Speaker 0 | 00:09.503

Today on the show, we’ve got Brett Settles joining us on Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Today with your co-host, Mike Kelly. So, hey, Brett, why don’t you introduce yourself and tell us a little about yourself and your history. And you had told me you fell into IT, so let’s find out a little bit more about that.

Speaker 1 | 00:30.140

Yeah, well, first of all, Mike, thank you very much for having me on. I really appreciate it and was definitely flattered when you guys reached out. I was like, do I belong on this show? And whether I do or not, it doesn’t matter. We’ll still have this hour long conversation. But yeah, it’s interesting because as you and I talked, so my background, I’ll start from just being a young kid. Grew up in the Midwest. You know, very. middle class type life. Dad was a laborer turned carpenter turned superintendent in construction. Mom was a nurse. So very good upbringing, nothing extravagant, but definitely not struggling. And that kind of led to my personality and what I do. And I remember being interested in what my dad did for a living, but I also wasn’t interested in beating my body down every day. So What happened was I really took a drafting class in high school and had a really, really great drafting teacher. And if he’s listening, which I doubt he is, it wasn’t so much that he was great at drafting. He was just a great person and a mentor. And that mixture led me to sort of deciding that I wanted to get into drafting, like CAD drafting. And the year was 2003. So I, you know, go off to school and I feel like it’s a great balance of education and in sort of workmanship. Right. It’s like I don’t see myself getting a huge degree. I want to get in. I want to kind of start my adult life. Well, what happened was, is that I graduated in 2003. I immediately got into GIS. Now, for anybody listening, explain my acronyms here. GIS is a. geographical information systems. And it was the early days of that. And I was essentially using like a handheld scanner to collect GPS points. And that was really kind of what opened my mind to, okay, we’re out here in the field collecting these points, but why? Why are we doing it? And as you follow the trail of data, it led all the way back to Esri software and ARC. map and GIS tools. And that’s really what piqued my interest in sort of, well, okay, we use computers to draw drawings, but how else does that tie into the industry? It ended up leading me to working that job for a little bit. But then my next job was with the municipality of Wentzville, Missouri. where I did a lot of infrastructure inspection, but I learned how to use field surveying tools, data collection devices, and how to work those into the software while I was there. And I was very young while I was doing this. And at the city, you’re kind of forging your own path because you have these tools, you want to use them. And did that for a few years and really kind of became a generalist, right? I knew how to use CAD. I knew how to use field tech. I knew how to use how to construct all of that. And then I ended up working for an Autodesk reseller. So for anybody that’s listening, and Autodesk is probably the biggest software force in our industry for a lot of different reasons, especially with design software. So working for the reseller exposes you to a lot of tech. I ended up learning all about… not only the databases behind the software, but what the different softwares are used for and how to integrate those. And then that led me to the first time I worked at the place where I work now. My first time here, I was the technology manager for about seven years. And my job was to essentially take the firm from dated practices into modern practices. Did that for about six years, was very successful. a few key pieces of technology, mainly our IT infrastructure, as well as our scanning and BIM capabilities. Once the world kind of hit a plateau in terms of tech I could implement, I ended up leaving and joining a software company that is now known as Revisto. Now, this is where a lot of my exposure to the industry and sort of the social aspect of the industry came into play. Because when I started at Revisto, relatively unknown, and by the time of my departure, very well-known, up-and-coming software that had really increased its revenue. And a lot of that was just due to the people that were part of that team, right? Like I was part of a team of people that really knew what they were doing. And, you know, I feel like I played an integral role in its success, but definitely not the only person. But a lot of what I did for that company was say, this is what the customer needs. What are your capabilities? And work directly with the product management, the development staff, as well as deployed our customer success strategies. And I then got the opportunity to go back into the industry with my old company as chief technology officer. And I’m about three weeks deep into that job, and you’re talking to me now.

Speaker 0 | 06:08.891

So do me a favor. Tell me a little bit more about your industry, the industry that you’re talking about. Because, you know, I know GIS, and I’m very familiar with who Esri is and what kind of things. happened from GIS. You know, we live and die by GPS information as we’re doing transportation and tracking where our trucks are and where the customer’s loads are and that kind of information. But, you know, tell me a little bit more about your industry and like the general term of what you would call that industry.

Speaker 1 | 06:47.517

Yeah, absolutely. So it is a evolving profession. For example, When I was doing it in the mid-2000s, we were trying to figure out what to call ourselves. And now there are literal degrees in colleges around this topic. But there are a few different ways to explain it. Ultimately, it all stems from a term known as BEM. Now, people listening from my industry may be like, oh, no, Brett, don’t say it. But I kind of look at it that way. There are other technologies that feed into it, but it’s ultimately when the design and construction industry decided to go from 2D to three-dimensional design.

Speaker 0 | 07:33.318

Okay, so with a lot of drafting and 3D graphics.

Speaker 1 | 07:38.563

Exactly. So a lot of the customers that not only myself, but the customers that I dealt with at my last job, it would. be, there were different contexts, but ultimately it revolved around the use of these models to construct buildings, right? And to keep it very simple for the audience. Now, for a design firm, that would mean creating the model. For a construction firm, that may be using the model to make sure that the building gets built right. And so in the design side, they often refer to these people as BIM managers. building information management managers or modeling managers, depending on what argument you want to take. As you can tell, the industry is still sort of determining itself. But on the construction side, it’s a little bit more solidified, and they call them essentially virtual design and construction specialists. And on the construction side, their goal is to build the building in a virtual environment so that the real environment is profitable on time, and most importantly, safe.

