Derek Cheung - Mattamy Homes Canada

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

Derek Cheung, leading the charge at Mattamy Homes Canada, is transforming the construction industry through innovative use of digital technology. His focus on Building Information Management (BIM) is not just about 3D models, but about using those models to improve the construction process and minimize issues before they arise. With a background in engineering and business, Derek's approach is rooted in problem solving and efficiency. He learns from past industry failures to ensure success in his mission to modernize home building.

Highlights

Derek Cheung is revolutionizing the construction industry with digital tech! 🚀
Building Information Management (BIM) is key for efficient home construction. 🏠
Mattamy Homes builds approximately 4,000 homes a year in Canada. 🇨🇦
Digital models can reduce construction clashes and improve quality! 🔧
Derek's journey from engineering to construction innovation is inspiring. 👷‍♂️

Key Takeaways

Derek Cheung is leading an innovative program at Mattamy Homes Canada, utilizing Building Information Management (BIM) to enhance construction processes. 💡
The goal of BIM is not just 3D modeling but effective information management to minimize construction issues before they start. 📊
Derek brings unique insights from his engineering and business background, striving to make construction more efficient and adaptable to future worker shortages. 🔧
The emphasis on digital technology aims to transform traditional methods, making construction smarter and more adaptable. 🎯
Understanding industry failures like Katerra's provides valuable lessons in balancing innovation with practical application. 📚

Overview

Derek Cheung is making waves in the construction industry with his ground-breaking work at Mattamy Homes Canada. With a strong background in engineering and business from the University of Waterloo and Ivy Business School, Derek is spearheading the use of Building Information Management (BIM) to push the boundaries of traditional construction practices. His innovative approach aims to improve efficiency, reduce material waste, and enhance the overall quality of their 4,000 homes built across Canada each year.

Harnessing the power of digital technology, Derek's team focuses on more than just 3D modeling. They are revolutionizing the information management process, allowing for smarter and seamless construction practices. This shift could potentially solve existing issues in the industry, such as clash detection and resource management, long before they become on-site problems. The goal is to create smarter, tech-savvy homes while also preparing for possible future worker shortages by simplifying construction processes.

Reflecting on industry lessons like the downfall of Katerra, Derek believes in a careful balance of innovation and practicality. The use of technology in home building is poised to drastically change the landscape, but it's crucial to ensure the sync between all parties involved. His passion for problem-solving and delivering value makes Derek Cheung a pivotal figure in the evolution of modern construction methods.

Chapters

00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Project Involvement In this chapter, Derek is thanked for sharing his time and insights in an interview. The conversation highlights the importance of his work and aims to provide value to viewers. The discussion begins with a question about Derek's involvement in a particular project.
00:30 - 02:30: Description of the Project and Its Impact This chapter provides an overview of a significant project applying digital technologies to the construction industry. The speaker begins by mentioning the scale of the company they work for, indicating that what they are involved in is not just a single project but rather a collection or series of projects. These projects collectively aim to enhance the construction sector, hinting at a broad and potentially substantial impact.
02:30 - 07:00: Explanation of BIM Technology The chapter titled 'Explanation of BIM Technology' delves into the differences between Building Information Modeling and Building Information Management. The speaker expresses a preference for the term Building Information Management, emphasizing its focus on extracting and utilizing model information to improve construction processes. Rather than concentrating solely on the modeling aspect, the chapter underscores the importance of using the model data downstream to enhance construction efficiency and effectiveness.
09:00 - 16:00: Derek's Career Background Derek currently works for Madame Homes Canada, focusing on operations within Canada, although the company also has a US sister company. Currently, Madame Homes Canada's annual production is approximately 4,000 homes.
17:00 - 22:00: Learning from Katerra's Attempt The chapter discusses the potential impact of launching a specific program across Madame Holmes's production and all product lines, focusing on the Canadian construction industry. It highlights the significant influence the program could have on the industry, particularly in terms of technology adoption.
24:00 - 29:00: Skills Needed for the Project The chapter 'Skills Needed for the Project' discusses the concept of BIM (Building Information Modeling), described as virtual construction. It highlights the traditional methods of home building and production, indicating a shift or comparison between old and new practices. BIM represents a modern approach to construction, aiming to improve the production process and level of influence in the industry.
29:30 - 35:30: Support for Project Implementation The chapter discusses the evolution from 2D CAD drawing to digital innovations in project implementation. It highlights the ease of transferability and modification of digital technology over traditional drafting processes. It acknowledges the continued relevance of CAD as a significant innovation in facilitating project support and implementation.
36:30 - 44:30: Standardizing Construction Activity The chapter discusses the standardization of construction activities over the past century, emphasizing the evolution from traditional drafting tools to Building Information Modeling (BIM), which serves as an information management tool in construction. The importance of BIM in modernizing and optimizing construction processes is highlighted.
45:00 - 51:00: Impact of Physical Environment on the Project The chapter discusses the significance of Building Information Modeling (BIM) beyond mere 3D drafting. It emphasizes BIM as a technology-enabled process aimed at virtually constructing homes during or at the completion of the design phase, ensuring detailed planning before the actual construction begins.
