eVolve MEP grew from a desire to give powerful BIM detailing tools to the trades, and has grown into a set of products that 'turn days into hours' in terms of workflow. Clay Smith, CEO of eVolve, describes their journey, how they're working to create ever better products, and some ideas for the future of MEP supply chains.
Hugh Seaton: [00:00:00] Welcome to Constructed Futures. I'm Hugh Seaton. Today, I'm here with Clay Smith, CEO of eVolve MEP. Clay, welcome to the podcast.
Clay Smith: [00:00:10] Thanks Hugh.
Hugh Seaton: [00:00:11] So Clay, let's start with what eVolve MEP does.
Clay Smith: [00:00:16] Yeah. So I'll I'll go into the little bit of the history of eVolve MEP and then, then answer your question more directly. So, so several years ago applied software, which is a n Autodesk reseller, one of the biggest in the country, started making some acquisitions as the channel started to consolidate and we bought several resellers that were really focused on the fab space and the MEP contractors in particular.
And so as we acquired those customers and started delivering services to them, we saw a great need for additional tools. Especially in Revvit for the electrical and mechanical contractors and, and at that , that same time Autodesk was moving more toward a platform play instead of a vertical play.
And so there was an opening there. And so we had the customers and we saw the opening. And so then we decided to start developing software for for the MEP trades and that's how it all started. And, and so we've been doing that for three or four years now.
Hugh Seaton: [00:01:15] Why don't we talk about what you've been doing, like, so you're in, Revit andkind of innovating in the Revit ecosystem, which is how I've just seen a fair amount of that. But what sorts of things did you see were necessary and what sorts of things are you guys doing?
Clay Smith: [00:01:30] Yeah, that's a good question. So when we think of, of of the product there there's, there's two products really, there's an electrical product and a mechanical, and so I'll have to talk to each separately to some extent, but on the mechanical side what we saw is, we first needed to help those contractors transition to Revit itself.
A lot of them were still in AutoCAD based solutions like CAD MEP. And so we had to first kind of duplicate what the basic functions of what CAD MEP could do in Revvit. And so we did that and you get the functionality and the great benefits of Revit itself, whether it's a 3d platform and all the things that Autodesk has done there.
And then since then we've been adding more and more functionality, originally focused on making detailers much, much more efficient than they were previously. And so we've added lots of tools, automated a lot of the tasks that they do. And when we first started, we were turning days into hours and now we have added more and more tools, but we are taking hours. I mean, those hours now, turning into minutes and in some cases into seconds on the electrical side and, we also stayed, stayed with the ITM format that so many Mechanical contractors, their database was ITM to begin with. So they were able to stay in that same environment, use that same database on the electrical side, it was a different story and there was really not a great solution in the market whatsoever.
And, on that side, we use RFA, more native to Revit database type, and then we have added all kinds of same, same kind of focus there initially was to make those detailers so much more efficient. And, since then you know, we've grown into all kinds of other , through the organization, more operational type products.
And that's the, you know, the, some of the thoughts behind foresight.
Hugh Seaton: [00:03:21] And so, so for those that haven't, I had the benefit of a, of a demo, but what you're talking about is, you know, things like, you know, creating the right conduit and then bending it the right way and, you know, making the right kind of corner.
And just honestly, there's family after family, I know family is not the right word. But there's, there's. You know, bunches of different functions that you guys have automated either because you can just grab something or you can twist it really easily, or you can mold it, or you can define it. When you say you take days and turn them into hours, that's a lot of it, right?
Is that look, people always need this kind of a bend. So instead of making somebody draw the bend, we're going to provide it and let them say, well, it needs to be, you know, a six inch radius or whatever, is that right?
Clay Smith: [00:04:04] Yeah, to some extent, and not only is there, is there one conduit that needs to be bent that way.
In many cases, you know, there, there may be eight or 10 conduits. And so instead of individually drawing those, draw them all at the same time and then align your couplings and then, and then auto place your hangers. And with our next release at the end of May of 2021 those hangers will also clash detect automatically.
And so you're taking just the placement of hangers with non eVolve clients, it may take days on a big job to, to place those hangers one at a time. And then anytime there's a change you've heard this story before, but anytime there's a change, you've got to go back and redo a lot of it.
And so we've automated all of that, right? So you can place your hangers, you have all kinds of different conditions that you can set different parameters that how those hangers will be placed. And, and now you know, at the end of the month, the world will see that done automatically with clash detection.