Speaker 0 | 08:51.503

Okay, so, you know, come on, we’ve had high rises and huge buildings for decades, way before we digitized, you know, to use one of the buzzwords that everybody’s loving right now. So all of this was done on paper prior. It’s that drafting piece that you were talking about doing in high school, and now it’s moving further. How— deep into the um the 3d designs do you guys have like virtual walkthroughs too or is it more of just the wireframe and the um materials and i i just you know i think about construction and what it takes all of the different people who were involved in building a house let alone a huge building or a high-rise or or a skyscraper and all of the different contractors that get involved in that. So you guys are like, the BIM is working with all of the different drawings that are needed to be put together for the building as a holistic. Drawing or?

Speaker 1 | 10:04.883

Yeah, it’s an interesting concept because in construction, the limitation in my mind, there are two big limitations in construction, but they’re not easily overcome in terms of technology deployment. One is that despite all the technology we can use, construction is a very risk adverse industry. And the lawyers look at the drawings as the deliverables. So ultimately, the 2D drawing still reigns supreme in the world of litigation. So that’s what we still deliver in, despite some contractual terms about how we will get to that point of those drawings. But ultimately, those 2D drawings that used to be drafted as in I’m going to draw a line here, I’m going to draw a line here to make a picture that represents something are now all mostly derived from the model, especially in a situation with software known as Revit. So that’s where the people model intelligently. They say it’s no longer an exercise if I’m going to draw this. It’s I’m going to place this item. And then in turn, the drawing is going to be correct. It’s a connection between the drawing and the model. Right. But that is just in terms of delivering the drawing. There are all sorts of, like you said, you pointed out good. You were catching on real quick. There are structural engineering analytics that have to take place with that model. There are quantities. There are scheduling issues. There are different parties that are privy to information that other parties are not. And so. a lot of what goes into the way we deploy technology is coming up with a project execution plan about how, when, and what will be used and how, um, in terms of like trying to loop back to one of your original questions. One of the biggest challenges we have is we do and have the capability to do virtual walkthroughs and have for quite a while. but the, biggest problem is, is how do you do a walkthrough at the drop of a finger and have that information reflect where you stand in the project? If that makes sense, right?

Speaker 0 | 12:29.806

Because it does. Cause I, you know, I’m extrapolating a little bit and I’m imagining throwing on a virtual headset. And then you’re talking about like, okay, I want to look at the basement and I want to look at how the water main is coming in. I want to look at the furnace. Okay, now take me up to the penthouse. And, you know, me just asking like that is, you know, it sounds quick and easy, but the rendering and all of the other pieces involved and or, you know, removing the walls and the virtual furniture and everything else that got thrown in there or didn’t get thrown in there depending on the view that I’m asking for. That’s what I assume you’re alluding to.

Speaker 1 | 13:13.279

Yeah, and, you know, not to get too much into the weeds of what professionals do. That’s for you. Good, okay. We got weed whackers. Good, okay. So I’ll take you guys for a deep dive. And what’s funny is when some of my colleagues hear this, they’re going to be like, wow, he let you talk about this. We would never explain it this way to an end user in the field. But in terms of us talking about it. So the Revit model, the Tecla model, the survey, Excel spreadsheet, the point cloud, it’s all part of a database. And individuals like myself know how to use that data to make the exercises a little less of a physical one. And you bring up a good point around views, right? Well, if, you know, I want to see it this way and I want to see through walls. But this guy wants to see the walls. How do you bridge that gap, right? A lot of that comes from people like myself creating what we call search sets. Now, there are different softwares that call this different things. But ultimately, what you’re doing is you’re manually categorizing and segmenting the model into different buckets of data that you’re going to use and that you’re going to deliver to end users. Did I lose you? Not mentally, but audio. Sorry. You’re still here,

Speaker 0 | 14:48.082

brother.

Speaker 1 | 14:48.963

Good. So that is in virtual design and construction, we may want an exercise for the project team where they say. We really need to understand if this new fire sprinkler system change is going to affect any other systems that are due to be installed on this date. We would go in and do a comparison of that system versus everything else that is going to be constructed on that date or any of these other criteria. For the project team, it’s just we want an answer. Is it going to be a problem or is it not? It’s people like me’s responsibility to retrieve that using the model data.

Speaker 0 | 15:34.410

So now I believe you came into the industry at a time where all of the, well, not all of it. I mean, it must have been emerging as you were coming in also. But I’m just amazed thinking about that kind of a question. What, 40 years ago? When everything was being done on paper or the only people who could afford to have this done by computers, they definitely didn’t have the databases with the comparative. Or, I mean, they did, but it was so much more expensive for storage and compute and all of that that they probably still worked on paper and had somebody else doing this by hand. And I can’t imagine the work that went into trying to answer that question by hand compared to being able to answer that question programmatically today.

Speaker 1 | 16:34.095

Yeah, I mean, it’s a really interesting thing because I really I’ve always been a person that implements change and that change always comes along with sometimes ridiculous efficiency gains. And it’s just part of what I do for a living. And there have been times that have been uncomfortable for me before where a piece of technology comes along that can literally replace hundreds of hours of work. Right. And so I always try to think of how can we use these people’s skills if they’re not doing this? Because as soon as I unleash this technology, we got two or three people that are going to be like, why am I here? A great example would be a cut and fill analysis from civil software in the mid 2000s. Right. You would have to have very good engineers, multiple of them working on extrapolating a proposed set of contours to an existing set of contours to get a cut and fill analysis of how many cubic yards would be removed from a site.

Speaker 0 | 17:44.585

Give me a simple explanation of cut and fill.

