May 22, 2024 • 13 mins
In this episode, we discuss Sharron Halpert's unique journey into the construction industry and her passion for life safety and mentoring, which led her to establish Halpert Life Safety Consulting LLC. Today, she guides and supports quality control teams, tradespeople, and inspectors to build better and safer structures.
Sharon emphasizes the challenges of knowledge application in construction, the importance of continuous learning amidst changing codes, and encourages embracing new technologies and products for better building safety standards. Her dedication to education and improvement shines through, offering valuable insights and encouragement for construction professionals.
Sharon emphasizes the challenges of knowledge application in construction, the importance of continuous learning amidst changing codes, and encourages embracing new technologies and products for better building safety standards. Her dedication to education and improvement shines through, offering valuable insights and encouragement for construction professionals.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hey everyone, I'm Lou and I'mMegan, your host of The Builder Upper
Show, a podcast where we talkabout all things in construction and trades.
I would like to welcome our guest, Sharon Helbert from Helpert Life Safety Consulting
LLC. Sharon, how are youdoing today? Awesome, It's so great
(00:24):
to be here with you. Thanksso much, Meghan, Awesome, it's
great to hear. I would loveto hear about your story and what inspired
you to make a difference in theconstruction industry. I started in the construction
industry in nineteen ninety nine. Iinitially started working for Hilty, developing new
products and working in marketing, andfrom there the bug kind of bit me
(00:45):
in. The idea that this littletiny element of firestop can make such a
colossal impact, and the level oflife safety in a building for the life
of the building kind of geeks meout. And I've been doing that in
one one respect or another since nineteenninety nine. That's awesome. I love
the excitement that's coming from behind it. You can tell that your heart is
(01:07):
in it, and that always makesa difference, especially when you're trying to
make a difference. I love thatso I guess you already kind of answered
the question too. When you gotinto construction it was nineteen ninety nine or
was it prior to that, andyou kind of no, Okay, awesome.
Before that, I was a vagabondfor I don't know, like seven
years. I bounced around, literallybounced around the world, and then came
to the realization that nobody's going tohire a former boat builder, kindergarten teacher,
(01:33):
bartender for a real world job.So I went to graduate school,
and I got halfway through graduate school, and the obvious thing became the fact
that I'm still just a boat builder, bartender, kindergarten teacher, and now
I'm going to have a degree,and I still don't have any real world
experience. So I did an internshipwith Hilty and that was how I got
introduced to the whole realm of constructionthat was not at all what I ever
(01:55):
expected that i'd be doing. Iwent to university expecting to be any school
teacher. Right, Okay, thatis quite a switch. So what from
that to where you are now?What actually got you into wanting to be
an owner in it and or amentor? So I've been mentoring in one
way or another. Since I wasabout twelve years old, between our community
(02:15):
in a rural town in Maine adoptedto nuclear families of folks from Cambodia,
and all of the local churches gottogether and supported them. And my mom's
sister was an ESL teacher, andthey decided it would be great if they
had a kid teaching kids ESL,and so I got pegged to be that
(02:37):
kid. But it was interesting becauseit put me in a position of leadership
at a young age, and itdefinitely served me well, and you know,
the last however many years, Soit was kind of interesting there.
But switching from working for other peopleto actually owning a company. Back in
twenty twelve, the International Building Codechanged and mandated the third part special inspection
(03:00):
of fire stop. I thought,that is exactly what I want to do,
and I was so wrong. Whenyou go in as a special inspector,
your job is to look at somethingand either say you did a good
job or you didn't do a goodjob, and your hands are really tied.
You're not supposed to do any coachingor mentoring or supporting people. And
(03:23):
if you run into people that wantto do it right, you're still stuck
with that role of saying you didyour job well, you didn't do your
job well, and your hands arereally bound by the standard. You're not
allowed to do any coaching. Sowhat I really love doing is education.
And right now I'm consulting on aproject where I get to support the quality
(03:46):
control team. I get to educatethe trades and the special inspector and in
some cases the jurisdictional inspectors. It'sjust a lot of fun to be able
to look at a project and saynot that I did that, but that
I, as a small, littlecatalyst, was able to help this army
(04:06):
of people build better, not juston this project, but if they choose
every single project that they work onfrom here forward. No, that's that's
really great. Yeah, I know, I love that. It was a
great answer. So then I guess, what are some of the challenges that
you know you're facing as a constructionowner today? And better yet, also
(04:30):
how you know would you overcome itor even help others overcome it. I
think the biggest issue when it comesto construction, whether it's the general contractor
the design team, the trades thatare in the field, the biggest challenge
is knowledge and here we are inyou know environment where all the information that
(04:54):
you want is in theory at yourfingertips. But having the information and applying
it in the field are two verydifferent things. I could sit down and
I can read the building code,but unless I understand the standards that are
written into the code, that doesn'treally do you a whole lot of good.
