 32:43
  And they need to know where everything is, was it installed
• 32:47
  correctly, if something goes wrong, how do they fix it,
• 32:50
  yadda, yadda, yadda. And there's a, a level of rigor
• 32:55
  that I think some industry verticals have that maybe some
• 32:58
  don't. And I personally believe, I
• 33:01
  think there's, there's value in that trickling down.
• 33:04
  I talked about this when I was on the contact crew as a guest.
• 33:07
  And it's like, you know, how do we get to the Carfax of our, our
• 33:10
  building information? Does every building get a VIN
• 33:12
  and I can know how old the air handler is or?
• 33:16
  I it does make me want to jump in and say I believe that this
• 33:21
  is the future of the digital twin conversation.
• 33:24
  I do believe, I strongly believe that in the future and I can't
• 33:28
  put a date to it, but in the next 10 to 20 years, I believe
• 33:33
  every building and every major facility and every major asset
• 33:36
  will have a digital twin. And of course you can get into
• 33:40
  the an hour long conversation of what's digital twin and what
• 33:43
  qualifies at what level and what system and what platform and
• 33:46
  what's tied to it. There's a lot to unpack there.
• 33:49
  However, the value of having accurate information of a
• 33:53
  building for the building owner, for the person that's going to
• 33:56
  buy it, for the renovation of it, for the expansion of it.
• 33:59
  People are going to get to the point they realize we shouldn't
• 34:02
  be waiting until we're in the middle of a project and now it's
• 34:05
  too late and we're rushing and it's expensive and we're nobody
• 34:08
  started from the same sheet of music, right?
• 34:10
  It's going to get to the point that people see the value of we
• 34:13
  should just proactively capture everything, get it into the
• 34:17
  right system, have it in a platform people are familiar
• 34:19
  with so that at any moment we can get in and pull information
• 34:22
  from it. And then from the actual ongoing
• 34:25
  asset management side and the information and the predictions
• 34:29
  that can be created by having sensors and having AI constantly
• 34:33
  evaluate what's the air temperature, Why is this room on
• 34:37
  this floor of this level of the building dropping like it's,
• 34:40
  it's going to be far more than just an accurate as built.
• 34:43
  It's going to be the living information of those facilities
• 34:47
  and assets that help predict things and solve problems before
• 34:51
  there's an actual problem. Yeah.
• 34:53
  And that gets into like the role of clarity, the role of data in
• 34:58
  how we build and how we innovate.
• 35:00
  You've mentioned digital twins. I had Chris Hussey on last
• 35:03
  season where we talked about digital twins.
• 35:06
  And the reason I brought him on is because he, one of his first
• 35:09
  exposures to it was actually in the, the race car environment
• 35:12
  where Audi wanted to win the Le Mans and they built a digital
• 35:15
  twin and they won for three years in a row.
• 35:17
  And I think if we treated, you know, construction with a
• 35:19
  competitive environment that it has, you want to win the Le
• 35:22
  Mans, you want to win the Le Mans of construction.
• 35:25
  And I think that the more that these firms can start to explore
• 35:29
  the technology and explore the applications and then bring
• 35:33
  their partners, and I think most importantly to talk about how do
• 35:36
  we share and collaborate with this information, it becomes
• 35:40
  critical because, you know, go back to the old way of doing
• 35:43
  things. I know that we still to this day
• 35:46
  blow up our data before we share it with another partner.
• 35:50
  And it's because of this fear of exposure to risk.
• 35:54
  And ultimately, in many ways, it exposes the project to risk by
• 35:59
  trying to insulate ourselves to risk, as opposed to creating a
• 36:03
  truly collaborative environment between all the partners in the
• 36:06
  build. Yeah.
• 36:07
  And you know, I think there, there is complication that has
• 36:10
  to still be figured out in the industry, especially with new
• 36:15
  and emerging technologies where, you know, and I'll, I'll go back
• 36:18
  to laser scanning because it's been one of my core focuses for
• 36:22
  the longest is there's no formal training processes out there.
• 36:26
  There's no standards, there's no certification, There's no
• 36:32
  everybody and their neighbor can buy a scanner and go work on a
• 36:36
  job. And the outcomes are going to be
• 36:38
  different. They're going to have different
• 36:39
  scanners that have different accuracies.
• 36:41
  Some of them are going to know how to use it properly and some
• 36:43
  are not. Some are going to know how to
• 36:44
  make models from the data, some are not.
• 36:46
  Part of why there is still some hesitation is the lack of
• 36:50
  consistency, the lack of training, the lack of trust that
• 36:54
  has been built because there are, there is a lot of bad work
• 36:57
  that happens when there's a new technology that people don't
• 37:00
  know how to use properly. That is, that also comes back to
• 37:03
  some of my core focus and why I believe in building this
• 37:06
  community. Building shared learning app
• 37:08
  opportunities, bringing people to a conference to to open up
• 37:12
  and be real and honest and talk about the challenges, Bring
• 37:15
  those to light, share those through media, create committees
• 37:18
  where people can work on these problems together and say we
• 37:21
  need to build a process to help owners understand how to ask for
• 37:25
  data properly. You know, the more that we
• 37:27
  collectively share lessons learned, problem statements, and
• 37:31
  work work on solving those together, the sooner we get to
• 37:33
  the point people understand it, people can trust it.
