Matt Abeles has been a pioneer in construction technology and innovation. From his days as a founder of BuiltWorlds, to personal efforts to guide startups and others, and now his role as VP of Construction Technology and Innovation at the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC), Matt has been a thought leader and powerful voice for the industry. Through their Tech Alliance and Marketplace, ABC are bringing vetted technology solutions to contractors, while the education and awareness ABC continue to introduce promise to help the industry be safer, and more efficient.
You can learn more about Associated Builders and Contractors here:
Follow Matt on Linkedin here
Matt's email (mentioned in the episode) is: abeles@abc.org
Matt Abeles
[00:00:00] Hugh Seaton: Welcome to Constructed Futures. I'm Hugh Seaton. Today I'm here with Matt Abeles, vice president of Construction, Technology and Innovation at Associated Builders and Contractors.
Matt, welcome to the podcast.
[00:00:13] Matt Abeles: Thank you. Welcome Hugh. Appreciate you having me today.
[00:00:17] Hugh Seaton: Well, I wanted to start with a little background on you because you've done some amazing stuff in the industry.
[00:00:23] Matt Abeles: Well, thanks. So, my background is heavily in both real estate development and construction and in real estate and construction tech, and I would say for this audience probably the most interesting and relevant would be in 2014 I was a co-founder of a business called BuiltWorlds.
What we were was, you know, I always like to say we were kind of the cheerleaders of innovation for the building industry, specifically construction, but what we did was we hosted events. We provided research, we provided content. We collaborated with the tech community. And we were a resource to help everyone just raise the tide a little bit.
During my time at BuiltWorlds, there were many associations that I collaborated with in bringing their education, collaboration, technology efforts to fruition. And if you look across construction as a whole, many of the associations now make this a priority now… that comes in all different shapes and sizes that can be, you know, events, resources, videos.
And I'm just very passionate and enthusiastic about what's happened in this space and seeing so many companies that back in 2014, came from a couple of guys in an idea to raising money, to being bought out.
The amount of money, dollars, interest, eyeballs coming into construction tech is like never before. It's an exciting time.
[00:02:45] Hugh Seaton: Yeah. You and your team have really brought a level of sophistication and professionalism to what can sometimes be a chaotic innovation process. I thought that was really, really cool.
So let's talk a little bit about where you are now. So you've built this amazing thing, BuiltWorlds, no pun intended. And, you've kind of expanded your reach with where you are now. Let's talk a little bit about that.
[00:03:08] Matt Abeles: my passion is this industry and helping innovate. ABC is one of the associations I've worked very closely with for years. When you look at construction tech and where we're going as an industry, ABC has 21,000 members across the association. And most of that is comprised of small and mid-sized contractors. [DR1][EW2]
[00:05:29] Hugh Seaton: Let's talk a little bit about how you view construction technology within the context of all these things that ABC is doing. Maybe we start with safety, because that was something you called out earlier. How are you seeing construction technology evolve to support that?
[00:05:46] Matt Abeles: Yeah, I think... so, you know, ABC, we have our step program, which is a program that our members use to have best in class safety. Where construction technology comes in the safety realm. And by the way, a lot of the education that I do, safety technology is probably the most asked for education and presentation I give because we work with... I do a lot of presentations for young professionals. We have 69 chapters across the United States. So all of them have safety committees. So I've talked to safety committees and it's you know, conventions and events and lunch and learns or safety awards presentations. We're getting more interest in “how does technology help us?”
Some of these solutions are free to help you digitize that process. Well, that's ultimately going to help you be safer. My job at the end of the day is to help companies be safer, be more profitable and win work. And by being safer, if we digitize our processes and understand what we're doing well in safety, where our gaps are, technology can help not only track that, but we can also help folks on the job site be safer.
Safety becomes even more paramount today.
And in the past year, because there is a lot of COVID-19 technology solutions that are not just necessary, but they're easy to deploy. They're cheap and they're plentiful. So, there are solutions out there that just make sure that everyone is cleared to go on a job site, that their health and safety checks out.
So some technologies make sure that your temperature is okay to go on the jobsite. And also that you're wearing a mask. You know there are some companies that use artificial intelligence to make sure that everyone is socially distanced on a job site. There are smartwatches that make sure that people are socially distanced on job site.
