PCG Connect

Welcome to Inside Out, where we take a deep dive look at performance contracting services and product lines. We'll be talking to the movers and shakers of performance contracting, the folks who make the big deals and then bring those big deals to life. So with that, let's get to it. Well, good morning, everyone. Very excited.

Today, we're doing an inside out podcast, and today is all about quality assurance. And I will apologize right off the top. My voice is in and out. I am struggling for my life here. I'm recovering, from bronchitis.

I swear I am not contagious. So which my guests are very happy to hear because this is a small room. So I'd like to welcome this morning, we have Shawn Burnum.

Good morning,

Sean. Shannon. So as most people know, you are now officially senior vice president of operations over the central region.

Correct.

So first time in the chair since the promo.

That's right. Yep.

Congratulations. Thank you. And then also joining us, we have Chris Schumack, and he is the director of quality assurance. And did I say your name right, Chris?

That's correct. You did, Schumack. That's right.

Yes. Okay. Well, welcome. I'm, I'm excited. So quality assurance is we've always dabbled in it, but we have never given it our full focus, like, in the way that we've given safety or even, like, labor control when at launch.

And so when Chris joined us on August 1st, correct?

That's right. That's right.

This was kind of the green flag. Like, we are in it to win it, and here we go. So I'll go to you first. Sean, kinda can you tell all of it? How how did we get to that point where we decided, hey, we need a director, and we need to go hard with this?

Good question. And so, really, it started at the strategic planning sessions. And I think a lot of people know that in, in the winter, usually, in February, the leadership group goes off for about a week and really kinda does a deep dive into setting direction and and where we wanna be strategically in our moves with the company. And part of that process is we actually evaluate all of the core values and and ask ourselves, hey, what are we doing to promote and and live out our core values? And so quality being our second core value, and I haven't been in that room for for long, but they would get to that one and go, are we doing enough?

Yeah. We have a lot of quality minded folks, and we're doing a variety of different things, maybe by branch or by product line, things like that that we've kind of organically grown, but we're not doing an initiative across the country like we're doing safety and and some of the other things. So this was born out of the of a conversation at that strategic planning meeting where the leadership group said we need to do more. We're getting to the size and the sophistication where the things that used to happen in a smaller company where you could just react and learn from those things becomes more difficult when you're when you're the size we are with as many product lines that we have and those best practices are more difficult to share. And we don't have a way to really gather information about what we're doing well and what we're not doing well.

And so, we really wanted to have some analytics about where to invest our our time in training and development. And so, the onus was, let's try to figure out how we can get inspection reports and things like that collected and through a program where we can learn about what we do well and what we need to invest in.

Yeah. And I think a lot of brand you know, a lot of branches have been doing this for a while, some better than others. And so I imagine part of this is just consistency too across the company.

Absolutely. But you know? So a branch would do things and it would live within the branch. Right. And so they might use some other software that another branch was using to track or it might be paper.

And what we wanna do is collectively learn from each other and so, you know, one of the first things that we looked at was what kind of platform, and we'll get into some of that probably here, but we're looking at using Procore for our quality management control. And with that, we're gonna be able to collect a lot of analytics across the country about where we need to, you know, enhance our our training and do some things and to protect our company.

Sure. And so strategic planning, this is where it's decided, and, you know, let's put a focus on this. And so then what type of individual were you looking for? That's kinda the next step. And then how did you find

Chris?

Great great question. So, coming out of the strategic planning, we really try to to move the ball, and we all can't do everything at one time. So I was asked to help, and Anthony Rossetti as well, help with the this quality initiative. What does that mean? We're just gonna go try to figure that out.

We asked to find it.

Yeah. So, we spent a little time saying, hey, what is this what do we need, and what's this look like? We had some some internal meetings. We had legal in with us and things like that. And at the end of the day, we knew we needed somebody that was the expert in in quality management.

And with that, we started a search. And we interviewed a a number of candidates, and some of them were quite good, but none of them had really what I would call good construction background and experience, which is what was unique about Chris. As we interviewed and got to know Chris, and I'll let him tell his story, is he brings a wealth of knowledge, not only about quality programs, but about our industry. So it became quickly, you know, we kinda pivoted and and moved towards Chris as our our leading candidate. And, and then obviously made a deal and he was in, Louisiana, so he's had to move up to Kansas City to join, PCG and and really we can get into kinda what the initiatives were in his 1st couple months and how we move forward here as we as we go.