• 37:36
  People know how to ask for it. You know how to vet it.
• 37:38
  You know how to check for the quality.
• 37:40
  Those things have to be worked on for it to grow to the point
• 37:44
  that we believe it will. And it's the, the trust I think
• 37:47
  is key. And you said consistency and a
• 37:49
  big believer that trust is just consistency over a time, right?
• 37:53
  And I think there's that aspect and you said it right, it like
• 37:57
  spot on of like everybody's using it differently.
• 38:00
  So everything kind of comes out the other end a little bit
• 38:02
  different, but I know we're getting we're getting traction
• 38:05
  with trust with a lot of field technology.
• 38:08
  Where have you seen that trust to get cultivated and why do you
• 38:13
  think that some technologies are cultivating that trust maybe
• 38:17
  more quickly than others? I think I know.
• 38:20
  That's it is my mind's like trying to pull 10 directions at
• 38:24
  once. I do think that many of the
• 38:27
  technologies are gaining trust and I do think that it's because
• 38:32
  we've been at it long enough now that that a majority of people
• 38:36
  who have been doing it for years have worked out a lot of the
• 38:39
  kinks. So even though there is not
• 38:41
  standards and training and certifications and all that,
• 38:44
  there's a good percentage of the companies out there doing the
• 38:46
  work that are good, that are providing quality.
• 38:50
  There are also a lot that are still not.
• 38:51
  And some of those even, you know, I'm not going to point out
• 38:54
  names or call out things, but like there's certain processes
• 38:57
  and certain people and certain mindsets that you, you end up
• 39:01
  learning. Like, OK, this company has this
• 39:03
  type of background or they've, they've shown me in, in their
• 39:06
  proposal, here's what we expect to do, how we expect to achieve
• 39:10
  XYZ results. Here's some examples of what
• 39:13
  they've done in the past. People have failed enough to
• 39:16
  figure out processes that work. The other thing that comes in
• 39:19
  with new technologies and something else I try to
• 39:21
  encourage people to evaluate is you can't expect perfection
• 39:26
  every time and you definitely can't expect perfection from new
• 39:29
  technology. But ask yourself the question,
• 39:32
  even if it's not perfect, do the pros of going this direction
• 39:36
  outweigh the cons? Right.
• 39:38
  If if I have a scan done on a building and there is some
• 39:41
  misregistration in it and there's a little bit of error in
• 39:43
  it, is it still better than sending tape measures?
• 39:46
  Probably. Do we still need to figure out
• 39:48
  better processes to get as best as possible?
• 39:51
  Yes. And this is, this is where it
• 39:53
  starts to get very detailed though is there's a big
• 39:56
  difference between saying I need a rough floor plan for an
• 40:00
  architectural purpose. It's OK if it's two inches
• 40:02
  accuracy versus I'm in an industrial facility where we're
• 40:05
  manufacturing pipe that is 1/4 of an inch tolerance.
• 40:09
  Like those are very different outcomes.
• 40:11
  And those are some of the basic education that we're trying to
• 40:14
  do is if someone new is entering the industry, they don't
• 40:18
  understand the differences between the 10 different types
• 40:20
  of scanners and the workflows and the modeling.
• 40:22
  Processes. So I think that it is people
• 40:26
  need to focus on an area, get really good at it and try to
• 40:29
  hone in on processes for the types of work that they're
• 40:32
  looking at doing. And man, there's one thing that
• 40:35
  stood out to me out of what you just said is like the about
• 40:38
  perfect. And there's something this flaw
• 40:41
  about new technology needing to be perfect.
• 40:43
  And I just think every single conversation is local.
• 40:46
  What about this and what about that?
• 40:48
  And it is this. Was it perfect?
• 40:49
  Now, like is the way you're doing it right now today
• 40:52
  perfect? No, you, you just know how to do
• 40:55
  it. Really.
• 40:56
  You know how to do it in a poor method very well.
• 40:59
  You're, you know, I go, I go back to I, I use this.
• 41:03
  I've used this visual in my presentation about innovation,
• 41:08
  where I'm sure most people have seen this across social media at
• 41:11
  some point. But you've got this picture of a
• 41:14
  Lego character pushing a, a, like a wheelbarrow with a square
• 41:20
  wheel, right? It's slow, it's clunky, but it's
• 41:24
  like, that's what the wheel has always been.
• 41:26
  And they're like, I'm the, you know, I want to be the best
• 41:28
  square wheel pusher. You know, we know how to do this
• 41:31
  really well. And you see the other guy
• 41:33
  standing there with a round wheel that's like, I, I want to
• 41:36
  just show you how to swap this out.
• 41:37
  And they're like, we don't have time to stop.
