MCAA has been a leader in thinking about technology, training and work process of trades in construction. At their recent MEP Innovation conference, mechanical, pipefitting, electrical, sheet metal trades all collaborated to recognize commonalities and think through new approaches. Sean shares some of the findings from this process and others.
Hugh Seaton: [00:00:00] Welcome to Constructed Futures, I'm Hugh Seaton. Today. I'm here with Sean McGuire, the director of innovative technology at the mechanical contractors association of America. Sean, welcome to the podcast.
Sean McGuire: [00:00:13] Hey Hugh, how you doing?
Hugh Seaton: [00:00:16] Really good. So you guys just had an amazing conference last week. I think you told me it was over 1300 people came from a bunch of different organizations, kind of coming together for the first time.
Tell me a little bit about what you saw and about the kind of cooperation that you're seeing really happen.
Sean McGuire: [00:00:32] We, we had our first virtual technology conference. We actually it's called the MEP innovation conference. We've been doing this conference for give or take about seven or eight years now at MCAA.
And, you know, the whole theory behind this was that we, when we did an internal look at how contractors are kind of evolving, we really saw a big, giant hole in our education that was out there for the technology side. And, you know, we're taking a very old system and a very old process we're building has been built for centuries.
And we're trying to kind of revolutionize this and especially in the last 10 or 15 years, and there's been a rapid amount of change that's kind of come around that. So yeah, you can probably testify to that as well. Like what you're seeing is a whole bunch of, "yeah, we've been doing it this way forever why are we changing the way we're doing things" and it's, it's merging with: "Hey, everything else is digital. Why isn't this process?"
You know, why aren't we starting to use more laptops and computers and not only the job sites but why aren't we, you know, having to go and reach to our fabrication facilities and, and our cell phones and make sure that everybody is coordinated and everybody has more information at their fingertips.
That's true. We, we absolutely need to get there, but this rapid pace of changing on the fly is really, it's really kind of been a challenge for members across... yeah, not just the construction, it's pretty much every industry as well. And you know, the, the real kind of drivers we've had for this whole program is to make sure that we can educate and get as many of our members up to speed and ready to not only compete, but try to be ahead of that curve so that we can, we can understand the process a little better and control as best we can to get ourselves in better shape going forward.
So we had this conference you know, we've, we pivoted to digital and I'm not sure how many digital conferences you've been on this last year. Quite quite a few, I imagine. The good news is, you know, we're, we're kind of late in the pace. We, we were able to do the live conference in January of 2020.
And as far as I'm concerned, it was the best conference of the year because. It pretty much won, but wecrushed the competition in 2020 because we did it so early. But you know, what we did is we, we sat through a whole bunch of other conferences and, you know, luckily we saw what hit and what missed, and we, we just basically tried our best to lean into all the advantages that we could find for doing a virtual conference.
And what we found is, you know what, there are really good sessions of value, but it seemed like a lot of the pomp wasn't really hitting as, as much as a lot of the blocking and tackling. So what we decided to do for our conference was to try to really have as many breakouts as possible. Have every single session be contractor led because I think that was the two things we thought that were landing the best.
So, you know, we've been really blessed that we have a pretty engaged committee that does kind of the backbone of this and the network of this little community of construction geeks, and construction dorks, that we could find to lead most of these sessions. But we didn't really just want to stop there. What we thought we would do this year is to try and broaden this.
So that we we're hitting more areas of both operations that kind of deal with technology. Cause it's not just the VDC groups. It's not just, you know, the fabrication guys, you know, there's safety tech, there's operations tech, project managers have to deal with stuff field foreman have to to deal with this stuff.
So we thought we would broaden the whole scope and say, let's just make it as much about corporate registrations instead of individual. Not really care about the numbers of people coming from your group. We weren't focused on individual registrations. We thought if, if there somebody in your operations that is going to value the value of going to a session on safety technology, and that's the only thing to go to, then that's, that's a win for us.
So we, we try to do that there, but once we started there, we really didn't stop. Cause we started thinking, "why don't we start incorporating other contractor associations that have a very similar path as we do." And we thought that the more diverse a perspective across the industry, the better off we would be.