There are technologies that can just take a scan of your eye and make sure that you are coherent and you are healthy to go on a job site. Where I think we are going as an association and this falls even beyond technology, is that it's not just safety on the job site, but it's focused on safety and total human health.
I think one of the things that that gets lost is when you look... We do a lot in, you know, for example as it relates to suicide prevention, what goes on in between the hardhat, construction is the number one industry when it comes to suicide. So we are playing a big role in that.
So technology plays a role, but as an association, we are trying to cover everything from the job sites to just making sure our people are healthy.
[00:10:09] Hugh Seaton: Yeah, it's a great thing that ABC does. That's great. Well, I want to switch gears real quick to adoption. So you just talked about how education and making people aware of these things is a big part of what you do, but baked into this and you've been doing this for years, even prior to ABC is understanding what makes people say yes to a technology.
Talk a little bit with me about how you view that and things that you're doing for that.
[00:10:34] Matt Abeles: Yeah. And let me take one step back just to give you kind of a look at my role. So as VP of Construction Technology, Innovation, a lot of the things I'm doing focus on those things I mentioned. Health and safety, workforce development, membership, political advocacy, all those hit our strategic plan, but creating that education and awareness around construction technology, that is a huge piece of this. And that includes collaboration with the construction tech community, bringing more resources to light that that support our members.
We need to educate and create awareness to our contractors and collaborate with the tech community. To create that innovation adoption.
And that comes in many lights. ABC is different from other associations, we have general contractors, electrical contractors, mechanical contractors. I mean, we're so diverse that there are so many things we have to cover.
And I think, going back to the education I'm bringing to the chapters, outside of safety technology, one of the things I constantly talk about is having a strategy. How do you properly plan to bring on technology? That can be everything from, you need to understand there's an overwhelming amount of technology coming to construction right now. So understanding what are your problems and where your profitability gaps are.
Because what has happened that doesn't work as sometimes. Especially within different, whether it's association groups or just different communities in construction, some leaders might hear what their peers are using and bring it to their company. Every company is different.
So I think understanding granularly, what the needs are for your business is really important. And if you are, for example, like I said, I focused on small mid-size contractors, the small, mid-size contractors don't have chief technology officers, chief innovation officers. So you need to get a little resourceful sometimes.
And, but you still need a technology champion. So that may be a project manager in the field, but having someone who is a technology champion who understands what those areas of needs are and having that person get buy-in in and present what the needs are. That's going to really help because to have an understanding of your needs, creating a strategy, getting buy-in and bringing in the right technology, that that is just so important, because technology can be expensive, but also, companies that just shoot from the hip…it's not going to work.
So I think that that goes back to also planning cost-wise and implementation wise. Some technologies are going to be more expensive than others, but if you don't plan, everything looks like a much more crucial cost and it's not being evaluated appropriately.
If you don't budget at the right time and then implementation, some technologies can be implemented in a week in some may take you six, six plus months. So just planning ahead.
And the one other thing I would add to that is people forget that bringing on technology is hard. Don't forget to celebrate the small wins.
[00:14:25] Hugh Seaton: Yeah. That's great. This idea of look, we got data out of the thing it's working. We've made it work and it's starting to tell us things that help us with our business. I think that's great.
Do you find that you're in a position to be able to go through some of what you just described to me, that's a really nice high level, "guys here's a generic strategy, which you have to make your own, but that sounds like that's a lot of what your messaging, it's almost a stump speech, right?
Cause you, you probably find yourself saying it over and over again, which is exactly...
[00:14:55] Matt Abeles: And it may vary to different audiences. I will level points, but yes, I have, we've done webinars for some of our chapters on that. And when you go deep, you start talking about things like dual education.
So I'll give you a perfect example. While the average construction workers between 40 and 45, which it's important to consider that the journey-level construction worker age demographic could be much higher. That demographic is different than the generation coming in. So some companies deploy what's called dual education.
You have the tech savvy professionals coming in, teaching those workers about how technology helps them. And those craft veterans are teaching those young professionals about what it means to be a craft professional and all the tips and tricks on what has been successful for their career.
