March 7, 2024 • 29 mins
Join host, Tonya Schulte, for another exceptional episode of the Construction Junction podcast, presented by The Profit Constructors. This episode takes a deep dive into the exciting and often overlooked world of pre-construction. Our special guest, John Sibley, CEO and founder of TrueBuilt, sheds light on how modern technological tools are transforming pre-construction and setting the foundation for successful construction projects.
John illustrates the power of TrueBuilt's unique platform, a blend of cutting-edge AI, computer vision, and heavy-duty automation, designed to simplify and streamline pre-construction tasks. With pioneering features like automatic document renaming, TrueBuilt enhances accuracy and cuts down on time-consuming manual labor, changing the industry's outlook on bid management.
While TrueBuilt boasts impressive automation capabilities, the platform provides room for manual adjustments, striking a balance that allows construction contractors to achieve utmost efficiency without compromising the quality of work. This episode uncovers the TrueBuilt journey, right from its launch, and its consistent evolution into an indispensable tool within the construction sphere.
Addressing the challenges of transitioning to new technology, John discusses common hesitations that clients face and how TrueBuilt can prove its worth by highlighting its, accuracy and efficiency. He also divulges some of TrueBuilt's future integration plans, setting the balI rolling for further innovation in the construction industry.
Discover a new perspective on pre-construction, explore TrueBuilt's platform, and all it offers in this insightful episode. Listen in and be part of the conversation, unravelling new paths to profitability and productivity in the construction industry.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
The Profit Constructors presents Construction Junction, the junction between
accounting and construction.
Please welcome our host, Tanya Schulte.
Hi, everyone. My name is Tanya Schulte, and I am so excited to welcome you back
(00:25):
for this next edition of the Construction Junction podcast.
Before we dive in today, I'd like to tell you if you're at the SubExcel conference,
which I'm pretty sure that when this podcast drops, we'll be smack dab in the
middle of, I'm going to be there too.
So we're headed to Nolens. And if you are there at SubExcel,
(00:47):
when you're hearing this, please stop by and say hello.
I can't wait to meet all of the listeners out there and get to chat with you.
So looking forward to seeing everybody at SubXL and catching up.
It'll be a good time. And like I said, please do come and say hello and say
that you're listening to the podcast.
Always like to know who's out there listening and catching these great podcast drops.
(01:11):
With that said, let's dive into today's main subject, which is pre-construction.
I think that pre-construction is in a lot of ways for a lot lot of companies
a great missed opportunity.
I'm going to dive in a little bit more on why I believe that.
Today, we're going to be taking a look at it mostly from the standpoint of a general contractor.
(01:32):
And we're going to talk with someone who's offering some solutions in that general contracting space.
And that's really where they're focusing their efforts on this particular solution.
But I'm going to tell you, I think that every single construction firm ought
to be focused on on this aspect of pre-construction, on this aspect of what
do we need to do before anything happens and before our work starts out on the job site,
(01:55):
we do need to have a process in place for that.
And so we're gonna talk about it. Again, today, we're mostly gonna be focused
on that general contractor area.
But generals, subs, and everybody on the job site should be focused on and paying
attention to this all too important and unfortunately all too often sort of
(02:17):
missed opportunity of that pre-construction phase.
Let's talk about what the pre-construction phase allows us to do,
right? It allows us to properly assess the scope of the job.
We want to make sure we know exactly what we're going out to do and how we want to do it.
It allows us to establish the proper budget so that we know exactly what we
think this is going to cost.
(02:38):
And that then obviously enables us to understand what we should charge for it.
So we want to make sure we get those budgeting pieces in place.
It allows us to know who our team's going to be. So again, from the general
contracting side of things, as we're going to kind of be focusing on today,
that means knowing who all of the subs are going to be that are going to be
players, making sure that they're on board and that we've got scheduling lined
(03:01):
out for for them. We're going to talk about that in just a second.
But like really getting a feel
for who the team will be that's going to be participating in this project.
And then establishing those timelines, establishing lead times on material ordering,
establishing timelines for the project and setting up our project plans.
And then any sort of like permitting and things that need to happen as well, right?
So very, very important pieces that go into this pre-construction work.
(03:26):
And some would argue it's really the most important part of any construction project.
Imagine that I called you up, you and I are friends, and I picked up the phone
and I called you up and I said, all right, let's go.
Your response was, great, where are we going?
That's kind of what it's like if we just skip this whole pre-construction phase.
(03:50):
If I called you up tomorrow and said, all right, I'm going to be at your doorstep
in 20 minutes, where are we headed?
You wouldn't have any idea what I was talking about, most likely.
And so the goal for pre-construction is that you and I sit down and say,
hey, I'd really like to take a trip to Spain.
Do you want to go with me? And you could say, I'd love to go with you to Spain.
When were you thinking about doing that, Tanya?
What dates should we go? How are we going to get there? What's it going to cost us?
(04:15):
All of those things should be in a conversation between you and I before the
day that I pick up the phone and go, okay, let's go.
Now, obviously, that's a very strict interpretation of totally missing the boat
when it comes to pre-construction. But sometimes some of those pieces can fall
apart, right? I may call you up and say, hey, do you want to go to Spain?
And you might say, yeah, that sounds great. When can we go? You know,
(04:37):
what time frame are we looking at?
And you might say, hey, what's our budget?
If I don't clearly define what budget means, does that mean like,
what is the whole trip going to cost us?
Or were you just thinking about what's the budget for plane tickets, right?
So again, communication is so key when it comes to these pre-construction aspects.
(04:57):
We have to all be on the same page. And if we don't know where we're going,
if we don't know when we're going to leave, if we don't know when we're supposed
to get there, and we don't know what we're supposed to do when we get there,
and we have no idea what it's going to cost us, everything is going going to
go wrong about that trip from start to finish.
