More and more attention is being paid to preconstruction processes. Jeff Sample, head of communications at Join, explains that the key missing ingredient in many preconstruction processes is effective communication amongst different teams. Join was designed to provide the tools and platform to facilitate those communications.
Hugh Seaton: [00:00:00] Welcome to Constructed Futures. Today I'm here with Jeff sample, head of communications at Join. Jeff, welcome to the podcast.
Jeff Sample: [00:00:09] Thanks for having me here. It's great to be here.
Hugh Seaton: [00:00:12] So let's jump right into what Join does and go from there.
Jeff Sample: [00:00:17] Well, it's a great place to start, right? And I think to really understand Join and really understand who we are as an organization, you have to kind of look at our story and, you know, if you look back quite a few years ago, when the founders started the company, they really started with the idea that there was going to be a plugin to Revit that did some automated quantities and some other things, you know, to really revolutionize and help some of that process. And the team sat down with some critical, great GCs that had opened their doors to become partners and learn, and it quickly became evident to the team, that the world didn't need another Revit plugin. It really needed a platform that could support the transformations and the changes that were going on in pre-construction. And that's where Join was born. You know, it was born out of the industry problem, that as the industry moves to more design build more IPD projects, the tool sets to support that transformation just didn't really exist.
And, you know, they needed a platform that could do that, and that could really meet them where they were and then could continue to evolve to support that change. And, and so Join was born out of that. So, you know, we are a platform where the pre-construction decision-making happens, you know, all of those different, difficult, early decisions that need to be made that can drive construction and make sure projects are on budget, you know, cause it's a very much focused on cost and, and value management, and looking at target value delivery for your customers.
As a GC, you've got to look at, what do your customers value and focusing the team on that. So you're not only delivering something that really meets their cost needs. But also meets their experiential needs from a facility, depending on what they value and what they're building.
And so this platform was built there. It really came around and hit its stride about, I'd say about a year ago. I think we came out of MVP around then and we really started being a viable product. Right now we are a really viable product. We've got a great group of customers that are extremely communicative and give us a lot of feedback and allow us to continue to tweak and move this platform forward and are also helping us look out into the distant future and be something that can continue to support them in their process.
I think there's far too many groups that have gotten involved in this that think they can disrupt them and disruptions not really coming in this industry, in my opinion, from the software companies, we're here to support the evolution of the processes that are leading GCs, trades, you know, depending on where you are, suppliers, owners that they're experiencing and that they're coming up with, it's no software company that's going to come in and retool the contractual relationship or the collaboration relationship between these different entities and make them work better.
But if they do that, then we've got an opportunity to help them reach their full potential by supporting that with a platform that's flexible enough to do that. So I know that was a little long winded on Join, but I'm super passionate about what this can provide for the industry and you know, what we're here to do.
Hugh Seaton: [00:03:39] And let's, that's great. It's good to level set on, what you guys do and where you came from. And there's a few pieces that I want to pull out and talk through. One of them is let's talk a little bit about humility. I've heard from a couple of different folks, about how software companies they enjoy working listen.
And they're not coming to them and saying like SAP did in the nineties, right. Where it was like, you are going to reorganize around us because back then, there really wasn't a choice. Software wasn't as powerful as it is now. And I don't want to pick on SAP, all the big ERP systems did this, but now it's, it's the other way around, right?
You are there to support the process that's there and help it, help it to evolve and support its evolution, instead of saying, you need to do it this way. Is that kinda how you guys approach it?
Jeff Sample: [00:04:25] Yeah. I mean, it really is. It's core to our DNA to be, humble and have a little bit of humility.
I think that comes from the global experience from the different members of the organization. I think all of us, at some point in our career, I know personally I have. I've walked in and said, I know how to do it better only to be smacked in the face with, well, you really didn't understand all the complexities and all the parts and pieces and you really...