Speaker 1 | 17:47.588

So cut and fill is, let’s say that you buy a property and you want to put a gas station there, right? Your first goal is going to be, okay, well, at what elevation is the parking lot going to be so people can get off the road and back onto the road easily and accessibly, right? Right. That’s going to determine how high your building sits and where all your utilities play a role. And then from that, you begin to design the drainage away from those specific amenities and infrastructure. And this is how you come up with things like a pavement plan, a grading plan that’s going to get all the water off the site, make sure you can get water and electricity into the building. And then… that generates a set of proposed contours. Those contours are basically lines that represent elevations, and those are compared to what the surveyor provides in terms of what the site looked at the beginning. And that gives you a number of how much material am I going to have to remove and how much material am I going to have to put back in. And also how much of it’s going to be contaminated allows us to come up with a number that says, OK, we need this equipment. This is how much it’s going to cost per cubic yard and really get an estimation on how much it’s going to cost and inform us if that design is financially feasible or not, or if we need to make changes to reduce the cost or whatever, depending on the situations. Hopefully that helps.

Speaker 0 | 19:30.579

Yeah, it does. But let me. Let me take you in a radically different direction for a second, and then we’ll swing back into this. And so earlier in the conversation, you talked about being a generalist, and you were talking about using the different types of applications within your industry and having a broad knowledge of those applications. And in our pre-interview when we were talking, you mentioned the generalist. And my mind instantly went to generalist, and I’m thinking of like across the different technology industry so like you know i i understand networking i understand the pc i understand the mainframe and and the cloud environment and i’m i’m trying to get my head wrapped around devops and and the pipelines and deployments and you know business intelligence and of course, the industry-specific applications that I’ve got to deal with. And I’m wondering how much of that infrastructure piece of this that you’ve had to deal with, because your focus has been more around the applications and the industry that, yeah, I was going to say the application of the applications, which is, you know, a little redundant. But so it. How much of the infrastructure, the IT infrastructure and the building of things like that are you involved with? Or do you think of it just as another one of those components of like the the water system going into a building?

Speaker 1 | 21:07.684

Yeah, it’s it’s really interesting because I think about it really both ways. And it depends on, you know, as CTO, I have clients that need these systems and then we have these systems. Right. So it’s one of those things where a lot of it, you know, definitely depends on, you know, where where we’re at or what our needs are. One thing I can say is that this is a part of my profession that has grown over time. And it’s always been based on the needs of how those things that I’ve been talking about this whole time get dispersed out. Right. So. Cloud technology, something that I know as much as I possibly can without being formally educated on. And intranet, you know, servers, switches, things like that. Those are other things that I’ve had to learn what they do. And the reason why is because I remember a story from my first time here. It’s like, wow, we’re going to change the world with this point cloud technology. Well, point clouds are essentially. large masses of survey points that can equate to like 500 gigs to a terabyte well when you try to push those through a hundred megabyte switch problems arise yes you know so so you quickly learn those things that didn’t exist before you created that problem um and so you know like cloud technology the software that i was employed by revisto Its goal was to take what the problem in my early career was, because once I get back to what you said, the first half of my career was very much focused on the applications and what they did. Now I care about what they do, but I only care about what they do really from a business perspective. Do they do what we need to do? But what I more care about is the collection of the data. of the activities that are happening inside those softwares and the disbursement of communication from those individual teams into the greater centralized hub of the company. Because what we found in our industry is that it’s full of talented people that can run software and know how to build projects, but the delay in communication is really what is crippling a lot of our profits. And then… also probably leading to people putting blinders on and not understanding how we can work better together. So I think there’s a couple of things there that our industry can improve upon kind of using all this.

Speaker 0 | 23:59.380

Well, OK, so now swinging back into the conversation that I deviated from, the thought of the massive efficiencies that you’re going to bring and then. um concerns around the effects to the um co-workers that are are going to be affected by this and and potentially you know it you could take the harsh reality of okay well you know what we’ve just made it so efficient that we no longer need these people or now like you were saying okay we’re we no longer need these people to do this thing you Where can we reapply them? So it’s, you know, in all honesty, I’m kind of surprised to hear a CTO worried about making sure that these people have more responsibilities and chances to continue to work than just here are the efficiencies. This is what I brought. Look at what I did. You know, because. Because we tend to, a lot of people tend to have blinders on and get focused into this is what. IT has brought or this is what technology has brought. And we leave it to, I leave it to the operations team to redeploy those skills in a way that keeps our co-workers as valuable members of the team.

Speaker 1 | 25:40.489

Yeah. Yeah, it’s, you know, first of all, I think there’s a couple of things at play here. Just in general, I… I, as a person, have, just like every other human being on earth, I have qualities and I have things that make me not so great, right? Don’t tell anybody. Yeah, one of the things that I really, really, because I was a victim of that harsh tech people early in my career, I really, really try to always look at it from a human approach, right? Like. What would make what I’m trying to do terrifying to someone that’s trying to pay their bills? And how can I bridge that gap between those people? It’s also why I chose this company to come back to. I had offers at some bigger companies. Maybe some people thought I should have gone to some other place or whatever. But the reason I came here is because there’s growth to be had. And so it makes my life a little bit easier in terms of the way that I can communicate with the team. I can go over to the document management team and say, you know, we’re doing this implementation. You’re going to be 50 percent faster. And that’s great because we’re going to get five X work over the next three years. So prepare to work harder and longer and make more money. As opposed to we’re going to automate your job. So be scared until you get fired. That does not that does not make the working environment that you have to go to every day an enjoyable one. And it’s not really something that I want to do to other people.

Speaker 0 | 27:32.410

Agreed. Completely agreed. So. All right. So learning compassion for the your co-workers and the effects of technology have on them. And you said that you had a little bit of an experience with that yourself from the negative point of view. What other things have you learned through this that may not be the technology focus, but have helped you move from being that generalist and knowing the applications to the CTO of an organization?

Speaker 1 | 28:09.838

Yeah, I think a lot of it had to do with… I did not grow up in a business savvy family. I grew up in a family of like doers. And so I think what really developed was I took it upon myself to ask a lot of questions early in my career. You know, why do we do this? Why do we do that? That doesn’t really make sense. I was never really scared to be looked at as like the stupid person. And that happened a lot. And that’s OK.