You can guarantee it. And I see this all too often with smaller construction companies,
(05:17):
especially that they don't yet have their pre-construction process dialed in
and everything just falls apart across the board on the jobs because we didn't
start with that good foundational piece.
So pre-construction being a great foundation for everything that we need to
create a really good customer experience for owners, developers,
(05:38):
developers, and then at that sub-level for our GC clients,
it's just so important for us to have really good processes in our back office
and in our pre-construction phase that we know what we're doing.
And by the time we step on the job site, everyone's going to look and point
and say, hey, that's a crew I want to work with.
Those guys know what they're doing because they thought about this from start
to finish before we ever stepped foot on the job.
(06:00):
And I'm going to work with those guys again. That's the goal.
And that's what we're going to talk about in the next segment. it.
I'm excited to introduce you to our guest.
We'll be right back.
If you would like to share your company or product on the construction junction,
email hello at theprofitconstructors.com to become a sponsor.
(06:21):
Welcome to the show. Really glad that you're here. Folks, joining me today is
John from TrueBuilt, and we've chatted a couple times.
I'm super excited to learn more about TrueBuilt and be be able to kind of share
the solution that you guys are bringing to the table for everyone that's listening.
John, tell us a little bit about TrueBuild, what it is and kind of why it was created.
(06:43):
Yeah, so I'm John Sibley. I'm the CEO and founder of TrueBuild.
We're a modern pre-construction platform.
So we basically leverage the power of computer vision and AI to speed up the
takeoff process, that process of quantifying materials, labor,
equipment, et cetera, and then inputting that into an estimate all in one platform.
We also have a bid management module for our general contractor customers,
(07:07):
and they can can send out bid requests to subs, subs can reply,
and that can be integrated directly into the takeoff and estimation module.
So it's one cloud-based way of doing everything for pre-construction.
Awesome. Let's dive into that a little bit more because I think this is something
that a lot of folks, especially when you're sort of starting out,
(07:28):
sort of starting to get your company up and running.
It's my opinion. You can tell me if you think I'm wrong about this,
but I think it's the pre-construction area where a lot of folks don't spend enough time.
They don't spend as much time as they should when they're first starting out.
And that can lead to a lot of issues. Would you agree?
Yeah. So pre-construction is key to profitability. The better you understand
the project and the earlier you understand that project, the more profitable it's going to be.
(07:51):
You're going to eliminate or reduce the need and risk of change orders or different
things coming up once you actually do break ground.
So we really think pre-construction should be a competitive advantage.
It should drive profitability and,
And also firms that do get that track record of delivering a very,
very accurate estimate to the owners and developers, they're going to win more business.
(08:15):
The owner developer is going to say, all right, I've worked with this firm before.
I've heard of someone working with this firm before.
And they delivered a very, very accurate estimate. And it might have been a two-year project.
And they were within 10% of that initial estimate. That's really important.
It's really hard to do. And that's why modern software can accelerate that.
(08:36):
Yeah, modern software can accelerate that. So tell us a bit more about how TrueBuilt
specifically accelerates that.
Yeah, so I'd say our biggest benefit right now is our AI and computer vision takeoff platform.
Basically, we can automate the manual
task of tracing different lines in a blueprint into just a few seconds.
We've trained our models on all sorts of use cases. So we have a model that
(08:59):
can read a reflected ceiling plan, for example, and identify the different textures
that are named for a legend. We have another model that can go through a door schedule.
We have a one click where it can do the linear takeoff for all the walls in a plan.
And kind of the question I always get in this is, you know, how do I know it's accurate?
And AI is a bit of a scary word right now for some people. It's interesting for others. others.
(09:25):
But we really talk about AI internally here as augmented intelligence.
And by that, I mean, our estimators and our pre-con managers who are using the
Truebilt platform today have sometimes decades of experience doing manual takeoff
and doing estimation, kind of quote unquote, in this old school way.
(09:45):
So we need to create a platform that has all this automation that's very,
very robust, but still allows the users to come in with their own experience,
their own knowledge of this particular project, and then manually make adjustments as well.
And that's really been our design philosophy the entire time is how do we have
this very robust automated platform that can also be manual and flexible when it makes sense.
(10:10):
And then giving the user the power to choose, all right, I just want to fully
automate this to get a quick quote, quick bid, or I want to manually do it or
some kind of combination, which is what we see the most often.
I love that. So basically, what
you're saying, too, is they don't have to just choose one or the other.
It's not a toggle on or off. You can kind of really make it a hybrid of what
(10:33):
you need it to be. Yeah, every project is different.
I think we have some customers that say they, the one I'm thinking of just built
warehouses and the takeoff is pretty simple and pretty similar every time.
And so our computer vision models are learning from our customers as well as
(10:54):
blueprints that we're feeding them.
And so they can really trust that automation. automation
someone who's creating something more complex say
an airport we still need to have that that manual takeoff
layer too so it's kind of balancing the automation and
you know the manual tool so someone can bring
in that expertise that they have that's outside of
(11:14):
the software world yeah no that makes a lot of sense
when you're speaking about someone who is doing
those similar types of projects over and over and over and they
are really leaning into trusting that automation estimation i'd
love to hear your take on you know how much time savings is that yeah so we
we've run some tests with we we actually have an estimator in-house at true
(11:36):
build and we've run tests and we
we think it ranges between 150 to 200 reduction in time spent on takeoff.
But again it's it's honestly less about saving time and more making sure that
you get the most most accurate estimate possible.
Our software is very, very good at finding things that a human might miss in the blueprints as well.
(12:00):
And some of the annotations you can do, some of the callouts that appear can make that accurate.
So it's reducing time, but it's also increasing the accuracy of the takeoff.
I love both of those takes on that. I think there's benefits to both, right?
So, and streamlining those things and giving added efficiency so the estimator
(12:22):
can be spending their time really diving in on the accuracy of it rather than
just spending their time drawing lines on the screen.
