From Budget Nightmare to Profit Machine

In this episode of Builders, Budgets & Beers, Reece sits down with Owen Drury of Bricks & Bytes to tackle the pressure from big-tech clients demanding lightning-fast delivery. They dig into UK vs. US timelines, the surge in HVAC/heat-pump installs, the chaos of forecasting & retainage, and how offsite prefab + AI-powered tools are turning 24-month schedules into predictable, profitable builds.

https://bricks-bytes.com

Show Notes: 

Welcome & Quick Intros (00:00)
HVAC Boom & Heat Pump Surge (04:00)
From Trades to Quantity Surveying (06:28)
Forecasting Pitfalls & Retainage (09:46)
Design Deficits & Scope Creep (13:10)
Renovation Roulette & Hidden Hazards (18:06)
Why Lowest Bid Always Wins (25:05)
Tech Trends: Prefab, AI & Fast Builds (37:37)

Find Our Hosts:
Reece Barnes
Matt Calvano

Podcast Produced By:
Motif Media

Transcript

0:00

Everyone in the whole construction industry is like, no, it takes 24 months. They're like, I don't care. I don't want to wait 24 months you find out how to build it. Quick. Performance. Alrighty. Owen, we're live, baby. Thanks. Thanks for jumping on, dude, I appreciate you. Thanks for Thanks for joining. Yeah, it was in an interesting way, how this, this appearance came up, speaking to you guys probably two or three months or so, few rearrangements, and now we're here. And I think that we need the reciprocal you guys coming on bricks and bites one day, which we will do. But I guess I'm here first. I beat you to beat you to your podcast first. Yeah, exactly you. You have the maiden voyage here. Wait, what time is it in the UK? Alex, 436 436 Okay, so we're looking at like a seven hour time, time difference. I'm in Colorado, so it's 930 Oh, that's significant. Hey, man, maybe you'll find, maybe your audience will find this interesting talking of locations and stuff around the world. So Europe has been getting very hot, yes, and in the UK, I think that the only, oh well, this was in 2020, this is as far back as this research goes, which shows you how unimportant This is within people's lives, but only 5% of households have AC air conditioning. And that's mind blowing to American folk whenever I mentioned that. Yeah. I mean, it's common. So I'm actually getting ready to move to Boston, and that's a thing, like in Boston, like the northeast, it was, like, historically, they didn't need AC, but it is warming up there, so, but it's 5% in the UK? Is that what you said? Yeah, 5% of homes in the UK had AC this 2020, so maybe things, it's definitely got cheaper more recently. And I'm guessing that percentage will increase will have to because heat is becoming a major problem for people over here in Europe. And we discussed last week on a podcast we done about heat related deaths within construction. And it's quite a because I think it's like the big, one of the biggest industries for heat related deaths, which is something you probably don't think about, but has a major impact. And there is, like, guidelines and stuff which shows that at certain temperatures you should only be working moderate work at like, 10 minutes and then a 50 minute break, whatever, whatever the ratio is. I can't remember the exact figures, but I found it very fascinating. So, so it makes total sense, right? Of like the heat related deaths, construction, there's a lot of labor trades. You're obviously building stuff outside, but I had no idea, just dumb American, no idea that it got that hot in the UK. Like, I'd never been to the UK. I'd love to go, but I always think it's like, overcasty, chilly, kind of rainy, and that's just like, not the case. Like, How hot does it get? Well, we, we had recently, I'm gonna do a quick conversion degree Celsius, because I always get cool out on this. I feel like I should just learn it. But of recent, we've had, like, consistent temperatures of 86 ish, okay, 86 to 88 degree Celsius, which is hot for the UK. You have to remember, UK building stock is not designed or built. Did you just say 88 Celsius? No, no, Fahrenheit. Fahrenheit, dude, I was gonna say that's not, that's not even real. There's no way that's real. But okay, so 88 Fahrenheit, okay, and that's like, again, that's warm, especially with no air conditioning. But you guys are seeing like, casualties because of that heat. Well, no, not specifically in the UK. I mean, the stat I mentioned earlier was global, or maybe worse, okay, yeah, okay, yeah, but, but to the point, I mean, yeah, UK housing is not, it's not designed for such heat, so it gets super hot over here. So, yeah. Anyway, that was my interesting segue into this discussion, dude. No, I think it's good. I think it's good. Okay, well, cool. I'm glad you're here. I imagine HVAC. We call it HVAC. It's like heating and air conditioning is exploding in the UK. Is there, like, a is there a trend there? Like, if you're a guy that can do central air install, you're going to make a killing. Is that fair? Interesting question. I can only go by the discussion I had. So I literally had AC installed in my house maybe two weeks ago, so ago now. And by the way, what a massive upgrade to life that is, isn't that? Anyway, I was speaking to the guy who was installing and for a trade, we call them trade, yeah. You call them trade contractors, yeah, yes. We call them tradesmen, yeah, yeah, tradesmen, tradies, subs, maybe, maybe tradesmen is not, like, politically correct, but, well, we understand, we know, yeah, yeah. And he said they had about 20 jobs in the pipeline, and he was working like, What time does he get to sign up? Hours past seven quarter, 730 and leaving, like, literally 730 12 hour shifts, no break, like they were