So we reached out to NECA the national electrical contractors association and SMACNA, the sheet metal air conditioning contractors national association and said, "Look, you guys are in a very similar path as us. Why don't we try to work together and kind of put a path forward to merge our, our construction technologies and interests into a single you know, derivative event, and let's just have this be an MEP innovations conference instead of just making about MCAA." So that's what we did. So we, we, we got them on board this year. Next year. It's going to be kind of a fully integrated thing where they're working with us already now on the whole conference format and education for the next few years.
And I think it's a, it's a real win when it's all said and done to get input from other trades, because it's amazing. I mean, you can probably test this as well. Construction isn't done in a silo just because you're a mechanical contractor. You know, it doesn't mean that you're only concerned about the mechanical process and building.
Hugh Seaton: [00:05:43] And, and aren't you finding in addition to the fact that people do work shoulder by shoulder, some of the things you opened up with in terms of, of rapid change and these, you know, a lot of the types of technology, whether it was safety or, or scheduling or whatever are, are true across trades. So I'm assuming people are having less trouble figuring out how to do a weld and they are figuring out how to integrate that into, you know what I mean? Like that, integrate that into some software that is new. So the specifics of the trades, they, they people know pretty well, but how are they, how are they adopting digital technology is something you're all sharing.
Did you find that that's true?
Sean McGuire: [00:06:22] Well, I mean, that's, that's kind of a, it's not a, quite a fair comparison with loving cause you have to remember that the skills that people are going through skills trade you're talking about a five-year apprenticeship. So you have five years of very focused training on how to be, not just proficient, but be real craftsmen in the trade you're in people don't have five years to, to ramp up integrate their software. Right. If you had five years to roll it out, man, they'd probably be perfect. Well,
Hugh Seaton: [00:06:50] What I meant was you're across trades. You're finding that, that it's not the trade specific. There's plenty of work being done with trade specific skills.
My point is you all have common ground that you have this group of technologies that are actually trade agnostic, that everybody is being asked to evaluate and adopt.
Sean McGuire: [00:07:10] Well, they're absolutely trying to make all the software trading agnostic as possible because the, I mean, the smaller the market you have, obviously the less used your software is going to be, but it's, you're absolutely correct when you were saying there, you have to be able to try and make your platforms work for as many trades as possible. And that, you know, I honestly like getting the perspective and being able to get users on the same platform is, is makes the project coordinated better. There's no way around it.
You know, the, the one that I think blessing that you probably see it from this last year is people were kind of forced to move more virtual and integrate together. And that goes not just internally, but also goes externally. So, you know, project teams had to be kind of working virtually on the same page and that forced them into softwares that could help coordinate better and try and keep a centralized, single source of truth that people were working from. Wasn't ideal for sure. But it did kind of push them out of the nest to some extent.
Hugh Seaton: [00:08:12] And do you think some of, do you think some of that forced trades to cooperate more than they might have been before, or at least made them think about the process of coordinating with each other more than they might've before.
Sean McGuire: [00:08:25] I think it forced them to collaborate. I'm not sure how many people really were thinking beyond themselves because let's be realistic. I think let's try a certain kind of IPD job and stuff like that. People are always kind of like, I just need to get this work done. And they think about what they're trying to do first before they kind of really have any kind of empathy for everybody else.
But I'll tell you what, there was one session we did at the conference this last week. By an electrician from Lighthouse Electric, a guy named Adam Davis who did a session called "Labor by Volume" and his, this whole thesis of this came up from a conversation we had, he had with a couple mechanical and plumbing contractors and even a sheet metal guy.
And he's like, "I tell you what the electricians always get pushed to the last, when it comes to the you know, the sequencing and I'm the one who's always forced to like make 30 changes in 30 bends, but the perspective you have to see as, yeah, it's probably easiest for me to move it, but that's not necessarily the right thing to do over and over again, because when I have to make that many bends, my labor increases."
And if we're on an IPD job, you know, it's a net loss. When it's taking more labor for me to make all these changes, you know, just because it is easiest to move, doesn't necessarily make it the best move to make. So we need to kind of consider the holistic approach to this whole thing and say, what else, what else might be easier?
And not just look to say like, "Oh, you have a conduit that goes, we can just move the conduit and get that out of the way." Let's take a look to see what was the right choice. Not necessarily what's the easiest choice. And that was kinda that that kind of spoke to that was for the whole conference. We were, we were trying to gain that perspective.