Yep, exactly. And even a smaller example that's actually ended up being really
powerful and from a technical perspective is actually pretty easy for us to build.
But when an estimator gets a plan set, let's say it's 2,000 pages,
(12:44):
they have to go through and either use software or manually go through and rename
every single page for something that makes sense to them or something that maybe
the architect didn't put on there.
Some software out there, you can almost draw a box around the title of that
page and then just hope the architect put it in the same place every single time.
(13:08):
And so we thought that was the wrong approach
and so what we built and said is a model that
can understand the entire context of the page and it
can process about a thousand documents in five seconds and
we we say it's about 99 accuracy in terms of the renaming so that's saving our
customers a ton of time as well one of our customers actually told us that prior
(13:32):
to using truebilt they wouldn't bid on jobs where the documents were such a
mess and they had to waste a bunch of time,
like renaming pages and getting them in the right order and assigning them.
Automating that process means they can bid on that job much, much faster. Wow. Yeah.
That's amazing because it just opens up a whole new world of possibility for
that particular contractor.
(13:54):
Okay. So we've talked a lot about
that aspect of it, but there's TrueBuild doesn't just do that, right?
There's other aspects of pre-con that you guys are are diving into as well.
Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, TrueBuild, I guess to back up a bit,
is only two years old, less than two years old. So we're very, very early days still.
And what we first launched with was just purely bid management.
(14:17):
Yeah. And we made the decision to do that because we knew it was going to take
time to train these AI models and make sure they're really, really accurate.
I didn't want to go to the market and say, here's this new AI thing,
and then have them try it.
And they're like, oh, this only works 50% of the time. That's not useful.
Bid management, there's a few legacy competitors that are out there.
(14:40):
We're doing a few things differently.
Our bid leveling is a bit more automated.
We have layers of machine learning to really call out what bids make sense and
a recommendation engine to clarify that as well.
And so bid management was our strong suit all of last year while we continued
to build out, take off an estimation.
(15:00):
The end-to-end...
Vision for Truebolt has always been consistent though.
So by that, I mean, every sales meeting that we have, we come in and ask the
contractor to describe all the software that they're using for pre-construction.
And some of these larger firms are using, you know, six to eight different platforms
(15:22):
that don't talk to each other. They're not integrated.
They have to stitch it together in Excel and via email.
And so it's really a mess. So we think, you know, having something that,
takes a sub's response from the bid management platform, plugs that into the
estimation platform, which is compared to what you yourself as a general contractor
(15:44):
found on your takeoff module in Truebilt, is the right way to go.
We're eliminating that patchwork approach to software and consolidating not
only how much you're spending on software, but having all that data in one place. Yeah.
So to break down a little bit of what you said, especially for folks that that
aren't necessarily familiar with all the steps here.
I mean, if we go back very old school, I won't go too far back.
(16:07):
Let's just say we're still in the email days, but a lot of that bid management
used to just literally be funneling through email, right?
Like, Hey guys, I'm sending this out for bid, send me back what you've got.
And then all that just goes back and forth and back and forth with questions
here and questions there.
And like you said, having to compare multiple bids, everything's just sort of
funneling through emails that there's just a lot of room for For error,
(16:29):
a lot of time wasted in all of that.
How does what Truebilt does sort of narrow all that down and make it much more
easy? I'll first give you one better.
Our very first customer last year, actually...
The main point of contact there was the very first customer as well for something called BidFax.
And that was the innovative fax machine where you could send and receive bids via fax.
(16:55):
So even email has been a step up, is what I'm saying.
But yes, having one place where you can look at the different subcontractor responses by trade.
And look, sometimes subs still email it in. What we've created there is a plugin
that can automatically take the subs response via email and plug that into the software.
(17:17):
But the behavior we're trying to encourage is for the subcontractors to respond via Truebilt.
It just makes the system run a bit smoother.
The general contractor doesn't have to come in and either manually add or use
our plugin to add it to the bid leveling. leveling. Yeah, absolutely.
Let's talk about bid leveling. Again, for those kind of unfamiliar,
(17:38):
what does that even mean? Let's dive in a little bit more on what what is a
bid leveling process look like?
And how are we trying to determine which bids are best? And yeah,
so let's say I'm a GC, and my job is going to require me to hire a concrete
subcontractor, I'm probably going to send out six or seven requests,
six or seven different concrete subcontractors.
We have a full directory, true built directory, as well as a way to manage your
(18:01):
own directory as a true built customer.
And then from there, the subcontractors are going to take a look at the plans.
They're going to receive all the documents, any call-outs or notes you've left,
you can put in there as well.
You can literally put in different line items, general acknowledgements,
anything you want them to answer, you can create a form for that.
(18:21):
Some companies, they want a very specific way for the subs to answer.
Other companies are just like, here's the plans, like tell
me what you think right and so what we see is you
know when that happens that the subcontractors are able to get an email the
email comes directly from the general contractor it doesn't come from like a
true built alias that's easy for the sub to ignore yeah and the subs are able
(18:46):
to respond either via email like they have in the past and then we plug that into bit leveling,
or they can respond via true built and just you know literally answer that form
right there or just put in what that lump sum estimate is.
From there, in our bid leveling platform, you can compare all six or seven of those different subs.
(19:07):
The software will highlight, you know, this guy was 30% off on a certain line item.
You know, let's give him a call and find out what went wrong there.
We can compare that to our initial takeoff and estimate if the GC did that to start with.
I love that. So when we're talking about like you go into every single sales
(19:31):
meeting, you're kind of trying to understand what people are already using and
aspects of multiple platforms trying to feed into one, all of these things.
What would you say is the number one hesitation that folks have around switching
over to something like Truebilt? Yeah.
Honestly, what I hear most often when someone says no to using Truebill is, this seems really cool.
(19:54):
I should be thinking about this, but I've always done it this way.
And we have a decent amount of legacy competitors that I always joke look like
they were created in 1998.