grafting, grinding, as we say over here. Yeah, and he said he had 20 jobs like in queue. So that's a pretty good pipeline for a small company of, say, five people just installing these units. So I guess it will start to explode. You've definitely seen an increase in uptake of air source heat pumps. Over there, of what pumps? Air source heat pumps? What is that? I don't know. So in the UK, that the primary heat source of residential and maybe even commercial is boiler systems. Yeah, okay, gasps, gas, electric boilers, but they're now being replaced with heat pumps. I don't I don't know if this would be the exact same thing as a HVAC system. Perhaps it is, and perhaps that's why you're not so familiar with the term. But yeah, it's like the move to electric. It's a much more sustainable way of heating and cooling your house, and phasing out of gas, less reliance on the big beast in the East, Russia, for Europe, yeah, the beast in the East. I love it. Never said that before. I've never heard I love it. It's great. Okay, no, this is, this is shaping up into a good conversation. Okay? So actually, let's take a step back, give the listeners a little background on yourself. Okay, you mentioned you've been in construction, talked about your podcast, but give them a little detail of who you are. Yeah, I found that. I found how we just spoke for six minutes about AC fascinating, because we I did start telling you, then you said I did telling you my background. And you said, let's just hit record and do this. And then somehow we segued into AC and heat and whatnot. I think I do. I honestly. I think I listen. I think of our listeners, and I think they'd listen to this and be like, I have never thought of it that way. Or maybe I'm just an idiot. Maybe I'm just an idiot, and they're like, Risha, this is pretty standard stuff. I think it's fascinating. So I'm glad we talked about it. I think a lot of people will not know because I didn't know until I had done some research and then recorded that. But anyway, my background, yeah, so I have worked in construction for around 15 years now, and I started my career in actually, in the subcontractors, I don't know what the UK subs, yeah, yeah, for carpentry, joinery and fit out, which is like the second half of a build, so to speak, with finishes, nice stuff that goes in once the construction, the structural work is complete. And I trained as a quantity surveyor, so I don't you can another thing that doesn't translate perfectly to the US, but you're effectively responsible for the financial performance of construction projects. So you do procurement, you do reporting on costs. Is the project profitable? Is it making a loss, paying other subcontractors? Love it, suppliers, purchase orders, so on and so forth. Yeah. So I qualified as a as a quantity sphere, in as a subcontractor. And what you know, what one thing I loved about working as a sub was your marching for error is very low. I don't know if you, if you and your listeners would experience this, but you have to have a very strong attention, strong attention to detail. And I think it was a great lesson for me, like setting the foundation for my career. Because, yeah, if you can't make a lot of errors and you just by nature, become a little bit more conscientious. I never thought I would say that about myself, by the way, because I don't see myself as a truly conscientious person. But maybe I'm just harsh, yeah, dude. Oh, I think that's a, that's beautiful. I have no idea. Okay, so a, you were skilled tradesman, arguably, I was, Oh, yeah. Well, not trades as such, but okay, you were in the skilled trades, meaning like you were doing carpentry work, finished carpentry stuff like that. And then you jumped over into what we would call the back office. I think you called it the quantity surveying, or small correction. I was never actually on the tools. Always went straight into the management side, into the management side, okay, okay, but point being, you had the background, so I think that's, like, massively applicable, obviously, to this listening user base and like, I'm curious. Well, I guess my curiosity and how it differs is going to require understanding what that actually looked like for you in the day to day, but indeed, in terms of your comment of like, the attention to detail, and what was your phrase, it was like, the less room for error required more conscientious effort. Yes, is that right? Something like that, something like that. I love it, dude. Let's hear about it like, let's talk about what is it like tracking the books and the financials in the UK. I'm curious how it differs. If it does, it's tough. I mean, well, put it this way, construction and the people working in the trades are not renowned or have not won many. Awards when it comes to tracking their finances on projects, I think as long as there's more coming in than this going out, then you're usually on a good path. I don't think people are necessarily counting the pennies and the pounds. They're just looking and going, Oh, we're up this month. Oh no, we're down. Like, what the hell do we do about this? So that's one part to it, but second part to it is it's very difficult. You're always forecasting. You never really, you don't know until you know, right? Like, even when you finished a project, you could, you could be forecasting a profit margin. And then suddenly there's a big thing here in the UK called retention, I think probably is retainage in the US, and suddenly the client's like, 12 months later, when you think your profits coming in, they're like, oh, you know, I can't pay you that because I haven't been paid it. And there's a problem with the something