• 41:39
  We're really good at this. You, you have, you have to look
• 41:42
  at, even if you know how to do what you're doing really well,
• 41:46
  does the new process improve it, even if you have to relearn it a
• 41:49
  little bit or you have to figure out the process or you have to
• 41:51
  stop to swap it out? And there's, you know, a lot of
• 41:55
  people in this industry, they're really great hole pokers is what
• 41:58
  I prefer to do as and I honestly, I love them because
• 42:01
  whenever you're trying a new product fit or a new idea, you
• 42:04
  want to talk to these people because they're going to just
• 42:06
  try and sync you all day long. And if you can survive one of
• 42:09
  those conversations, I think it's a win.
• 42:12
  And so, you know, one of the big updates in in my side of the
• 42:15
  fence is like, I drink this the team cumulus and we have a, a
• 42:19
  method of connecting Bluetooth enabled tools out to software to
• 42:23
  actually report on and verify the quality of torque on flanges
• 42:28
  on everything being done right. I ended up having a conversation
• 42:33
  with my buddy, and he's like, well, what about the guy who's
• 42:35
  going to take a picture of the wrong thing or turn the wrong
• 42:38
  splanch or. And I'm like, I was like, if
• 42:42
  we're going to have a conversation about bad actors,
• 42:44
  my advice to you is you need a fire, right.
• 42:47
  Yeah. Like there's always gonna be a
• 42:49
  point at where there's no solution.
• 42:50
  That's perfect. But the old way of doing things,
• 42:54
  which in our case was people doing it, putting a mark,
• 42:58
  getting a third party to come look at it, going and reporting
• 43:01
  it, verifying it, writing it on reports and then getting another
• 43:04
  guy to go look at it. And then we go find the one that
• 43:06
  was bad. And now we have to go look at
• 43:08
  them all because trust is diminished.
• 43:09
  Yeah. Like, that's frustrating thing.
• 43:12
  Yeah. And.
• 43:13
  And you're telling me that if we can can get rid of half of that,
• 43:16
  that you won't do it because you're worried about the one guy
• 43:19
  who's taking a picture of the wrong thing the wrong way.
• 43:21
  And it's always very interesting of like, how do we start to
• 43:25
  create that culture of going back to like how you started in,
• 43:28
  in the opportunity, going back to creating a culture of
• 43:30
  curiosity and a culture of, well, let's try it on a project
• 43:34
  or let's see I. Think that's the lowest hanging
• 43:38
  fruit or the easiest way to to look at integrating new
• 43:41
  technologies is and many people do that.
• 43:45
  It's like, hey, let's do a pilot project.
• 43:47
  You know, the, the biggest suggestion is emerging tech, new
• 43:52
  tech, try it on a fake job, not a real job.
• 43:56
  You know, you, you try to integrate something immediately
• 43:58
  on a real project and you didn't know how to do it yet and it
• 44:01
  comes out bad. You've completely broken the
• 44:03
  trust and you go back to look. These teams are executing jobs.
• 44:08
  They have deadlines. They have to hit them If they
• 44:10
  can't trust you, they don't even care about the new technology.
• 44:13
  They just want to do what works. And so you have to spend the
• 44:16
  time trialling the process, failing, learning from it,
• 44:21
  trialling it again on fake opportunities, on pilot
• 44:24
  projects, on test facilities before you go in the real job.
• 44:28
  And the the other piece that I bring up often is, you know,
• 44:32
  some companies do they have to integrate these technologies?
• 44:36
  Probably not, or at least not for a long time.
• 44:39
  They could keep going the old way, but at the same time you
• 44:43
  get a lot of companies that say we want to be a leader in the
• 44:45
  space, we want to stand apart, we want to win more projects.
• 44:50
  You can't have both. You can't not innovate and be
• 44:54
  the best and what when it comes to innovation or trying this new
• 44:58
  tech? The other thing that I say is
• 45:01
  you don't try it once and it didn't work and say it doesn't
• 45:03
  work. It's not that it doesn't work,
• 45:05
  it's that you implemented it wrong or you didn't know what
• 45:08
  you were doing yet or it takes training.
• 45:09
  And an example I throw out, which is maybe a far fetched
• 45:12
  example, but Thomas Edison and creating the light bulb, right?
• 45:16
  1000 iterations before he got to success.
• 45:20
  And I always ask the question, how many times do you try
• 45:23
  something new before you quit and say it didn't work right?
• 45:26
  If you want to do something incredible, you want to create
• 45:29
  this new process, you want to change your workflow, you have
• 45:32
  to be willing to adopt that tech and trial it and trial it and
• 45:35
  fix and revise and learn and grow and trial it again.
• 45:38
  You can't just try a scanner or a drone or a model or something
• 45:42
  one time and go it didn't work, it was too hard or it failed or
• 45:46
  no. There's a reason the technology
• 45:49
  is amazing. Most of our problems right now
• 45:51
  are people problems people process and the knowledge of how
• 45:55
  to use it properly. And this is probably the perfect
• 45:58
  tie into your community and why it matters.
• 46:01
  And kind of the success that you're sharing is like you got
• 46:04
  people from video and and like Hollywood coming in as in
• 46:07
  construction and oil and all these different sectors.