That dual education has not only created better culture, but it's created a culture to help innovate. And that's worked in many instances by going to talking about things like that is where I kind of go into the weeds on some of this stuff, but yeah, it's. It's a big topic of conversation.
We even do a webinar series focused on diversity and innovation because they do tie together.
[00:16:09] Hugh Seaton: Yeah. There's an old expression that by the time you're tired of saying it, they're starting to hear it. That's why I kind of talk about stump speeches. It's just, you know, you can keep doing it.
So you guys have a couple of formal initiatives I want to make sure we touch on let's talk about the Tech Alliance.
[00:16:26] Matt Abeles: Yeah, so I'll give you a little history on this. So when I came over to ABC and I realized that, and we're going to back to your earlier question, if we're going to innovate, it's not just education and awareness. It is truly partnering with the tech community and the Tech Alliance was meant to be, not just a group of good solutions, a group of good partners who are going to help in all the things I had mentioned earlier that we do at ABC. So the Tech Alliance is a heavily vetted group, that all of them are helping us with education, awareness, upskilling, they are helping us provide opportunities, you know, with small mid-sized contractors, getting discounts or opportunities for free technology's a big part of that. Helping just educate our young professionals, helping get involved in some of the events where there's opportunities that they add value in.
We have been very careful at bringing on the right safety technology companies who help and some of the things we do with our strategic plan. I mean, these companies in the Tech Alliance are tied to our leadership, our strategic plan. We have quarterly calls with chapter presidents, with, different leadership VPs, our CEO, we talk to executive members.
This group gets inserted into the DNA of ABC, in all that we do. They are vetted through, we have a construction technology innovation committee that vets all of them, and we've taken an approach that these are the companies that we are going to entrench where appropriate within ABC.
They do all those things I mentioned. They even provide us educational content and everyone gets involved in a different way. But these companies...they're not all the large companies out there. They are small, mid-sized and large companies who, at the end of the day, they are good partners and they understand what we are asking of them.
And it is a mutually good program for the right companies. But I think, if you talk to any of the companies, they'll tell you that having a resource to help some of the initiatives I mentioned is an important part of this for it to be successful for both sides.
They include KPA, SmartBuild, FlashTract, Safesite, BuildOps, Autodesk, SubHQ, Tenna, Sage, MyComply, Procore, Bespoke, StructionSite, and ProQuest. So you have a different array of solutions, but again these are partners of ours. And some of those are household names, some of them are younger businesses, but they all add value to our broader, not only strategic plan, but going back to what I said before, that need for helping our members just be safer, being more profitable and win more work.
[00:19:21] Hugh Seaton: I was looking at the list and I was struck by the fact that you've been careful to include people, some of whom do amazing things when it comes to education and providing content. So there's an obvious one there, but the fact that you do have smaller companies, as well as some of the bigger household names I thought was really awesome.
[00:19:39] Matt Abeles: It's one thing I mentioned I'm going to a lot of chapters and I'm doing some different types of education. In many cases, we'll bring one or two of the Alliance companies who can talk about a different perspective or we do a lot on safety and now safety technology is a big topic.
So some of these companies have gotten involved in those, but they're involved in the bigger ABC effort. And we're seeing that understanding of the Alliance in order. So the Alliance internally becomes even greater because now it's been a year. We had our first year end July 30th, our program goes August 1st to July 30th. And we had just about every company renew. So we added a few more and the idea is that these groups are part of the ABC family. And one thing that we've done with our members of the alliances, they are in fact national members of ABC.
So you'll see a lot of them at our many events from our convention to things like our user summit.
[00:20:40] Hugh Seaton: And so it's a year long. I mean, you kind of answered this. I just want to call it out that it's a year long process or year long program that you renew or at least the plan is to renew yearly.
I think that's really smart. And in an industry that changes this fast that's really smart.
[00:20:55] Matt Abeles: Yeah. And that's one of the things that's part of the vetting process is longevity. Making sure that these are companies who understand—I think the easiest way to describe it is the Alliance is almost like a gym membership: you kind of get what you put in there. And truly if someone doesn't have the resources to do that, then you know, there are other avenues to get involved with ABC as a tech company. But, you know this is something where these companies have heavily been involved in so many different ways. And that's why they're still here.