And that's because they were created in 1998. 98 yeah
so i think it's a education obstacle that
we have to overcome you know what what are the benefits of being cloud-based it's
(20:16):
having multiple people in the software at one time you
don't have to internally email back and forth you can
leave comments we have a pretty cool multiplayer feature where
literally you can have you know two estimators on the
plans at once they can follow each other around they can point
stuff out to each other you can bring in a project manager who
might be on site if you want to show the the plans
(20:37):
via tree built there too yeah and so really it's
an educational obstacle where we have to come in and say like i i get that you've
done it this way for for 20 years but you know with modern technology we can
speed up the the process and make it more accurate as a whole and i think more
and more people are becoming aware that.
(20:58):
You do need to have a cloud-based take-off and estimation system.
And that you should have an end-to-end system that encompasses everything for pre-construction.
And so that's really what I focus on. You know, the stuff we talked about earlier,
the computer vision and AI things, they're kind of like these cool,
exciting new features that are coming out.
(21:21):
But, you know, really it's about just becoming cloud-based and having everything in one place. Yeah.
Yeah, sorry, go ahead. No, I was just saying, so like, that's like the hesitation
that we've always done it this way.
And honestly, every single new solution that comes along in this space,
it's not only that it's in the construction space, and it's everybody's kind
(21:41):
of more out in the field, right?
Like they don't want to worry about some of these more office based solutions as part of it.
But the other side of it too, is that for any industry change,
change management is hard. So introducing any new system is always going to be hard.
And so I think that your your hesitation makes so much sense.
And it's a normal hesitation for any change that we'd want to do.
But what are some of the aha moments that your folks who are on the platform have seen?
(22:06):
Even some of those maybe that were like, I don't know, this is going to be hard.
Like, what are some of those aha moments that they're able to now see?
When the AI models accurately, let's say, answer a reflected ceiling plan that
would have taken an hour or two hours to fully measure the area and do the linear takeoff.
When you can do that in 10 seconds, that's when it clicks.
(22:28):
I think what I said before about being cloud-based, that's more of an explanation.
That's not something you necessarily see actively.
You're just like, oh, who cares if I have software on my browser versus software on my computer?
And that's where we have to explain, no, there are benefits on having everything
backed up and safe on the cloud.
There's benefits for collaboration internally and externally with different
(22:52):
stakeholders. stakeholders.
And so I think that's more of an education, whereas AI models.
When they work perfectly, it's just like, oh my God, this is going to save me hours.
Yeah. I love that. What do you think is like the number one reason that your
general contractors really love using.
Yeah, having everything in one place. So bid management, takeoff and estimation.
(23:17):
I think some of the legacy competitors out there have stitched together an end-to-end
platform, but they did it by acquiring businesses and then trying to integrate them.
And in some cases, you know, some of the bigger players out there,
you might be signing a contract with everything for takeoff estimation,
project management, maybe a CRM as well.
(23:40):
But as is often the case with acquisitions, they haven't been well integrated.
Usually the innovators at the company leave during the acquisition process or
after the acquisition process. process.
And so what ends up happening is you still get that patchwork approach that I referred to earlier.
Even though you're signing one contract with one company, they're not accurately
stitched together. Yeah.
(24:02):
So what are some of the impacts that you think that like using bid facts,
email, and even some of these stitched together platforms, what are some of
the impacts that you're seeing in construction companies that don't have a more
integrated platform and way of doing this?
What toll is it taking on those businesses? I mean, it's a cliche,
but I think it's especially true in construction, like time is money.
(24:24):
And it takes a long time to copy and paste subcontractors' responses via email into an Excel document.
And that Excel document, by the way, isn't easily shared with other people on your team.
And then you have to go do manually takeoff and then bring that into the Excel document.
And when I see how estimation has been done in Excel for
(24:45):
a long time and there's you know 30 different sheets on
there it's like no we can do this with modern software
and modern architecture so yeah i i
think you know given where modern technology is
it's a waste of time to do it the manual way that said like i said before our
approach has been how do we balance the the manual and automated parts of reconstruction
(25:08):
yeah yeah i think earlier you were sort of digging in on the accuracy side of it as well.
Yeah. Time is money, but also how many times have both you and I seen that the
lack of accuracy can really come back to bite someone on especially some of
these much larger jobs, right?
So speak to that a little bit, if you would, like the accuracy side of that
(25:32):
and how TrueBuilt is solving for a lot of those issues.
Yeah. So an easy example is, you know, our AI will automatically identify the
different versions of a plan.
And that's something that gets missed all the time by estimators.
You know, they don't realize that they're looking at version four, which is now out of date.
And so as you upload plans, our software will automatically flag that and,
(25:54):
you know, put the version. You can compare those two different versions.
So it's all about, you know, flagging things that we think is off. Yeah.
I also think the part of having everything in one system, it's much easier to
say, oh, I estimated $10,000 for concrete.
All the subs came in on my bid management and bid leveling in Truebilt at $20,000. What am I missing?
(26:18):
So it's not necessarily that the software itself is saying like, you messed up on this.
It's saying, this doesn't seem right. Let's take a look at this together.
And that's that augmented intelligence I was talking about before.
Yeah, I love that. I love that you guys are calling it augmented intelligence
rather than just artificial.
Let's have a piece in this as humans. Are there other softwares that Truebilt integrates with?
(26:42):
Not currently. We get the request all the time to integrate the Procores of the world.
So that's something that we're considering for the back half of this year.
Right now, our focus is just being the best takeoff and estimation platform
possible. Yeah, absolutely. I love that.
How can folks find out more if they want to know more about like TrueBuilt and what you guys do? you?
(27:08):
Yeah, truebuiltsoftware.com. We also have a good presence on LinkedIn.
And then yeah, my email is john at jon at truebuiltsoftware.com.