That's why we wanted to bring in, you know, other trades so we can get that look, because otherwise we probably don't hear that feedback. You know, there's, blame that gets thrown around a lot more than collaboration, and that was kind of the whole goal: we want to get more collaboration, so that going forward, we know the MEP trades can kind of work together and we can be more sure about the product we put out collaboratively, as opposed to trying and be competitive about it. Because that's, I'm not going to say that Owners and GC's kind of like that combatitive nature because they can pit us against each other, but that's not the way that the projects get built better or faster or cheaper.
Hugh Seaton: [00:10:38] Right and so do you find that that, you know, last week was a good step , like people learned concrete ways that they might work together better, or at least at minimum what you just described right. Where they're seeing. "Okay well, I see it now from an electrician's perspective, whereas I may not have before," but did you see the kind of beginning of people starting to concretely say, all right, here's how we might work together differently or , plan differently.
Sean McGuire: [00:11:05] Yeah, I'd say yes. But I think it was also the first time. Yeah. It's also just the first step in, in knowing and getting to know and meet people who have equal passion. And network with them outside of your group. I mean, that's networking in these events is by far one of the most advantageous things to them.
Every single time I go to a conference, I'm not gonna even say which conference. It doesn't make a difference. Every time I go to a conference, I get more value out of the people I meet. And the sessions I go to except my own conference, obviously there, the sessions
I see what I see what happens. And I, and I understand that you know, some of the stuff that goes on in the hallways is way more beneficial than some of the stuff that's being taught on the classes.
Hugh Seaton: [00:11:52] The whole thesis behind the Construction Dorks is "let's hang out and talk to each other like we do after sessions or over a beer after the conference."
Sean McGuire: [00:12:01] Yeah. They had me on recently. They prefer it to be bourbon or whiskey, but yeah. Any case, but yeah, you're right. And you know, I've been trying to, I wouldn't say help them along because the construction dorks has always needed to be beyond mechanicals or plumbing, contractors, or even service contractors.
It needs to be across as many industries as possible. So there's a certain amount of help I can give them an after that it probably works against them. So all I can really do is, is you know, get their message out as best I can and try to encourage people to participate in it from our perspective, but that group needs to be its own thing and they need to kind of explore their own space intentionally.
Hugh Seaton: [00:12:41] Definitely. But it's nice that there are things like that popping up where people realize the value of talking to each other and just, you know, continuing the conversation. So did you find as you, as you went through the planning of this. Did you find that you had to make your, you, you purposely made space for people to network and talk to each other?
That's not easy to do in a virtual virtual experience.
Sean McGuire: [00:13:04] Look, we took some swings and I think the things that we try to do for the social aspects did work. I really wish some of the after hours, things were as attended as well as some of the things that were during the sessions. But strangely enough, I think the, some of the session formats we had, because it wasn't just You know, speaker and presentation kind of thing.
We had a whole series of round table discussions that forced, and we told everybody at the, at the jump, "Hey guys get your hair ready, you know, put on a clean shirt. Cause we want everyone to have their mics and video on for this." This is not one of those things where you can sit back and watch and do work in the background.
We're going to break out into small, you know, 5 person, 6 person rooms, and we're going to discuss things in person on video. So, I'm going to give you a 10 minute warning. We're gonna do a little mini presentation, but it's, it's funny, that's the kind of thing that really did kind of force some of that networking.
And at, you know, the first kind of day we did this, everybody was maybe they just didn't understand what the clear vision of the format was. But once they started talking to each other, they really did kind of carry through. And all those sessions were intentionally agnostic in terms of trade, because we wanted to have different people in from different groups.
And to be clear, like, you know, especially when we said we had some round tables that were just going on different parts of the process, the process is incredibly similar across all, all those trades. You know, it, it really is, especially as you apply it to VDC these days. So in my mind, it was, it was kind of really beneficial to, to have everybody kinda participating in it because I mean, there's, there's very slight tweaks to what you're doing, you know, depending on the type of work you're you're building, but the process kind of held true and it really kind of helped everybody get a come to the realization that yeah, we can learn just as much from a sheet metal contractor who has a really good process to validate the fabrication as we can from an electrician or mechanical or a plumber because it's there, they all need to have to do the same thing, but some people might have a little nugget of gold there that they can share with people and show them how they can do it. But it also set the pace right off the bat that says, you know, we're out here and we're not trying to learn from the expensive speakers that have really good message, and they're really, well-polished.