But that was that was the tall order is finding Chris and getting him hired and getting him relocated to Kansas City.

Yeah. So, Chris, why don't you, tell us a little bit about your background. And, first of all, where are you from? Where did

you choose? Originally from South Texas. So a town right outside of Corpus Christi called Rockport is where I grew up. It's a little fishing town. Grew up there.

And then once I got out of high school, I had a passion, I've discovered, during high school, I should say, about architecture. So I went to a school then focused on architecture. I did that for 4 years there. And then when I got graduated, worked for a couple different architecture firms, and then I started progressing from there. I thought, you know, I think I'm gonna learn the estimating side also.

So I jumped in the estimating side, worked for a general contractor, and then I went to, from there, I was able to move over to, be a field engineer and a project engineer, then show up to a project manager. And then by that time, I thought, what else could I do? What else could I learn? And then kind of quality just, you know, ended up just dumped in my lap. Someone they needed someone who could figure it out for the organization.

I said, alright. I'll give it a shot. And that's kinda where I started with it. It just I

mean kind of the same kind of the same situation here where they we have quality, but what we're asking you to do is really build the infrastructure Yes. For the same thing there.

Yes. That's right. The only difference is, where I was, it's more of a centralized organization where this one's more decentralized. So there was nothing in place. So I spent the 1st year traveling and trying to figure out all the different offices we had.

What are you doing? What are you doing, if anything? And then trying to and along that process, trying to develop the manuals and the forms. And the challenge I had with that one, I thought was a challenge, and I before I got here, okay, was there was only one product line. Okay?

Here, we have close to 30. So it's it's a much bigger lift, but I got it to where that one product line we had where we were the leaders amongst our peers. Whenever I would travel and see other our competitors' forms and manuals, they looked very similar to to to what I did. So I figured that, you know, being a leader like that of our peers, I wanna do the same thing here. I wanna get to where people were gonna wanna emulate us as well because, you know, whether it's jealousy or the who knows what the reason is, but I'd like for us to do the same thing here.

It's a good goal to have. I wanna ask, like, a really remedial question. What is the difference between quality assurance and, you know, quality control?

Okay. Do you want me to answer it, or do you want to?

Yeah. And, actually, it's not remedial. There's a lot of confusion around it, but, I've been educated, but I'm gonna let him educate everyone else.

Okay. The quality assurance is how do you plan it? How do you want to accomplish the goal? Okay? So for on a project level, what you're gonna do is you're gonna read through the contract or an exhibit and kind of determine what the client deliverables are going to be quality wise.

So you need to come up with a whole plan of it, And then the controlling part is part of the assurance, because you need to figure out on the back end how are you gonna verify that what you planned is gonna meet the client expectations.

So lead and lag?

That's correct. That's correct.

Okay. And so we're focusing on quality assurance first,

I would imagine. So correct. I mean, it it's interesting. We've had to kinda go a little out of order because we were doing both. And really, the onus of that was to to have a solution for Procore.

So we had a lot of subject matter experts and Emily Tucker and, did a great job helping lead this. Adi did as well. But talking to each one of our product line subject matter experts to continue to help build out a uniform inspection program for each one of our product lines that we could put into Procore, so that when Procore went live, that would be our solution. So I didn't particularly I wasn't excited about doing that right at that moment, but I also understood that we needed to get people off of other platforms and getting comfortable with Procore. So we were kinda doing that, and it felt like it was a little out of sequence with, okay, now drop back and and start building a program, that that's gonna be an essential part.

It's a function of it, but we're gonna we gotta build the program at the same time. So it was a little little chaotic. Would you agree with that, Chris? Definitely. But there was a reason, and I when we talked about it, Chris completely understood what we were trying to do.

I was trying to get folks in the habit of going to Procore with all the other project management solutions and that be our platform. But his so when we got him hired, he moved up and he's he's jumped in and and really what was asked of him was to spend the 1st 60 days doing nothing other than listening, observing, learning, our culture, going out and visiting, introducing himself. He did a great job, because what I I thought was really important is sometimes when people say, hey. We're gonna have a new new initiative. Oh, great.