• 46:10
  Is that some of these tools in tech, while they have I think
• 46:14
  application for everyone, they have more value for certain
• 46:19
  verticals and others out the gate where that return on
• 46:22
  investment can be more meaningful.
• 46:24
  And so where, you know, oil and gas may be interested in certain
• 46:30
  things like, you know, vertical construction.
• 46:32
  We're not building underwater all the time.
• 46:34
  I know we're experimenting some data centers underwater, but
• 46:37
  we're not always building vertical construction underwater
• 46:40
  tools to do reality capture over there is going to help pave the
• 46:45
  way for understanding how we build in those environments
• 46:48
  better. And I'd imagine all of our
• 46:50
  undersea construction is going to probably pave the way for how
• 46:53
  we're going to build on the moon one day.
• 46:55
  And there's this like translative property of tech
• 46:58
  adoption that I think is really fascinating of, you know, what
• 47:01
  sector is going to get the most return on investment where they
• 47:04
  can pilot it, learn, iterate it, and then demo and go to a
• 47:08
  community like the reality capture network and share what
• 47:12
  they're seeing and, and experiencing.
• 47:15
  So that someone maybe who's in the office space is like, wait a
• 47:18
  minute, I have this problem every single day.
• 47:22
  And this is a solution for that. Exactly.
• 47:24
  And, and that's what we see happening.
• 47:26
  And what what I'll even say that comes to mind too, is a lot of
• 47:32
  people don't know again, the variety of hardware that exists,
• 47:37
  the variety of different software processes that exist.
• 47:40
  So a lot of people have this assumption if they aren't using
• 47:44
  the tech yet, they think that's going to be too expensive or
• 47:49
  that's for bigger, you know, $100 million jobs, not my 10
• 47:52
  million or not my home remodeling business or not my.
• 47:56
  And the truth is there is a process and a certain budget
• 48:01
  project and a certain, you know variety of hardware and software
• 48:05
  that some of those same workflows apply to all of those
• 48:09
  industries. I know people that all they do
• 48:12
  is do capture for high volume for homes, for home builders for
• 48:17
  verification of build process. I have gotten hired to scan a
• 48:21
  staircase because they're fabricating really important,
• 48:25
  you know, glass panels. I have done, you know, custom
• 48:29
  build counters in a home because they're shipping granite from
• 48:33
  across the world and they want to make sure it's going to fit
• 48:35
  properly. Like the the The thing is,
• 48:37
  though, nobody's educating people on the variety of
• 48:41
  hardware software processes on here is what you should do for
• 48:45
  your type of project or industry.
• 48:48
  And the truth is it's it fits for everybody.
• 48:51
  Well, that's, it's the, I think the easiest examples like
• 48:53
  Matterport. And I remember when Matterport
• 48:55
  came out and I was super excited and like, man, I need to adopt
• 48:57
  this in the architecture firm. Everybody's like, kind of, we
• 49:00
  don't really need that. Like we can go do it the old
• 49:02
  way. And I watched real estate agents
• 49:04
  go and adopt Matterport in Mass because it's like, well, now
• 49:06
  people can go visit these properties.
• 49:08
  They don't even have to walk in. They can see everything.
• 49:10
  And it's like the the adoption curve is always so interesting
• 49:14
  where some tech gets its legs as opposed to where maybe you'd
• 49:18
  think as an expert it should get sitting here.
• 49:21
  Like how come your real estate agents figured out the power of
• 49:26
  matter port before the construction industry really
• 49:29
  leaned into it? And I get a bit of that is,
• 49:32
  well, they're they have a product that they can sell and,
• 49:34
  and wrap up real nicely. And that's, you know, the
• 49:36
  business economics of it all. But I can't tell you the amount
• 49:40
  of times I've done a field survey with the old fashioned
• 49:43
  camera and tape measure. And I get back to the office and
• 49:46
  that's the one picture, the one picture I didn't take of the one
• 49:49
  electrical receptacle or the one, one thing that I needed.
• 49:52
  And now I got to go get in my car again.
• 49:54
  Yeah. I was I was.
• 49:56
  I was working on a library project one time, scanning this
• 49:59
  old historic library for a construction company.
• 50:03
  While I was in there scanning, an architect showed up with a
• 50:06
  tape measure and they were there for the, I think they said fifth
• 50:09
  or sixth time. Because again, there's all
• 50:12
  these, you know, things that are not normal.
• 50:15
  They're not, you know, it's a historic building.
• 50:17
  So walls are different, window sizes are different, like all
• 50:20
  these things. And you cannot go to a site and
• 50:24
  come back with every measurement.
• 50:26
  If you don't use these new technologies, you just can't do
• 50:28
  it. You get back and you're like, I
• 50:30
  didn't even know I was going to need the height of this doorway
• 50:33
  or I did, I forgot to get that window.
• 50:35
  Or now we've gotten to this process and I need another
• 50:38
  measurement on the outside from this angle or whatever it is.
• 50:42
  And again, the architect didn't even know the technology
• 50:45
  existed. They're like, so you're saying
• 50:46
  when you're done, I could open up this data and measure any of
• 50:50
  these features? It's like, Yep, you never have
• 50:53
  to visit this site again. Yeah.