And so that literally, saves days and days and days worth of work on, on a big job. So those are the kinds of things that, that we're able to do inside the program, which just makes everybody's life a lot more efficient. And you're able to focus on other big problems rather than kind of repetitive work.
Hugh Seaton: [00:05:17] Right then, then just about bending a bunch of pipe over and over and over again in the virtual world. Do you find also though that, because it is, some of it is computer defined or computer generated that, that in some ways the quality of what gets done can also be improved because it's more exact or it's more regular.
Clay Smith: [00:05:38] No, that's, that's a great, that's a great question. Here's the, here's the problem that most contractors, MEP contractors have when you're talking about design and you're talking about detailing every company has got to make a decision and they have to make a decision whether to use a person that's familiar with Revit or at least familiar with technology you got to take that person and then teach them what they do in the field.
Hmm. Right. So that's one that's that's one path you could take. The other path is to take somebody from the field and either teach them to model on the computer. Which is not their core competency, but there, you're going to try to bring them up to speed that way. Or there's a third option, I guess, where you could take somebody from the field and they literally stand over the shoulder of somebody who knows the computer and they design in a way that will benefit the field.
So, all three of those have their downsides. If you think about it. So the person who knows the computer doesn't know the field, he can design something that you can't build. And that, that happens all the time and it erodes the confidence of the field in what's being designed and even the prefab shop.
So that's not a great solution unless you spend a lot of time teaching those folks how to do it correctly. If you bring somebody in from the field. And teach them the computer. Number one, their computer may not be their, their competency, their core competency. Number two, now there's one less person that you can put in the field in a situation where we all know there's not enough people to go on the field to begin with.
And then the third is maybe the biggest expense where you've got two people doing what one person could do. And so what we've tried to do now, as we've evolved, literally, you know, with the product is now we're putting more and more things in the product that will help keep a designer or a detailer from drawing something that can't be done in the field.
So a great example of that is on the electrical side. Now we have constraints around what kind of bands you can actually put on a conduit because you could design something, that has a been that you can't do with your vendor or can't be done at all. Right. And so those types of tweaks or things that we're, we're putting in the product so that you can help teach the detailer about the field as we go forward.
That's a very simple example, but more and more of that thought is going into the product now.
Hugh Seaton: [00:08:09] And just to be clear, are you thinking that most of the time it's going to be allowing a detailer who doesn't know the field to not make field mistakes, or is it also equally often you guys have made it so easy that someone who doesn't really know Revit as well can learn it a little bit more quickly because you've, you've just made it easier to use.
Or do you think you think it's both, or do you think it's a little more one or the other
Clay Smith: [00:08:32] It's definitely both. Now to the first one, I don't want to suggest that, you know, we have, we've solved all of the problems and that you can just pop somebody down, who's never seen the job site and used the product.
That's not true, but we're moving in those directions and helping with that. And in reality you know, the best in class customers of ours are best in class in the, in the industries there, it's definitely a blend, right? You've got, you have a continual learning curve with folks in the office. Learning more and more about what's going on in the field.
And so that's, that's just has to continue. And in the companies that we do business with for the most part are looking for better and better solutions, they're trying to get better every day. And so that's part of their process. We're just trying to enhance that.
To the other part of your question was a really good one, a very insightful, because what we're seeing is a lot of companies that are trying to make the transition to Revit. As they found eVolve, it speeds that up just, just tremendously. And so now they use our tool as a way to get into Revit and you know, go faster than they've ever gone before. And so there is another, because it's just a lot more simple. It's faster, all those things.
Hugh Seaton: [00:09:47] Yeah. Well, you, you put guard rails in almost because Revit's a big tool. I remember once I tried to learn Unity, which is not the same, but except for the fact that it's a big tool and it can do a lot and you're like, I don't even know where to start. So the fact that you're, you put guard rails on it almost, or at least, an easier path straight to what they need.
It might, you know, maybe they don't need to learn a bunch of stuff that, that they're not going to use right away.
Clay Smith: [00:10:10] And that's been the problem with BIM, which I don't even like the term, but that's been the problem with BIM for years and years. Is that nobody... I don't want to say nobody, but, but very little of the work that was being done in the design shop, was actually being used at the, you know, in the field at all. As a matter of fact, a lot of people absolutely didn't trust it. They, they tore it up and threw it away. The only reason we did it was so that you would have a model that may or may not actually be what was built, to deliver to somebody at the end. Right, that was it.