And anyone can reach out to me at any time. I don't turn down any conversations
in the construction world.
So happy to chat on anyone. If it's someone who wants a demo,
great. If it's someone who just wants to learn more about AI, great.
(27:31):
If it's someone who wants to tell me, you know, you guys are thinking of something
the wrong way, like even even better.
Yeah, no, I love that. We all should be welcoming those challenges to our thinking.
That's absolutely part of what it means to be a great business owner.
John, great. Thank you so much for taking the time out to talk to us about Truebill
today. I'm really looking forward to seeing where you guys are able to go from here.
(27:52):
Awesome. Well, thanks for having me. Thank you.
Thank you for tuning in to Construction Junction. To find out more about the
junction between accounting and construction, please email hello at theprofitconstructors.com.
The Profit Constructors presents Construction Junction, the junction between
accounting and construction.
Please welcome our host, Tanya Schulte.
Hi, everyone. My name is Tanya Schulte, and I am so excited to welcome you back
(00:25):
for this next edition of the Construction Junction podcast.
Before we dive in today, I'd like to tell you if you're at the SubExcel conference,
which I'm pretty sure that when this podcast drops, we'll be smack dab in the
middle of, I'm going to be there too.
So we're headed to Nolens. And if you are there at SubExcel,
(00:47):
when you're hearing this, please stop by and say hello.
I can't wait to meet all of the listeners out there and get to chat with you.
So looking forward to seeing everybody at SubXL and catching up.
It'll be a good time. And like I said, please do come and say hello and say
that you're listening to the podcast.
Always like to know who's out there listening and catching these great podcast drops.
(01:11):
With that said, let's dive into today's main subject, which is pre-construction.
I think that pre-construction is in a lot of ways for a lot lot of companies
a great missed opportunity.
I'm going to dive in a little bit more on why I believe that.
Today, we're going to be taking a look at it mostly from the standpoint of a general contractor.
(01:32):
And we're going to talk with someone who's offering some solutions in that general contracting space.
And that's really where they're focusing their efforts on this particular solution.
But I'm going to tell you, I think that every single construction firm ought
to be focused on on this aspect of pre-construction, on this aspect of what
do we need to do before anything happens and before our work starts out on the job site,
(01:55):
we do need to have a process in place for that.
And so we're gonna talk about it. Again, today, we're mostly gonna be focused
on that general contractor area.
But generals, subs, and everybody on the job site should be focused on and paying
attention to this all too important and unfortunately all too often sort of
(02:17):
missed opportunity of that pre-construction phase.
Let's talk about what the pre-construction phase allows us to do,
right? It allows us to properly assess the scope of the job.
We want to make sure we know exactly what we're going out to do and how we want to do it.
It allows us to establish the proper budget so that we know exactly what we
think this is going to cost.
(02:38):
And that then obviously enables us to understand what we should charge for it.
So we want to make sure we get those budgeting pieces in place.
It allows us to know who our team's going to be. So again, from the general
contracting side of things, as we're going to kind of be focusing on today,
that means knowing who all of the subs are going to be that are going to be
players, making sure that they're on board and that we've got scheduling lined
(03:01):
out for for them. We're going to talk about that in just a second.
But like really getting a feel
for who the team will be that's going to be participating in this project.
And then establishing those timelines, establishing lead times on material ordering,
establishing timelines for the project and setting up our project plans.
And then any sort of like permitting and things that need to happen as well, right?
So very, very important pieces that go into this pre-construction work.
(03:26):
And some would argue it's really the most important part of any construction project.
Imagine that I called you up, you and I are friends, and I picked up the phone
and I called you up and I said, all right, let's go.
Your response was, great, where are we going?
That's kind of what it's like if we just skip this whole pre-construction phase.
(03:50):
If I called you up tomorrow and said, all right, I'm going to be at your doorstep
in 20 minutes, where are we headed?
You wouldn't have any idea what I was talking about, most likely.
And so the goal for pre-construction is that you and I sit down and say,
hey, I'd really like to take a trip to Spain.
Do you want to go with me? And you could say, I'd love to go with you to Spain.
When were you thinking about doing that, Tanya?
What dates should we go? How are we going to get there? What's it going to cost us?
(04:15):
All of those things should be in a conversation between you and I before the
day that I pick up the phone and go, okay, let's go.
Now, obviously, that's a very strict interpretation of totally missing the boat
when it comes to pre-construction. But sometimes some of those pieces can fall
apart, right? I may call you up and say, hey, do you want to go to Spain?
And you might say, yeah, that sounds great. When can we go? You know,
(04:37):
what time frame are we looking at?
And you might say, hey, what's our budget?
If I don't clearly define what budget means, does that mean like,
what is the whole trip going to cost us?
Or were you just thinking about what's the budget for plane tickets, right?
So again, communication is so key when it comes to these pre-construction aspects.
(04:57):
We have to all be on the same page. And if we don't know where we're going,
if we don't know when we're going to leave, if we don't know when we're supposed
to get there, and we don't know what we're supposed to do when we get there,
and we have no idea what it's going to cost us, everything is going going to
go wrong about that trip from start to finish.
You can guarantee it. And I see this all too often with smaller construction companies,
(05:17):
especially that they don't yet have their pre-construction process dialed in
and everything just falls apart across the board on the jobs because we didn't
start with that good foundational piece.
So pre-construction being a great foundation for everything that we need to
create a really good customer experience for owners, developers,
(05:38):
developers, and then at that sub-level for our GC clients,
it's just so important for us to have really good processes in our back office
and in our pre-construction phase that we know what we're doing.
And by the time we step on the job site, everyone's going to look and point
and say, hey, that's a crew I want to work with.
Those guys know what they're doing because they thought about this from start
to finish before we ever stepped foot on the job.
(06:00):
And I'm going to work with those guys again. That's the goal.
And that's what we're going to talk about in the next segment. it.
I'm excited to introduce you to our guest.