52:00 - 59:00: Addressing Worker Shortage with the Project The chapter discusses strategies to address worker shortages through a project that involves detailed planning and coordination. It highlights the use of architectural designs and 3D models to manage and troubleshoot construction materials and procedures more effectively. This approach allows for precise material quantity takeoffs and enhanced placement accuracy, showcasing how technology and design can mitigate workforce deficits.
56:00 - 59:00: Advice for Engineers The chapter discusses the concept of 'smart components' in engineering models, which are components that inherently contain metadata about themselves. For instance, when modeling, a two by four piece should automatically recognize itself as such within the model space, allowing for efficient querying. This smart modeling facilitates better resource tracking and management, as components can report their details and quantities accurately. Although the speaker mentions potentially using the wrong example, they pivot towards discussing walls, indicating a broader application of these modeling principles.

Derek Cheung - Mattamy Homes Canada Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 so derek thank you uh very much for taking the time to talk to me for the people who are going to be watching this i'm sure it's going to be of great value to them the work you've been doing is i think very interesting uh but i thought i'd start by just uh asking you about the project that you've been involved in so uh you've been this
00:30 - 01:00 is a very interesting project applying digital technologies in the construction industry and i thought i'd ask you just to describe the project and the impact that it's intended to have uh on the industry sounds good so um it would be a little bit uh i'd be remiss not to talk about the scale of the company i work for uh before diving into i wouldn't even necessarily call this a project it's a group of projects so to speak so more of
01:00 - 01:30 a program but the program that i'm running is uh essentially bim so building information either modeling or management depending on who you're talking to or about it i defer to the terminology of building information management because really that's the core of what we're trying to do as opposed to doing the modeling we want to extract and use the information out of the model on the downstream um to essentially do construction better
01:30 - 02:00 now the company i work for is madame homes canada and we do have our us sister company as well but my focus is on the canadian side and i would um i would say that our yearly production of homes right now across canada sits at around 4 000 homes a year give or take so um the size of our production is
02:00 - 02:30 certainly nothing to be scoffed at and in that sense uh the project that or the program that we are running right now uh if it were to be launched across all of our product lines and uh all of madame holmes's production in canada there will be a sizable impact on the canadian construction industry as a whole and the use of technology within the industry simply simply just by our
02:30 - 03:00 production and level of influence excellent and and so can you talk about what the project is yeah so um bim itself is essentially virtual construction so what we want to be able to do is in the past and this is probably a good way to talk about it in the past or even right now the traditional method of uh home building production has been
03:00 - 03:30 very much 2d cad drawing based and that's you know that's absolutely fine to be very frank with you that process and and even cad as an innovation on top of you know like drafting boards in the past is from the you know use of digital technology and you the ease of transferability and modification if you make a line drawing wrong and so on so forth but the entire process is still
03:30 - 04:00 largely similar or practically the same uh over the past however long it's been since we started you know using drafting tools so i would say probably a hundred years or perhaps more now um bim is not the same thing and i i think like my earlier clarification with bim being an information management tool uh hopefully sort of sets the stage for for this part of the conversation because um using
04:00 - 04:30 bim it's not just drafting in 3d and i think that's very important clarification to throw out in front because this uh technology enable process which is what i like to call it what it strives to do is um digitally construct the homes that we want to build while we're doing the design or as we're finishing up the design so prior to construction phase the home should be
04:30 - 05:00 not only designed from an architectural perspective but also coordinated for clashes have materials modeled out such that we can grab information for material quantity takeoffs and uh be able to use it for specific construction troubleshooting for where materials need to be placed across a 3d model so the 3d model itself
05:00 - 05:30 is not just a geometry the individual components in there we'll call them smart components as in if you model in a by four that two by four in the model space will know that it's a two by four and if you query and ask the model to um spit out the information in theory it should be able to spit out that uh that amount of information to tell you how many two by fours are in there and perhaps perhaps i'm using the wrong example let's call let's talk about walls or
05:30 - 06:00 windows or um you know square square footage area of brick obviously the modeling detail will dictate uh how much information you can draw out of the model and that certainly is something that we're working towards and uh to be very frank modeling in individual studs is not actually something that we tend to do uh in current uh in current day and time uh although we are starting to try to play
06:00 - 06:30 with that uh we don't know if that's entirely a necessity for this to work however i think i'm diving a little bit too deeply into the uh the weeds there the the overall idea of what we're trying to launch is have a model that before we go to site and this is how in the traditional building method it happens and and it's not like it's something that works um the way we do it is we do the design we work
06:30 - 07:00 everything out as much as possible in the 2d in the 2d world and you can imagine if you draw a engineered floor drawing then you have the uh the layout of the home where flooring goes and where the walls are then you have hvac drawings um then you perhaps have some markups on where plumbing stacks might show up and then you try to overlay all of them on a 2d in a 2d world even in cat it becomes a a