Speaker 0 | 28:47.825

No, it’s actually it’s an awesome quality to have to be to be willing to ask those questions and to not be afraid of people going, wait, why are you know, just why?

Speaker 1 | 29:00.450

Yeah, I mean, I think the last time I did it and I felt a lot comfortable, I was at a conference. And if Robert Scheer, who works at OpenSpace, listens to this, he might laugh. He might be like. But we were talking about technology on stage regarding reality capture in front of about 300 people. And someone said the term nerf. And I was like, raised my hand on stage. I was like, what is that? And, you know, the thing, though, is that my thought was that if I didn’t know it, there surely was people in the audience that didn’t. We got a quick explanation out of Robert. I’m sure people were thankful for it. He moved on with his point, and we all understood it greater.

Speaker 0 | 29:50.021

Yeah. I was going to ask you what BIM was until you explained it, so I no longer had to.

Speaker 1 | 29:56.467

Yeah. One thing I try to do as well is if I know that I’m talking to somebody that is not of my ilk per se. I try to always preface it with things that I understand that are not going to be immediately understood as to where if me and some of the people I’ve worked alongside of were having dinner, we may say nothing but acronyms for two hours straight and completely understand each other. So,

Speaker 0 | 30:29.662

I mean, that was some of the stuff that we were talking about in the early or the pre interview was our ability to talk to each other like this and quickly get. towards some of these ideas as opposed to, well, like me and my wife. I’m talking to my wife, and her eyes glaze over, and she’s like, just quit talking about the tech. And or my boss, who tells me, okay, quit telling me how to make a watch and just tell me what time it is.

Speaker 1 | 30:56.642

Yes.

Speaker 0 | 30:57.463

Because I tend to over-explain, or if you ask my kids, I’m mansplaining.

Speaker 1 | 31:03.068

Yes. It’s interesting because I think what gets you good at that is working for a software company versus working at a company that consumes software. And the reason why is because you’ll get those people that are like, you got three minutes. Tell me what you’re about. And you learn that a little bit better, right? Just because you’re kind of thrust into those situations.

Speaker 0 | 31:28.143

Yeah. I laugh because I think of how many calls that I’ve gotten from cold calls I’ve gotten from salespeople and I kind of hit them like that. I’m like, all right, dude. If you’re getting any time at all, you got like seconds. Tell me, why should I stay on the phone?

Speaker 1 | 31:44.350

We often, when I worked at, you know, I really think, and I know this is a tech talk, but sometimes I think a degree in human psychology would have made me better at this than my technical background. There are so many human elements to getting tech not only like sold to. people but also once they buy it them being successful with it themselves right i’ve seen so many people in this industry that are very very technically savvy that aren’t very successful because of that communication training change management aspect so it’s i i’ve really really like over time focused on you How do I take my technical knowledge? How do I connect with people? And how do I help the business make money? Those are my two top priorities. Sometimes that gets me into the weeds. Sometimes it doesn’t. And it always takes me new places whenever I just kind of follow that philosophy.

Speaker 0 | 32:51.829

You know, that’s a perfect piece of this. I think that’s a fundamental reason why you’ve got C at the beginning of your title there. Because… being able to talk to others and to make sure that you’re talking to them about, especially the other business leaders, about how this affects the business and what it’s going to mean to the top and or bottom line and what it’s going to bring. But being able to do it in a relatable human aspect is so important to us. Because, yeah, you and I can get stuck in those acronyms and we can talk about this kind of stuff, the GIS and the BIM and how it’s all put together and looking at all of the views and all of those things. But if we can’t talk to the business and sell them on, okay, when we’re able to do these five things, these are the types of efficiencies we’re going to have. And now you can take these people, these resources.

Speaker 1 | 34:01.900

and focus them over here where you’re going to need more efficiency because we’re going to be able to bring in five times the work yeah you know it’s one of those things where we have an employee that works under me and and he uh well he doesn’t really work under me he’s not my employee nor do do i know if he should be but he’s a bim manager right that’s his role so his role has always been coordinate the models make sure everything’s set up make sure the resources are there And it’s interesting that when I come in and talk to him about this tech, he understands that at a high level. He understands what I’m trying to achieve. I have people defending him, even though he’s on board with the idea, just because of the communication, right? Well, that’s what Tom does. It’s like, well, Tom is going to now be able to do this better. And be able to do what he really wants to do, which is interject efficiencies into the design process, not compare models together. That education to the company is important because they like and appreciate this person, and they’re worried about them. But as soon as we talk about the plans that there are for that person, everyone eases down. This is one of the reasons why I wanted to work for a company like this versus a company where I’m being told as CTO that I’ve just got to find dollars. Because that results in some decisions that do. become less empathetic and you have to do them to do your job. So I feel I’m not saying that all CTOs even have the opportunity to operate like I do. I don’t think that they do. I am just in a very unique position where I’m at a mid-sized niche company that needs someone that can tie together the bottom to the top. Some large organizations don’t need that. They need a CTO that can come in and make things more efficient so that they can reevaluate their workforce. And that’s just not the type of job that I really wanted. But there needs to be people like that. So for those of you out there listening, definitely not talking down to you. It’s just not my style.