We'll be right back.
If you would like to share your company or product on the construction junction,
email hello at theprofitconstructors.com to become a sponsor.
(06:21):
Welcome to the show. Really glad that you're here. Folks, joining me today is
John from TrueBuilt, and we've chatted a couple times.
I'm super excited to learn more about TrueBuilt and be be able to kind of share
the solution that you guys are bringing to the table for everyone that's listening.
John, tell us a little bit about TrueBuild, what it is and kind of why it was created.
(06:43):
Yeah, so I'm John Sibley. I'm the CEO and founder of TrueBuild.
We're a modern pre-construction platform.
So we basically leverage the power of computer vision and AI to speed up the
takeoff process, that process of quantifying materials, labor,
equipment, et cetera, and then inputting that into an estimate all in one platform.
We also have a bid management module for our general contractor customers,
(07:07):
and they can can send out bid requests to subs, subs can reply,
and that can be integrated directly into the takeoff and estimation module.
So it's one cloud-based way of doing everything for pre-construction.
Awesome. Let's dive into that a little bit more because I think this is something
that a lot of folks, especially when you're sort of starting out,
(07:28):
sort of starting to get your company up and running.
It's my opinion. You can tell me if you think I'm wrong about this,
but I think it's the pre-construction area where a lot of folks don't spend enough time.
They don't spend as much time as they should when they're first starting out.
And that can lead to a lot of issues. Would you agree?
Yeah. So pre-construction is key to profitability. The better you understand
the project and the earlier you understand that project, the more profitable it's going to be.
(07:51):
You're going to eliminate or reduce the need and risk of change orders or different
things coming up once you actually do break ground.
So we really think pre-construction should be a competitive advantage.
It should drive profitability and,
And also firms that do get that track record of delivering a very,
very accurate estimate to the owners and developers, they're going to win more business.
(08:15):
The owner developer is going to say, all right, I've worked with this firm before.
I've heard of someone working with this firm before.
And they delivered a very, very accurate estimate. And it might have been a two-year project.
And they were within 10% of that initial estimate. That's really important.
It's really hard to do. And that's why modern software can accelerate that.
(08:36):
Yeah, modern software can accelerate that. So tell us a bit more about how TrueBuilt
specifically accelerates that.
Yeah, so I'd say our biggest benefit right now is our AI and computer vision takeoff platform.
Basically, we can automate the manual
task of tracing different lines in a blueprint into just a few seconds.
We've trained our models on all sorts of use cases. So we have a model that
(08:59):
can read a reflected ceiling plan, for example, and identify the different textures
that are named for a legend. We have another model that can go through a door schedule.
We have a one click where it can do the linear takeoff for all the walls in a plan.
And kind of the question I always get in this is, you know, how do I know it's accurate?
And AI is a bit of a scary word right now for some people. It's interesting for others. others.
(09:25):
But we really talk about AI internally here as augmented intelligence.
And by that, I mean, our estimators and our pre-con managers who are using the
Truebilt platform today have sometimes decades of experience doing manual takeoff
and doing estimation, kind of quote unquote, in this old school way.
(09:45):
So we need to create a platform that has all this automation that's very,
very robust, but still allows the users to come in with their own experience,
their own knowledge of this particular project, and then manually make adjustments as well.
And that's really been our design philosophy the entire time is how do we have
this very robust automated platform that can also be manual and flexible when it makes sense.
(10:10):
And then giving the user the power to choose, all right, I just want to fully
automate this to get a quick quote, quick bid, or I want to manually do it or
some kind of combination, which is what we see the most often.
I love that. So basically, what
you're saying, too, is they don't have to just choose one or the other.
It's not a toggle on or off. You can kind of really make it a hybrid of what
(10:33):
you need it to be. Yeah, every project is different.
I think we have some customers that say they, the one I'm thinking of just built
warehouses and the takeoff is pretty simple and pretty similar every time.
And so our computer vision models are learning from our customers as well as
(10:54):
blueprints that we're feeding them.
And so they can really trust that automation. automation
someone who's creating something more complex say
an airport we still need to have that that manual takeoff
layer too so it's kind of balancing the automation and
you know the manual tool so someone can bring
in that expertise that they have that's outside of
(11:14):
the software world yeah no that makes a lot of sense
when you're speaking about someone who is doing
those similar types of projects over and over and over and they
are really leaning into trusting that automation estimation i'd
love to hear your take on you know how much time savings is that yeah so we
we've run some tests with we we actually have an estimator in-house at true
(11:36):
build and we've run tests and we
we think it ranges between 150 to 200 reduction in time spent on takeoff.
But again it's it's honestly less about saving time and more making sure that
you get the most most accurate estimate possible.
Our software is very, very good at finding things that a human might miss in the blueprints as well.
(12:00):
And some of the annotations you can do, some of the callouts that appear can make that accurate.
So it's reducing time, but it's also increasing the accuracy of the takeoff.
I love both of those takes on that. I think there's benefits to both, right?
So, and streamlining those things and giving added efficiency so the estimator
(12:22):
can be spending their time really diving in on the accuracy of it rather than
just spending their time drawing lines on the screen.
Yep, exactly. And even a smaller example that's actually ended up being really
powerful and from a technical perspective is actually pretty easy for us to build.
But when an estimator gets a plan set, let's say it's 2,000 pages,
(12:44):
they have to go through and either use software or manually go through and rename
every single page for something that makes sense to them or something that maybe
the architect didn't put on there.
Some software out there, you can almost draw a box around the title of that
page and then just hope the architect put it in the same place every single time.
(13:08):
And so we thought that was the wrong approach
and so what we built and said is a model that
can understand the entire context of the page and it
can process about a thousand documents in five seconds and
we we say it's about 99 accuracy in terms of the renaming so that's saving our
customers a ton of time as well one of our customers actually told us that prior
(13:32):
to using truebilt they wouldn't bid on jobs where the documents were such a
mess and they had to waste a bunch of time,
like renaming pages and getting them in the right order and assigning them.