07:00 - 07:30 very big jumble of information right so you can use that to do as much coordination and clash clash resolution as you can before going to site but you're still going to miss something invariably and the idea is that if you have all that in 3d space you can coordinate that long before you build but in the traditional world what would happen is we would go to construction and we would build the first home as we're building it our construction teams and our trades work together to
07:30 - 08:00 resolve any issues that we find any clashes that we might have missed and um you know and once we resolve that that's how we refine number one our construction method number two our material uh material quantity counts and um as the project progresses every house gets better and better refined and that is typically how we do um construction and right now the the method that we're proposing
08:00 - 08:30 right now um will in a way eliminate that uh initial level of i guess let's call it discovery or resolution by doing that in a digital environment so uh for the way person like me uh i would think of construction being uh guided by blueprints or
08:30 - 09:00 drawings that come from a cad system what you're describing is a super super type drawing uh in 3d that allows all what's more information to be considered and but which also is smart to the extent that it can understand relationships between the various aspects of the construction and deal with the consequences of those relationships which in the past
09:00 - 09:30 uh often or usually wasn't done until under construction and people were having to solve problems at much higher cost probably and potentially with negative consequences for the final uh final house or whatever you're building so uh so this is a very important thing that you're doing in order to make house building uh and other construction
09:30 - 10:00 presumably uh better than it is today now you are managing this activity but your previous job wasn't in construction that your uh and what you're doing with the technologies is to some extent radical so how did your career uh before construction influence your uh ability to do what you're doing today
10:00 - 10:30 um yeah so i wouldn't say unt i was entirely outside of the realm of construction uh in my past life so uh just as a brief explanation i uh after i graduated from mechanical engineering in uh in undergrad at the university of waterloo i did work in engineering for a couple of months before i uh i went and worked in a logistics firm for a couple of years where i was
10:30 - 11:00 managing supply chain work and then um from from a very business-based perspective and i think that's important because of uh it sort of informed my career choice later on then i went back into the engineering world a couple of years later and that world was uh epcn so engineering procurement and construction management and that's the piece where there's still some uh tangible relationship to construction
11:00 - 11:30 but it's more from a management perspective as opposed to you know being closer to the actual finished product and especially in these in these firms being known as consultancy firms most of our design work and engineering work was done remotely and that information was then transferred to site to to be completed and the site the types of sites that we were working on were resource projects so um you think of mines uh refineries
11:30 - 12:00 processing plants of all sorts and my very specific role then was as a piping engineer so a lot of what i dealt with was stress calculations of piping systems um we did process and power piping so as bb 31 3 and as vp 31.1 respectively the associated design and material standards that would go along with those pipes uh to be specific so piping specifications
12:00 - 12:30 essentially so though like designing and putting that together was essentially my rule uh now in that world uh to relate to how um i got interested in bim in my career now in the world that i came from previously in epcn uh i don't think they called it exactly bim because most of this was internal to the company that i was working at at the consulting firm uh a lot of term terminologies get thrown around but i always thought of it as
12:30 - 13:00 smart 3d where we designed designed out a plant uh the whole plant within a 3d environment and you know when i was doing engineering procurement i'd be able to click a couple of buttons and it would spit out a um an excel file essentially for me to use as the build materials or form the basis of my build materials and you know conduct bid evaluations and so forth so the world of what we're defining bim as was practically natural for me because i
13:00 - 13:30 lived in this engineering consultancy world for so long now um after a couple of years in in a technical position i realized at least for me that and this had a lot to do with my time in um in business in the logistics company that that i mentioned earlier on in my career uh i realized that i i wanted to make more impact and make more decisions from a business perspective because i felt that the potential impact and the
13:30 - 14:00 positive impact that i could make from that from that seat and from that lens would be would be higher at least from my personal perspective than i could have done as a pure technical engineer so that was when i decided to go back and do an mba and so i went to ivy business school for that once i came out i went into a leadership development program that miami homes canada happened to have hosted at the time
14:00 - 14:30 and the rest is history while i was digging around or like learning from all the different rotations that i was in i i number one i realized that the not the the entire construction industry the way that we you know perform construction isn't necessarily equal and especially in low rise home building because the and and here's the qualified why there's the difference in my past life doing a refinery i don't know
14:30 - 15:00 thousands of kilometers away from where you know where my office is um you need that high level of accuracy we're also designing you know pipes that are sometimes 24 or or larger inches in diameter or sometimes up to a thousand fahrenheit of uh you know temperatures so it's you know high pressure high high temperature processes that can get pretty dangerous so you like having a high level of accuracy and
15:00 - 15:30 uh design accuracy and you know as an engineer obviously that was that was sort of the state of affairs that you need to be at however and not taking anything away from home building and residential construction but the level of tolerances and standards for a you know ontario building code uh complete at home uh and which we