Another thing from PCG that's coming into my branch and is gonna impact us. I didn't want it to be, here comes quality, and we're gonna come a 100 miles an hour and roll right over the top of people. So we really wanted to come alongside folks, learn what they're doing, ask a lot of questions, get comfortable with the idea that we're the quality department's gonna be a resource and not a cop. And so you can't do that if you come in a 100 miles an hour saying, we're gonna do x, y, and z, and we're gonna do it tomorrow. So

So what in that light, what's the the overarching vision? Right? Because the end of the day, it is could be more work for some branches or doing it differently where it might take longer at the beginning. So what's in it for me type of thing? What's in it for the company if we do this well?

I think and I'll let Chris answer to this question too. But I think from, again, a strategic point of view, it's ensuring that our clients to our clients and our owners that we're doing what we say we're gonna be doing. At the end of the day, we wanna sell the best product, the most complete product, the highest quality product, and this, to use the word, assures us that we're doing what we say we're gonna be doing, and we're learning from mistakes. And that's the overarching goal, which means that we have to put a program in. And Chris, over the last several months while getting to know the company and all that, has gone all the way back.

He's he's looked at our our previous policies and our previous quality management systems and all that, and he has helped rewrite a new program, a quality manual, if you will. And this will be the launch. The this is a product that we can give to our clients when they ask, hey. What are you doing in the area of quality? It's very well spelled out, and now it's our governance.

Right? So that we're gonna go back and build the system around what we're telling our clients and our folks this is what we intend to do.

That's right. And just kinda add to it is the manual I use this analogy a lot is is kinda like the apple tree. Okay? The product line manuals are like the individual apples, so they all go back to the apple tree. So our corporate quality manual is also gonna be a way for us to talk to our clients how we're ISO 900,012,015 self compliant.

We're not gonna be certified but self compliant, because one of the things that quality always is challenged with is they don't have, like, you know, like, the safety has OSHA. We don't have anything. So most, companies rely on ISO. So and that's International Organization of Standardization, and they're based out of Switzerland. And they write a quality manual, and they update it every 7 to 8 years.

The next one they're gonna come out, got pushed from 2025 to 2026. So this will give us a great time for a little over a year for us to get our feet wet on how we wanna do 2015.

So what's the difference between you mentioned there we're compliant but not certified.

Okay. So self compliant means that, you know, they're gonna write the manual, and we're gonna and we're going to abide by, let's say, 95% of the things that are in the manual, not 100%. Some things we're just not going to do, like design development. You know, that's an NA box for us.

Right.

So, obviously, we wouldn't be doing that, but everything else, we will do. Okay? So going back to the ISO, the base out of Switzerland, okay, they have consultants around the world. Okay? That probably one here in Kansas too.

Say, hey. We'll make you certified, but they're not affiliated with ISO. They're a stand alone company, and you pay them every 3 years based off your revenue. So it could be $1,000,000 every 3 years, could be several $1,000,000. They all vary on their price, and they're gonna say, yeah.

You're certified. Okay? Check the box. You're great. But back of mind, I'm thinking the clients are not asking us for that.

Right. Okay? Right. So we don't need to do that. That's where we're gonna be self compliant.

Okay?

Well, I think that's the general philosophy that we have about a lot of things. Right? We we want to be compliant, but there's certain things that we don't need to lead the pack in. Right?

Right.

And, yes. And I think

Both and kill, I guess, is what I'm saying.

To his point, it's not what the customers are asking for. Right. Right? But being self compliant, I think our our clients and we first of all, I think we would lead our industry because how many have gone to the effort to standardize. Right?

That's right.

And our clients aren't asking us to invest a $1,000,000 to get there. So it's it is a nice balance.

Yeah. So you've been here for a while. Mhmm. According to Sean, you've been doing nothing. And that was very hard

for the 1st 3 months to sit on my hands, as I say, because I have so many like, I mean, we could be doing this. We could be doing that, but he just wanted me to sit there and just listen. So when we did have our first quality advisory group meeting

Yeah. Talk a little bit about that. So we we didn't have it before.

That we'd actually did.

We did.

Okay. And one of the things that came out was to hire someone like myself to come into it. But what I was gonna what I was referring to is on the meeting, the first one that I went to, it was pretty easy for me, like, the top six things we need to be doing because it doesn't matter if I was on the East Coast, West Coast, down in Texas, okay, Denver, wherever. I kept hearing the same things over and over and over, and I thought, well, those are easy. We need to start doing those things.