We're trying to share and learn from each other. And that sharing and learning is, is a tough message to really kind of convey and get everybody to buy into, but it really helps to see other people do it and say, okay, I guess I will only learn as much as I'm willing to kind of share in these things.
Hugh Seaton: [00:15:33] Do you think maybe this year also where everybody's been kind of cooped up and, you know, we're hungry for human interaction and being able to talk to people on like eye level instead of, you know, on a stage. So I wonder if that may be, did you find that dynamic helps as well?
Sean McGuire: [00:15:49] I did. Absolutely. And I think some of the comments we got back right away were like, wow, I haven't actually like spoke to anybody in a while. I'm kind of out of practice a little bit. But yeah, I do think that that peer to peer level of interaction is really kind of vital and, in all honesty that when you're learning from people who do your job in other places you get so much more insight.
And it's, it's almost, I wouldn't say it's like a lifeline or an anchor either case, but it's, it really is kind of a way to empathize and feel the pain and simultaneously learn and grow from other people around the country.
Hugh Seaton: [00:16:26] Well, I think we know this from technology adoption across everybody. Like it's just a human thing that I believe something is valid if it comes from someone who does what I do or looks like, thinks like I think, or is of my age or whatever it is that you think is important. So I think, you know, hearing from other folks who are going through the same learning curve and are maybe seeing some successes.
Is a way faster way to really learn some things, then hearing it from, you know, a software company.
Sean McGuire: [00:16:54] Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah, we didn't even allow any of that really to kind of go on. We did try to do some virtual exhibits and they were well relatively well attended. But you know, you're gonna speak way more truth to the actual power of the software when you have a contractor saying here's how we're using it. Getting some honest feedback cause it that the truth isn't nearly as polished as some of the stuff you'll see, you know, from the sales reps. And you know, that's, that's, I think it's not only more effective, it's more powerful. It's a better sales tool, to be honest because when you're seeing how things are done in real world ways. You're kind of getting a good feel that you're learning from, first of all, other people's processes, for sure. But you're getting kind of like, "Hey, this is a solution. It's not just all, you know , fake or, or polished up for, for just this presentation." We're seeing somebody actually do it. And a lot of people call BS on something it's like, "Oh, I don't think you can't really do this in this way. You can't really do what this is saying. But when you're seeing other contractors actually doing it that messaging resonates more than, than anything else.
Hugh Seaton: [00:17:57] I was going to say it it, among other things, it shows you there's nothing missing or if there is something missing, here's what we had to do to make it work, because that's the, that's what you see with technology a lot is that it does the demo really, really well, but it's missing a piece to make it really work on a job site or in a real project.
And hearing that it's either end to end really working or, you know, here's what you need to do to make it work end to end. I think reassures people. So, you know, you're not stuck there with something that almost works.
Sean McGuire: [00:18:22] You know, the really hard thing, like building on that you like one of the most frequent questions I get now is not whether a software will do something like that is how is it integrating with something else that they're using.
So it's like, well, I want to use this software, but how does that work with this other software? Like where is this going to fit in my tech stack? And how much trouble is it going to be? I was, I was telling some other friends. We almost had a session called. We've got a backend API that'll that'll fix this problem just fine and other lies that you hear from, from salespeople.
Yeah. And we decided to scrap that one.
Hugh Seaton: [00:18:55] Everyone would have said yeah, me too! That's funny.
Sean McGuire: [00:19:00] But it's, it's not a, cause it's not a lie. Back end APIs. They are effective, but I think the, what you have to understand with any of those things and to get any kind of integration to fully work and cook together is, it's going to take some programmers and coders, and it's almost like having a coder on staff of a contractor is not an abnormal thing anymore.
And they're busy because if you're using even like, say four main softwares for your tech stack, with every single update that goes through every single time, there's an update that affects every single piece of the operations. And you've got to reconnect all those connections again. So it's one of those things where it's just, just understand that it's not just the price of the software or the box.
There's a, there's a price for integration.
Hugh Seaton: [00:19:46] Well, they, they often, they often call that shadow IT like you may not have hired the person, but here's the, extra expense that it costs. And I think, you know, the broader point is that the construction industry is, is growing their IT capability, you know, by force and by strategy.