15:30 - 16:00 actually anatomy we exceed uh where we build typically to energy star if uh if anything but still it's not to the same level as uh you know when you do as maybe 31 3 process piping so it's it's two it's two different worlds uh but what i realized uh and since the days of my my engineering life it's uh i understand that the technology has gone a lot more mature and it's also a lot more accessible at
16:00 - 16:30 different tiers and different levels of industry so it'll no longer cost you know tens hundreds or tens of hundreds or that thousands of dollars to procure software in order to perform all of this um so that was where i realized that there would be an opportunity for um this type of work and that's how i guess my past life has really
16:30 - 17:00 influenced my decision to head down this path and manage at least what i feel to be a very worthwhile endeavor in this industry but which it seems to be the uh the description that you gave me earlier of what the project was going to do is certainly a fundamental change to the way that things were done in the past you've mentioned to me before that an attempt was made
17:00 - 17:30 to introduce digital technologies in construction uh that was unsuccessful so can you tell me about that attempt and uh perhaps what you learned from it so uh this wasn't a this was an anatomy or a my past life attempt in in that sense but it was certainly something that i kept a very very close eye on because this also partially influenced my enthusiasm at the time for diving down this path of
17:30 - 18:00 bit um it's it's on a company called katera k-a-t-e-r-r-a uh that you may or may not have heard of but essentially the long story short is in 2018 which is approximately when i started my role at matt me homes uh this company was founded i think it was also founded in 2018 it might have been a little bit earlier but somewhere along those though like that timeline uh and when i read up about this this
18:00 - 18:30 company i was extremely impressed because they they took the philosophy of um mass production um you know the production line and a lot of um tech based knowledge so um and and you know their funding came from um softbank i believe uh they had a ceo who had been in the um yeah been through the the ringer in
18:30 - 19:00 silicon valley i believe he might have been a previous um executive at tesla and um you know like all in all it just sounded like an extremely promising firm that was out to disrupt the residential home building industry uh what what i did see and uh like most of this is obviously anecdotal and you know based on information that i found or had read in the news or i kept track of on the internet but
19:00 - 19:30 um you know this extremely promising firm um took a lot of steps like i and i feel like as a as a post-mortem let's call it when i when i read about this firm uh it has unfortunately failed uh i think it was over this past summer so perhaps like may or june of uh 2021 where they as where they close their doors and so as a postmortem reading up on you know what might have
19:30 - 20:00 caused the failure or where where they had invested what moves they had made um what i read was in large part was they were aggressively vertically integrating they they thought that as long as they can dominate the whole supply chain and the value chain that um change let's call it this way that change would be simple and easy um and i they found out the extremely hard way that it is not necessarily the case and i think
20:00 - 20:30 the the number one reason is that a house is not a car it's also not an iphone it's also not a what whatever a lot of people might think of from whenever they think of mass production it's a consumer consumer electronic items or you know a vehicle right and you know running a home uh the method of production of a home entirely through a production
20:30 - 21:00 productionized basis isn't uh you know without actually consulting and understanding how the current industry works makes for a very very difficult case of trying to change this industry there's a and at least from my perspective there's um there's a reason why over this period of time uh let's say and i i've seen a couple of memes in the past where they showcase uh you know 19
21:00 - 21:30 1900's vehicle production versus 2000's vehicle production and you see you know a bunch of folks on is on an assembly line like standing right next to each other doing doing car in 2000 uh you know it's all robots in a uh in an automated production line whereas the home building 1900s and 2000s looks largely the same and
21:30 - 22:00 so i believe that there's a reason and a somewhat good reason for that is that the uh the current level of technology that's used to build a home uh has been sufficient based on the um based on the current level of production and the speed of production and the available um talent let's call it um you know our skill traits and so that's what makes this change or any change in this industry
22:00 - 22:30 um a somewhat difficult proposition um this the the reason i i talk about this and like one of the biggest learnings about katera's failure is that i take i take it to heart that i'm not trying i'm not saying and i never will say that the current construction method of lorax homes is uh you know doesn't work it obviously works right we've been doing it for
22:30 - 23:00 literally hundreds a hundred a hundred years so you know the what i do want to be able to do is to make the home building experience for our trades for our builders for everybody involved a more efficient um experience a a better um you know a more a more structured experience and where we can continually improve
23:00 - 23:30 until the point and perhaps someday we will get to uh largely automated you know panel production and actually in in some cases we're already there um but it's not a flick of a switch and i think that i think that mentality is what caused uh katera's downfall at least from my perspective and that brings us nicely will you describe uh that construction
23:30 - 24:00 is not uh something that is mass production and that perhaps makes my next question especially relevant uh your work in leading the project you're leading now uh does apply your engineering skills but of course it also uh requires others so i was keen to ask you to talk about the range of skills that were needed to successfully manage your project
24:00 - 24:30 of course um so i would say that my engineering skills did form a very strong foundation of um my capability to take on uh the challenges of of this project and mind you there there will continue to be challenges as as we go down this path but i think uh a strong a strong training in the world
24:30 - 25:00 of engineering did and will continue to pay dividends to um you know my capability to continue to problem solve because at the end of the day there has never been and you know very smart people like the folks at katera have tried to come in and you know do something different and deliver better you know better quality homes and and you know using technology and they have failed so