Well, and I wanna be fair to Chris. He wasn't doing nothing. But Well,

he told me at the beginning, he's already hit Southwest a list status in those 3 months.

I mean, he was everywhere. You know, he was he was trying to to win those Southwest, points, but that's exactly what I wanted. Go introduce yourself. Be visible. Go out.

See how how we're doing things. Learn from those that are in the in the company, what's working and not working, ask a lot of questions, and be a partner, versus, you know, coming in and and dictating because nobody wants that. No. And and and I will tell you, the folks that have spent time with him, I get nothing but positive feedback because of that approach, and he's got a great personality anyway. He fits our organization very, very well.

So I see nothing but success as we move forward, but that was very intentional, and he he did a great job.

So tell me a little bit about this, quality assurance group. Who who's on it? How frequently do you meet? How

Can I start, and then I'll give it to to Chris? So first of all, we had our very first meeting before we had identified Chris because I what we were looking for was feedback of what what the group wanted, you know. So we got we've got, a variety of folks from all over the country, some operations people in a variety of different business sectors. We also had, again, legal and government compliance and and other people that were a part of that. And we just started asking the questions, what does it look like?

And we started building it out. We had hired a a consulting firm that has been into a variety of our businesses, ICG, who give us, some information and and some expertise. They're more industrial, engineers, and so they're continuous improvement model. So they were successful in helping us at Metro set up our our manufacturing systems and all that. So we invited them to participate in this first meeting.

We also invited Procore because we believed it was a solution. We just had a roundtable. Let's just talk about what this looks like.

What do we want it to yeah.

Yeah. It was very, very productive, and we came out of there with some some solid leads about what we wanted it to look like. And and we can get into that if we need to, but or want to. But then, the second meeting was a transitional meeting where we still had ICG come back for the second meeting and help lead the thought process of, oh, now. Now, we have identified Chris.

Chris participated in that meeting, did a lot of introduction and things like that and his vision, but it it was kind of a transitionary meeting into this is now his his group versus a consultant run group. And so, I'll get I'll let him cast his vision here for everyone, but it it's it's really if you if people wanna know, it's kinda like the SAG is for

safety. Safety.

Yeah. It it brings, you know, where SAG brings the safety group to the operations and said and gives operations a a voice to say this works or this doesn't work or this is this is a need and and all that. The same thing for this group. This is gonna be Chris' opportunity to get people and thought leaders in the company together and go, this is an initiative. Give me some feedback.

Do you like this, or what are you seeing? Where do we need to pivot, and where do we need to go? So, that's the future of, the quag.

Quag? That's right. The quag. Yes. We gotta credit Ryan Lang for that.

I've gotta start off by saying very thankful for all of their participation, all of their help. Can't do it without them because they provide a lot of guidance for me already, like things that they feel like will work, things we try in the past that didn't work. Maybe we need to try a different approach. So that's been very beneficial to me. One of the things that Sean and I also talked about before we had the or I attended my first one is we needed to find out, do they want to be advisory or do they want to be actually helping?

Because that is a big thing for us and I need people to help, not advise. Because right now, I'm a one man show and I need all the help I can get, so which would be a great thing

for us. So Ryan Crist, who is our innovation manager, Ryan Lane is our regional manager, Sean Burnham, which is our corporate sponsor, Maggie Maher is our manager of contract administration. Eric Cox, Promatec quality manager. David Fulton is our quality manager. Taja Campos is our manager of compliance support.

Cindy Crooks, which is our senior product support specialist. Wade Christiansen is our operations manager. Adrian Mendoza, our regional manager. Colin Newbold, our corporate counsel and myself. Okay.

And then we're gonna be rotating people off every, what, every year or 2 years. We haven't figured that part out yet. But as new objectives come, we'd like to bring those SMEs in the organization in and maybe get people that have their parts already done. We, you know, we phase them out.

Okay. So those are those are the participants in Quag. How often do you guys get together?

About once a quarter is what our plan is.

Okay. So what what's your goal for that group? And then just, like, within the first I'm I'm sure you kinda have a timeline, but what what's what's the overarching goals and objectives?

So the first thing I need to do is I need to publish a corporate quality manual for the organization. That's something I'd like to do January, February the latest next year because that's the first thing that we need to do because that kinda sets our foundation of how the organization operates and how we address quality. And then the next thing I'm gonna be doing is attacking, or I shouldn't say attacking, but writing the individual product line manuals that we don't have for. Like, the first one's gonna be glass and glazing. That one's gonna be done in January.