Sean McGuire: [00:20:05] Yeah, absolutely. I like that. I like that term shadow IT. I haven't actually heard that. Is that, is that something that's...
Hugh Seaton: [00:20:12] it's a commonly, yeah, it's a commonly used word because people say, all right, we're going to pay this much. And they think, you know, some, a high percentage of their IT spend is going to be external software, but it's usually not. It's usually like, maybe a third and often less of what you spend on tech on software is for the actual software. The rest of it is salaries of people to make it working and make sure the data works and all the things you need to keep the machine humming. And the more you connect things together and they add all this great business value, but you need someone to feed the machine and keep it, humming.
Sean McGuire: [00:20:46] Yeah. Does that, does that include like the rollout and implementation for the, you know, the regular people on staff? Like if you had a construction technologist on staff who was, you know, validating all the software in the first place as being productive and positive integration, would it also kind of help out with the rollout and implementation costs and just try and keep it moving within the internal organization?
Hugh Seaton: [00:21:08] Yeah. And I think they use the word shadow to say, look, there's going to be unintended costs. So you should give yourself a 20% or whatever, the number you land on. But know that if you've , if you said I'm gonna spend a hundred thousand dollars, including an existing staff person in the software, there's going to be shadow IT costs we're not thinking of. It could be training people, so there's just hours to spend training people. It could be fixing things that break the point is, that's why they use a word like shadow. It's, it's kind of an unknown, but, but you know, there. It's one of those known unknowns you know there's going to be a number, you're not quite sure what it is. So you put something in your budget to say, great, we're not going to be surprised by this. And in year three, it's not going to be so shadow anymore, but in year one it's we just, it's a risk that we can allow for.
Sean McGuire: [00:21:51] Absolutely. I mean, yeah, I guess I was always considering something else, like overhead to expenses that just go towards implementation.
But it makes, that makes perfect sense the way you describe it.
Hugh Seaton: [00:22:01] Everyone figures it out, but I want to get back online to what you guys learned and, you know, we've talked a little bit about cooperation and how it's just it was really important. It sounds like it was a really great event from that perspective.
And one of the things that you were talking about was kind of how, how labor as a general topic fits into what, what you've been discussing and what you've been working on. You want to talk a little bit about that?
Sean McGuire: [00:22:25] Yeah. Labors is a bit of a tricky thing because we're at a labor shortage for sure.
And you know, the worst thing is you probably lose more work from a, from a union contractor market share standpoint during the good times. And you do during the bad times, because there's just a certain amount of work you just can't get to. And it's hard to grow fast enough to, to achieve that.
But the only kind of real check to that is, is if you can kind of increase your productivity. So productivity is the thing that we're always going for. We want to make sure that, you know, our members are increasing their productivity and, you know, the work that they're taking out, you know, work, they can, that is kind of repetitive or not really kind of gaining any kind of real manpower advantage.
It's the stuff that you don't really want to do. The repetitive tasks that you don't want to have to like. Do towards the end of the day or anything along those lines. And just basically say like, if, you know, if you can do something one and a half times faster than you're doing it, of course you want to be able to do that.
You're not, you're not going to get kind of push back on that kind of stuff. So that's really kind of one of the things, but on the other side of that is we've got Labor partners with United association and our relationship is really great with them. And for the conference itself, I think we had about a hundred UA Members who are actually attending the sessions that we had.
We even had them present as well. And you know, the reason why our partnership is strong and the reason why we do this and integrate them into the sessions as well, is that perspective has to be there the entire time because we work together on so many things. Especially in terms of training and we want to make sure that we're on the same page to what our contractors need.
These are in terms of manpower demand. You know, it's, if Total station work , is going to be part of every single contractors operations, then they need to know, Hey, we, we've got to train more people on how to use Total stations. Same thing has been already been going on for VDC, fabrication.
But we all need to get on the same page so that we understand where the, the needs of the future industry are. So we can train people appropriately. And I couldn't ask for better partners, especially, you know, since I've been kind of in this role here last seven, eight years.
Hugh Seaton: [00:24:29] And how, how do you guys kind of collaborate on, on training like that?
Sean McGuire: [00:24:34] Well, I mean, there's JETCs and that the thing is there's there's programs, you can develop on a national level and there is kind of things you can do to help train the trainers per se. But each year, you know, there's a, there's an annual training conference for the trainers that goes on in Ann Arbor.