25:00 - 25:30 i would say that uh and this is quoting one of my mentors at anatomy she told me once that technical colleges um they tend to teach you how to do but university uh teaches you how to think and i think that that is extremely extremely true and particularly with engineering right as an engineer we're taught we're taught and repeatedly hammered the scientific process into our minds right
25:30 - 26:00 everything that we do every analysis every problem that we that we take on our focus is on identifying the the problem with the list of givens so what are we actually trying to solve uh what are our constraints right what what are the physical limitations what are the financial limitations what are the you know whatever else is that might may or may not hold us back and also here's a big one to list our assumptions
26:00 - 26:30 right because we we have to operate and there there will always be unknown unknowns uh and you can never really tell all of it so you just have to in some cases make an assumption and run with it and then what you next do is you establish a hypothesis for whether you can solve it you perform your tests on the hypothesis you analyze what your results are and you communicate the outcomes so i'm i'm describing by and large a scientific process but if you think about it this process isn't very
26:30 - 27:00 different from when you let's say try to run a pilot project which i'll be honest is uh a large part of what uh i've been trying to do uh within madami in order to get this up and running clearly walking in and you know if i walked in and tried to talk my ceo into giving me all 4 000 homes to run a unproven methodology of uh you know of 3d modeling of homes and
27:00 - 27:30 so on so forth the first thing he would do is probably kick me out of his door next thing he would do is probably fire me but and put it this way nor would i want to because doing something like that i can't do it alone i need a i need a team of technology partners and uh capable consultants that are willing to back the project we need architects that are willing to use the the information that comes out of the
27:30 - 28:00 system there's there's a whole ecosystem full of uh very very smart folks that uh need to really come together in order for this to work the way we want it to work uh and that both that both i guess energizes me and uh sometimes it is it is quite daunting in the sense that you have to link up um different i guess different personalities different uh
28:00 - 28:30 aligning folks with different interests uh in order to get this work done um and i think that takes me to the other piece of the skill set that is necessary which is people skills um and i'll i say people skills instead of using the word soft skills because i don't think there's anything soft about being able to you know deal with people and you know deal with competing personalities and so on so forth but however having said that perhaps the
28:30 - 29:00 reason why it's called soft skills is because it's something that's very hard to pinpoint and very hard to train as it's somewhat elusive on what is the exact right methodology to to go about doing certain things um so in a lot of those cases i guess i will i will call this a skill because i also know that this is something that is not common despite its name but it i would say the soft skills portion
29:00 - 29:30 of it has a lot to do with common sense which again is not common uh but yeah that i think that would hopefully round off the question of the key skills needed to manage such a program how did you get support for the project implementation was the order that you implemented the project uh influenced by this um in this case i think uh because of the
29:30 - 30:00 unique situation of how i started on this there were some implications of how the uh the project had flowed uh so our program i should say uh because what happened was i joined about a year and a half into the start of the bim program um at anatomy like i i think i joined matami itself at about the half year one year mark uh but i really
30:00 - 30:30 took on the manage the managing role of this program uh one and a half to two years into into it and uh because of that um the the person who was previously running this which is my now my now boss uh the vp of architecture had already established some projects and was already moving like there were already moving parts of how how this was all coming together within the organization so some of the existing pilots were
30:30 - 31:00 inherited uh other pieces of it were were very specifically and cautiously put together and launched uh the idea was always that and this is this might actually be interesting for those who are listening to it to understand because in a lot of organizations and my mind included we are innovative i and i believe this
31:00 - 31:30 but having said that it's very hard to understand how to innovate and especially for me i was somewhat new to the organization and that but honestly the fact that i was there which was through a leadership development program in and of itself was a was an innovation because um madame at that time was willing to take a chance on someone that was outside of the industry myself to come in and try to do things differently so therefore i felt like i hadn't the onus
31:30 - 32:00 was on me to um to push to push some boundaries let's just say um and so therefore i i chose to dive in to to this area but i dove in cautiously because number one is uh is a question of funding so um i will quote one of one of my professors again from from my waterloo days uh my mechanical design professor who
32:00 - 32:30 at the start of my final year i think it was my 4b term my very last term at waterloo he walked into our classroom and asked us if i told you to design a rocket could you and the whole class remained silent for a cup of her for a minute or two but you know when none of us answered him he said well i asked you this rhetorically because you could now the the reason you could is if there were no absolutely no constraints
32:30 - 33:00 um and so if you didn't have to worry about money if you didn't have to worry about timelines if you didn't have to worry about throwing resources at it can you do it absolutely yes every single one of us at that point in time had enough background engineering knowledge and enough uh and enough capability to build upon that knowledge and grab resources and read um existing documentation of how rockets
33:00 - 33:30 were built to do so but oftentimes we are limited and actually not oftentimes every every time that we we go about doing something in the real world we will always be limited by financial constraints by uh resource constraints whether monetary or human resources and and and and there's plenty of there's plenty of those cases and this is where the the whole concept of like the science the