If not, well, January, latest February. And then the next one's going to be the prefab walls, which would be March, and then scaffold will be June of next year. And then from there, I'll kind of see what what we need to do next.

Yeah. You're gonna be busy.

Yes. I will be very busy. Very busy. But that's why I I appreciate everybody's support and help and effort into this because it's gonna take all of us to do this.

Yeah. And we had I mean, some of those manuals and Cindy Crooks had been working on these for a while, and I know that she's been, you know, helping with that too. What what kind of, like, standards are you gonna bring, or is there any type of reporting or anything like that do you see coming up?

Yes. I do. So we're gonna initiate a lot of new things next year, but majority of the workload is gonna be on the corporate quality department, not so much the branch offices or the job sites. And we're gonna slowly release that out. So we we have a 5 year plan of where we want to be, but I have, like, in a like every year, I have another plan of things I want to roll out.

So it just, like I said, next year, my focus is gonna be getting the manuals written and getting us really focused on utilizing Procore so we can start collecting data and kinda analyze where are our trends, you know, where are our potential risk, what are our opportunities for improvement, Where can you know, things that we haven't thought about yet? Where's our next line of quality training we need to do? So one of the things that I also wanted to mention on this too is, you know, maybe within 4 to 5 years, we could possibly have maybe a little over 200 people that are working within quality doing something. Okay? And that's gonna be all the way on the project side as well.

Because one of the things that Sean and I talked about, like the Sphere job we did, okay, is what, over a 100,000,000? Is that right? What was the roughly A 100,000,000. Yeah. Okay.

So that job would easily have a full time project quality coordinator who'd kind of equivalent to a manager, okay, and you'd have a handful of quality control inspectors and maybe a handful of type control people that help with administer all the paperwork just for that one job.

So I see a lot of parallels with safety here

Yes, sir.

And how we've grown safety. And so, yeah, when I heard 200 people, my eyes got big. Well, I don't think it necessarily Yeah. It's not Chris with 200 people

on the whole chart. Salary. Right. Right? It's it's people that are doing a function of quality inspections using Procore, loading information, documenting things, and and understanding their role within a system, which is what he was talking about.

Yep. A lot of the things that we already do, we just we just have pockets. I think we'd all agree we have pockets that do it well. Right. Pockets that maybe we have some exposure on, but it's just consolidating all that into one plan where everybody's kinda rowing the boat the same direction.

And it so, yeah, I don't want anybody to get nervous that we're gonna we're gonna hit your branch with, you know, 6 people that you have to pay for. It's people that are already there. We're just teaching them how to be more effective in their documentation and quality, management. So let

me just kinda add to that as well is another initiative we're gonna do next year is we're going to, hire 4 regional, quality coordinators, one per region. Sean and I have also possibly kicked around idea of maybe having 2 for central just because it's you have 11 offices, and it's hard to get that person to every I mean, every 11 weeks, they'll be somewhere. Right. So we don't know for sure yet how that's going to work. Are they gonna be in the region?

Are they gonna be here in Kansas? We don't know that part yet. We're still working the details out. But eventually, you possibly could have someone within the branch that could do safety and quality or maybe it's an entry level position that they're doing as an engineer. So there's a lot of lot of things we're still working out.

I think, first of all, I think the regional quality person is much like a regional safety.

Yeah.

So, again, I'm going back to the

We already have a blueprint kind of.

Yeah. Why make this stuff up again when we've had success in other groups of of rolling out something that is effective? So, yes, we're pirates. We we're going to steal somebody else's great idea. So we're go we're gonna have the regional folks.

Those are that's gonna allow Chris to have people that are his hands and feet getting some feedback, going to areas that are hot spots or issues, and things like that. But at the same time, in that quality manual that we referred to, we have a series of options, option 1, 2, 3, 4, and and it kinda lays out where a branch might be in its maturity and what that branch might need in terms of need for a full time QA person or somebody that is that's a function, maybe a training person slash QA. But there's gonna be a variety of options that we're we're still trying to work on and define what that looks like.

What I'm hearing, and as somebody that's over development, is for people listening out there, if you have an affinity for this type of work, your antenna should be going because

That's correct.

Some opportunities are out there that, you know, didn't exist before in the organization. And, yeah, Chris's name is on this podcast.