[00:21:26] Hugh Seaton: Well, it's like any, well, it's not, but it is analogous let's say to sponsorships without activation. And in this case, you're putting your name behind it too. So you want to make sure that they're supporting what you're out there trying to do.
[00:21:39] Matt Abeles: Yeah. I mean, we have we have such a large opportunity to make change to the industry in a big way.
And I can't do it without this group of companies and to segue to kind of the marketplace. The reason we built the marketplace is that there are more than 15 solutions that add value to members. So we built a tech marketplace for our members to know that technology is very overwhelming, as I mentioned.
So the marketplace is to help them have a first place to go. That can be an array of solutions that help our members based on surveys, conversations. And again, there is an approval process with that, but in the marketplace, will have, you know, it'll have within the next 12 months, we plan to have 25 to 30 companies in there, 15 of which will be the Alliance companies, but we're going to have more companies that are solutions that add value to our members. And we're in the process of filling that out. But the idea again is to be a starting point for members that have just a better group of technologies. All the groups in the marketplace are giving some sort of exclusive discount to ABC members and have been through, again, a heavy vetting process.
[00:22:52] Hugh Seaton: Yeah. I was going to comment on that. I love that you guys have, you know, back to the point of adoption is I'm looking at the site as we speak. And it's obviously it's easy to use, but all of them have some level of either an intro price or a free this or a discount, I think, which is fantastic is again, you're asking people to take a bit of a risk and the fact that, that through you, they're willing to share some of that risk, I think is really helpful.
Really, really great.
[00:23:21] Matt Abeles: It's a win-win partnership for the right companies. If they're adding value to our members. And our members find the value in them. It's going to create a win all around, which is going to inherently bring more innovation to the industry as a whole.
[00:23:36] Hugh Seaton: So I'd love to sort of, kind of come into a landing, asking you a big question, which is where do you see this going?
I mean, you've been, you've been paying closer attention than most to what's going on for years now. Where do you see the trends going and what do you think people should look out for?
[00:23:54] Matt Abeles: I think that, as far as trends the biggest... I'm going to take it back a step. One thing is I constantly get asked the question: "can you talk to us about the future of construction technology?"
Data, the opportunity to get more data is now available, in many ways, but once the contractors understand their data needs, then you're going to see more adoption of these data technologies and we're all going to be smarter and raise the bar, because now we have multiple solutions that track data on people, processes, projects and especially equipment.
And there is a lot of cost savings and opportunities for efficiency and those things that are not bringing on some tougher adoptions like virtual reality, robotics, that may take that or, or 3d printing. That's where I see the big adoption taking place.
That said, I do think that you're seeing...just talking to a robotics company the other day, you're seeing robotics become more readily available for the small, mid-size contractors.
You are seeing kind of the realization that the technology needs to cater more to the small, mid-size contractors because that is the bulk of our industry. So I'm happy that we're seeing that, but ultimately I see the future being more digitization, more efficient as an industry when it comes to our small, mid-size contractors.
And you know, I think you're going to see a new workforce coming in that is a different talent pool. The guys who are coming into our industry, I mean, my almost three-year-old can use an iPad better than his grandparents. Well, that generation coming up was built on smart devices and they're going to be a little more tech savvy.
So they're going to demand companies... you know, it doesn't matter if you're a small business or large business, they're going to demand that companies be more innovative. I think that's going to push everybody. And we have 430,000 jobs that we need to fill just this year. So we that talent pool coming in, I think is going to help rise the tides to on everything from data, pushing innovation, a little more, and making our, you know, 10 plus trillion dollar industry better.
Or, you know, every company in the world is a tech company. I believe that construction companies will be considered tech companies in the future.
[00:26:51] Hugh Seaton: What a great way to end construction companies will be considered tech companies in the future. I couldn't agree more, Matt, thank you for being on the podcast. I learned a lot and this was a great conversation.
[00:27:01] Matt Abeles: Yeah, thank you Hugh. I really appreciate it. And if anybody would like to reach me, my email is abeles@abc.org. I love talking to, you know, leaders in the industry and happy to help where I can. Or if anybody wants to know anything more about ABC.
[00:27:17] Hugh Seaton: Great. And we'll have all of that in the podcast notes.
Thanks again.
[00:27:21] Matt Abeles: Thank you. Take care.