33:30 - 34:00 scientific method of problem solving really does come about because you have to list your constraints to remember now our constraints and i think for any upshoot of innovation will always be financial and buy-in so from my perspective also from my boss's perspective at the time uh the best way to launch is through small pilot projects that we can get that we can get together
34:00 - 34:30 and um roll them into uh different scenarios to test out if this particular method works and on top of that we're also testing whether our consultants are able to support what it is that we want to do we're testing whether our internal processes are able to accommodate and adjust to the delivery of these new these new types of goods
34:30 - 35:00 and we're also evaluating whether the outputs are um are desirable or how or the level of desirability of these outputs which are i believe all very important conversations and um the reason in a way and a lot of people might ask uh and perhaps especially folks like katera they would ask why are you going so slowly and cautiously well uh i think another analogy comes into play
35:00 - 35:30 here which is the idea of the pandora's box because it's very easy to get excited about available technology and then over promise and under deliver and that is that would be the scenario of the pandora's box right if we've tested and while it's half baked or maybe we tested three homes out of 4 000 homes and those three homes worked out perfectly uh we might say like super excitedly to the world then
35:30 - 36:00 all right we figured out this problem that is bim and uh you know 3d technology and we're ready to roll it out to the entire organization the moment that button is pressed and pandora's box opens you can't just take it back and at that point if it all comes tumbling down um that that the the the amount of damage that it can do for uh such a promising program if it did not work at that point uh could be monumental so
36:00 - 36:30 if there was um you know if if there was any rationale of why to go slow and steady i would say that would be it thank you and in what you're doing you're standardizing uh construction activity uh to an extent could you talk about how that was received by the construction workers and and how you're managing that
36:30 - 37:00 um so a funny story on that one and it partially has to do with what i said about the pandora's box because despite being going small scale uh those and having the the foresight essentially to see that this could be a possibility of happening it still ended up happening a little bit for us so um on because bim is uh it's standardized construction activity it's supposed to deliver um information management
37:00 - 37:30 capabilities and so on and so forth so it's not just it's not a one-trick pony so to say but on the standardization of construction activity uh on that side of things uh what happened was this uh we we worked with the construction team to define and one particular construction team as i said pilot project went small and we defined uh a set of outputs that we would really like to see um nor and to to qualify
37:30 - 38:00 this normally construction is done in our world using um using working drawings so issued for construction drawing sets uh from the architect and those drawings are absolutely are absolutely fine we've been building with that that level of information for years and years and years um however there's um there's a lot of information on those drawings and so uh because if you think about it that
38:00 - 38:30 set of drawings is used by a framer in the same way it is used by mason in the same way as used by a concrete forming crew in the same way it's used by a uh exterior trim contractor and because of that there's if you think about each of the each of the trades obviously there's some trades that might be able to overlap in their usage but there's some critical trades that would have a let's call it not necessarily a tough
38:30 - 39:00 time but that's a lot of information to parse through before they go into construction and what happens normally is we send these drawings out to the foreman and those four men go in and they mark they mark up as necessary cross out what you don't need maybe sometimes some highlighters get popped out sometimes some uh you know correction tape or whatever you might get popped out scissors and glue sometimes get popped out as well when you're combining and gluing together uh options
39:00 - 39:30 and so on so forth and what we wanted to do in in managing that or in supporting that was to make things more simple which is all within the capability of this many trick pony let's call it um what what we did was we created a um a specialty drawing set that we've deemed the framing cut sheets uh so ultimately that is for the specific purposes of the
39:30 - 40:00 carpenters who are you know who will go in the frame the house um that way they don't need to calculate or back calculate the measurements for drywall thickness they don't like measurements are stuck to stud as opposed from the exterior of a wall which would be the edge of a stud to another edge of the stud plus drywall right um it it essentially gives data and information that uh
40:00 - 40:30 was never was never available before because we never modeled down to that detail um and it you know it was something that um we believe and to this day we still believe this to be true we'll give an edge to our framers as they as they go through and produce the homes and the other thing is that there's a it creates a level of a level of expectation right if in
40:30 - 41:00 previous in the previous world uh you know a plumber comes in and does something and then an hvac uh contractor comes in and can't run his duct where he was expecting to well he runs he'll have to run the duct around it and that creates scenarios where uh you have undesirable uh circumstances that you have to you have to go in and what we call back frame uh but essentially we have to
41:00 - 41:30 create a box around some of these uh these cases in order to accommodate for it and you know as time goes on and like one box out may cost you know a couple dollars in one house but when you multiply that across 4 000 that ends up being a fair number so um long story short is that that doc that documentation plus the uh what we what we nor actually normally do but is done in-house by our
41:30 - 42:00 uh super superintendents our foundation builder specifically which is marking up a foundation cut sheet so that specific set is for the foundation crews um what we've done with this is you know we put it together and we we've handed it off to our trades to do testing uh and in the sense of you know them seeing it
