How Tracking & Documenting Work Leads to Fast Payments and No Disputes

Contractors want to get paid for work they’ve completed as soon as possible, and owners don’t want to pay for anything early. Sound familiar?

Join this webinar to hear a discussion with Phillip Lorenzo, CSO at StructionSite, and our own payment expert Alex Dunn on how accurate progress tracking gives all parties what they want.

Find out:

• What project tracking methods are most accurate
• Why accuracy makes progress payments agreeable for everyone
• How to optimize a project for better cash flow

Transcript

Alex Dunn: (01:10)
So without further ado today’s topic is how tracking, um, and documentation work will lead to faster payments and no disputes.

Alex Dunn: (01:19)
Um, we’re all about faster payments here at level-set and nobody likes disputes and a construction site has a lot of really cool software. That’s going to help with, you know, the cumbersome, documentation and paperwork process that we’re all, um, you know, annoyed with to some extent in construction. So just a little bit on the agenda. I’m not going to read through it, but you see it there on the left. Um, we’re going to talk a lot about the current state of tracking, why it’s important and basically how it’s going to help. So, uh, now I’ll just let, I’ll let up do some talking, uh, tell us a little bit about yourself, Philip, and, uh, a little bit about instruction site.

Phillip Lorenzo: (01:54)
Yeah. Um, you can go to the next slide. Um, so, um, quick background on myself, uh, Philip, um, one of the co-founders construction site, um, I used to work for a large general contractor. I was actually on the other side of the table where I reviewed pay apps, work, coordinate, uh, with subs. Um, and then, uh, co-founded a company called instruction site, which is a really quick and thorough way using BCC cameras to capture, uh, your job site by walking around with, with photos and videos. And then what we’ll do is a little automatically map where you walked into construction drawings. So you have that context virtual tour. Um, the past has been used to document what’s happened to make sure that you get paid for your work to help justify change orders, document any kind of damage from, from other trades. Um, and just basically just giving everyone the same page, that same social truth visually with what’s going on. Um, the pictures are worth a thousand words, three 60 photos worth. I mean, at the under 60,000 words, uh, some of customers have said, and so basically, you know, it’s also been said that you don’t get paid for what you build, you get paid for what you document and, you know, you seek to comp we kind of compliment Levelset in that way, where we will help document the physical job site at X scale, um, which we’ll get into a bit more later. Yeah, that’s for

Speaker 1: (03:05)
It’s really awesome. Um, and then, um, that’s really cool that you worked for a large national GC, um, when subs were submitting their pay apps or when they were trying to, you know, get, get paid for their work, like from the GC perspective, like, what was your Mo like, how are you looking at that, you know, documentation from your standpoint at that time?

Speaker 2: (03:25)
Yeah, I mean, also it really, depending on the size of the project, um, some of the smaller ones where you can get, get a really close relationship with some of the subs and you can really solve some of that trust. Some of them, some of the jobs were just a lot bigger. Um, some of them really required, like it’s, it’s really hard to track stuff. And when things start to get behind it’s, it’s, it’s easy to point fingers or like try to figure out where, where things were behind and, and, you know, um, other other projects, maybe ones that I wasn’t directly involved in sometimes, um, you know, there, there would be some incentives to front load stuff a little bit, you know, about obviously definitely understand the reasoning for that. Um, you know, that increases risk. So then the GC could push back, um, and, and maybe, maybe under underpay in some ways, and, you know, that’s obviously not a very healthy relationship, right. Um, at the end of the day, we should, you know, people should get paid for what they do. Um, and just, just, just, just be cool. So, um, let me try to kind of manage that, um, that gap was, was, this has been kind of the biggest challenge. Yeah,

Speaker 1: (04:25)
Yeah, definitely. Definitely. And we see that a lot here on our side too, is this idea of just like, you know, kind of missing the Mark on communication. Like everyone knows that relationships are really important. Everyone wants to have really positive relationships with their subs or, or what the hiring party. Um, and, and sometimes things just don’t go that way. And one thing that helps with that communication is this documentation part. We’re going to talk a lot about today. Um, but before we go too much further, we’ll talk a little bit just quickly about Levelset. Um, you know, a lot of customers of ours probably on, on this call. So I won’t go too deep, but really, uh, construction payments are super complicated. They’re very stressful. Um, and for some reason, construction has this problem where people just don’t get paid a lot. Uh it’s, it’s kind of rare when you look at a lot of other industries, but it happens a lot in construction, and we’re really here to help with that payment process and make sure that everyone gets paid.