• 50:55
  And there's an aspect like I want to have a respect for where
• 50:58
  we've come from, like those where are the ways.
• 51:01
  Totally. And yeah.
• 51:03
  It's nothing against the old ways.
• 51:05
  And, and you, you look back and you're like, I cannot believe
• 51:09
  whether architecture or facilities and mechanical
• 51:12
  people, I cannot believe you used to be able to go out and
• 51:15
  get what you did in these buildings by hand or in this
• 51:19
  complex piping facility. I'm like, I can't imagine trying
• 51:23
  to go in there and do that without the technology.
• 51:25
  So huge respect to how it used to be done and and the fact they
• 51:28
  did their best effort in what was possible at that time.
• 51:32
  Yeah, and not to mention many cases too.
• 51:35
  This is especially with existing and historicals like this is
• 51:38
  safer. I have gone through some project
• 51:41
  sites that realistically just needed to be demoed for lack of
• 51:45
  better words. And I was a young intern and
• 51:48
  walking around with my flashlight because there's no
• 51:50
  power in these buildings and there's holes in the floors and
• 51:53
  water dripping from the ceilings.
• 51:55
  And I'm sitting here wondering if I'm going to fall through the
• 51:58
  floor as I go to take the dimensions of everything that's
• 52:00
  going to get ripped out anyway. It took that I like going into
• 52:04
  my boss's office at the time like, you know, I like you gave
• 52:06
  me the little pen light I need like a mag light because I don't
• 52:09
  know if I'm going to find some rabid dog or something in one of
• 52:13
  these buildings. And to have to have had done
• 52:16
  that. And I I did it in one building
• 52:17
  where the ceiling caught fire. I was flipping the switch to see
• 52:20
  if I could get lights it exposed wiring ceiling caught fire.
• 52:23
  Thankfully, I turned the light switch off, cut the electric and
• 52:25
  the fire didn't spread. But then I had to call the fire
• 52:28
  department and the long running joke because I got to save the
• 52:31
  owners on some demo because the firemen ran around, poked holes
• 52:34
  in the walls anyway. But it was like, I can't believe
• 52:38
  that, you know, in I can believe because that was the way those
• 52:42
  days. But in today, we don't need to
• 52:44
  send people into some of these buildings.
• 52:47
  We can send the robot with the scanner.
• 52:49
  We can look, use a camera. We can fly a drone, we can get
• 52:53
  such better information without putting risk on people that I
• 52:58
  think they're there's just there's the power is just
• 53:01
  incredible. And I can't.
• 53:03
  I get excited about how these technologies connect to each
• 53:06
  other is where I get really jazzed.
• 53:09
  And, and, and that is again back to why we're focusing on.
• 53:13
  What we're focusing on is the, I say a lot of people ask how do
• 53:19
  we grow the industry or how do we solve some of these problems?
• 53:22
  And I think the number one answer for me is education.
• 53:26
  It is awareness. It is that many firms still
• 53:30
  don't even know what's possible. They don't even know about these
• 53:32
  technologies. They don't know that a robot
• 53:34
  exists that you could send a scanner on.
• 53:36
  They don't know that you can use that data to, you know, run it
• 53:39
  through an analysis and figure out square footage.
• 53:41
  They don't know. There's a lot of lack of
• 53:44
  awareness, lack of knowledge. And then there's also the
• 53:47
  problem that no one company does all of these technologies well.
• 53:53
  And so it has to be through collaboration.
• 53:56
  If you have this unique project where it's like you need the
• 53:58
  robotics, but you also need the scanner, but you also need a
• 54:01
  model that goes into XYZ platform, it might take three
• 54:04
  companies to work together to produce that.
• 54:06
  And so the, the way I see solving some of these problems
• 54:09
  is building awareness through content, through media, through
• 54:13
  presentations, through event. And then building the
• 54:16
  empowerment of actually being able to do this through helping
• 54:19
  people build relationships with these different companies and
• 54:23
  really fostering this, this culture and this, this desire
• 54:27
  for collaboration and openness and helping each other where
• 54:32
  that used to not be there. I, I believe we're actually
• 54:35
  making a difference in that scenario where a lot of firms 10
• 54:38
  years ago are 100% competitive, keeping all the information to
• 54:42
  themselves, not telling anyone how they're doing it better.
• 54:45
  And I my goal is completely breaking those walls and trying
• 54:49
  to do again, collaborative approaches, less sharing lessons
• 54:53
  learned to elevate the whole industry.
• 54:56
  Yeah, no. And that's, that's I think the
• 54:58
  admirable mission of, you know, how do we raise the tides?
• 55:01
  I it was very when we, when we had our pre call, I was like, we
• 55:05
  had a lot of very similar vein of like, I can make an impact at
• 55:08
  a singular firm and that's great, but I could change the
• 55:11
  industry if I can help educate. And so I feel like this is a
• 55:15
  great opportunity to tie in and look forward this first episode
• 55:19
  of 2026 for us. Happy New Year, even though it's
• 55:22
  still December for us here. Tell me a little bit about, you
• 55:26
  know, what your mission is looking in 2026 with reality
• 55:29
  capture network, Arcon, what's coming on on the Bathy Bird
• 55:32
  podcast, You know, give us a peek at what's in the future for
• 55:35
  you. Well, one, one, if I had to put
• 55:37
  our number one focus, it is our conference.