42:00 - 42:30 and thinking that it's useful and it's great that's that worked out extremely well what did not work out well was um because it wasn't well refined enough and our outputs had some mistakes on it uh at the end of the day and that caused a loss of trust which is again obviously undesirable for the same reasons that i talked about when we were talking about pandora's box but um
42:30 - 43:00 overall the uh the contr our construction team sees the value in having this their ask from us is actually quite simple is that if we can provide something that makes their life easier and their work more efficient they will lap it up and they will use it absolutely the moment that it creates additional work additional confusion um and uh any and and forces any setbacks
43:00 - 43:30 to our production schedule that's when it will have a very negative impact and won't allow us to continue down the path and this is again that's why we highlighted uh katera earlier on i think understanding that piece and understanding the absolute like how absolute that declaration is is extremely important if anybody wants to come in and do
43:30 - 44:00 innovative work in uh in this industry because you can't stop this well-oiled machine and this this well-oiled machine might not be uh you know put put it this way it's uh if you think of uh if you think of our giant uh 18-wheeler truck and that those engines well they're not they might not be precise machined uh ferrari engines but if you want to
44:00 - 44:30 keep them running they're very powerful they can tow a heck of a lot and they will keep running and running and running with regular maintenance and that's what i believe the traditional control construction process uh is um and so if you bring in an innovation and you want to do something different it better be good and it's better it better knock everybody's socks off and that is something which is you know not obviously not just the case
44:30 - 45:00 in construction but would apply elsewhere you know you want the technology has to work and the people who are going to be using it uh need to uh gain a benefit from or see a value in the uh in the change that you're trying to make i'm also interested in how the physical environment influenced the project uh construction sites can be harsh especially at the time of year we're recording this in the winter oh yes so
45:00 - 45:30 how did that affect what you did um so that always in my mind it always factors and this is uh this is interesting too uh because the the idea of creating the cut sheets that i was just talking about these are 2d printouts uh that are essentially simpler versions or more more information more direct information uh to our site folks than they would get
45:30 - 46:00 in a normal working drawing set but if you think if you think about it philosophically what you're what we're doing is we're taking a 3d model and we're still extracting 2d information in order to use it on site a lot of um and mind you this was what what used to happen in the old days when we were when i was doing engineering uh in the epcm firms as well but um the difference uh is that well nowadays a lot of people they ask me they ask me well what has
46:00 - 46:30 been what are you trying to provide well the answer is yes it is partially the 3d model but there's an additional step to take that 3d model information and get it into a 2d print out and that is what we're actually delivering and so when i talk about a user experience which sounds very tech like and uh you know almost non-construction style it is very true right because
46:30 - 47:00 uh it is a tech based um generation of an output and that output is getting used on site and when you uh like when you alluded to the physical environment uh i will give you a uh a little bit of an example uh of how it you know how how things looked like to me the last time i was on site so i was walking down i was walking down the site uh this was last winter or i think last last year or this year i
47:00 - 47:30 guess earlier in january end of january 2021. i was walking the site uh and what i saw was on on the rafters there was a framer who was there to uh i believe there was some damage that might have been that might that there might have been for a uh for one of the trusses uh at the very top and he was there to mend it uh but it was it was extremely impressive because
47:30 - 48:00 my hands were frozen but i was looking up and i could see his breath like hit him breathing out and all the you know all the all the fog or whatever you want to call that as he was working and what he was doing was he was expertly fitting a piece in between where where it had broken off and i think he probably he probably cut it exactly to length uh and like it looked perfect it was it was amazing craftsmanship but
48:00 - 48:30 he was doing this in negative 20ish celsius weather plus wind chill it might have been negative 30 or 40. um and so when i think i always think uh when when we do um our bim outputs to that gentleman that i saw up up there because it's under those conditions that they're reading this document so if there's anything that is unclear or if there's anything that is
48:30 - 49:00 um you know not uh not matching what their expectation is and i'll call those errors right uh what if there's anything that looks suspicious or uh if they had the working drawing set and they compared it to this it didn't match well they would have a really really hard time uh trusting that output and so that's what i mean when i think i want to talk about the user experience
49:00 - 49:30 because when you when you think in their shoes about what they're going through and how and what conditions they're using the information uh that you're providing as a whether it's whether it's innovative technology or even if you're just drafting a regular old working drawing as a as an architect that that goes a long way with providing the right solution i believe uh and i i always keep that mindset close uh you
49:30 - 50:00 know close to my heart because i think at the end of the day um what we can accomplish largely has to do with our trades and the success of our site teams because they're the ones who are right out there in the trenches literally um you know putting our putting the homes that we produce together and getting them into the the hands of our uh our customers and our and our homeowners and
50:00 - 50:30 that's that's where the rubber meets the road and if we are to be successful in doing any sort of endeavor including and pro probably specifically if we're doing innovation those folks need to be supported and their needs need to be met we're experiencing a shortage of workers at the moment uh does the project help deal with that well that's certainly the hope peter um when when i when i think about