Speaker 1: (05:16)
Uh, we have a really great software to help with the documentation, um, preliminary notices and pay apps and waivers. Um, we have, you know, thousands and thousands of pages of free resources to help you with payment. We have a community of experts, um, credit managers, lawyers, and folks in the industry who chat about payment within the community. And we have our contractor payment profiles that allow people to see the payment history of those they work with. Um, and, and most recently we’ve added a FinTech product that helps people get cash. Now, when they’re in a tight spot and need that cash flow to keep their business running smoothly. Um, so that’s the Levelset plug after the structured site, uh, plug and we’ll dive into today’s content. So I’ll just kick this off really quickly and talk about like, you know, why do people like not get paid or like these common issues?

Speaker 1: (06:03)
Um, they all kind of boil down to one thing, you know, there’s, there’s probably 101 reasons, um, that that issues can happen. Pretty much everyone who’s listening in today has their own reason that they’ve had payment issues in the past. Um, they can start as early as the contract or the bidding process, and they go all the way through the punch list and close out, but pretty much, no matter what happens or what point it occurs, you can probably always trace it back to some communication issue or some collaboration issue. Um, so one thing we noticed recently, or, you know, it’s kind of like a no brainer to some extent, but our survey data showed that GCs get paid a lot faster than the subs and suppliers. And, you know, we believe that that is because the way payment flows from the owner of the lender to the GC and the GC down to the sub tier parties.

Speaker 1: (06:51)
And as that becomes more of a complicated project, when there are more subs, more suppliers, more parties on the job that need to get paid, you have more complexity in how those payments need to go. There’s more paperwork, there’s more documentation, there’s more checks and balances that become quite complicated. And there’s a lack of visibility that happens from that GC, knowing who they need to pay when there’s three or four layers of people that the payment needs to flow through. Um, and really like just the nature of the cash flows in the business and this idea where people are trying to leverage themselves into the best position, almost always ends up in this poor communication, this lack of collaboration. And we end up with payment issues. So it’s not always the GCs fault. It’s not always the sub’s fault. It’s not always a supplier’s fault. There’s always two sides to the coin and really what we believe can help stop these payment issues is when people start collaborating and they start communicating. Um, any thoughts on that Philip from your perspective?

Speaker 2: (07:54)
Yeah, I mean, that’s, uh, that’s definitely right. I mean, the GCs, um, you know, one perspective is that they need to justify to, to their owner that, you know, w what, what is being charged by the sub-contractor is, is, is legitimate. So they have to do the due diligence. There’s some additional stuff in there. There’s some inspectors that come in. And so, so you’re right. It’s, it’s unfortunate that, you know, as you go down, go down the line to the substance suppliers, you know, they essentially had to fund the project. Um, as, as you know, it’s been mentioned a lot in, in Levelsets on blogs.

Speaker 1: (08:26)
Yeah, for sure. And just to like, kind of hit the nail on the head one more time. This is another set of data from our, one of our payments surveys. They’re really like hits that communication and collaboration, uh, element. When you look at the top three and some other ones in there, you’re seeing that, like, these are all communication related, things that come up, like setting those clear expectations, whether it’s in the contract or at the start of the job, having good communication between the contractors, um, having a good invoice process that is in a way, like very much communication. Like how do we invoice? When do we invoice, um, you know, having a good follow-up process, uh, all those things, good management by the GC, like you were talking about doing that due diligence. Um, and then what’s funny is you see all the way at the bottom is like this, this idea of like taking a stand, um, like, you know, holding firm.