But if you understand the standards andyou understand the code, but you
don't know what happens when you've gotboots on the ground in the field,
(05:17):
then you're missing a big piece ofthat puzzle. And the building codes change
every three years, and little tinyparts and pieces change. And if you're
in this area versus that area workingto the twenty fifteen code, the twenty
twenty one, oh no, we'reback into the two thousand and eight code
over here. So all of thosethings can be a hindrance. So it's
(05:40):
really important that people maintain their levelof understanding. Not of I've been doing
this for thirty years, which drivesme nuts. I hear it every day.
And it's not just from the oldfolks. There's some young people that
have been in the industry for maybeten years and they're like oh, this
is what we always do. Justbecause it's what you have done doesn't make
(06:01):
it right overall, I completely agreewith you. I mean, even in
something as simple as real estate,right there is ongoing education and if you
don't you don't you know do that, you don't progress and that there are
definitely issues that end up coming along. And so I and the knowledge to
application is a very big topic andthere's a huge gap in between that.
(06:23):
So you hit that right on spot. How would you encourage contractors to embrace
technology and stay ahead in the industrytoday? I love this question because when
you say technology, people think techstuff. But in my firestop world,
technology isn't necessarily tech stuff. It'sthe new firestop devices. So when I
(06:44):
say new, I mean cast inplace firestop devices, which are basically a
sleeve that you would put on theconcrete form work before you pour the concrete.
Those aren't really new. I meanthey kind are as far as construction
is concerned, but there a newway of approaching firestop. And then after
those came about, there's cable devices. So one of the issues when you're
(07:08):
running cabling is especially if it's abusy office or hospital or an occupied space
a school, maybe there's new cablesthat need to be run on a regular
basis. So with the old schoolmethods, you would have a framed out
opening and you would have mineral walland sealant, and then every time you
(07:29):
needed to run new cables or dodata mining or cable mining to pull out
the old cables. Now you're gonnahave a hole or you've made a hole
to run new material, and it'snot easy to replace that existing material.
It's kind of a pain in thebutt. So having different types of products
that can be re entered easily isreally important to the industry's sort of evolution.
(07:53):
And then firestop devices for fire resistance, rated joints for head of wall,
wall to wall, bottom of wall, the things dramatically. All of
these devices dramatically help reduce the opportunityfor human error because if as a human
being installing firestop, I need tohave a prescribed depth of mineral wool,
(08:13):
and that mineral wol needs to befour pound or six pound, but on
site we've got two pound, we'vegot eight pound. Well, that stuff's
just laying around and it's convenient.Why can't I just use it? It's
that itchy scratchy stuff. It's thesame thing, except again back to that
level of knowledge. If you don'thave the knowledge that these are all different
products, it's easy to understand whysomebody would use that and not know any
(08:35):
better. So when we change andwe've got devices, we no longer have
to worry about the right depth ofmineral wool, the right depth of sealent,
the right cealant, the right product. As a backer, and it's
just a device, people think,oh, it's a device. Now it's
idiot proof. And I'll be thefirst person to tell you that the minute
that you think something is idiot proof, the world will give you a better
(08:56):
idiot. So there's little things thatyou still have to check to make sure
that those devices are installed properly.So if you decide to go that path
as a builder, make sure thatyou know what those little tricks of the
trade are. That's a great answer. I think I'd have to agree with
you too, again, especially becauseI make the joke all the time with
(09:18):
things that are supposed to be childproof and the adult can't get it open,
but the child's gotten it open atleast five times, so never could
put the two together. But itis something that I face on a regular
basis as a parents. With thatbeing said, what is something that you
know today that you wish you knewwhen you started? I think that the
(09:39):
answer for me is summed up inmy favorite Maya Angelou quote, which is,
you do the best you can untilyou know better, and then you
do better. So I do alot of education across the country and as
far away as Saudi Arabia, andfrom time to time I do a class
and I get a great group ofpeople and they take their job seriously,
(10:01):
and at the end of the class, they realize I've been doing this wrong
for fill in the blank with whateverthat number of years is. And the
answer to that that duration doesn't matter. What resonates to them is I've been
doing this wrong, and I've lefta liability in the projects that I have
been proud of being part of,and now they lament over that. And
(10:24):
the first thing I can tell themto hopefully make them feel a little bit
better, is me too. I'vebeen involved in over twenty two billion dollars
worth of new construction and I learnedsomething new on every single project. Gotta
love that about the trades. It'snever it's never not a learning process,
(10:45):
and every time you have a smoothplan, there's always a hiccup. So
No, that's that's great, veryencouraging as well too. I love that.