Speaker 0 | 36:24.312

Right. No. And I get it. You know, I that’s I have to focus in on a lot of those efficiencies. And I’m not always focusing in on the people, but more on the technology. And, okay, you know, if we did this, like, right, lately we’ve had this question about how we’re working with email and doing different things and shared mailboxes. And I’m looking for a more efficient way of handling that versus just letting people stumble through old analogy of they’ve got a hammer, so everything looks like a nail. So this is the way they’re working on it. And I’m trying to see, okay, what’s their goal and what solutions are out there that I can twist into a way that’s going to make them more efficient and help them provide better service to the customers so that we get more customers. Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 37:28.722

It’s, you know, it’s interesting. We’re going through a large implementation right now. Our company is, to talk about the company I work for a little bit and to give you an idea of where I’m at in my current job, I work for the engineering corporation and then that corporation is comprised of three companies. We’ve got a consulting arm, which is highly efficient and takes care of itself for the most part. That’s kind of our… front-end feasibility studies and things of that nature. They’re intensely talented individuals, and a lot of that is upfront engineering work, right? So not a lot of stuff that I do. Then we have the engineering, actual engineer of record part of our company, what we call the engineering company itself. This is a company that turns out drawings for… our projects, right, our different clients and all of that. And they tie directly to our construction arm. Our first implementation is really to modernize our construction arm, which once again is made up of really amazing, talented people that just need kind of thrust into, you know, kind of pulled up for maybe, you know, four or five years ago. But it’s really interesting in that implementation. how many efficiencies we’re going to gain just from that communication, right? And that ability to connect those people. And a lot of the difficulty for me is not understanding or finding new tech. It’s a change management from an older system to a new one so that we can use our talent to take advantage of what everyone else is already using.

Speaker 0 | 39:22.598

Oh, man, that is such a challenge. That is like one of the largest things, no matter what industry we’re in, those of us dealing with technology are fighting that battle. Yeah. The implementation of things and the use of what was implemented and how to get people to embrace, leverage, and accelerate. whatever is being done and to try to achieve the vision that, that many of us see the capabilities of this, but, but we’re reliant on the consumers of it to get there.

Speaker 1 | 40:08.648

Absolutely. And what you just explained is honestly what people like me have to be best at. We don’t even have to be the best in the world at the tech itself. You can do this job potentially with less tech knowledge than someone that you’re training how to do it. But if you can connect and make that connection and get. With that interior win, I’ll give a great example. And this comes from the software sales side. And this was true at the vendor, the Autodesk reseller, as well as my time at Revisto. And for all my buds listening in the high up R&D departments, love y’all. But when we deal with a company, when we deal with someone with a title like myself or a CIO title or something like that, the conversation goes great until the rubber has to meet the road. Right.

Speaker 0 | 41:07.556

Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 | 41:09.778

Usually at that point, it delays and you have to find somebody that is not only a doer, but believes in the software or not just the software, but just a greater system of technology. We found that individual and I’m going to give a shout out to one of my buds. I didn’t plan on doing this a lot, but Alex Belkofer, if you’re out there listening. He he’s my main dude. He was one of the guys at one of our larger construction companies at Revisto that was that doer that understood why it’s important, but how to connect with the people and how to get them to understand it and love it and embrace it. And that’s great. Let me interrupt you for just a second.

Speaker 0 | 41:56.738

And what would you consider like Alex to have been? You know, he’s not necessarily somebody that’s in the IT industry like we are, but, you know, he’s one of those business people who are embracing the use of technology to achieve the goals. So he’s definitely somebody that I’m looking for at our organization to help me do these things. What would you name Alex as? And not just…

Speaker 1 | 42:33.724

himself but like that that personality or that role or that i call them champs yep that’s what that’s what i call them and to be honest we always we always look for them and in some companies you never found one in some companies you found three um and boy those companies can really move with tech you find a company with three or four guys and guys or girls in important roles um that can that can work together. We’ve got a young woman named Morgan at JTM Construction in Seattle, man. She’s just like Alex, you know, enthusiastic, understands the tech and knows how to motivate people. And, you know, one of the things I found is that positivity is hard to take hold in construction. But once it does, it is infectious. Um, and, and normally the people that can really change things are people that not only know what they’re doing, but are enthusiastic about it and confident. Um, I think that early in my career, that was one of the problems I had is people go, Brett, is this going to work? And I go, I don’t know, maybe. And now they’re like, Brett, is this going to work? I’m like, if it doesn’t, you can fire me. How about that?

Speaker 0 | 43:55.778

There you go.

Speaker 1 | 43:56.898

And people go, okay, well, I guess it’ll work.

Speaker 0 | 43:59.279

I guess he believes in it.

Speaker 1 | 44:01.028

Yeah, and that changes the whole tone of everything.

Speaker 0 | 44:04.651

So confidence, having your champs, knowing how to talk to business, being concerned for your fellows and your coworkers, all those things that help to get you to where you are today.

Speaker 1 | 44:21.585

Yeah, and, you know, it’s funny because this was my goal. And… Now that it’s here, I’m greatly humbled by it, but I’ve got a ton of work to do, and I still got a lot of life in me in terms of career. My goal here at Penta is to take us from where we are, which is a very profitable, talented organization that just needs a little boost in tech. If I can come in and help the company grow. by, you know, really utilizing the talent around me and enabling it, then that’s more success. And, you know, after the few stints I’ve had. I’m very hungry for it still. So I think that if the company works with me and we can all kind of find that common ground, I think we’ve got a lot of positive places to go. And we’re in an industry where tech hasn’t really taken hold, and there still is some unfounded workflows to be had and tech to be had. I mean, one of the things we’re doing now is we’re trying to figure out the best workflow to get fabrication level. vendor models into design models without crashing all the computers, you know, something that still hasn’t been figured out well. So,

Speaker 0 | 45:46.236

oh, and so I was, I was going to ask you, um, I want to twist our conversation into a different kind of direction because of some of my experiences and some of my experiences have been that sometimes working with engineers, um, can be quite. challenging and provide lots of opportunities um buzzwords here um because they um many of the ones that i’ve run into and have worked with have been smarter than the average bear and they have all the answers um and it sounds like you are surrounded by engineers so kind of so give me a story about some of that yeah i mean

Speaker 1 | 46:36.044

when you’re an engineer, your job is to be correct. Let’s just put it that way. Yeah. My job is to do a whole bunch of trial and error. So work.