Speaker 1: (09:14)
Um, it’s funny that that’s the lowest, like, you know, there’s, there’s a time and a place for everything. Like if you’re in a bad situation and just like no one ever wants to file a lien, um, you might have to get to that issue, but chances are, if you’ve had good communication, you’ve had a really good collaboration. You’re never going to need to take a firm stand on something. And, you know, if you’ve set, set your expectations upfront, um, you know, people are, are happy to take your services. People are happy to, um, you know, user supplies. Like they should know that, you know, there’s a cost to that. And like, that’s not necessarily taking a firm stand. It’s just like that good communication and like good business practices. So is there anything you want to add to that?

Speaker 2: (09:54)
Yeah. I mean, it’s, when you get down the line, especially when it comes to the sub-contractor level, I mean, they really know how the project gets built like that the GC kind of sees things from a higher level that they see things, but the subs really know that, you know, it was all harder to build this section over here or fabricated or get it done. And so they actually might, um, I kind of, for a hard, higher percentage of work that they have, they already, they already knew. And so, you know, that that’s where the communication expectation really comes in, um, is like, you know, being, being, being on the same page with it, with, uh, with the GC, um, between the GC and the sub is really important. Um, so that, so that you don’t have to have these disputes or, um, and to make sure that everyone gets paid on time.

Speaker 1: (10:37)
Definitely. And, and really that kind of segues us nicely into this next part, which is like, why you need to be doing all this documentation and, you know, maybe why people don’t do it in some cases. Um, you know, it’s a lot of work, first of all, but like, I’d love to hear your thoughts on at first, uh, Phillip is just like, why don’t people track progress? Why don’t they do this stuff that, you know, is basically proven to help facilitate payments and facilitate really good relationships, which is really the key.

Speaker 2: (11:07)
Yeah. I mean, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll come kind of come in with one big reason, um, that I’ve seen is that, um, teams are just too busy. Um, there’ll be understaffed and we can dive actually even deeper. There’s like a deeper cause, uh, which is, you know, it’s important to ensure that you’re profitable on projects, right. And people are expensive. So it’s natural that our projects will kind of staff the minimum required to get the job done, but then also also be profitable, right. That’s just natural business. Um, and you know, part of why that’s also part of why people work so many hours in the construction industry, it leads to a lot of, uh, projects and, and staff, maybe not having the time or two to bother or to kind of start guest quantities, which we didn’t get over, um, getting to later. And for those that do track the job, um, you know, they do the minimum to just get them by.

Speaker 2: (11:56)
Um, obviously there’s a lot of room for improvement and, and I get it, it’s time consuming. There’s a lot of problems to be solved. There there’s so much fires that had to be put out, and there’s not enough time today necessarily to start tracking and be more proactive, uh, at least not without burning yourself out or sacrificing your, your relationships. So, so when we’re using this mostly a minimum ticket to get paid, maybe not necessarily the best way to do it, it’s a necessary evil, but I’d say it’s root cause one big root causes this under staffing and projects, especially the margins

Speaker 1: (12:26)
And burnout is such a thing that I think is like, always, like you said, everyone’s working these long hours and it manifests in these really, you know, not ideal ways, whether it’s safety on the job site, whether it’s that lack of documentation where they’re just like, Oh, it doesn’t matter. We did it. Like, they’ll see it. Um, but then the drywall goes up and the paint goes up and it’s like, well, did you actually do that correctly? So you, you know, getting a little distracted or feeling burnt out or not really being all the way there, it’s almost always bad. And like that documentation is going to come in to like help you in the event that like those things were missing. So, yeah.

Speaker 2: (13:02)
Yeah. I mean, tracking, tracking things properly is, is, uh, it’s, it’s really tedious, right? It is a busy take. I get it. It’s not really challenging work either. It’s just kind of, you know, you just got to do it. Um, and you know, with the pressures, pressures of construction and things moving really fast, trying to, you know, make the schedule and budget. Um, I mean, th there’s a reason why, like, you know, there’s, there’s, uh, construction has among the highest rates of suicide and divorce rates and, you know, there’s, there’s some things there that just kind of it’s, it could be avoided, um, by, you know, hopefully tech can help, help ease some of that pain of, of the manual, um, mental labor of, of just tracking what’s hap what’s happening so that more time can be focused on, um, collaboration and, and solving problems.