This year, unfortunately it can be virtual, which is too bad, because it's an incredibly. Good time. Cause you get to meet , some people are really kind of doing the, the, the work on the, on the ground where the rubber is meeting the road. But we work together with them and, you know, they've got an internal muni control committee as well that really kind of evaluates where things are, and develops the right curriculum for this.
But that's, that's kinda how it works. It's kind of a, a flow, but, from the top, it goes down, but for it to actually be implemented, it really takes some mutual driving from both contractors and labor groups that say like, this is the curriculum that we're going to try to put out for our apprentices this year, or this is the kind of continuing education we're going to have for those who want to learn VDC and to push it to, get it to kind of take place.
Cause you know, changing any kind of education program is, is a challenge. Especially when people say, well, when I went through the apprenticeship, this is what we learned, why aren't we doing this anymore? Kind of thing. Right. Everybody has this perspective of what they think is right. Somewhat based on how they kind of learn stuff, but it's, it's changing really fast and everybody needs to be able to adapt. But to their credit, they're, they're making that change they're teaching our labor force, how to really adapt to the current digital age.
Hugh Seaton: [00:26:03] That's. Yeah, that's exciting. And I've seen some of that at the the UA's facility in Chicago is impressive.
Sean McGuire: [00:26:09] 597's got a beautiful facility. They have, it's unbelievable. I wanted to move in the crazy thing. So the, so the, the trading center seven, they have a beautiful facility. And they've got a whole bunch of great workstations.
One of the things that the national did is they went through a 3D scanned it, and the reason for it they did both a, you know, with a phase based, you know, laser scanner to get really hard model, but they also did it with like a Matterport to get a photogrammetric version of the model in a soft model. So that people can get, they get shared a lot more easily.
And the reason why they want to do that is because as people are building out different things around the country, there are hundreds of these training centers around the country. And every time someone says, you know, I'd love to see you do this.
You know, we're thinking about doing a water heater. Program at ours, you know, we need to, how can we see a water heater lab? And they say, okay, sure. Here's our water heater lab. And as, as every single one around the country is being built, especially as new facilities, they're doing the same thing. So they're scanning all these new buildings, putting them in kind of a catalog, so that as they're, you know, they're, they're putting money towards training every single year, they can learn and get best practices from each other and, and do it better.
So they're not trying to recreate the wheel every single time.
Hugh Seaton: [00:27:26] That's really smart. So I'm going to end with with a quick question about whether you see more and more opportunities for sort of cross trade events as the, as we've kind of learned from what you just did, but also a whole year of being siloed.
Do you see that as a big opportunity going forward?
Sean McGuire: [00:27:44] You know, I see probably more, at least from the MCAA SMACNA, NECA, TAUC groups. And I think, I mean, there's been some, even some MOU's that are kind of assigned between each of the organizations to try to progress and develop content together because it really like, for example, another good example is, is our safety directors conference.
I think each of our associations do that and they're pretty much teaching, very similar curriculum around each association as like, okay, why are we doing this your times guys? Just like technology. We didn't, we don't need to have three separate or four separate technology conferences. That's that's, I wouldn't say it's a waste of time, but we can do it a lot better.
And if we kind of, if we're sharing our, our resources and, getting better content out of it so there's things like that. They're there that we're looking at. But you try and see what is kind of collective and what you can kind of do training-wise together. And you know, the real kind of key to it all is you can't have anything that's like so sacred that you're not willing to share it.
I mean, we could've taken a standpoint of we're seven years ahead of you guys. Develop it yourself and try and catch up. And it would have been really counterproductive to the entire industry because my job is to move, you know, to move the whole industry forward. We want to be progressive in how we kind of deal with things and, the net gain from having other good, you know, trade partners get on the same page is all part of the process. So, you know, the more you're willing to kind of share the more we can get out of it. And, you know, the truth is, you know, already, we're starting to see some uptick from the other association groups developing, you know, their own committees and developing content and, and doing the same thing.
So it's already kind of it's already kind of bearing some fruit here and the faster we get everybody up there, the better.
Hugh Seaton: [00:29:40] That's an amazing way to end this. Sean, thank you for being on the podcast.
Hey, thanks Hugh. Thank you for having me.