And so now, you know, we've tried very hard to stand that whole notion on it's ear and say, no, we want this idea of like the whole purpose of detailing is to create this intelligence that, you know, eVolve MEP helps to augment that intelligence and that, and then it it's really installation intelligence from the very beginning, you are detailing for the purpose of helping to create a workflow, whether it be through kitting or prefabrication, or just better organization that, you know, the whole thing flows through that then your purchasing department and the field, the whole supply chain can be all aligned around this idea of really powerful installation or construction intelligence.
Hugh Seaton: [00:11:38] I love that. So the word construction intelligence, I think is helpful here because what you're, some of what you're saying is you're embedding in the product, some of what somebody would be able to tell you, "you can't make it that way." So that the product makes it harder or impossible for someone to design some things. I, I get that, you know, the world's a complicated place, but you can at least help people with the obvious mistakes, this system will help guide them to make it a little more constructable and a little bit less likely to get them in trouble.
Clay Smith: [00:12:09] Yes. And so you know, our materials product, the foresight materials product that is a cloud-based product. So, for instance, that product is taking the output from Revit right with the bill of material that comes out of eVolve is, is superior in every kind of way compared to the traditional, you know, exported from Revit and put into an Excel spreadsheet and then played with .
So, especially, let's talk about the electrical side again. When you think about what materials is doing, which we're taking a better bill of material, much better bill of material out of evolve MEP, and then we're marrying it up with, because it's so good and so accurate, we're marrying it up within the details that are necessary for ordering it.
Right. So, so let me give an example there. So let's say that the bill of material that comes out of eVolve says, okay, we need four, whatever, screws on this. Right. We need four screws. Well, when you go to order. You don't order four screws. You may order 50 screws right at the bare minimum. And so that very simple example there, but the bill of material that you produce cannot be ordered and everybody knows this.
And so what we're doing with it, with the materials product is then we're aligning or mapping to that bill of material and turning it into something you actually order. And so, and, and all that's seamless since you get all your counts, and all the catalog numbers and everything else are available to, to the... if there's a a purchasing agent, they can use it, or whoever in the company is going to do the, the buying.
So you take that, that comes out of the model and then you also marry it with a, with the mobile app capabilities that allow the field to order other pieces and parts. Right? So again, back to BIM even on a, on a really high level a BIM required job. You still may only have, let's say 60% of what's built is ever modeled.
Right? And so the other 40%, where's it come from? Well, currently it comes from some foreman at the end of the day, scratching something, a dirty note in his pocket or on a piece of cardboard, what he needs. And then he calls that in to somewhere to try to get that ordered. And then, and then in most companies, even great companies somehow that information goes somewhere to some vendor and the best case scenario, the vendor has all that and they are going to ship it to the job site as one of 10 deliveries to the job site that day, that foreman really doesn't know if he's getting it other than to make 10 phone calls and maybe receive several emails to try to track down when it's going to be there. And he may, in some cases, we've through our research, we found that he may order that three or four times because there's just no communication to him.
He can't do his work without receiving that material. And so it all gets lost. Right. And so, anyway, going off track a little bit, but what we've tried to do. With our materials product is marry all that together, marry the foreman's needs and things he's ordering outside of the, out of the the model with a really actionable bill of material that comes out of the model, marry those two up and so that you can start making the supply chain a lot more efficient.
Hugh Seaton: [00:15:25] And to kind of summarize some of what we've just talked about is this idea that you've gone from taking something where people were hand drawing things and you know, it works most of the time and it may or may not have reflected what was going to be built to really drilling in with tools and different ways of presenting the software so that it's as constructable as a software can help with. I mean, it's still a person doing it, but now what you're saying is you've digitized the process from the drawing all the way through to what is needed to produce the thing, to make it, to translating those model elements into the real world. So that it's actually, as you say, orderable, But then you're not making it model only because I think it's it's what is below a certain size?
You don't bother the model and that's one, one reason not to, right? Correct. And, and then, but also that's the other 40% people just need things they realize on the job. Oh my God, I need another conduit or I need another, you know, name the thing so that, you know, real, real problem solvers on a job site are able to order what they need.
So you're kind of going as end to end within what the, the contractor does. Is that right? Like, like there's really not a, not a lot that involves model and data that contractor's doing that you guys haven't grabbed at this point.