over there, which is totally unrelated to you, I know, but look, we're not getting paid, so we can't pay you. And you're like, Well, okay, all the forecasting we just done, it's kind of gone out the window now. Yeah, okay, go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. It's a move. Yeah, it's a forever moving target. So you can do, I would just do the best. You can do something. But don't just, don't just pray and hope. Don't just think that the numbers work themselves out. Because, yeah, I don't know where that will take you when it comes to really building a sustainable business. I think that's a whole conversation. And like the fact that you're like, I want to go into what makes it challenging again to see the assimilations between the UK and the US. It sounds like this is just a universal problem in construction, which makes all the sense in the world. I did a podcast with a builder in Austin, Texas A couple weeks ago, Thomas Joseph, and he he he had phrased it as like, and this is primarily to the quality of the product that builders build. He's like, when you take a step back and you realize that who's actually building the product, right? These are people that are incredibly talented, incredibly skilled, right? But there are salt of the earth people, as we call them in the States, right? They are blue collar, they are labor working. They are in the elements. And for God's sakes, you're building a product outside, right? So the nature of what you're building is like by design, variable, right? There are so many moving parts and so many different components that go into it, but that's where like, the challenges of business come into. The product that is being provided is like business. The best business is the most forecasted, consistent, expected business, right? That's all like, the bigger you get, the more you try to want to know, and you want to control, and you want to prevent variables from happening. So then you can hit the numbers, the P and Ls, that the profit margin. But when you're talking about, like, the difficulties of it, we're very aware of that problem. But specifically for you, what makes it difficult, in your opinion, to track project financials or the quantity surveying on your in your guys's world. What makes it challenging? Yeah, oh, man, you really open the can of worms for those kind of questions. Oh, I'm gonna do it. Let's do it, baby. Let's say so much. Well, two, two things come to mind, primarily, one, maybe a few people will, like, pull out the party poppers here, but inadequate design. Wait The what the PI popper party poppers. Keep pulling the confetti. Yeah. He said it Okay, okay, yeah. Inadequate design. So we, we massively find over here in the UK that, due to very various reasons, client pressure. Client would be employer in the US, or owner, should I say? Owner pressure, like wanting to get their projects down quickly, which doesn't give enough time to the design team and to design projects adequately. That design is then packaged and sent off to downstream, to the contractor, who then sends it downstream to their their contractors. So, so you kind of like, see where this is going. Right? It spirals. You have is 80% inadequate design, and it's, it's almost, it's filtering down to the people who are building it, at which point they're just like, What the hell does this mean? This doesn't work. That doesn't work. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and so then change orders. Start flying left, right and center because someone has missed something, or the design just fundamentally doesn't work. So that's issue, I would say number one, which comes to it. And two, I don't know if you get this within the world of within the US. I don't think it's such a major problem there. But we work with a lot of existing buildings in the UK. And dude, they are rest. There are, like, soon as you start opening those things up, it's a lottery, really, that you think, you think everything is forecasted, and you know how much something's going to cost, but you start taking down walls and or the you. Have laugh and plaster over here, particularly in the UK, which is like a pick to work with, and you don't know it's there when you're doing initial pricing, and things just start to spiral and escalate, and costs just start going only one way. So yeah, two things really inadequate design and existing buildings. I'm sure there is so much more, but the list is probably as long as you can imagine, totally Well, no, and I think that those are like, two very identifiable I think the one that struck me as the most interesting, that makes a ton of sense in the world, is the pre existing structure, a lot of remodeling, a lot of retrofits in the UK, like, I mean, we see that primarily. Okay, so I grew up in central Nebraska. Do you know where central Nebraska is? Or, do you know where Nebraska is? Kinda sounds remote, very desolate. There's, it's, like, it's, it's a, it's a sizable state in the middle of the country, in the plains, and there are like, 1.2 million or 1.8 million people that live in the entire state, massive state. It takes like, six hours to drive across the state, okay, like the size of the UK, then, huh? More? I guess I don't know. I never been in the UK, but, yeah, that makes sense. My point is, is so I grew up in like, a very vast part of the country, okay? It wasn't an issue to build homes. A lot of new construction, okay, but as I started working more with like the East Coast client base and builders specifically, like New England all the way down to Washington, DC, really, it's a very dense metropolitan area. A lot of renovations, a lot of whole home