It's kind of great that the group came together there. I also think that humility allowed us to learn. I mean, I think all of us in the group, at least most of us have come up against a few barriers and roadblocks that we've had to take a step back and ask ourselves, okay, how could we have gone about this better? How can we meet... anybody, you know, me being an IT architect by trade and working in the IT business, I used to always just want to come in and fix it. Right. And then just walk away when I was younger. And I really learned quickly that yeah, that works for a brief period of time. But then they're going to break it again.
The key is you've got to come and learn what the problem is that they're experiencing why the outcome is happening and then help them learn and support them in doing it differently. So then they become a more capable themselves and the problem really does go away. So right, it's not just treating the symptom, it's treating the problem. And I think at Join, that's what we're doing. I mean, there's lots of things that we provide to organizations and to our customers that they really didn't know they needed, but they were struggling with it. And they were already able to articulate to us the problem.
And I think if, you know, if you're listening on the construction side, we cannot live and do this without you. I mean, this is a truly symbiotic relationship. I think it's a bummer that the, not a bummer that the SAP's and those guys, really made a big, but the shoe horning of things, you know, was a real travesty in that it forced some of the groups to really believe that, oh, well, I just got to take what I'm given and do what I can with it versus I can become more of a success by feeding information back to the companies that support me because, let's be honest, I don't get to do this, Join doesn't get to exist if we don't have customers, we can exist for a little while. But in the end, the success of our customers drives the success of our company. So your success is my success, and I think that's important to all software companies have taken that just about everywhere I go.
I don't want customers that don't fit it. It's something you see a lot in software sales people just trying to sell things to people. If you're not a good fit, that's great. You know, let's shake hands, let's talk. I literally had a conversation with someone yesterday and I, and I told them initially, Hey, you're not a great fit for us. What else can we talk about for right now? Because we've gotten that out of the way.
And he said, that's surprising. I said, well, no, it's not. Because if we can get there. And I understand that you're not a good fit. I want you to be an educated user that enjoys your experience. And if, if you're not, then let's help you find something that does work for what you do. You know, I listed out some people that I thought could really help them in their business and sent them on their way to do that. You know, someday who knows that person might go to work for a company where Join will be a fit and they'll know, Hey, listen, we can go to these folks and they're going to tell us the truth.
And I think if you're listening in software sales on that side, realize that it's one thing to land them, but they're going to have an experience. And not only are you impacting yourself and your reputation in the company, but you're giving us all a reputation. I could, I don't name names. At all, but there there's ERP and other things in our business who did a lot of that.
And we in this side of the business and the tech side of the business, come up against that a lot. And we almost have to go through like this. I call it construction technology therapy sessions to help them get past those experiences and move on.
Hugh Seaton: [00:08:41] Well, it's back to this humility and listening, and I think that speaks a little bit to, and I want to come back to what kind of the problems that Join solves.
And it sounds like the DNA of the approach you just spent some time really getting into, right. Is that baked into how you guys approach everybody is, you get there from communication. That's two way that's, you know, that's letting people have the best information they can and make the best decisions they can.
Talk to me a little bit about how Join does what it does. As concretely, as we can, maybe with some examples, but you know, it's fine to say people are communicating. What does that mean? How are they, what are you guys doing and how are you facilitating.
Jeff Sample: [00:09:20] Right. So great question, because there's some real concrete things that we do in Join that really facilitate that communication piece.
For us, it's all about, collaboration, communication, and transparency, right? All these things come together to support the goal that we have of building a building, right. And early on...
Hugh Seaton: [00:09:46] if you don't mind, let me just jump in and I don't want to preempt where you're going anyway, but let's take those three things that you just said.
So collaboration, communication and i forgot what the third one is already, but when you say collaboration, what does that look like? Is that texting? Is that. You know, you've got a platform everyone's looking at, is that messaging like slack? Is that graphics? What, what is it? What does it look like in the process of people saying we've got all these choices to make, because we have to put a building together or pull it out of the ground, you know, what does that look like?
Like what's the, what does it, cause we can't show people the Join interface right now, but what are you doing?