How do people find you to getstarted? I am all over.
If you're following me already, you'reprobably sick of hearing about fire stop stuff,
but it's not going to start.You can also find me on our
(11:07):
website on Instagram, and we havea YouTube channel as well, with a
bunch of short, little snippets ofjust different Sometimes it's me venting about problems
that I see in the field thatI want you to stop doing. And
sometimes I'm honest, just hey,here's an educational tidbit that I thought would
be valuable. We also have ablog with tons of content on there.
(11:28):
I've been blogging since I think twentyfifteen, so our goal is to get
a lot of educational content out toanybody who wants to build better. I
love that, No, and youoffer a lot. I do see a
lot of your posts to go outon LinkedIn. Very knowledgeable. I'm definitely
(11:50):
not tired of seeing them again.It's just something you're learning new as you
go, something that I've never evenbeen aware of, but is important.
So no, I definitely, youknow, encourage you to keep going on
that it's pretty awesome and to seethe feedback that you get a lot of
times is encouraging as well. Solast question before we wrap up, what
is something that you would like totell entrepreneurs who want to join the construction
(12:11):
industry. I think this is areally important point bring out is whatever you
are doing, like let's say you'rein the trades, You're an electrician or
a plumber or fill in the blankwith whatever it happens to be, and
you do your job really well.It's easy to think, well, I
can make money at this and insteadof making money for the company that I'm
currently working for, I could dothis and I could make all that money
(12:35):
for me. But there is arisk reward element that goes into that.
So understanding your financials is really important. Understanding marketing and sales, how are
you going to get new clients.I'll be the first person to say that
this is stuff that I wasn't supersolid on when I started my business.
So this isn't me saying I haveall the answers. This is me saying
(12:58):
I've screwed all this up. That'sright. As you can get coaching on
whatever your weak points are, thestronger you'll be. I love that.
I love that. Sharon. Thankyou so much for joining today and all
of the information you'd be willing toshare and give to all of our guests.
I want to thank everyone for tuningin and to like, subscribe,
(13:20):
comment, and share the Builder UpperShow with anyone in the construction industry.
If you are a woman in constructionor a contractor and would like to appear
as a guest on our podcast,send an email to MegaNet lumberfi dot com.
See you next time. Bye.If you're a construction contractor and would
(13:48):
like to appear as a guest onour podcast, write us an email.
It's Lou at lumberfi dot com.
Hey everyone, I'm Lou and I'mMegan, your host of The Builder Upper
Show, a podcast where we talkabout all things in construction and trades.
I would like to welcome our guest, Sharon Helbert from Helpert Life Safety Consulting
LLC. Sharon, how are youdoing today? Awesome, It's so great
(00:24):
to be here with you. Thanksso much, Meghan, Awesome, it's
great to hear. I would loveto hear about your story and what inspired
you to make a difference in theconstruction industry. I started in the construction
industry in nineteen ninety nine. Iinitially started working for Hilty, developing new
products and working in marketing, andfrom there the bug kind of bit me
(00:45):
in. The idea that this littletiny element of firestop can make such a
colossal impact, and the level oflife safety in a building for the life
of the building kind of geeks meout. And I've been doing that in
one one respect or another since nineteenninety nine. That's awesome. I love
the excitement that's coming from behind it. You can tell that your heart is
(01:07):
in it, and that always makesa difference, especially when you're trying to
make a difference. I love thatso I guess you already kind of answered
the question too. When you gotinto construction it was nineteen ninety nine or
was it prior to that, andyou kind of no, Okay, awesome.
Before that, I was a vagabondfor I don't know, like seven
years. I bounced around, literallybounced around the world, and then came
to the realization that nobody's going tohire a former boat builder, kindergarten teacher,
(01:33):
bartender for a real world job.So I went to graduate school,
and I got halfway through graduate school, and the obvious thing became the fact
that I'm still just a boat builder, bartender, kindergarten teacher, and now
I'm going to have a degree,and I still don't have any real world
experience. So I did an internshipwith Hilty and that was how I got
introduced to the whole realm of constructionthat was not at all what I ever
(01:55):
expected that i'd be doing. Iwent to university expecting to be any school
teacher. Right, Okay, thatis quite a switch. So what from
that to where you are now?What actually got you into wanting to be
an owner in it and or amentor? So I've been mentoring in one
way or another. Since I wasabout twelve years old, between our community
(02:15):
in a rural town in Maine adoptedto nuclear families of folks from Cambodia,
and all of the local churches gottogether and supported them. And my mom's
sister was an ESL teacher, andthey decided it would be great if they
had a kid teaching kids ESL,and so I got pegged to be that
(02:37):
kid. But it was interesting becauseit put me in a position of leadership
at a young age, and itdefinitely served me well, and you know,
the last however many years, Soit was kind of interesting there.