Speaker 0 | 46:51.308

That’s when you, when you said that, I’m like, okay, my job is make it work. You know, those blinking lights need to blink and you know, the engineer may be correct. But we have to apply it in the real world.

Speaker 1 | 47:06.282

You’re exactly right. So there are often times where we are not even on the same plane of existence in how we tackle a problem. However, where I meet them is usually through logic. I’ll give you an example that happened recently. OK, so we’re going through an implementation of a PM software. That PM software is called. Procore. Now, for anybody listening, the reason we’re doing Procore is because it does everything that we need it to do. It gives us high-end analytics, and it’s not a space-age software, so it’s something that I can implement correctly, right? Now, we’re an EPC company. Procore is generally for general contractors, subcontractors, but… they’re getting more into this industry. And I definitely want to help them do so as much as I can. But we’ve got the problem of it’s built for GCs. That’s great for our construction arm. But we want to use it as our main project hub, management hub. So I go down and talk to the engineering project managers. And they go, Brett, this is built for construction people. I go, true. However, it has integrations to Microsoft products. And we can customize it to the needs of engineering. And he goes, but we need an engineering project management tool. I said, no, we need a centralized place where we can communicate and collect data. So because if we go and find something that fits every individual person that sits in this office, we will be using 50 softwares that do not communicate together.

Speaker 0 | 48:46.512

So one of the worst things that we can do today. But keep going.

Speaker 1 | 48:51.075

No, no, no. You’re exactly correct. So I said, you’re going to have to meet me in the middle. in that I’m going to acknowledge that the software does not do everything you need it to do. And you’re going to have to acknowledge that we’re going to have to find a place where we can all centralize. And if that means using point solutions to feed the central location with info, then so be it. But we’ve got to start there. And the reason I tell this story is because it not only happens here, but it happened at every job I’ve ever had, and I call it analysis paralysis. And I’m not the only one that uses that term, but it’s where you think so much that you never do anything.

Speaker 0 | 49:32.016

Yeah. You know, and for me and my team and lots of the people around me, we start solutioneering, to use a co-worker’s term, we start solutioneering around that 1% chance of a problem. And so we get so lost in trying to avoid all those 1% chances that we never. do the 20% of the work that’s going to give us 80% of the goal. And because we just get lost in that that analysis paralysis. One of the terms that I heard, and I can’t remember where I heard it, but you know, I quit building the bridge until you get to the ravine. You know, because you don’t want to drag that bridge with you until you get to the ravine. So, you know, build it when you get to the ravine. Quit worrying about it until then. And let’s get out the gate. And so that’s kind of what you’re talking about.

Speaker 1 | 50:29.599

Or build it in small transferable pieces and ship it to the site in modular units. That’s a joke.

Speaker 0 | 50:37.025

Sounds like you might have some knowledge of construction there.

Speaker 1 | 50:41.969

Yeah. No, no. But you’re right. You’re exactly right, Mike. It is a situation of…

Speaker 0 | 50:53.040

You just gave me a new term, engine nerding.

Speaker 1 | 50:56.522

Yes. It’s really interesting because I am very much that way in the opposite of where I’m like, okay, what is the bare minimum we need to do to achieve 75% of success? Set that base level and then… Then when we get there, we can build off of it.

Speaker 0 | 51:17.088

Yep. Start there and work. Get that done. Get that implemented and work on improvements. The fast iteration. You know, that’s modern methodology anymore is, you know, get the foundation out and reiterate and reiterate and reiterate and make it better and make it better and make it better.

Speaker 1 | 51:37.195

Absolutely.

Speaker 0 | 51:38.592

You know, again, in the pre-interview, we were talking about something else, and I really want to touch on this subject because it just fascinates me. And the fact that you have your own personal person to help with this is just awesome. So talk to me a little bit about your fun and your experiences with intellectual IP, intellectual property.

Speaker 1 | 52:05.119

Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. So. I am married to a wonderful and very talented woman named Rachel Settles. And I am lucky to have her in multiple ways. But for the sake of this conversation, she is an intellectual property specialist. And what’s really weird about that is it often dovetails with some things that I’m involved in. My first time when I was here at this job, We really, really developed a workflow that allowed us to not only jump out in front of our competitors, but also gain an advantage over our competitors in the bidding process. And not through any weird, maniacal business tomfoolery either. It was because when we went and scanned, we would scan their whole site. And so if they needed a… project for an expansion, we would already have the information to begin engineering. So it was an advantage that way. One day my boss looks at me and he says, hey, can we patent this process? And I’m kind of ignorant to the situation at the time, but I go, hey, I’ve got a wife that works in this field, so I’ll go ask her. And I tell her and she goes, let me ask a lawyer. And then she comes back. She says, nope, can’t do it. I go, why? She says, well, because there’s a clause and a lot of intellectual property, and I’m sure there are people that are like, you’re explaining this wrong. I am not an IP specialist.

Speaker 0 | 53:42.424

That’s all right. Go for it.

Speaker 1 | 53:43.965

Ultimately, what she explained to me was, is anything that you do where you are using tools that are available to the public, you can’t really claim as IP because you’re just using a tool of the trade. So, for example. I can’t patent the way I use a DeWalt screwdriver to screw a screw into the wall. I have to make the screwdriver or I have to invent the screwdriver. I don’t have to make it. I have to invent it. Yeah,

Speaker 0 | 54:17.675

it makes sense. It makes me wonder because I know that there are process patents out there.

Speaker 1 | 54:24.520

But they have to have a piece of proprietary information that that party created in them right so something about my understanding yeah exactly so like tesla for example they can patent their process all day because they made it up and it is uniquely individual as to where shop and save can’t patent the way that they check customers out because it’s the same way that walmart does it and they just do it yes exactly you That’s the way that I understand it. There has to be something innately different about the process that can be literally pointed out.

Speaker 0 | 55:10.726

It can’t be just discovered by use of.