Clay Smith: [00:16:49] No, that's exactly right. So, so the idea is at the end of the day, these contractors get paid for installing pipe, wire and duct, that's what they get paid for it. They don't get paid for making a pretty model. Although it's a requirement, sometimes they don't get paid for moving material around. They don't get paid for making 15 calls to the vendor to try to find out where that order that I scratched into the you know, the cardboard box is they don't get paid for that. They get paid for installation. So anything we can do to, to make the work they do on the model side and, and let that information, that actionable intelligence flow through to the field and everybody that touches that material in the process to the time it's installed, all of that, doesn't have to be redone.
Yeah, it is, it flows because it's right in the right things augment that, is it goes through the process so that you can ultimately support a faster and better installation and that's what will ultimately make the contractor more money and allow them to take on more work.
Hugh Seaton: [00:17:58] Yeah. That's a great vision for the piece that the contractor controls. I want to talk or ask your, your opinion really about the bigger picture, that , that workflow is a part of that, that you know, how supply gets ordered out and how it gets held and all that. What's your view of how, how the entire supply chain works right now?
Clay Smith: [00:18:22] Yeah. So, so that's a great question again and I would answer it with just an illustration, right? So if you, if you go into your typical electrical distributor next week. And you go in on Monday, you'll quickly run into a bullpen of people. A lot of them are recent college graduates, first job out of college, maybe.
And they sit there and answer the phone all day and they scribble orders. Right. These are not coming in via email. Most of the time they're not coming in... some of them might still come in on the fax machine, maybe. A lot of them are simply phone calls and you can hear the volume of contractors screaming at these kids about where's my stuff.
Or I've got to have this stuff right away, blah, blah, blah. Right, because that's, and that's just one illustration, but that's the way the system works today in a lot of cases, it's a little bit of an oversimplification, but unless you're a huge contractor with a great big order, right? If that's the case, then maybe things get streamlined a little bit otherwise, because they don't have enough information to order enough ahead of time to give the vendors a fighting chance. Then the whole supply chain is simply putting out the biggest fire. That that's how the supply chain works today.
Hugh Seaton: [00:19:50] And as a result, I'm assuming the suppliers then, well, there's two things that kind of come out of that. One of them is suppliers hold way more stock than they wish they did.
And the second one is the contractors have to really worry about whether they're going to get what they, what they ordered.
Clay Smith: [00:20:06] That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And, and even further back upfield from the distributors are the manufacturers and the manufacturers really don't know what to build because they might receive buying signals from eight different people, all quoting the same job, but the bill of material looks a little bit different. And so it's just, there's just loads and loads of waste in the whole system. And then, back to my illustration of the bullpen vendors themselves distributors might make 10 trips to a job site a day.
When, you know, I won't say there's no reason for that, but in a, better, with better actionable information, the kind of which we're trying to deliver, that should be one delivery.
Hugh Seaton: [00:20:51] That's yeah, it doesn't take a lot of imagination to see how so that makes everybody more profitable and you know, less hurried and less panicky.
And you know, I, I believe we talked about this at one point, but it's even a manpower issue, right? I mean, every time a truck rolls up, somebody has to stop what they're doing and go deal with it. And.
Clay Smith: [00:21:10] Yeah. Or planning your manpower, right? If you can't rely on what you think is on the job site or coming tomorrow, then you have very expensive highly skilled people standing around as the foreman tries to figure out what we're going to work on today.
Hugh Seaton: [00:21:30] Yeah. And it's, you know, this is part of the story of construction right now, is that all, all over the place processes are being tightened up or any way. People are trying to find areas where man, if we had a little better information or we could see, you know, a little better visibility, how much, how much manpower, money, and, and ultimately, time would we be able to save.
Clay Smith: [00:21:53] That is exactly right.
Hugh Seaton: [00:21:54] Right now, if you were to send things off to a supply house or a distributor, are they accepting this stuff digitally right now? Or are you kind of sending it off to them? I mean, how, how do they get what you send them?
Clay Smith: [00:22:06] No, th th they are, I mean, it's, it's, it's a mixed bag, right?
There's, there's some of the more, the larger and more complicated contractors have, you know, lots of systems , to place their orders and, and to interact with the distributors. But that runs from, you know, really well thought out very well executed all the way down to no, no thought.