remodels. A lot of the I think they call it like popping the top, where they like take the roof off and add an extra, extra story point being is that's like an East Coast thing to whereas the UK, I imagine, is like one of the oldest countries. It has, like, some of the oldest infrastructure, like city planning and urban sprawl. Like a you're surrounded by water, correct, right? Yeah, yeah. And then, God, my geography is terrible. I got to look at a map. But point being is, like, You guys only have so so much to go so, like, the reality of your world of it's a lottery on nearly every project. Stacks the deck, not in your favor, right? It's like, by design, like, it's not like, you guys have, like, all this space to go build these big Custom Homes, unless you're tearing something down and building something in its place. But you guys are just like, are immediately against like, okay, we can design this thing, and we can bid this thing, and we can take years of experience to insulate ourselves as best we can against the reality, but then start tearing into this wall and it's out the window. Scope creep like crazy. Load bearing walls failing. We need structural steel. We need to upgrade electricity. This stuff, whatever it might be. Is that fair? Yes, you're also forgetting the unexploded bombs of World War Two that may exist. Dude, what? Building? What? Yeah, yeah. Every now and then I get this, quite rare these days, but does happen, yeah, you're someone. We're doing a project, and then there's like, Oh, crap, we've just, like, hit the top of an unexploded bomb. Like, there's surveys that you do unexploded ordnance surveys to try and to, like, the bombs have been mapped. And if your project is in one of these and you have to go and do some further investigation. But it's quite funny, yeah, you will, you will come across these. And one of my friends actually, he's, he was in the British Army, and his job was to when there was an unexploded bomb found in for whatever reason, it could have been a project that could have just shown someone saw it was digging in their car. I don't know, whatever the circumstance, but you he would quite often go to these, like, call outs and start, like, doing what they do. And fine, it's just like a cardboard box with like a and see a logo of like the local bath store or something on it, and be just a bath, not a bomb. Don't worry, guys, dude, this, I never would have considered that again. Like, I think it's, it's like the challenges are, are quite different, but there is like similarities. What are you do in a situation when you find a bomb, is it evacuate everybody, and you're like, we got to get, like, someone to come in and take care of this thing. Like, what is it? Pretty much, yeah, luckily, I've never been involved, but I've can recall pictures I've seen on websites, through the news, where, yeah, the police and whatnot will come and shut off a certain area, and then they'll call in the army to disarm it and get rid of it. And you carry on. How big are these things? And hey, how do they get there? And like, they're hidden almost. Yeah, I don't know that. I suppose this ground has just never been i. Like dog excavated up to that point. And so it's a new, it's a new, new piece of land. Effectively, insane, insane, yeah. Do you know what's interesting? Just one other thing to your point about Nebraska, just so people can understand. So you said Nebraska had 1.2 million people in 1.8 I think it's 1.1 point roughly, yeah, so that so Nebraska is 80% of the size of the UK, and so the population of London alone is is 9 million. I think that's insane. So think about that. Yeah, that's just London, yeah, so 8.9 million people in London. So you can imagine, like, the density of population, which further complicates how to do construction over here. That's why everyone really is just going up now, up, up. How high can we go? Well, obviously not like that, but like, Yeah, we don't build so much horizontally anymore. Totally, totally, what, um, I mean, is that just like, taking out old buildings and just building skyscrapers, or is it, or is there like, a component of, like, trying to maintain the historic charm of London? Like, how does all that get decided? Ah, good question. A few ways. Well, my break my brain goes a few ways on yours is so firstly, we have this thing called listing. So if there's a building of significant historic interest, it will be listed, which means you are restricted to as to what works you can do in it. And you have like, different grades. So you have, like, grade two listed, grade one listed. Maybe there's some more as well, which I'm not too familiar with, but they seem to be the two most common ones on projects I've worked on. Grade two is you can cut, you can alter, as long as you maintain the appearance, and you get the right permissions, and you only work within the parameters of the permission that you've got but grade one, which would be like Buckingham Palace, or buildings like Henry the Eighth type mansions, or whatever that for significant interest, you're very restricted on what you can do to those. You have to maintain even stupid things like floorboards. The floorboards maybe, maybe listed, so you can't take off and throw out the floorboards. People just build on top of them. So, but why the floorboards? Okay, I pick I'm picking up what you're putting down. But like, Is there, like, some type of significance that they want to maintain the now, or is it just government bloat? Is what we could call it, kinda, some of it, yes, but some of it is like they could have been the original floorboards from 200 whatever, years ago. So they've just, they