But switching from working for other peopleto actually owning a company. Back in
twenty twelve, the International Building Codechanged and mandated the third part special inspection
(03:00):
of fire stop. I thought,that is exactly what I want to do,
and I was so wrong. Whenyou go in as a special inspector,
your job is to look at somethingand either say you did a good
job or you didn't do a goodjob, and your hands are really tied.
You're not supposed to do any coachingor mentoring or supporting people. And
(03:23):
if you run into people that wantto do it right, you're still stuck
with that role of saying you didyour job well, you didn't do your
job well, and your hands arereally bound by the standard. You're not
allowed to do any coaching. Sowhat I really love doing is education.
And right now I'm consulting on aproject where I get to support the quality
(03:46):
control team. I get to educatethe trades and the special inspector and in
some cases the jurisdictional inspectors. It'sjust a lot of fun to be able
to look at a project and saynot that I did that, but that
I, as a small, littlecatalyst, was able to help this army
(04:06):
of people build better, not juston this project, but if they choose
every single project that they work onfrom here forward. No, that's that's
really great. Yeah, I know, I love that. It was a
great answer. So then I guess, what are some of the challenges that
you know you're facing as a constructionowner today? And better yet, also
(04:30):
how you know would you overcome itor even help others overcome it. I
think the biggest issue when it comesto construction, whether it's the general contractor
the design team, the trades thatare in the field, the biggest challenge
is knowledge and here we are inyou know environment where all the information that
(04:54):
you want is in theory at yourfingertips. But having the information and applying
it in the field are two verydifferent things. I could sit down and
I can read the building code,but unless I understand the standards that are
written into the code, that doesn'treally do you a whole lot of good.
But if you understand the standards andyou understand the code, but you
don't know what happens when you've gotboots on the ground in the field,
(05:17):
then you're missing a big piece ofthat puzzle. And the building codes change
every three years, and little tinyparts and pieces change. And if you're
in this area versus that area workingto the twenty fifteen code, the twenty
twenty one, oh no, we'reback into the two thousand and eight code
over here. So all of thosethings can be a hindrance. So it's
(05:40):
really important that people maintain their levelof understanding. Not of I've been doing
this for thirty years, which drivesme nuts. I hear it every day.
And it's not just from the oldfolks. There's some young people that
have been in the industry for maybeten years and they're like oh, this
is what we always do. Justbecause it's what you have done doesn't make
(06:01):
it right overall, I completely agreewith you. I mean, even in
something as simple as real estate,right there is ongoing education and if you
don't you don't you know do that, you don't progress and that there are
definitely issues that end up coming along. And so I and the knowledge to
application is a very big topic andthere's a huge gap in between that.
(06:23):
So you hit that right on spot. How would you encourage contractors to embrace
technology and stay ahead in the industrytoday? I love this question because when
you say technology, people think techstuff. But in my firestop world,
technology isn't necessarily tech stuff. It'sthe new firestop devices. So when I
(06:44):
say new, I mean cast inplace firestop devices, which are basically a
sleeve that you would put on theconcrete form work before you pour the concrete.
Those aren't really new. I meanthey kind are as far as construction
is concerned, but there a newway of approaching firestop. And then after
those came about, there's cable devices. So one of the issues when you're
(07:08):
running cabling is especially if it's abusy office or hospital or an occupied space
a school, maybe there's new cablesthat need to be run on a regular
basis. So with the old schoolmethods, you would have a framed out
opening and you would have mineral walland sealant, and then every time you
(07:29):
needed to run new cables or dodata mining or cable mining to pull out
the old cables. Now you're gonnahave a hole or you've made a hole
to run new material, and it'snot easy to replace that existing material.
It's kind of a pain in thebutt. So having different types of products
that can be re entered easily isreally important to the industry's sort of evolution.