Speaker 1: (13:52)
Hmm. What would you say, um, would be like one thing that any construction business can do, you know, today, or very easily to help start tracking their projects just a little bit better or at all?

Speaker 2: (14:06)
Yeah. And w we can get to that. We’ll definitely get into that in the next few slides, but before we get into that, I think we should definitely look into how tracking is, is, is how they try to do today. Um, cause like, you know, there’s lots of companies that do track, you need to track so that you can, um, document for, for being able to get paid and to be able to monitor, you know, your own internal profitability.

Speaker 1: (14:29)
Yeah, definitely. That’s, that’s interesting. I want to definitely peel back that onion from your perspective. Cause from ours, it’s like people don’t do a lot of this, you know, pavement paperwork, just cause it’s a pain in the butt. Like it’s confusing, it’s complex, there’s all these like rules and statutes and laws and legal changes that happen due to case law. Um, and everyone’s, you know, we had a survey, we found out 80% of people are 80% of the companies that were pulled in. It spend a significant portion of their work week chasing down payments, chasing down paperwork. Um, and a lot of them are, you know, not really even using any technology to do so. So to follow up on what you wanted to talk about Philip, like I’d love to dive in and say like, how are they doing it now? Like, you know, what does it look like?

Speaker 2: (15:15)
Yeah. I think that’s a great transition, um, to, to this next slide over here, um, which is, you know, like how does it, how does,

Speaker 1: (15:22)
I don’t want to skip this one, this is the, uh, you know, this is what it looks like when people aren’t using the technology and, you know, trying to manage all this paperwork. Uh, but yeah, go ahead. Sorry.

Speaker 2: (15:33)
Yeah, I like that. Um, so I mean really like, you know, what I would like to share is not just, um, what we’ve gathered from talking to lots of people about how they track projects, but even actually like personal experience, um, and like relatively fresh experience I spent last summer, um, actually doing some tracking, um, you know, the, the, the manual way with, with a drywall sub here, um, just so you can get like I get firsthand experience and where things can be improved. And also they experienced that firsthand. And, um, what I found was that, um, which, which many people are kind of aware of is that, you know, tr trying to track things properly, um, without tech is manual and it’s also physically challenging. Um, so basically you see, you see me over there, um, holding, holding, uh, a bunch of papers, some markers, um, basically walking out of the job site, um, on it with a clipboard of a bunch of 11 by 17 to highlight scopes of work, revisiting the same room for three, four or five times, um, and having to redo this process on a weekly basis. So it was, it was definitely, um, you know, it was, it wasn’t the funnest work. I mean, it definitely gets you to understand what’s happening on site, but the end of the day, it’s, you know, the easiest highlighted drawings that, that are being used to get everyone else kind of on the same page and, and, you know, and, uh, and to be able to create those production values, um,

Speaker 1: (17:04)
Comment like the weekly, weekly cadence, I guess it probably depends on the trade itself, or if you’re the GC, like how often are people, you know, going out there with this stack of paperwork or, or whatever tools they have and highlighters and making these updates, is it usually weekly? Yeah,

Speaker 2: (17:18)
Usually we’ve, we’ve seen them do weekly. Um, you know, that’s kind of when the, um, you know, uh, the people installing the work and the unions, like those laborers, they get paid, you know, more on the weekly basis. Um, sometimes it’s done monthly because you to match it with the pay apps, um, from what we’ve heard, people would love to do a daily. Um, but it’s just because it’s so time consuming that it’s, it’s not as, not as practical, um, where it’s, it’s, it’s a lot harder to do so much, much fewer actually do it on a daily basis, a weekly, the most common one that we’ve seen, um, where, where they can get the ROI specially, right. And with doing this, you know, highlighting this. I mean, we, we quickly realized that, um, you know, you can get two different PEs to do, to track the same thing, and then you get different results. Cause like, there’s, it’s really open to your interpretation. Like how do you know that’s actually done that? You know, how far did they get done? And that did highlight, right. What up to the stud or you just kind of like kind of fudge it a little bit. Um, you know, there’s an extra translation layer sometimes when you you’re bringing it back to OST or Bluebeam. Um, you know, so a lot of them, a lot of them are guesstimates. I think, um, you know, maybe you guys have seen some, some similar things happen.