don't want people. Don't want to get rid of them. They just want to keep them. So it causes major issues. That's another thing why you could so difficult to forecast costs on projects, right? Because if you have a load of that in and suddenly you realize, like, yeah, you found something of significant value, then you have to consider what to do next. Totally, totally well. And I think, like, again, that's the similarity here between building in the United States and the UK. Is just like the unforeseen stuff that's where, like, primarily, when you talk to builders, like, if they're new construction, right? They're building a new vertical product. It's not as rampant typically, from my understanding of like these changes, they're coming from like a builder variance, right, an issue that they created, or a customer variance, right? But they mitigate a lot of that unforeseen work that comes in. But when it comes to remodeling in the United States, I mean, that's like, that's why you hear guys want to get out of remodeling and into new construction, right? Because they're always like, they're like, dude, like, you could, you could walk into a house and think it's a home run project, and it's going to be great. You're going to hit your 40% margin that you're looking for, 30% margin you're looking for, and then all of a sudden you tear it out. It's like the electrical isn't up to code, and now you have to go to a customer and say, like, hey, it's going to be this much more money, or whatever it might be. So, yeah, I mean, those are there, but I, I mean, obviously, like, through the lens of adaptive, like, we're fairly bullish on what is controlled being automated to give better visibility into the forecasting, into the cash flow positions in a knot, but like, I'm actually curious, like, what the solution is going to be for situations that you're talking about, because it's still bizarre to me that it's like, truly global and like, there isn't a like, it's bizarre to me, how Isn't this like, a builder's like, Yeah, I'm gonna go and build a skyscraper that's going to have 1000 residential units in it and 500,000 commercial square feet, whatever, million square feet of commercial. And then they just, like, run into all these issues that make it, like, totally brutal to move a project along, and they're just taking these absorbent risks for new. Extremely low margin business like, how isn't this? How isn't this a solution? What do you think? No, I 100% and I actually do not think the solution exists or will ever exist, because when put in for projects, sometimes the less you know, the better. If you want to win it. So you must be very familiar with the term, like, if you price the project, well, you're never like, you're not going to win it, but because it's the person that, it's the race to the bottom Exactly. So you could be, you could be the, like most professional contractor, you could go in, you could allow for all of this risk within your price, but it's going to put you, like, 20% higher than the guy that comes in from the street and is like, Yeah, I'll do everything, and you'll, you'll sign up to a quote with me, which is 20% cheaper, but you won't. You'll still end up paying the same price when everything is said and done. But the irrational customer on the other end sees the price 20% cheaper, is like, Yeah, I'll take that because it's the lowest price. I want that built, and that's it. So you can, if you uncover all of these risks, then it does actually do you no favor at the start. And so the solution, if you found a solution which could do all this for you, I don't think it will break the fundamental tradition that exists within the industry, which is lowest price wins. And I you could rant about that for for hours. I think people probably share that frustration to think about like, luxury goods, right? It's like, like, It's the trend in handbags. It's like, you're buying something like a 2,000% markup because of the print that they put on the bag completely inversed, right? It's like, it's not the cheapest product wins. It's the most expensive product wins, right? It's the style, right? Yes. So it's like, how do you flip that? Right? I truly think and simple. And I brought this up on the podcast I was doing with Thomas Joseph. I was, like, in the United States, there's a huge inventory shortage for homes, residential. It's all the big national builders are coming in, and they're building a ton of product. Okay? I know friends that have bought these homes, and they're like, six months, 18 months into living in a new construction home, and they've got some, like, pretty serious issues, like, Oh my gosh. Like HVAC catching on fire, right? And like, and like, concrete splitting in a garage, right? And like stuff, these are, like, decent capital expenditures, right? Oh my god, yes. And so glad you said this well. And so my take to Thomas was like, I think we're going to be coming in with the shortage in inventory national builders building a ton of product at volume. That's not quality. The first obnoxious thought is, is this product? Is this asset even going to outlast the life of the loan we do 30 year mortgages in the United States, right? Like, is this even going to be an asset in 30 years? Right? Wow, which I'm like, is that going to drive a consumer to emphasize a quality product, almost suggesting, like, that inverse of cheapest person wins into someone saying, okay, the United States has been moving across the nation like crazy since covid. You've got people from Nebraska moving to Denver and California moving to Austin, like a lot of sprawl and movement. But with all of these challenges, are they