Automating that process means they can bid on that job much, much faster. Wow. Yeah.
That's amazing because it just opens up a whole new world of possibility for
that particular contractor.
(13:54):
Okay. So we've talked a lot about
that aspect of it, but there's TrueBuild doesn't just do that, right?
There's other aspects of pre-con that you guys are are diving into as well.
Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, TrueBuild, I guess to back up a bit,
is only two years old, less than two years old. So we're very, very early days still.
And what we first launched with was just purely bid management.
(14:17):
Yeah. And we made the decision to do that because we knew it was going to take
time to train these AI models and make sure they're really, really accurate.
I didn't want to go to the market and say, here's this new AI thing,
and then have them try it.
And they're like, oh, this only works 50% of the time. That's not useful.
Bid management, there's a few legacy competitors that are out there.
(14:40):
We're doing a few things differently.
Our bid leveling is a bit more automated.
We have layers of machine learning to really call out what bids make sense and
a recommendation engine to clarify that as well.
And so bid management was our strong suit all of last year while we continued
to build out, take off an estimation.
(15:00):
The end-to-end...
Vision for Truebolt has always been consistent though.
So by that, I mean, every sales meeting that we have, we come in and ask the
contractor to describe all the software that they're using for pre-construction.
And some of these larger firms are using, you know, six to eight different platforms
(15:22):
that don't talk to each other. They're not integrated.
They have to stitch it together in Excel and via email.
And so it's really a mess. So we think, you know, having something that,
takes a sub's response from the bid management platform, plugs that into the
estimation platform, which is compared to what you yourself as a general contractor
(15:44):
found on your takeoff module in Truebilt, is the right way to go.
We're eliminating that patchwork approach to software and consolidating not
only how much you're spending on software, but having all that data in one place. Yeah.
So to break down a little bit of what you said, especially for folks that that
aren't necessarily familiar with all the steps here.
I mean, if we go back very old school, I won't go too far back.
(16:07):
Let's just say we're still in the email days, but a lot of that bid management
used to just literally be funneling through email, right?
Like, Hey guys, I'm sending this out for bid, send me back what you've got.
And then all that just goes back and forth and back and forth with questions
here and questions there.
And like you said, having to compare multiple bids, everything's just sort of
funneling through emails that there's just a lot of room for For error,
(16:29):
a lot of time wasted in all of that.
How does what Truebilt does sort of narrow all that down and make it much more
easy? I'll first give you one better.
Our very first customer last year, actually...
The main point of contact there was the very first customer as well for something called BidFax.
And that was the innovative fax machine where you could send and receive bids via fax.
(16:55):
So even email has been a step up, is what I'm saying.
But yes, having one place where you can look at the different subcontractor responses by trade.
And look, sometimes subs still email it in. What we've created there is a plugin
that can automatically take the subs response via email and plug that into the software.
(17:17):
But the behavior we're trying to encourage is for the subcontractors to respond via Truebilt.
It just makes the system run a bit smoother.
The general contractor doesn't have to come in and either manually add or use
our plugin to add it to the bid leveling. leveling. Yeah, absolutely.
Let's talk about bid leveling. Again, for those kind of unfamiliar,
(17:38):
what does that even mean? Let's dive in a little bit more on what what is a
bid leveling process look like?
And how are we trying to determine which bids are best? And yeah,
so let's say I'm a GC, and my job is going to require me to hire a concrete
subcontractor, I'm probably going to send out six or seven requests,
six or seven different concrete subcontractors.
We have a full directory, true built directory, as well as a way to manage your
(18:01):
own directory as a true built customer.
And then from there, the subcontractors are going to take a look at the plans.
They're going to receive all the documents, any call-outs or notes you've left,
you can put in there as well.
You can literally put in different line items, general acknowledgements,
anything you want them to answer, you can create a form for that.
(18:21):
Some companies, they want a very specific way for the subs to answer.
Other companies are just like, here's the plans, like tell
me what you think right and so what we see is you
know when that happens that the subcontractors are able to get an email the
email comes directly from the general contractor it doesn't come from like a
true built alias that's easy for the sub to ignore yeah and the subs are able
(18:46):
to respond either via email like they have in the past and then we plug that into bit leveling,
or they can respond via true built and just you know literally answer that form
right there or just put in what that lump sum estimate is.
From there, in our bid leveling platform, you can compare all six or seven of those different subs.
(19:07):
The software will highlight, you know, this guy was 30% off on a certain line item.
You know, let's give him a call and find out what went wrong there.
We can compare that to our initial takeoff and estimate if the GC did that to start with.
I love that. So when we're talking about like you go into every single sales
(19:31):
meeting, you're kind of trying to understand what people are already using and
aspects of multiple platforms trying to feed into one, all of these things.
What would you say is the number one hesitation that folks have around switching
over to something like Truebilt? Yeah.
Honestly, what I hear most often when someone says no to using Truebill is, this seems really cool.
(19:54):
I should be thinking about this, but I've always done it this way.
And we have a decent amount of legacy competitors that I always joke look like
they were created in 1998.
And that's because they were created in 1998. 98 yeah
so i think it's a education obstacle that
we have to overcome you know what what are the benefits of being cloud-based it's
(20:16):
having multiple people in the software at one time you
don't have to internally email back and forth you can
leave comments we have a pretty cool multiplayer feature where
literally you can have you know two estimators on the
plans at once they can follow each other around they can point
stuff out to each other you can bring in a project manager who
might be on site if you want to show the the plans
(20:37):
via tree built there too yeah and so really it's
an educational obstacle where we have to come in and say like i i get that you've
done it this way for for 20 years but you know with modern technology we can
speed up the the process and make it more accurate as a whole and i think more
and more people are becoming aware that.