• 55:41
  We have gotten such momentum such buy in and we see the
• 55:44
  conference as a way to pull a lot of these professionals
• 55:47
  together that are like minded, that are innovative, that are
• 55:50
  using emerging tech. And this last conference we did
• 55:54
  this year, we had people from 17 countries and 40 of the US
• 55:59
  states across all of the verticals that I mentioned,
• 56:02
  airports, oil and gas, forensics, entertainment.
• 56:05
  We have that big of a poll already flying into Boise for
• 56:09
  our conference. And the partnerships we see
• 56:12
  leave the people that reach out and talk about new career
• 56:15
  opportunities, the integration of students and learning
• 56:18
  opportunities we're bringing. I see that as one of the biggest
• 56:21
  ways that we're truly creating impact.
• 56:23
  The the second piece, apart from the conference, is the online
• 56:27
  content and the media, whether it be the podcast and
• 56:30
  interviewing professionals and telling their story, or whether
• 56:33
  it be doing a round table around a specific technology to talk
• 56:36
  about the pros and cons and where it's at.
• 56:39
  Then taking all the content from that and spreading it across
• 56:42
  social platforms to build awareness, to get people
• 56:44
  curious, to inspire people who are not even the in the industry
• 56:48
  to think about this industry to bring in the the desire for
• 56:51
  students to consider roles. So I see it, this ecosystem of
• 56:55
  in person events and relationship building online
• 56:58
  content to build awareness, curiosity and trust, those sum
• 57:03
  up our overall focus. And the next piece that we've
• 57:08
  actually not announced or talked about anywhere yet, which I'll,
• 57:11
  I'll just tease here a little bit, is there's certain things
• 57:15
  that our team does really well that we've gotten a lot of
• 57:19
  feedback on with our brand and with our content, with our
• 57:21
  media, with our events. That has gotten us to spark and
• 57:25
  say we need to actually create some of what we do into a
• 57:29
  service because it, it empowers the mission of, if our true goal
• 57:34
  is helping people grow, grow awareness to their technology,
• 57:37
  grow awareness to their business and the unique projects they're
• 57:40
  doing. We see offering this as a
• 57:42
  service to actually help people build a voice, build content
• 57:45
  plans, build their own awareness online and and build that
• 57:49
  thought leadership that I've seen transform people's careers,
• 57:52
  even my own. We want to actually offer that
• 57:55
  and help people build that. So that's not completely
• 57:57
  defined, but there's a little tease of something else that we
• 57:59
  plan to do. None.
• 58:01
  That's, I think that's exciting as someone who's on the journey
• 58:03
  myself and has seen the impact of what it means to really just
• 58:07
  put yourself out there, have the conversations, be vulnerable,
• 58:09
  which is not something this industry is very commonly
• 58:13
  familiar with. But there's, there's so much
• 58:17
  that comes from that sharing in that conversation and the aspect
• 58:21
  of keeping it to ourselves maybe was the old way.
• 58:25
  But what I have found by sharing this is I have connected with so
• 58:29
  many people that I probably would have never even met
• 58:33
  through this journey, People have started to reach out to me.
• 58:35
  I've had amazing conversations. Great example.
• 58:38
  That's forum analytics who was on it's a Kmaka and they reshot
• 58:42
  and they said, Hey, can we be on the show?
• 58:43
  And that was the first time I ever actually accepted a guest
• 58:46
  solicitation. Usually I'm like kind of hand
• 58:48
  cherry picking, but to hear like of a vision, someone has a
• 58:51
  vision to create the Google Maps of infrastructure information
• 58:54
  and how critically important it is.
• 58:56
  And for someone who's deeply passionate about it to to share
• 59:00
  why it matters. And hopefully, you know, someone
• 59:03
  listened to him and, and heard how that applied to their
• 59:06
  business and is looking at them as a solution and, or is open to
• 59:11
  the idea that solutions even exist is kind of a big win, I
• 59:15
  think in this space. So as we as we get to their app
• 59:18
  here, if you know someone wants to get involved in the Arcon
• 59:21
  network, I'm going to pay some links in the description.
• 59:23
  But you know, what's the best way for people to start to get
• 59:26
  involved with you and the work that you're doing?
• 59:29
  One, I would say, I mean, I live on LinkedIn, so you know, I love
• 59:34
  people reaching out there. I love jumping on meetings and
• 59:36
  calls and, and just talking with people about where they're at on
• 59:39
  their emerging tech or innovation journey.
• 59:41
  Or, and that goes for businesses or individuals like I, I love
• 59:45
  advising startups. I love talking with individuals
• 59:48
  on their journey of how they grow their career path.
• 59:50
  And I love helping companies figure out how do we start our
• 59:52
  journey on growing this or using this.