First name dot last

name at PCG. Get in touch with him if if, you're wired this way.

Well, we certainly look to probably do those regional roles with people with experience in our company. I mean, it only makes sense. I also think that we are looking at on top of maybe making it more complicated for ourselves. But, you know, it it would be nice to have those those folks in that regional position, one to be a subject matter expert on this product line and another one to have a complimentary

Right.

Product line. So, again, it's a resource for him. So if we have an issue related to water intrusion, he has his subject matter experts. Hey. Here here's an issue or here's here we wanna dial in our, you know, our education around this body of of problems or exposure, and he has the resources to at his disposal.

Speaking of product lines, how's that for a segue? This isn't new to us. I mean, we were talking a little bit before, but Promotec and the nuclear industry, marine, and doing all that work directly, I'm I'm sure they're pretty dialed in on in this area.

Industrial coatings is another one, and Firestop. So those are the ones that I am not going to mess with or adjust because they are certified by a third party, and what they have is work works. So the old saying goes, you know, don't fix something that's not broken. So I give little guidance or assistance when needed, but those are the ones I'm not I'd like to learn more about, but those are not the ones I need to address first.

Yeah. So if you learn more about it and and exactly how they were managed to be successful here in this culture and in the way it works.

That's correct. That's correct.

And those certifications are important for those product lines, but they also teach us, to your point, maybe, again, another blueprint we we can pirate of what worked and what didn't work. So

You're really into piracy today. I

know. I need a black

I need a little I like a hatcher

in my eye.

Yeah. Exactly.

A parrot on your shoulder. Something you said earlier, Chris, you talked about, through your observations and going through here, kind of 6 things that you were hearing of kind of needs that we have. What what are some of those? Or I'm I'm interested in hearing some of your observations as somebody that's coming into the organization.

Okay. So one of the ones that, that I I remember hearing, like the first one I went to was ACT. And that was when I first heard about, you know, the 1 PCG mentality.

So acoustical the acoustical product line?

Yes. That's correct. That's correct. So with getting new people on board with that, the the biggest challenge was who do they contact? Okay?

Do we even know if these vendors are able to supply us with the product on the East Coast like they can on the West Coast or vice versa or in the central region, Midwest region or even? So I I heard that. I also heard, do they even have the ability to do it, okay, financially? Mhmm. Okay?

The other thing I heard is if we were subcontractors, do we even know what their OSHA log is? Okay? How many recordables do they have? Do we do we really want them on our project? Okay?

Because we're we're not vetting them. I say that. I'm still learning how it works here. Obviously, I don't see we're not doing it. But the things I was hearing was they don't know who to hire, when to hire them, and and the workshops are great.

Sunita does a great job with them. But some people, I guess, are reluctant in wanting to provide that information or they just don't wanna ask. It's like, you know, when you sit in a classroom with 30 people, okay, and the teacher says, okay, let's do the let's do the math problem on the chalkboard. Who has questions? And, of course, over half people have questions, but no one's gonna raise their hand.

Right.

K. It's like a physics class. No one's gonna say, oh, I don't understand it. Okay? But I'll be the 1st to say, I don't understand it.

Yeah. Because physics is hard. But anyway, I heard about that one. The other one I heard about was, you know, how do how do we start doing you know, start addressing these quality questions we start getting that we don't have any answers to? And I said, well, that was the things that I can help with.

I just have to be a conduit. You just gotta let me know. So those are the big ones. The other one kind of going back to is the training. That was another big one for me was these one off trainings that we have, which Ryan Wayne's heading this up for us, for for the quag, is we are not documented or we're using an Excel sheet on someone's laptop.

Okay? So

You mean for who was there to Yes. That's correct.

That's correct. So once again, going into that ACT, we had that wood ceiling that was installed, a company in Germany. So having them come over to train us is great and I'm sure we document it like we're supposed to, but how do people in the East Coast know that they even purchase that? Because we don't advertise that internally.

Yeah. And who's certified to install?

That's correct. So it'd be nice to know who has done it so they have some internal SMEs on that product line because it's so unique that we've never done it before. Yeah. It'd be kinda nice to share more information just like what subcontractors can rely upon or or maybe not subcontractor. Maybe vendors actually have an install arm too that they can help us with a product line.