(07:53):
And then firestop devices for fire resistance, rated joints for head of wall,
wall to wall, bottom of wall, the things dramatically. All of
these devices dramatically help reduce the opportunityfor human error because if as a human
being installing firestop, I need tohave a prescribed depth of mineral wool,
(08:13):
and that mineral wol needs to befour pound or six pound, but on
site we've got two pound, we'vegot eight pound. Well, that stuff's
just laying around and it's convenient.Why can't I just use it? It's
that itchy scratchy stuff. It's thesame thing, except again back to that
level of knowledge. If you don'thave the knowledge that these are all different
products, it's easy to understand whysomebody would use that and not know any
(08:35):
better. So when we change andwe've got devices, we no longer have
to worry about the right depth ofmineral wool, the right depth of sealent,
the right cealant, the right product. As a backer, and it's
just a device, people think,oh, it's a device. Now it's
idiot proof. And I'll be thefirst person to tell you that the minute
that you think something is idiot proof, the world will give you a better
(08:56):
idiot. So there's little things thatyou still have to check to make sure
that those devices are installed properly.So if you decide to go that path
as a builder, make sure thatyou know what those little tricks of the
trade are. That's a great answer. I think I'd have to agree with
you too, again, especially becauseI make the joke all the time with
(09:18):
things that are supposed to be childproof and the adult can't get it open,
but the child's gotten it open atleast five times, so never could
put the two together. But itis something that I face on a regular
basis as a parents. With thatbeing said, what is something that you
know today that you wish you knewwhen you started? I think that the
(09:39):
answer for me is summed up inmy favorite Maya Angelou quote, which is,
you do the best you can untilyou know better, and then you
do better. So I do alot of education across the country and as
far away as Saudi Arabia, andfrom time to time I do a class
and I get a great group ofpeople and they take their job seriously,
(10:01):
and at the end of the class, they realize I've been doing this wrong
for fill in the blank with whateverthat number of years is. And the
answer to that that duration doesn't matter. What resonates to them is I've been
doing this wrong, and I've lefta liability in the projects that I have
been proud of being part of,and now they lament over that. And
(10:24):
the first thing I can tell themto hopefully make them feel a little bit
better, is me too. I'vebeen involved in over twenty two billion dollars
worth of new construction and I learnedsomething new on every single project. Gotta
love that about the trades. It'snever it's never not a learning process,
(10:45):
and every time you have a smoothplan, there's always a hiccup. So
No, that's that's great, veryencouraging as well too. I love that.
How do people find you to getstarted? I am all over.
If you're following me already, you'reprobably sick of hearing about fire stop stuff,
but it's not going to start.You can also find me on our
(11:07):
website on Instagram, and we havea YouTube channel as well, with a
bunch of short, little snippets ofjust different Sometimes it's me venting about problems
that I see in the field thatI want you to stop doing. And
sometimes I'm honest, just hey,here's an educational tidbit that I thought would
be valuable. We also have ablog with tons of content on there.
(11:28):
I've been blogging since I think twentyfifteen, so our goal is to get
a lot of educational content out toanybody who wants to build better. I
love that, No, and youoffer a lot. I do see a
lot of your posts to go outon LinkedIn. Very knowledgeable. I'm definitely
(11:50):
not tired of seeing them again.It's just something you're learning new as you
go, something that I've never evenbeen aware of, but is important.
So no, I definitely, youknow, encourage you to keep going on
that it's pretty awesome and to seethe feedback that you get a lot of
times is encouraging as well. Solast question before we wrap up, what
is something that you would like totell entrepreneurs who want to join the construction
(12:11):
industry. I think this is areally important point bring out is whatever you
are doing, like let's say you'rein the trades, You're an electrician or
a plumber or fill in the blankwith whatever it happens to be, and
you do your job really well.It's easy to think, well, I
can make money at this and insteadof making money for the company that I'm
currently working for, I could dothis and I could make all that money
(12:35):
for me. But there is arisk reward element that goes into that.
So understanding your financials is really important. Understanding marketing and sales, how are
you going to get new clients.I'll be the first person to say that
this is stuff that I wasn't supersolid on when I started my business.
So this isn't me saying I haveall the answers. This is me saying
(12:58):
I've screwed all this up. That'sright. As you can get coaching on
whatever your weak points are, thestronger you'll be. I love that.
I love that. Sharon. Thankyou so much for joining today and all
of the information you'd be willing toshare and give to all of our guests.
I want to thank everyone for tuningin and to like, subscribe,
(13:20):
comment, and share the Builder UpperShow with anyone in the construction industry.
If you are a woman in constructionor a contractor and would like to appear
as a guest on our podcast,send an email to MegaNet lumberfi dot com.
See you next time. Bye.If you're a construction contractor and would
(13:48):
like to appear as a guest onour podcast, write us an email.
It's Lou at lumberfi dot com.
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