Speaker 1 | 55:13.869

Exactly.

Speaker 0 | 55:15.790

Right. It’s got to be unique and new and an original work.

Speaker 1 | 55:22.232

For example, that’s a great point, and we’ll move on quickly, but me and my colleagues often come to similar conclusions without talking.

Speaker 0 | 55:30.536

Right. Yeah. So that’s that common use kind of thing.

Speaker 1 | 55:35.758

Yeah. Absolutely.

Speaker 0 | 55:36.938

So you had mentioned that, you know, you come home and you ask and you’re like, oh, I’ve got this brilliant idea. And boom, she just pops that balloon. But then there’s other times where you like offhand mention something. And so tell us one of those stories.

Speaker 1 | 55:55.110

Yeah. So one time.

Speaker 0 | 55:57.593

You’re not going to give away your IP.

Speaker 1 | 55:59.734

No, no, no, no. In fact, the reason she was interested in my potential IP is because I don’t know how to use a tool properly. So. There’s a software in our industry called Dynamo. Now, Dynamo is a visual programming tool that allows us to do some pretty nifty stuff inside of tools. So, for example, when Dynamo was introduced, you saw a lot of architects being like, oh, I can, you know, design a wavy stadium roof with Dynamo. Now, it can do that, but I never used it for that. I usually used it for send this file from here to there automatically. Right. Or. do this or take this specific view and export it as this specific file. That’s what I would normally use it for. Now, Dynamo works with Python code. So if you know how to code with Python, you can create blocks of code in Dynamo that work. Now, my problem is that I don’t know how to visually program that well. I should, but I do know how to program a Python. So I went in there and just blocked out a Python block. and then just executed it as Dynamo. And hopefully I’m not losing everybody here. But my wife was like, well, you wrote that code? I was like, yeah. She’s like, and it’s Python? Yeah. She goes, you could patent that. I go, oh, I thought I was just moving a file from here to there. I didn’t know there was anything special about that. So it’s one of those things where, and once again, her saying that I could patent that, that was just her assumption. Anytime you go through that, there’s a huge legal process, and sometimes you can qualify, sometimes you can’t. It’s a bunch of stuff I don’t know. But it has raised a bunch of interesting conversations inside of our household around what I do for a living and how that tails into hers, her living. And I don’t want to talk about, you know, the places. She’s worked for large law firms as well as large organizations. So I generally trust what she’s telling me is correct.

Speaker 0 | 58:15.047

You better if you want to stay married.

Speaker 1 | 58:17.228

Exactly. Yes. I’ll take her side over the large corporations any day. So, you know. Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 58:22.550

There’s that aspect of it, too. Just just throw that out there, you know.

Speaker 1 | 58:26.011

Yes, absolutely. But no, she you know, it’s one of the things that it’s great having a partner in life that is. Someone that you can talk to and gather just random information that you probably can’t get out of many people from.

Speaker 0 | 58:44.404

Yeah. I mean, I know that there’s been lots of times that I wish I had somebody that I could talk to about an intellectual property. It’s been one of those areas that I’ve always had an interest in and just have not taken the time to educate myself in it. Because, you know, damn day jobs.

Speaker 1 | 59:05.089

Yeah. I’ll tell you what, the day jobs, man, they get in the way of… What kind of fun? You know, what’s funny is, and this is a big shout out to everybody who’s kind of in my position. A lot of us, Mike, that are kind of in my position, we did our normal job to the adherence of how they wanted it done, and then we proved our theories correct at night.

Speaker 0 | 59:31.680

Oh, man. You’re reminding me of about… Five people that I work with that have that I constantly try to help and cultivate and grow. Some of the co-workers that, you know, they they go home and do exactly that. You know, they they help us achieve the goals that we’ve set in front of them during the day. And then at night they go home and and they built their own environment and they’re proving out theories of things that they think they can make happen. And half the time they come back, show, and we implement it.

Speaker 1 | 60:07.240

Yeah. And look, I mean, if people don’t do that, it is very dangerous when people I don’t expect people to do that and never will. Right. But when they do, I notice heavily. It shows enthusiasm. It shows dedication. And that’s attractive.

Speaker 0 | 60:27.517

And it also shows a love for the work. It shows that they enjoy what they’re doing because they’re choosing to do that for no reward except for the achievement itself.

Speaker 1 | 60:40.723

Yeah, absolutely. The betterment of, you know, we often use this term, right? It’s about time that. You know, our industry has always been big on, well, I worked 11 hours a day. I worked 12 hours a day. And, you know, a lot of us now are asking, I don’t want to know how many hours you worked. I want to know what you achieved. And if you achieved a valuable amount of work, if it took three hours or nine hours, I don’t know how much I care. I mean, obviously, we want you to be responsible and available for when the job calls. But. I’m really into evaluating performance over attendance, per se. I mean, you obviously need people to show up, but I think that’s a big aspect, as opposed to the way my dad thought about things, as opposed to mine.

Speaker 0 | 61:35.118

Yeah, well, and I think that I’m trying to think of where I saw this, of how much the… generations before us were it was all about the labor and about the doing versus the um and i try to say this in a way that doesn’t hurt anybody’s feelings but you know the the mental labor that that we’re doing or the um the thinking labor that we’re putting in. And I’m sure that there was a lot of thinking labor that was put in in other places too in the prior generations. But it was such a manual world prior to this technology revolution.

Speaker 1 | 62:25.101

Yeah, a good example would be when we sat down as a team and developed the Clash Automation module that’s in Revisto now. One of the big questions we ask ourselves is, okay, when an individual sits down to do what this tool is going to do for them, when do they think and when do they just push buttons? Because that’s a button they got to push, right?

Speaker 0 | 62:53.288

Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 62:53.929

When you really sit down and think about what an individual does and you separate it into those two categories, automation and AI targets become very easy to identify, at least in my mind. As a simpleton.