Right? Right. So even, but even my point earlier was even the big companies on the big jobs. They still have to do it. Right. They still do not have the information that they need. They're better than maybe some of their competitors, but but if you were compare them to Toyota, they'd be way, way, way off, obviously.
Hugh Seaton: [00:22:52] Yeah, that's an interesting one. Even keeping track of all this stuff that, you know, everybody has a problem with it because the numbers are huge and they all look the same. How do you, so how do you see this evolving? No pun intended over the, over the coming years, I mean, you guys have, have, have really done a good job of, of digitizing and automating within the four walls of, of what the contractor does, but how do you see this ecosystem evolving over time?
Clay Smith: [00:23:23] So I think there's a lot of forcing functions that are out there in the market that are unavoidable. Right? So as you think about that, you know, we've, we've talked about the skilled labor shortage for years now.
The average age of that skilled labor is just getting older and older. And so that is a train that's coming that will not be able to be stopped. Right. Those folks are going to retire. They're going to they're going to go find something else to do as they get older and that's, that's the way it works.
And so, and you also have the millennial generation those folks expect technology to help them, right. That that's the, that's how they grew up and that's what they expect. And so if we want to lure people into looking at a career in the trades, we've got to deliver to them things that make sense to them naturally.
You know, th that somebody coined or wrote several years ago, that folks my age and I'm part of generation X, but folks, my age were digital immigrants. And the kids after that, are digital natives. They think in a digital world, you know, they think from a digital mindset almost. And so we've got to deliver the tools that they expect if we expect them to join the ranks of construction. And so I think there's two forcing functions there. I also think that if you don't evolve, right. We chose the name evolve MEP for, for very you know I'd like to say, well thought out reasons, but on purpose I should say. Because we feel like if you don't evolve, you're gonna, you're going to go away.
Right. The, the vendors that don't are not thinking about these problems and are not trying to solve the problems as best they can, they won't be here. The margins continue to erode over time, as we've all seen. You know, there's now you know, in 21 and 2021, there's all kinds of problems with the supply chain, maybe those will be temporary. Maybe there'll be more long lived, but copper fluctuates drastically every day. And if you do not have your information that you need to make the best copper buy prior to the job starting, or at least have the bills of material in your hands. So you can make a call. Right, right now, most contractors do not know exactly what they're going to need until they fish tape through the conduit, you know, weeks, weeks, and weeks from now , that's when they're trying to make their copper decision. And so if you're armed with the intelligence beforehand, then you can make better decisions in terms of whether to buy copper now, whether the hang on and hopefully it'll go down and all those things that, that with the low margins that are out there, you can get killed on a copper buy.
And so things like that I think are going to drive more and more people out of the business, if they don't get their hands around good information as early as possible.
Hugh Seaton: [00:26:23] And that, that kind of summarizes what we've been talking about so far, right. Is better, better, more accurate generation of model data, but then much more accurate generation and kind of, you know, transmitting of data through the process all the way through. And that's kind of what, what eVolve is building for for mechanical and electrical right now.
Clay Smith: [00:26:46] That's exactly right. And, and really there's a bigger, there's even a bigger vision than that. So, you know, I am I'm very proud of the culture we have on our team. And we've tried to be as intentional as possible about that, but there's, there's, there's two elements to that. If you really boil down everything and one is that we have to produce results, right.
We and this, the second side of that is we have to have relationships. Right. And so. You can beat people with a whip for a short period of time and drive some results. But in order to have long-term success, you have to build relationships and treat people with respect and do all the things that good teams do.
And so, you know, when you look at a lot of the contractors today. Because , they don't have, they can't trust the data that comes through their organization. They stay constantly misaligned, which causes all kinds of friction in the company between the field and the office and the office and the purchasing agent and the purchasing agent and the financials and all of that.
Right. And that's just, I've lived in that, those types of environments before, and it's not fun. And. And so the greater vision is that our tools could be used to better align teams that make people enjoy what they're doing as they build great products or build great buildings for their customers. And so you know, it's just a better way to live when you're, when you're working in an aligned team versus a team that can't trust the upstream workflow .
Hugh Seaton: [00:28:22] It does. It does. It's a hell of a vision. Well, Clay, thank you for being on the podcast. I'm really excited about where you guys are going.
Clay Smith: [00:28:29] Thank you for having me Hugh. It was a, as you can tell, like I get a little fired up about these things sometimes, but I'm always happy to talk about the industry and what we're trying to do to help.
Hugh Seaton: [00:28:41] Fantastic.