going to move into a more quality, focused product, not suggesting a low cost price wins, but a high cost price wins? So you can get into 100 year asset that was a lot. Were you tracking? That's an interesting, interesting fool, actually. Hmm, I don't know. He disagreed with me. He disagreed with me. Thomas disagreed with me. I maybe I might have lost you. Did I lose you in there? No, you didn't lose me. I think my point to this would be, I don't think people really, when you, when you're in that like emotional state, and you're trying to, you want to buy your first time, or whatever you don't consider, really, the lifetime value of the asset that you're buying, like, the lifetime cost, should I say, Sure, so if it is cheap on on paper, and that's what you can afford at that time, and maybe, like, you have other pressure, like you want to start family, or you're you'll want to Get married and whatever, whatever it might be, then I think that you will just go for the asset and deal with the problems afterwards, like it shouldn't be that way, 100% it shouldn't be that way. It shouldn't have problems. You should be able to move into somewhere and it'd be functional. But unfortunately, that's the reality, and I don't think that, especially over here in the UK, you don't get a lot of support from the government if you do end up in one of these new build homes, or schemes whereby, which you can't get out of, or where there's major issues, because just profit, profit pushing companies and like, you're a small fish, like your little house has a problem. Sorry about that. I've got 400 homes to build over here, dude. I. Right. Okay, so you're suggesting that and correct me where I'm misunderstanding, but you're suggesting that a it's such an emotional decision that people overlook the reality of what they're getting into. Am I missing, or is that what you're saying, not entirely, but I think, ultimately affordability and what you can buy is the deciding factor. So if you haven't got the money, but you want, say, say, to take your hypothesis, if you want to go for expensive price wins, but you can't afford it, then you can't afford it. Whereas, if you, if you, if you can afford a cheaper house, unbeknowingly, that you will encounter problems, then you will probably take that option at the time when you are thinking of purchasing a house. Does it make sense? No, it totally does. What's the average square foot of a home in the UK to build that someone lives? What's the average square foot of a home of, like, the average consumer, like, 100 ish, I would like to say I don't know that for certain, but just thinking, I think that would be interesting. And because this is, like, kind of, my counter to that is, and this is, like, just from an American perspective, is, I want to say it's something insane, like it like, from the 1950s it was like the average square footage of a home was like 800 square feet. 900 square feet. They were raising like four or five, six person families in these things now you're getting up. Go ahead, yeah. UK, a it would be eight, yeah, 1000 square foot. UK, average size is what it currently is, whereas in these states, it's like 2000 Yeah, and you're just like, sitting there, and you're like, dude, the expectation of homes is like, we gotta have a 2000 square foot home with three beds, four baths, and, like, we've got to have all this stuff. And it's like, no, you don't why? Like, if we're talking about quality, right? And it's like, I can't afford it. It's like, well, who in the like, do you as a 28 year old young family, need a 2500 square foot home or a 3000 square foot home in Dallas? No, right? It's like you need 1200 square feet of a well built product that you could very likely hang on to for 30 years and see the appreciation of it run and it's going to be a much better investment than the 3500 square foot home that you want that's got all the bells and whistles, but it's falling apart after 12 months. Yeah. Months. Yeah, you're just kidding. Rant. Go ahead, when you mentioned about these low quality new build homes in the UK, I don't know how I came across this, but man, it's like a I'm almost embarrassed to admit this, but hey, I will do it. But came across a channel, channel or page or whatever, on tick tock. I don't use tick tock. Let me just, let me just clarify that. Protect my ego a little bit. Yeah, that's a badge of, yeah, just to protect my ego, um, but there's this one in the UK called home. Snag, home. Snag, I can't remember that. That's the tag, uh, let me try and find this, because I think people should check it out for the entertainment. But home. Snag, tick, tock, yeah. Basically this guy goes round of, do you call it like a spirit level in the like a it's like a level. So if you're trying to install something flat, then you put the level on and it'll have a little bubble. Oh, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Where he basically goes around in these new build houses from the major developers over here in the UK, which would be companies like Taylor, wimpy, persimmon, Barclay homes so and he'll like, just go for a house new build and be like, the brick wall is not straight, like the brick plum, the brick wall, No, like from just like, a one meter level. It's like a gap like that between the bottom and the top. It's insane. Like, the quality of these things, yes, and yeah, just check out a few videos. It's ridiculous. It's app it's like, criminal, almost. That's, that's kind of my point. And like, I again, like, we're like, this, like, actually, a has been, like, a very good conversation, very interesting conversation. But like, starting at the beginning