50:30 - 51:00 uh what we what we can use to bring to the table and that includes the 3d model that i was talking about as well right so in in the past if you got a worker to look at uh and even right now right uh as as the shortage is happening but still we have a lot of experienced workers uh that are that are on site um and it always blows my mind because you give them a an architectural drawing which which gives them the front view of the side views
51:00 - 51:30 the top view uh like like and plan views of uh of of our designs they have it in their head and they uh i think someone described it to me as if they are they're seeing uh sort of like the the marvel world or iron man's world of the the 3d um uh vr or ar setup that that they can sort of see but they just visualize it in their heads uh when they look at a
51:30 - 52:00 plot of land they can already see the the final built home that's that's how someone someone on site have one once described this to me and i thought that that was amazing but at the same time folks like that are becoming fewer and further in between so um what i'm hoping with this program and in a way that's why this is uh perhaps innovative and um you know it's the idea of this whole program is that
52:00 - 52:30 right now it might not be that extreme of an of a necessity because we have those very skilled very very uh you know powerful craftsmanship folks that are on site that can deliver um amazing things with very little or you know just enough information there will come a time where the that skill set um you know drops off and we might have to rely on
52:30 - 53:00 uh either you know lower skilled tradesmen or in some cases maybe even a lack of traits to support us and so when that happens well what can we then fall back on well perhaps it's a it's uh you know panelization perhaps it's factory-built homes perhaps it's um what what i like to call lego legotization or ikeatization of our plans where it's made simple enough that
53:00 - 53:30 you don't need a highly skilled trade to come in and be able to do it uh or maybe it's all of those things right and i don't while i don't know which one it might be i believe setting the roots for this program is a start for accomplishing all of those all of those ideas because if you have a 3d model well it's an easier proposition to take that information and send it to a
53:30 - 54:00 panelization company for their sauce to you know automatically cut them out if you already have the the you know the lumber and the studs and the plates and all that stuff modeled in um if you have the model it's also easier for you to if you were to set um i guess what this is what we call 40 bim or sequencing of construction uh if you know what has to go in first one has to go in afterwards uh it becomes a lot easier to create that lego
54:00 - 54:30 or ikea style instruction set for our or depending on how technology develops maybe it becomes a augmented reality uh goggle that tells them step by step where to what to do or it might become something uh or it might just be the same thing as a ikea instruction set where it's like where you label step one two three four in a clear clear and concise manner i don't exactly know how that's going to come together but would that be easier to be done if we
54:30 - 55:00 had a 3d model with like smart detailed information within it versus a 2d cad drawing you betcha um so yeah i think i think that's a very uh and for me it's a it's a medium to long-term outlook for why we're why we're doing this and in a lot of cases it's hard to it's hard to convince folks to uh to see that far away uh
55:00 - 55:30 and while i like living in this world it is somewhat ambiguous and that i think if i were to answer or hop back to one of the earlier questions about key skills of you know how to run something like this and i think i would i would have to add um capability to handle ambiguity is uh is a big part of it too because most of what i'm trying to do has been done before and i said that already but in order to figure out what to do
55:30 - 56:00 that is uh like no one's going to give me a step-by-step instruction set on how that's going to happen what i'm trying to do is build that step-by-step instruction set funny enough but uh yeah that would be another key skill i'd say interesting and uh fascinating to think of what the technology might be able to do in the future i just wanted to ask you one final question which is uh any further advice
56:00 - 56:30 that you might have for engineers who would be watching this um so i i think that i can say that well number one and i think i said that earlier on as well which is uh my engineering career and my time as an engineer had a lot to do with um what i am doing right now and like the the pro like the problem solving skill sets that i've learned the method of
56:30 - 57:00 thinking that i have learned as an engineer plays a huge amount into the the why and the how of what i'm doing right now um and i would i would also say to the end to those engineers who are uh you know who want to dive into a different um how should i say it if if they don't necessarily just want to do technical work which is why i i left the pure engineering world and i'm
57:00 - 57:30 currently non-practicing just just so all the all the engineers listening to this uh understand but um in order to get in like going into the business world didn't necessarily mean that i dropped the the key piece of what i felt was important of being an engineer which is the problem solving i'm still trying to do i'm still trying to problem solve i'm still trying to do uh something that is an innovative piece of technology which is uh uh it is interesting i keep some of my
57:30 - 58:00 friends keep teasing me that i never really truly left engineering tonight they're they're not wrong but uh like on a on a very exact and technical basis i am currently not practicing and so in in that case i mean i would say that if uh if you're wherever you are in your career as an engineer or not as an engineer uh you know go back to your training go back to what it is that you know and uh go go back to
58:00 - 58:30 that problem solving mentality and mindset because that that can pay dividends usually no matter what industry you're in if you go into finance if you stay in technical engineering and build build pumps and uh you know compressors or if you're in a role like mine trying to wage way through um ambiguity and deliver innovation very very good advice and a good note to end on
58:30 - 59:00 uh thank you for your time derek i really appreciate you uh talking to the people who'll be watching this and uh what you've had to say i think has a lot of uh value for them thank you and uh peter as i said the honor is all mine for being here today so thank you for having me