Speaker 0 | 63:09.399

You know, it was something that I was almost going to bypass just because of time. But so expand on that a little bit, you know. All right. So where are you aiming the AI at? Are you aiming the AI at the button push or at the moment that the human has to stop and think about the process and about, you know, the switch mode? Are we going A or B? Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 63:38.323

So it’s interesting. I would term what we did at Revisto as automation and not that they can’t turn into AI. I think it could. I think it absolutely can. And I think that’s where hopefully they’re all going, which they have a fantastically talented staff. So I think they understand that. But it really did automate the task. of a specific type of worker that not only was misused, but created huge bottlenecks in data flow. Very much automation, though. You set up all the criteria, and when it executes, it executes specifically to that criteria. And if that criteria generates errors, the computer doesn’t care. It gives you those errors. Right. As to where something like OpenSpace, who was founded by AI engineers, is the computer’s actually making decisions. It’s going, okay, I’ve got this reality capture. How does that liken itself to the drawings? And how am I going to place this scan to those drawings? So it’s not a human saying, put scan here. It’s a computer going, I understand how to do this. I’m going to do it for you. And to me, in our industry, When I use the term automation versus the term artificial intelligence, I feel like that’s the line. Is the computer making a decision that a human would normally make? And to give Revisto some fair play here. The grouping mechanism in the Clash Automation could be interpreted as AI, a very simple form of it. But it absolutely could because it’s grouping groups of objects together based on intelligent information. And that human is not individually choosing every object that ends in that group. And for the audience, unless you’re a Clash Detection person, you are not going to understand what I just said.

Speaker 0 | 65:48.890

Well, I mean, some of that, I get where you were headed with it, and I love that differentiation because, you know, it’s helping me envision things and solutioneer and engineered some. So, you know, this has been an awesome conversation, Brett. Thank you so much for spending some time with us. Is there anything you want to promote? Is there anything that you want to, you know, the I love me page that we can use? learn about?

Speaker 1 | 66:19.666

Tell us. So yeah, I’ll do it real quick. I’ve got like four or five. Is that okay?

Speaker 0 | 66:24.529

Yeah, by all means, man. This is your moment.

Speaker 1 | 66:27.831

All you. Perfect. So let’s go through all the companies that I really, really think the industry needs to be not only looking at, but helping and lifting up and understanding that these people aren’t perfect, but they’re trying to get us to where we need to go. Revisto, the people over at Revisto. That software was a mental labor for me for years. I can still consider the people there, for the most part, to be family. And that product is going to continue to shape the way this industry coordinates for years to come. OpenSpace, openspace.ai. Openspace.ai is a software that is your construction time machine. It essentially allows the construction site to take pictures very easily with very simple 3D cameras. And then you can go back and see what the site looked at any time, at any day, when those pictures were taken. Integrates with all this BIM stuff we’ve been talking about. Integrates with different various forms of reality capture. And more importantly, all these softwares that I’m talking about create a centralized environment for people to communicate. And then I got to give a shout out to the new company that I’m working with now. They’re big. Some people may be like, you’re tall. We have undertaken Procore recently, and their customer service and sales team has actually been very, very good, helpful, responsive. And, you know, maybe if I talk to you again, we’ll talk about how all that went down. And then, of course, you got the company I work at, Penta. Penta Consulting, Penta Engineering, and Penta Industrial. You know, we specialize in material handling, CO2 reduction projects, waste recycling projects, really focused on changing and diversifying our business into more ecra-friendly solutions, making some technological changes. And… still doing the projects that we’ve always done, focused in cement, lime, aggregates, mining. So those are all the companies that I really am passionate about and am going to be involved with. And check us out, check all those different things out. I think for most of the people in this, you’re going to find something that can actually be… used in the software companies, unless you’re planning on building a facility, then you can come to the Penta side of things and we’ll build that facility for you. Yeah, Mike, never done one of those. So that might be the restiest part of this whole presentation.

Speaker 0 | 69:27.211

Well, it works, man. It works. So again, Brett, great talking to you. Thank you for the information and teaching us about the… Thank you. Wait a minute. You called it EPC, Engineering Project Corporation. Wait.

Speaker 1 | 69:41.960

So Engineering Procurement and Construction. It is an industrial way to say design build.

Speaker 0 | 69:51.964

Design build. And the use of the, oh, man, BIM. Yeah. Give me BIM. Business Intelligence?

Speaker 1 | 70:02.089

Nope. Nope. So.

Speaker 0 | 70:12.972

Okay, building information management to the business intelligence.

Speaker 1 | 70:17.174

Yes, which we also use.

Speaker 0 | 70:19.615

Yeah, we all use. Reporting.

Speaker 1 | 70:24.177

Yes, reporting is funny because I think reporting was, it’s like where everyone knew we should be in 80, like 1980, but they’re like, we have no data. Damn it.

Speaker 0 | 70:35.041

Yeah. And so now it’s gather all the data. All the data.

Speaker 1 | 70:40.368

30 years later, we’re like, all right, we have data. Now we can use the thing that we wanted to use 30 years, 50 years ago. Cool. Let’s go.

Speaker 0 | 70:47.950

Let’s go. Oh, okay. Now we know where we are. Where are we going? Yep. We know where we are.

Speaker 1 | 70:54.472

I have no idea where we’re going. I’ve spent my entire life understanding where we are.

Speaker 0 | 70:58.893

Yeah. Heisenberg, right?

Speaker 1 | 71:02.014

Absolutely.

Speaker 0 | 71:03.774

All right, Brett. Thank you very much, man. You have a wonderful day. Enjoy your fourth. Thank you, all you listeners out there, and keep listening. We’ll have another episode soon.

Speaker 1 | 71:13.647

Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Mike. Appreciate it.

Speaker 0 | 71:16.252

Thank you, Brett.