• 59:55
  So 1 is find me on LinkedIn, reach out, connect, you know,
• 59:58
  engage with content. I encourage everybody to do that
• 1:00:01
  with everybody that they follow and enjoy and want to support.
• 1:00:04
  I'm sure you know that as well of like the best thing you can
• 1:00:08
  do for someone who's trying to build content and expand an
• 1:00:12
  audience to build awareness is actually engage with their
• 1:00:14
  content, you know, comment, share it, help them reach.
• 1:00:18
  If you believe in the mission they have, then then you doing
• 1:00:21
  that helps empower that mission. So those are some things.
• 1:00:24
  The next would I would. Say is if you're planning some
• 1:00:27
  events to attend or go to our or exhibit at or sponsor or apply
• 1:00:31
  to speak at, we would love to continue to bring people into
• 1:00:34
  our conference. It's, you know, not at all in a
• 1:00:37
  selfish way, but we have a lot of testimonials from our event
• 1:00:40
  that it is the best conference many people have ever been to.
• 1:00:44
  And I say that, you know, humbly but also happily that we are
• 1:00:48
  building something that is very different.
• 1:00:50
  And there's there you walk into this conference and you
• 1:00:54
  immediately feel the community of like minded people there.
• 1:00:58
  It is so easy to engage with people.
• 1:01:00
  People are there around the similar topics.
• 1:01:02
  So that is one of the things that brings me honestly, like
• 1:01:06
  most joy throughout the year is seeing people show up to that
• 1:01:09
  conference and get the value out of it.
• 1:01:11
  So those would be a few suggestions.
• 1:01:13
  And I guess we're on a podcast. I would also plug, I'm always
• 1:01:17
  taking applications for podcast. I want to tell more stories of
• 1:01:21
  more professionals on their journey and what companies are
• 1:01:23
  doing. So, you know, that's always is
• 1:01:25
  another open invitation as well. Awesome, and last question.
• 1:01:29
  I'd always try to wrap it up with this.
• 1:01:30
  I've realized I may have forgotten on the last couple,
• 1:01:32
  but what is something that keeps you wired to build?
• 1:01:36
  Wired to build. Oh my goodness.
• 1:01:40
  It's actually what I just talked about a little bit.
• 1:01:42
  It is the fact that what we're building is helping people find
• 1:01:49
  a career path that they can be passionate about, work that they
• 1:01:53
  can love doing. And ultimately the industry that
• 1:01:56
  we're mainly focused on is built environment.
• 1:01:59
  And so when you talk about Wired to build, it's not just build
• 1:02:03
  your career path or build a company.
• 1:02:05
  These companies are the companies that are building the
• 1:02:08
  world, right? And I've said that many times in
• 1:02:11
  conversation is I see this community as one of the most
• 1:02:15
  important in the world because they are the people that are
• 1:02:18
  building hospitals and roadways and transportation and airports.
• 1:02:22
  And so to think that the work we're doing is empowering that
• 1:02:26
  entire ecosystem to build better, to build faster, to
• 1:02:29
  enjoy their work is just very fulfilling.
• 1:02:32
  Yeah. So I think a great way to wrap
• 1:02:34
  up today's episode, you know, whether you're thinking about
• 1:02:36
  your personal brand, your company's brand, how to make a
• 1:02:39
  change in this industry, take a swing at it, jump in the water
• 1:02:43
  is fine. We're out here doing this.
• 1:02:45
  You know, I think there's a lot of people in this space who are
• 1:02:47
  open to sharing the community of people, whether it is
• 1:02:52
  construction, content creation in a specific industry vertical.
• 1:02:56
  You'll find there's a lot of friends out there, people who
• 1:02:58
  are passionate about these things, who have learned stuff
• 1:03:01
  differently, have ideas, tricks of the trade.
• 1:03:05
  And the the theme that I'm getting from our conversation
• 1:03:08
  today is, you know, conversation, connection.
• 1:03:11
  These are the things that help Dr. Clarity in what we do and
• 1:03:16
  really make a big impact and a big opportunity for anybody
• 1:03:19
  who's trying to make a big impact in the space.
• 1:03:22
  The the last thing I would add on about some of that, you know,
• 1:03:26
  when it comes to building relationships, to building
• 1:03:29
  content and getting online, things like that.
• 1:03:33
  For me, it boils down to some of the basics.
• 1:03:35
  Even if someone was like, I need a business justification as to
• 1:03:38
  why to do it right. It here's here's a few things to
• 1:03:41
  think about. One, everybody is online these
• 1:03:44
  days. People are watching YouTube,
• 1:03:46
  people are on LinkedIn. People are looking for business.
• 1:03:49
  Everybody wants to grow. They want to find relationships.
• 1:03:52
  People can't buy from you or work with you if they don't know
• 1:03:55
  you exist. Content and sharing your message
• 1:03:57
  and sharing stories and and going out to events is the way
• 1:04:01
  to connect to new people, to stay in touch with existing
• 1:04:04
  people. So the awareness piece is there.
• 1:04:07
  And not only can they not buy from you if they don't know you
• 1:04:10
  exist, especially if you're looking for new relationships,
• 1:04:13
  people have to get to know you. They have to trust you.