Jeff Sample: [00:10:22] Okay, so give you a brief rundown, so you get an idea. We ingest your milestones. So we, we do this by milestone. We ingest your estimates and your budgets. And we graphically compare them and show them, and you know, those come out of your estimating systems, which, you know, those are complicated, deep estimating systems, but estimating systems, aren't presentation platforms, right?
And so, you know, at each milestone, the teams are coming together and usually the budget is lower than it should be. And the estimates higher than it should be.
Hugh Seaton: [00:10:51] If I can stop real quick again, sorry to keepdoing this, but inherent in, what you just said is, Join starts as an integrated, plays well with others product, right?
Like you kind of live by saying, look, you guys have done some of the heavy lifting on the math side in super-duper spreadsheets . We're really good at pulling that in and then allowing you to make, not quite so mathematical, but more decision level kind of processes.
Jeff Sample: [00:11:17] Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, those estimators are fantastic at understanding all of that mathematical equations, all the things that, you know, dotting their I's crossing their T's quantifying things, labor hours, et cetera. And then, but visualizing it to allow folks to understand where we are in different phases, if it's different work breakdown structures, you know, if you're talking about, you know, Hugh you're, you're very familiar with this, if you want to visualize it and MasterFormat, UniFormat. A particular work breakdown structure by funding source. However you want to visualize that information so you can understand where the current costs are where your gaps are and where the areas are that you really need to focus, that you can either drive down costs, if that's your key performance indicator, then you can drive down costs. From that perspective, you can create what really is done in all Excel spreadsheets. There's really nothing that supports that value management process, that target value design. And we've built that into the platform and we've enabled that and linked it back to the cost and the estimates and the budgets.
So it's sort of become a continuous estimating platform. Now that's where we do that. And a lot of those back and forth communications that were happening before in email, they're now happening inside of our system. So we have that chat functionality that's really around tracking how an item or an option has changed over time.
You know, they usually start as a rough order of magnitude. If we're, you know, if we've forgotten something like an ADA, you know, something in code compliance, we're going to toss out a rough number because we know we've got to bring it out there, as it progresses over time, it's going to get more detailed into having quantities, labor, different breakdown structures in it.
You know, it's going to have concrete, it's going to have fixtures, all that kind of stuff. So we can see that evolve and make sure it's sticking around what we had originally estimated at. But ultimately it's really about providing that information. That was really hard to unlock in a spreadsheet. Yeah.
And make it available to the entire team of stakeholders. And like I said, we believe in that communication, collaboration and confidence, and to do that, you have to have all of the stakeholders at the table with access to the information, you know, you'll hear single source of truth, a lot in the industry.
And, and I always challenge that because my truth is based on my reality, my reality comes from the view behind my two eyes. So there is no single source of truth. There's just my truth. But there is, and can be a single source of information to derive that truth and to drive that decision-making and really get it done.
Hugh Seaton: [00:14:06] And let's talk a little bit about some of the things you've covered as you, as you've walked to this point, and that is, what you're saying is all of the, all the communications are coming through a platform that everyone has access to. So, you know, a great example in my life, I had somebody ask me to help them with something in slack.
And it was like the general channel of slack, which I never look at, to be honest, cause it's like, you know, birthdays and stuff. And it's an extreme example of what I think you're solving for. And that is that communications get lost over time because they're in this platform or that platform or email, or you left the voicemail or whatever.
And by, by forcing people through one discoverable channel, part of communications is, is accessing old communications, right? Is what did we agree to? Or what did we discuss or what did we explore a week ago? Right. I mean, is that one of the ways that you guys are really kind of supporting the process of communication?
Not just the act of it.
Jeff Sample: [00:15:01] Yeah. So what you're really talking about is that accountability, right?
Hugh Seaton: [00:15:05] I think both, right. I mean, on the one hand it's accountability, but the other one is we may spend 20 minutes talking about something and I may forget it in two days and it's nice to go back and say, didn't we talk about swapping out, you know, this kind of dry wall.