of like, what are the challenges to run these costs? Like, then you start to talk about the pressure that you had initially mentioned, with poor design, right? Like, guys at the top are, like, we committed to these timelines. Like, this is what's gonna this is what's gonna take. This is what we have to hit. And then you just rush from the very beginning of it, and then you start getting into product like that. And it's like, how could we be off 10 degrees on this wall, or whatever the measurement is, right? Like, yeah, half an inch from the top to the bottom, I feel like, is a big deal, right? And, and it's just like, I don't know, I don't know who that's helping. But then it's just like, this huge, circular, like, massive problem of, like, where do you start? Or who's got the answer to prevent this type of stuff from happening? I don't know. Man, I really don't know what the solution is. And then you've got to get people into them, like, who can actually afford to buy them? Then you've spent your whole life trying to save and buy one. Then you find out the brickwork is like endangering you somehow, yeah, liabilities, brutal. Um, okay, this has been a good conversation. I'm curious. Do you? Do you have anything that you feel strongly about bringing up on the podcast? Well, maybe people will find this interesting. So a little bit about me, perhaps that like I don't I still, I don't really work in construction anymore, like I do because, but my career kind of took an interesting turn when I start. So I was in, like I mentioned at the start this podcast, at subcontracting business. I then started my own business during covid, doing owners, rep work that was following a small, small little stint out like more corporate company. And then started my own company doing it. And then, as whilst doing that company that started bricks and bytes. Bricks and bytes is podcast slash media company was a podcast which we started during or just after covid, when everything was online, moved to online, and that has slowly grown into my main kind of focus now, which has been which is like, strange how if someone from construction can go into media like half the time, like, I have a fucking clue I'm doing, but somehow it's working its way, working itself out. Yeah, and you speak like it's funny, you speak to people from media and and they come up with all these terms. And I'm like, I have no idea you're speaking about, but sounds good, right, right, dude. Okay, so talk about bricks and bytes. What do you guys talk about? I to my fault. Haven't listened to it yet. I will. Yeah, no, no worries. It's okay. Well, first off, construction is very fragmented, so you could be in the industry and would never have heard about this, but we really focus on tech within construction, AEC sector specific. So architecture, engineering, construction, we speak to technology builders, solution, bit like adaptive people, people building the software or the hardware robotics. And the people that are buying and purchasing this software and actually using it on sites are more of a corporate level, and they're talking multi billion dollar revenue contractors, ENR list, type of people I've seen, just seeing what's what in that world, and I'm seeing what's out there. How are we going to build better what the best products? Like, where's the future going? Where's innovation taking us? So, yeah, we've been doing that for three years now, and it's been interesting. I love it, dude. Yeah, I guess. Like, what's like your general pulse, like, what is your current synopsis of where construction is going to be going based on the technology? And what's out there? Yeah, two things. I think to always have two things every every question you ask, but that's cool. Number one, consolidation of technology. So what you're finding is there were ton Are you familiar with the term point solutions? Yes, yeah. So I'm not sure whether it's just, like, applicable to the world I'm inside No, no. Point solution is, like, widely used over here. Yeah. Okay, fine, cool. You get it. So yeah, people have the large corporate the large people, the large general contractors and architecture engineering companies have, like, whatever, 250 softwares on their current IT system and so, like, they're like, sick of it, so they're trying to work out ways. Now this is the consensus of how to consolidate that down to, say, 50 or less arbitrary number. But, sure, yeah, literally reduce it by by 80% that's interesting to see how that will pan out, and I think that the it's either going to be done through artificial intelligence and agentic workflows, but the jury is still out on that. There's companies that are doing it, but I think a lot of them are still yet to prove themselves, and there's also this pressure from big tech so obviously the data center boom is a bomb is among us. And these big tech companies, Tesla, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, etc, they don't want to wait 24 months for a data center like, even though everyone in the whole construction industry is like, no, it takes 24 months. They're like, I don't care. I don't want to wait 24 months. You find out how to build it quicker for me. So you have this pressure now from big tech coming into the industry, forcing big builders to think like, okay, how can we actually deliver it for 18 months? And that's resulted in these large companies hiring internal AI, a software slash AI engineers to build custom solutions for the projects, to speed them up, and also a lot of off site and pre fabrication. So it's good thing about data centers is they're very standard, generally very standardized, so you can manufacture a