So with that, I mean, obviously, we're we're talking about not only things to make us better in our processes for our product lines, but talking about an approved vendor list, you know, subcontractor qualifications. And we do that you know, for example, subcontractor qualifications. We do that. We we look at people's finances and make sure they're they can do those things. But we are asking, hey, prove to us that you know how to do a quality job.

We don't really dig a whole lot into their safety experiences and things like that, which is part of what he's talking about. Can we elevate our game so when we have subcontractors that are working for us, we have confidence that they're they're at the same capacity and the same, intent on quality and safety that we are. Sure. So those are the things that we probably gonna do a deeper dive on.

Yeah. So it's clicking. This is okay. This is why Procore is so important too because it's the it's the tracking.

That's right. Well

And all that. Exactly. And and a lot of our offices use labor chart, which is a Procore element. Right?

Right.

So they can put their training in and their experiences in, and and if somebody attends a class, and they can do those certifications, those types of things. But it's not been my experience that every office is doing that.

Well and the thing that Procore will do is we call the same things, regionally. We'll call we'll have different terminology

for it.

And so this will standardize even what's the official name of the certification when we go in and we try to do analytics and all of that.

And that's, you know, we do have one person joining, Chris, here in January, and as an administrator, and I'll let him talk about that. But what one of the functions is mining Procore information and telling telling us what it's letting us know what it's telling us in terms of areas of concentration and and things like that.

Yeah. So you won't be a one man band anymore?

That's right. That's right. So yeah. So Addie joins me in January 3rd, I believe.

So So Addie from legal?

Yes. That's correct. That's correct. So I'm excited about that. I also told her beforehand that she has to have some type of OCD to work in quality.

And she goes, Well, I've got that. Check that box. And I said, Well, that's good because I've had it for a long time myself. So because it's very it's very regimented, kind of the things that we have to do.

Yeah. So did you ask Santa for a clipboard when you were, like, 4 years old? No.

Not at all. Not at all.

What are you most excited about, Chris? Like, I'm sure this walking in, there's a lot of challenges, I'm sure, but what are you the most excited about?

I get to work with a lot of dynamic people. Okay? I get to work with a lot of people that want to think outside the box, who want this company or organization to be better than it was yesterday. That's what I'm most excited about. I've had very, very little questions about why are we doing this, you know, in the negative context, more of we need more of this.

You know, one of the things I was talking with Sean about too, and in every pretty much product line SME I've talked with too about this is, you know, this is y'all's plan. I'm just merely the scribe. I will give suggestions because you need to think of me more as an internal consultant. Right. I will help and kind of guide us where I think we need to be, but y'all have to tell me if this is realistic or not.

If you don't wanna do it, then we won't do it. But I do feel like if we do those things, we're gonna increase our profitability, which at the end of the day is gonna increase everyone's, you know, stock price

when

they do retire. Except for you because you're getting out next year. Right?

Yeah. You've chopped out. You better you better start shipping some hidden facts. So not everything's butterflies. So what potential challenges do you see, out in front of us?

That's a good question. So I would think, having a different mindset. Okay? Because one of the themes from yesterday, from 2 days' workshop that we did, was you need to think differently and we're going to build differently. We need to get to the habit of starting to verify our work more often than we are.

Okay? That's really the biggest challenge of actually utilizing Procore to an advantage and seeing that as an opportunity for us to be successful more so than big brother watching them, because that's not but that's not what quality is.

Again, being progressive, right?

That's right.

And being out proactively inspecting and doing things and having those records versus waiting to a problem

shows up.

We don't wanna be reactive. It's all about proactive, and that's, as he was saying, if you can mine the data, you can start recognizing trends and saying, okay, you know what, maybe this office needs more help on Okay? Or maybe we can get another office saying, y'all do this really well. Can we maybe borrow 2 of your guys for a week to go show them how to do this product? We we've gotta start sharing more information, and I feel like the quality would be a great resource to do that because we're gonna able to help other departments possibly, as I mentioned earlier, about being an internal consultant.

Because that's one of the things that I really do like about quality, because I'm able to help other people be successful. And they might not see it at the start thinking that this is a great procedure to have in place, but I always like to ask the question, what if you decide if we did this? Because if you did this, then this could affect accounting, this could help legal, this could help me, this could help safety. I mean, the the list goes on and on on what we can do with this department.

I'm pretty excited for it. Good luck because I won't be no. I'm kidding. How just as we wrap this up, let's talk about Procore a little bit more and how it this is it's really interwoven. And I know they're getting ready to come out with a new release, which by the time this airs, it might have been in task.