And we, we we've found some problem with it. What was, what was that problem again? So you can go back and say, oh, that right. That's what it was. And that's why we're going to go with, with something else.
It's accountability, but also like the ability to recall why you made decisions later, not just whether you did or where you got it.
Right. But, but like, okay, why did we do that?
Jeff Sample: [00:15:36] Yeah , you just hit it right there. Right. There's accountability because we've got to hold one another responsible. And that's something that people struggle with in the industry is like with transparency, with collaboration, communication comes this, you know, this level of accountability, we've got to be accountable for the decisions that we've made.
But also you're right, like we're making so many decisions. One of the key factors is why did we make that decision? You know? And, and I think that plays true and it speaks to where we believe, you know, pre-construction is headed, especially given the evolution of this part of the industry. Is that more and more why we made a decision becomes so important.
You know, if you're talking about cost, it's one thing and, you know, I had this conversation with an owner the other day. So many owners are making decisions early on and spending a ton of time in pre-construction selecting different building product materials, even down to their concrete mixes. That are based on their carbon footprint, you know, what they really want to leave behind or what the operations of their building or one was, you know, how they wanted the basements done to facilitate tenant build outs in the future.
And those get VE'd out in the construction process because it's not understood why those decisions were made. And yeah, you save a few dimes in the construction process, but you're costing the owner and you're ruining their experience mainly because you're not understanding why. Yeah. And so that's why, you know, we see Join spanning past pre-construction down the road because we see pre-construction spanning past where it is right now.
Right. We went from hard bid, which was, you know, that real quick design bid it and build it. And it was what it was pre-con was really not in existence. There was this little slice that maybe you could consider that happened, you know, early on. And now we're, we've gone into more modern delivery methods with design build.
And you're starting to see IPD really take off where that's really blurring that line. And now we're doing a collaborative pre-construction process that's including the architects, the owners, the engineers, the contractors, and now even more of your trade contractors and even some of your suppliers.
And with the pressure that's on this industry to continue to deliver more and more complicated projects that are critical to the infrastructure of our country. We see those lines blurring more and more. We feel as though right now you're in the ground, you're starting to do foundations, you're starting to do steel and you're still making decisions on certain other parts.
It's kinda like that just in time delivery that we hear in software, but it's on a bigger scale, right? There's still decisions that have got to be made really early in the process in order to facilitate things like offsite manufacturing, prefabrication, modularization to really consume those things.
And to do that, that's gotta be done early and you need a platform in which those decisions can be made to facilitate that and Join's going to be here to do that. But also throughout the project, since the schedules are so tight, things are so tight decisions can make schedules slip. But they have to be presented, prioritized, visible, trackable, and made.
Hugh Seaton: [00:19:02] And Jeff let's kind of harp in on that a little bit. One of the things I'm hearing you say is that, there's a lot of things that Join is helping with that. The problems that it's solving, one of them is, I don't know if we don't want to call it single source of truth, but single conduit of facts.
That that's one, right? Is it's a platform where you can find everything that went into the decisions that you're living with. But it sounds like another one is you really, and this gets back to the graphical presentation that everyone's, can look at, whether they're all there eyeballing, it is a different story, but the idea that you're able to show the implications of decisions. You're able to help people understand as they're weighing different ways to go, that they're facilitating the ability to really understand, okay. If we do this, what's that going to mean?
Jeff Sample: [00:19:50] I want to hit on two things you said there, cause you're absolutely right. They need all of that information and they need to feel confident in the ability that they have been given what they need. How many times have you sat with someone who said. I'm not sure we know enough about this, I feel like I need to see X or Y whether it's a spec sheet, a cut of the model and understand where we're talking about in the project itself, whether it's some particular cost data, whether it's a carbon study on, you know, the mix of concrete or some more information on this new enclosure method.
You need a place to house that, and that is what we do. We put that all in one place because it makes it, you know, it provides that level of comfort that the decision is supported by the information. You know, this it's far easier to make a decision based on tangible things that you can see and having it all in front of you.