(20:58):
You do need to have a cloud-based take-off and estimation system.
And that you should have an end-to-end system that encompasses everything for pre-construction.
And so that's really what I focus on. You know, the stuff we talked about earlier,
the computer vision and AI things, they're kind of like these cool,
exciting new features that are coming out.
(21:21):
But, you know, really it's about just becoming cloud-based and having everything in one place. Yeah.
Yeah, sorry, go ahead. No, I was just saying, so like, that's like the hesitation
that we've always done it this way.
And honestly, every single new solution that comes along in this space,
it's not only that it's in the construction space, and it's everybody's kind
(21:41):
of more out in the field, right?
Like they don't want to worry about some of these more office based solutions as part of it.
But the other side of it too, is that for any industry change,
change management is hard. So introducing any new system is always going to be hard.
And so I think that your your hesitation makes so much sense.
And it's a normal hesitation for any change that we'd want to do.
But what are some of the aha moments that your folks who are on the platform have seen?
(22:06):
Even some of those maybe that were like, I don't know, this is going to be hard.
Like, what are some of those aha moments that they're able to now see?
When the AI models accurately, let's say, answer a reflected ceiling plan that
would have taken an hour or two hours to fully measure the area and do the linear takeoff.
When you can do that in 10 seconds, that's when it clicks.
(22:28):
I think what I said before about being cloud-based, that's more of an explanation.
That's not something you necessarily see actively.
You're just like, oh, who cares if I have software on my browser versus software on my computer?
And that's where we have to explain, no, there are benefits on having everything
backed up and safe on the cloud.
There's benefits for collaboration internally and externally with different
(22:52):
stakeholders. stakeholders.
And so I think that's more of an education, whereas AI models.
When they work perfectly, it's just like, oh my God, this is going to save me hours.
Yeah. I love that. What do you think is like the number one reason that your
general contractors really love using.
Yeah, having everything in one place. So bid management, takeoff and estimation.
(23:17):
I think some of the legacy competitors out there have stitched together an end-to-end
platform, but they did it by acquiring businesses and then trying to integrate them.
And in some cases, you know, some of the bigger players out there,
you might be signing a contract with everything for takeoff estimation,
project management, maybe a CRM as well.
(23:40):
But as is often the case with acquisitions, they haven't been well integrated.
Usually the innovators at the company leave during the acquisition process or
after the acquisition process. process.
And so what ends up happening is you still get that patchwork approach that I referred to earlier.
Even though you're signing one contract with one company, they're not accurately
stitched together. Yeah.
(24:02):
So what are some of the impacts that you think that like using bid facts,
email, and even some of these stitched together platforms, what are some of
the impacts that you're seeing in construction companies that don't have a more
integrated platform and way of doing this?
What toll is it taking on those businesses? I mean, it's a cliche,
but I think it's especially true in construction, like time is money.
(24:24):
And it takes a long time to copy and paste subcontractors' responses via email into an Excel document.
And that Excel document, by the way, isn't easily shared with other people on your team.
And then you have to go do manually takeoff and then bring that into the Excel document.
And when I see how estimation has been done in Excel for
(24:45):
a long time and there's you know 30 different sheets on
there it's like no we can do this with modern software
and modern architecture so yeah i i
think you know given where modern technology is
it's a waste of time to do it the manual way that said like i said before our
approach has been how do we balance the the manual and automated parts of reconstruction
(25:08):
yeah yeah i think earlier you were sort of digging in on the accuracy side of it as well.
Yeah. Time is money, but also how many times have both you and I seen that the
lack of accuracy can really come back to bite someone on especially some of
these much larger jobs, right?
So speak to that a little bit, if you would, like the accuracy side of that
(25:32):
and how TrueBuilt is solving for a lot of those issues.
Yeah. So an easy example is, you know, our AI will automatically identify the
different versions of a plan.
And that's something that gets missed all the time by estimators.
You know, they don't realize that they're looking at version four, which is now out of date.
And so as you upload plans, our software will automatically flag that and,
(25:54):
you know, put the version. You can compare those two different versions.
So it's all about, you know, flagging things that we think is off. Yeah.
I also think the part of having everything in one system, it's much easier to
say, oh, I estimated $10,000 for concrete.
All the subs came in on my bid management and bid leveling in Truebilt at $20,000. What am I missing?
(26:18):
So it's not necessarily that the software itself is saying like, you messed up on this.
It's saying, this doesn't seem right. Let's take a look at this together.
And that's that augmented intelligence I was talking about before.
Yeah, I love that. I love that you guys are calling it augmented intelligence
rather than just artificial.
Let's have a piece in this as humans. Are there other softwares that Truebilt integrates with?
(26:42):
Not currently. We get the request all the time to integrate the Procores of the world.
So that's something that we're considering for the back half of this year.
Right now, our focus is just being the best takeoff and estimation platform
possible. Yeah, absolutely. I love that.
How can folks find out more if they want to know more about like TrueBuilt and what you guys do? you?
(27:08):
Yeah, truebuiltsoftware.com. We also have a good presence on LinkedIn.
And then yeah, my email is john at jon at truebuiltsoftware.com.
And anyone can reach out to me at any time. I don't turn down any conversations
in the construction world.
So happy to chat on anyone. If it's someone who wants a demo,
great. If it's someone who just wants to learn more about AI, great.
(27:31):
If it's someone who wants to tell me, you know, you guys are thinking of something
the wrong way, like even even better.
Yeah, no, I love that. We all should be welcoming those challenges to our thinking.
That's absolutely part of what it means to be a great business owner.
John, great. Thank you so much for taking the time out to talk to us about Truebill
today. I'm really looking forward to seeing where you guys are able to go from here.
(27:52):
Awesome. Well, thanks for having me. Thank you.
Thank you for tuning in to Construction Junction. To find out more about the
junction between accounting and construction, please email hello at theprofitconstructors.com.
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