lot on, on off site rather rather than relying on too much site labor. And hopefully that kind of effect of that translates to the rest of the industry, where we can. Start to think about, yeah, push the limit. How do we build quicker? How do we get the infrastructure? Housing is a major issue, like you mentioned earlier, shortages. How can we get these things done quicker that's still to a good level of quality, of course? So yeah, that's what. That's what's on. And obviously, labor shortages, hardware, robotics, is a hot, hot topic, totally for people. And I think so, I think it's a it's a great, it's a great synopsis point of view to have. And I think, like, candidly, like, after hearing I think it just, like, validates, at least my conviction that there will be a solution out there that is solving the problems of the top, feeling pressured to rush design, to then overlook pre construction, that's creating expensive problems in the back end, that is creating change orders and all this stuff. Like, I am bullish that there will be products out there that solve those problems, and I think it's going to come from the pressure of exactly what you had just discussed, like, how fast this world is changing and how much of it is revolved around tech, and what that tech is doing to the infrastructure of our communities. The one thing that I'm just like, still hung up on is like, do I think that they're gonna be robots walking around job sites, tying in rebar for the foundation of a data warehouse or data center? I don't know. I don't think so. What do you think? Yes, a good point. Okay, well, I think one day it kind of has to happen. But we're not. I think we'll be talking, in like 10 to 20 years time. This could be, we could be like way beyond that. And whether they would be in the typical sense, which people probably imagine when you say robotics like as a humanoid form, I don't think so. It will be like a very specific kind of robot that's built which does just looks like a piece of equipment, yeah, a car or something like as a stupid example, yeah, yeah, sure. So you will, I think you will start to see these being rolled out, but you still need humans. Yeah, there's so much unpredictability and interfacing with robots that needs to happen before all of this happens. But don't get me wrong, there are, like, very smart people working on this issue and really trying to figure out and running simulations and putting tons of money in to try and work out how this can be done. I think what might be an interesting approach versus robotics is more off site manufacturing. So we spoke to this great company called Qb, and we actually done, like a very interesting documentary with them on this about mobile micro factories, where, effectively, they build a factory last mile, so within 150 to 200 mile radius of a large home development site, say, 234, 100 homes, whatever it might Be, they manufacture all of the components within the factory itself, and then deliver that to site, flat packet, and deliver it to site, and it can then be installed by very, very low skilled labor. I think it takes like one to two months to train onto their system, to be like Ikea standard, basically, to be able to put this stuff together. And the amazing thing about them is they, because this, the manufacturing process, by nature, is extremely systemized. Their whole system, their whole factories, are built to like perfect precision, that it's all like coordinated. So you could put a humanoid robotic eventually within that factory, which is then producing the flat pack, delivered to site and put to put on, installed by labor on site. Yes. Fascinating approach. Totally, totally dude. I Yeah. I think when you start talking about, like tech horizons and what this world's gonna look like in 20, 3040, years, that's where I think maybe you are right to the point like we will see them. Is it going to be like the Terminator robots? No, maybe, not, maybe. Who knows? But no, I think we started talking about that, like the prefabbed homes and, like modular building and all the stuff. Like, it's pretty popular here, the printing homes. Like, right now, it's extremely basic. But there's a guy, there's a builder in Austin, who's just like, totally, like, sold his life to 3d printing homes. And he's actually, like, picking up traction again, they look like Star Wars houses, right? They're like, these, like, dome structures with, like, layers and layers of poured concrete, whatever, yeah. But it's like, dude, what's innovation gonna look like in 20 years with that, it's like, who knows? I don't know. No, I don't know. Yeah, pass I think it really will depend ultimately, we humans, we need a certain way of living, so, yeah, I think we'll always have that. I. Uh, that esthetic and performance that we want to achieve, and whether you can achieve that through 3d printing at an affordable cost, which looks guys, which performs well, which is accessible. The jury is out. There's time this, um, it could be just a different episode on but I will say, I think we did a hell of a job at trying to solve the world's problems. I think we put a little bit of a dent in this thing. I thought it was great. I appreciate you for coming on the show, dude. It was a great conversation. Great to meet you. And yeah, if you ever want to be back on or you want to want to have me on yours, let me know. Yeah, sure, man. Thanks Reese. Appreciate the performance. And yeah, keep doing great things that adapt it. Cool dude. I appreciate it. I'll let you jump to it. Enjoy your evening. I'm going to enjoy the rest of my day, and it was my pleasure. Thanks for jumping on. Thanks. You bet See you.