Yeah. But talk to me a little bit more about how how you see it being, interwoven.

Well, first of all, when we had one of our first meetings as a group internally before Chris was here, we It wasn't even before there was a flag. And it was just like, I don't know. We just, you know, again, got some thought leaders together and said, alright, what what do we need to do even to to begin? And it was like, we need a a uniform database system that's tracking our wins and losses, our issues, all that. And so, we went looking for a solution and luckily, we didn't go very far and then we were like, oh, wait a minute.

This is part of the suite that we just bought with Procore. So that was fantastic, and that's why Brad, joined us during our first official QUAG meeting as a Procore representative because he could

Brad whom?

I don't remember his last name he's with Procore,

but he was Procore. That's his last name.

Brad Procore.

Perfect. But he he basically test drove us through their program and and hey. Candidly, it doesn't do everything we wanted to do today. We've gotten some assurances from Procore that they'll continue to put resources to continue to develop it out, so that it's easier and more streamlined to do their checks, you know, with drop downs. If you answer yes, it gives a subsequent drop down and you or if you answer no, it just takes you to the next one.

Just it's more a little a a more efficient, than today's version. They say they're gonna do those things, and we we're gonna help hopefully have some input there. But, nonetheless, we didn't have to go buy another program, another software or something like that. We already had it as part of the suite.

We were already paying for it too.

And we did it was

already paid for. So it it was actually assuring to us that, hey, we have a solution. We just probably gonna need to to support it a little bit, but we have somewhere to go. And, Colin was in that meeting with us, and, he and I were high fiving each other. He was like, okay.

That there's one big win right there. We're we're not trying to figure out what software that we need to use. And so, with that, we just kinda jumped in and was like, okay. That that solves that problem. And I'll let Chris speak to some of the the challenges with the Procore as it's currently written, and what we hope gets solved or it can do for us in the future.

I need to start off and just give a shout out to Ryan Crist. He's done an awesome job leading that charge for the whole company because he has to be helping with safety and quality and the project management side, even in part of the finance, so he he's done great. Some of the challenges we have so far is, you know, trying to get people to use the system, obviously, getting the tablets. And, and then, of course, also the other challenge we have is trying to get everybody on the same page that these are the forms we're using for these product lines. Okay?

But we can always tweak the forms. We're also gonna make the forms to where they're a little more flexible for us too, to where if an office one branch office likes to attend standardized questions, they wanna use that. We have another office that wants to use 15. Well, there's opportunity for you to add more questions to the base list, so that's gonna be a nice helpful tool for us so we're able to piece, you know, multiple branch offices with it and still get the standardized ten questions we wanna ask on every project.

Well, it sounds like and for people that don't aren't as familiar, just Procore as a company, It's they're pretty dynamic. And, you know, the CEO, I don't know if this is their official vision, but he has said he wants to change the construction industry and is committed to it. And so I think they're really progressive. And for those of us that work in the industry, I would just encourage you to go out and read up a little bit on the company. So just beyond the the platform, I think, yeah, they're kind of revolutionizing some things.

So are there any last thoughts when it come what do you want people to know about the quality assurance, and what do you want them to take away from this podcast?

That we're here to help, and we want everyone to be successful, and we need everyone's input for it to be successful is is the thing. And I can't stress enough, this is, you know, everybody's plan. It's not my plan. Okay? And the more input we have, more feedback, the better it's going to be.

Hey. It's gonna be a journey, much like our safety journey was.

Mhmm.

We are deeper and better than we were when we began that, and we'll the same will be here. Right? So what it looks like today as we roll forward, it's gonna look different, to his point earlier 5 years from now. And it's gonna be a journey, and and we're gonna run that long marathon. It's gonna be fun.

Only thing I think we already mentioned this is, one of our biggest objectives is gonna be just getting the message out that you actually have a quality department now that you can rely on for help. I think that's one of our another one of our biggest challenges. Okay? It's getting the message out.

We're open for business. Right?

That's right. That's right. I think

you could put that at the end. Hey. We're open for business. And seriously, as things come up or questions come up or you can certainly reach out and say, hey. Is this something that that you can help us with?

Yeah.

K. Well, thank you. And, officially welcome to the company. Thank you. Again, we're glad you're here.

Thank you. Glad I'm glad to be here.