And so there there's that right? Specifically helps you with that decision, but then there's also the idea that you're going to have... There's always more than one way to make a decision. There's always more than one person to go down in construction.
But in many cases you can only go down one path. You can't go down two different paths in the same process. So certain things negate other decisions from being available. And if you can't tie those things together, Which is done currently right now in some really crazy spreadsheets that some great estimators have basically sat down and said, listen, I think I'm probably the only one on the planet that understands the things that we can do, because it's like you can take line 11 with line 18 line 37 and 22. But if you take those, you can't take 12, one and eight. But if you take 47, then 12, one and eight become... I'm already confused. Yeah.
And it takes that confusion and it removes that confusion and it provides you an easy place to make that decision. But the final part of that is, you know, so much software wants to be the hero in this.
They want to stand out, they want to be flashy. And what we've really learned is, that's actually a barrier to the utilization of the platform. The more invisible the platform is the more comfortable it is. The easier to use, the more powerful it is. I want people to understand that it is extraordinarily difficult to make something look so simple.
And that is what the team here at Join has built and really dedicated themselves to. It's what drew me in right away, was we are not your hero. You are our hero and we are not here to stand out. We are here to support you and we are here to take the background and really show the hard work that you're doing.
And I think that's what, you know, Andrew Zukoski ,our CEO and I have been inspired by. The amount of work that is going on in these modern pre-construction groups. When you talk to our customers, they are working so hard, but they were spending so much of their time organizing the data, preparing the data for presentation and wasting their time, when they could be focused more on all the value that they add.
Hugh Seaton: [00:23:19] It's funny you put it that way. One of the things that people get tripped up on, I think in construction more than other places, is the idea that the name of the game is productivity. And, and obviously there was a paper a little while ago, I'm not going to get into what, but you hear the productivity, productivity, and the reality is software sometimes helps with productivity. What it really helps with is quality. You're not wasting your time on, on silly little things. You still have the job to do, but now you can take a minute longer and think about it, or you can, you know, you can try more different options or consider more options.
So I'm sure you can make an argument for productivity and forgive me if you know, your sales teams are saying that, but I actually think that , yes, there's time saved, but I'll bet you, people are spending close to the same number of hours. What they're doing though, is they can get more done and they can get better work done and feel more comfortable with it.
Or if they are, if it is a productivity gain, it means fewer 8:00 PM meetings and it's more, you know, a better quality of life. But you know what I'm saying? Like, like as much as I think one of the reasons why construction has a quote unquote productivity problem is because people don't count the hours people spend off the clock doing paperwork and, and I mean, I'm like, I don't want to oversimplify it. That's a talk about a rabbit hole, but I do think as you talk about what you're describing. I think it's an outcome that is really getting served. Right? I mean, again, I'm sure there's a productivity argument, but I think it's better outcomes, better relationships, better ability to really leverage new delivery methods, like you were mentioning design build and, and IPD.
Jeff Sample: [00:24:54] Oh, no, you're right. And we could give you those numbers and we have those numbers. Cause you, you, do, you have to just get in trouble. No, no, you didn't at all actually, because in all honesty, like when we sit down and talk to customers about this, we say, "look, it saves you money. It saves you some time. It does do that, but you're not going to. You, you don't really save that time." You, you hit it. You repurpose that time from time spent making sure the information is correct and organized, and you focus that time on the value add that all of these people bring and that's decision-making and options and thought and you're right. If we eliminate the issues yeah, sure. It saves you time, but your strategic advantage that we provide through the platform is to give you time to focus on what humans are great at: more options, more ideas thinking, right. That's the key. And we just free you up to do that.
I think in construction you're right, every time we have a productivity gain, we just give people more things to do because there's an endless amount of things to do in what we do. It's about giving them a strategic advantage. It's allowing them to focus on the things that they're great at, and that they're really doing.