• 1:04:15
  They have to. They have to know who you are
• 1:04:17
  and why they would work with you.
• 1:04:19
  And I think that some of the things we've talked about from
• 1:04:21
  both in person and online are how you start that journey if
• 1:04:25
  you aren't already doing it. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:04:27
  And we're, we're always, we're tacking one more on.
• 1:04:29
  But I think the biggest thing at least come from my my angle is
• 1:04:32
  do not let perfect get in the way of you starting.
• 1:04:34
  I think another big theme of this was we got to have respect
• 1:04:38
  for where we came from, where we are at, where we are right now.
• 1:04:41
  I'm in my new house, don't have a podcast studio built, but I'm
• 1:04:46
  still out here doing it. And I think there there's a lot
• 1:04:48
  of power to iterating, as you said, like, you know, how many
• 1:04:51
  times do we need to fail in order to succeed?
• 1:04:55
  And giving yourself the grace and the freedom to try something
• 1:04:58
  new, to fail, to fail fast and fail often because that's the
• 1:05:02
  key to success. So thank you so much for joining
• 1:05:05
  me today. This has been an amazing
• 1:05:06
  conversation. I'm sure it's not our last, you
• 1:05:09
  know. I appreciate you being here and
• 1:05:10
  look forward to having you on again sometime.
• 1:05:13
  Thank you very much, I appreciate your time and it was
• 1:05:15
  great chatting with you. Well, that's a wrap to Episode 1
• 1:05:18
  of Season 3. I hope you enjoyed it.
• 1:05:21
  As you know, there is a lot of changes going on here at Wire to
• 1:05:24
  Build and I want to share a bit of them with you.
• 1:05:28
  So I want to 1st thank my founding sponsor, Avocado.
• 1:05:31
  It was the place that I was spent the past four years of my
• 1:05:34
  career at and I have, as I announced earlier in the
• 1:05:36
  episode, have moved on to Cumulus.
• 1:05:38
  But me and Avocado and the Avocado team are working quite
• 1:05:42
  closely together, still have that shared mission of improving
• 1:05:46
  the way we do things. If you're looking for talent,
• 1:05:49
  controls, expertise or implementation of a new PMIS
• 1:05:52
  system, they are a great partner for you.
• 1:05:54
  And they have, you know, been a great partner for me, letting me
• 1:05:58
  take wire to build out on my own in this next chapter of my
• 1:06:01
  adventure to see where we can take things.
• 1:06:04
  And so now check them out. I believe in everything that
• 1:06:08
  they do, and I'm excited because it's created this opportunity
• 1:06:12
  for me to continue this mission of how to have great
• 1:06:15
  conversations, connect folks who are wired to build, and really
• 1:06:20
  elevate this industry that is building the world we live in.
• 1:06:24
  And so that's a very exciting thing.
• 1:06:26
  You know, I'm experimenting and I'm going to be experimenting a
• 1:06:30
  lot this season, so expect new things almost every episode,
• 1:06:34
  from look and feel to format to what have you.
• 1:06:38
  We tried last year with doing the intro episodes and creating
• 1:06:43
  more, but I don't feel that more necessarily is always better.
• 1:06:47
  There's this aspect in the content.
• 1:06:49
  We're all aware. Like if you were ever on the
• 1:06:51
  TikTok craze and followed content, it's like big three
• 1:06:54
  posts a day. More posts and more stuff is
• 1:06:57
  stuff in the hopper, but stuff is stuff.
• 1:07:01
  And so this year, one of the big things I want to do get a little
• 1:07:05
  bit more locked in, a little bit more specific, make sure that if
• 1:07:08
  we're posting, it's high value, it's high meaning and that we're
• 1:07:12
  getting you the most that you can.
• 1:07:14
  So I hope you're enjoying this ride with me, you know, blank
• 1:07:18
  wall behind me that bee. But we are going to continue to
• 1:07:21
  innovate, elevate, integrate, do all those fun things that to me
• 1:07:25
  make me feel like I'm wired to build.
• 1:07:27
  So I really want to thank you all for joining me for the past
• 1:07:30
  two years. If you're first time listening
• 1:07:32
  to an episode, welcome to the wire to build community.
• 1:07:34
  There's all sorts of great things we're going to have from
• 1:07:37
  guests across all different segments of the construction
• 1:07:40
  industry, from technology companies, from people who are
• 1:07:44
  building better, faster, or even just willing to share what
• 1:07:49
  they're struggling with. And so if that fits for you,
• 1:07:52
  please feel free, reach out to me on the LinkedIn.
• 1:07:54
  I'd love to talk to you about having you on the show.
• 1:07:58
  And you know, hey, it's a new year, new things, new
• 1:08:03
  excitement. I hope you had a great time over
• 1:08:05
  the holidays with your family, your friends, your loved ones.
• 1:08:08
  You got to unplug, recharge, and get ready for an exciting 2026.
• 1:08:13
  Thank you again. Stay Wired to Build and I'll see
• 1:08:16
  you on the next episode.