And make more quality out of the time. It should be less about productivity and more about quality of product that you're putting out, whether that's the quality of the buildings, the quality of the estimates, the quality of the options that we're giving people. It's just the experience should change and let machines do what machines are great at right. Machines are great at crunching numbers. We're great at building in the ability to eliminate your fear around cyclical, redundancy, checks in Excel, et cetera. Let us handle that. You handle what we can't do. We cannot take the information from your head, the options, the experience and the judgment.
Hugh Seaton: [00:26:51] That's right. Machines have perfect memory and zero judgment. Humans have variable memory let's say, and often quite seasoned judgment. Right. And that's the point is you're trying to empower people to do what people do, right.
Jeff Sample: [00:27:06] Yeah. And to really help everything reach its true potential.
I mean, I, I don't want to let this go without getting to, I think where we see this going and one of my own personal reasons for coming over here to Join is, you know, I've spent a lot of time throughout all parts of this industry, it's been a wonderful run to see everything, but I got my start in the trades and I get, you know, I get ribbed by my friends in the trades.
Well, why did you jump to the GC side? And I said, you know, I've been looking at software, I've been looking at construction from the beginning, as, you know, seeing all these innovations that are happening downstream. And to really, truly impact and change the experience and help all of construction, I think, reach its true potential in this technology evolution you had to start at the beginning.
And we had to start with a platform and a process that's collaborative that allows teams to trust one another and reach their potential. And there's really no better place to start than pre-construction right. If you're going to start, start at the beginning. And it's my feeling that if we can, here at Join, support modern pre-construction teams to create alignment, to create, through the use of communication, collaboration, transparency, and accountability, that all creates trust.
And if you have a team that trusts one another, that's going to have a downstream impact on everything. It doesn't guarantee success, but it certainly sets you up to achieve. And if you can trust the early platforms in the early decisions and the early experiences, then you're going to trust in those other things, like sharing your models.
Like, so if you share your models, if you really work together, then in a VDC format, then your AR tools, your MR tools, all of those are going to reach their potential because we trust one another to use them. We trust the sharing. Okay. Now you start to see that we start to build this trust that continues on throughout the project life cycle and feeds us back and feeds that technology, so it gets to reach its true potential.
And I really think that that's why I made this jump is so that we can help this industry reach its fantastic potential and change the experience. You know, I'd say this over and over. People are probably tired of it, but. We finished just about every construction job with oh, okay.
Yeah. Oh God. Sorry. We got that sucker done. All right, let's do it again. Let's why don't we high five, one another and go. Holy, that was awesome. When are we going to do it again?
We deserve that. I mean, this industry shapes the experiences of our world more than almost any other. And we have the ability to impact the future of our world more than almost any. Our infrastructure, our buildings, our experiences, those are all driven by the built world.
Why shouldn't those that are creating that, also enjoy that experience along the way, and really feel proud in what they're creating.
Hugh Seaton: [00:30:30] And it all starts with amazing pre-construction. Jeff, this has been a fantastic conversation. I learned a lot about pre-construction and about how, you know, you guys are thinking about it with Join.
And I got to tell you, it also ties back to a theme that keeps coming up, and that is software that is humble software makers that are... you know, an earlier conversation was this disrupt respect ratio from Scott Ellison, which I'm going to continue to talk about.
Really good stuff. Thank you for coming on the podcast.
Jeff Sample: [00:31:00] Hey, I really appreciate it Hugh. Thank you for what you're doing. I, you know, I've been listening to constructed futures and I've been learning from the folks that are coming on here, and this is. You know, you know, I'm a podcaster as well. And, and I believe this is a rising tide lifts all ships. So we appreciate what you're doing and getting the word out.
And I love that, you know, you're focusing around that this is a symbiotic relationship between the software industry and the construction industry. Together we are best. And, and those companies that can embrace that, I think at their core, they're going to do really well. And, and so I appreciate what you do very much.
Hugh Seaton: [00:31:36] Thanks, man. What a great way to end.