Speaker 2: (18:35)
Yeah.

Speaker 1: (18:36)
I I’d say that like on, from our perspective, you know, we’re not necessarily, like a lot of our customers are very off the job they’re in the back office. It’s really important for them to know what’s going on on the job site to be able to build properly. And that’s where, like the, you know, the connection between structured site and Levelset kind of like comes in, is thinking about like, how do we know when to bill or, or whatever. And if people are, you know, if, if the sub is going and saying this is done on their thing, and the GC is saying like, no, it’s not like I tracked it a different way. And there’s no like proof to back it up. It’s just like highlighter on the paper. Like it becomes more challenging and more dangerous for the relationship for those back office people where they have conflicting things to look at where they’re saying, well, I sent him the pay app with the proof and you’re telling me that the proof is a lie. And like, you know, that, that causes those bad situations. And like those leverages and like the, not the collaboration that we want to see and that we do see a lot of times on the job site.

Speaker 2: (19:32)
Right. Yeah. So there’s that, that human bias of like, kind of, you know, even though people see the same thing, you know, there’s, there’s based on experience, um, or, or different types of knowledge, like some people will think done is, is some things are done. Some things are not done. Um, and yeah, that, that could create, um, some, you know, lack of it create, create. And so distrust, uh, between say like a GC and this on the, on the sub and that, that could, it presents a challenge sometimes and, and getting approved for repayments. Um, definitely. So like, in my question here is like, how do we remove that bias? Right. So that’s, you know, one example of how tech can help with that. Um, you know, you can, you can definitely try things properly. You could use tech, um, like, like this one right here, strikes and site called smart track.

Speaker 2: (20:20)
This looks really cool. What’s going on here? Um, so here, um, what you do is, so you capture a site with your, with like an off the shelf, uh, three 60 camera, and basically say, and you just walk and hit all the rooms once. Um, like this is something that like a P or someone on a project team or, um, foreman can just can do, um, at the end of the week or end of the day. So rather than spending hours walking around the site with a clipboard and a highlighter like you previously, uh, just, just walk in with a camera and what, uh, what this tool will do, um, called smart track. It allows you to contextualize where you walk automatically on the drawing, and then it’ll actually automatically analyze what got installed. Um, so, so gave you the exact quantities, right? You get, you get paid on the quantities, um, and then you can match that against, against your labor, just to make sure that you’re seeing where you’re productive.

Speaker 2: (21:11)
So it not only gives you like the numbers and the graphs, like you’d see on the right, um, you know, for, for your pay apps, but then really knowing where things got installed. Cause that’s really where, um, if there’s any kind of disputes or questions from, um, from the GC or the owner in terms of what got done, like that map, like really shows reality, like what, you know, what part of the job site gets done. So that way, when someone walks aside, they’ll be like, Oh yeah, you know, that’s exactly what he sees. So this helps establish a cadence of trust, um, as well, and as well as, as really, really strong backup for your payout.

Speaker 1: (21:45)
Yeah. This was really cool. Um, so we were talking about like how a lot of people, like don’t love to do the tracking stuff. It’s kinda cumbersome. Tell me about, you know, you have this off the shelf, you know, three 60 camera, you’ll walk through the site, like this person, this Lily orange line did here, how long does it take for someone to do that? And then like end up with this cool data and like completion metrics and stuff.

Speaker 2: (22:07)
Yeah. I’d say, I mean, compared to doing it like the old way. So he does a, side-by-side like kind of walking manually and kind of highlight everything. Um, uh, for, for, for one forum project, it took about, um, six hours to do, to, to be able to track everything for just the, for just one, um, for one subcontractor. And we were able to do the same thing, um, in an automated way, walking for about half an hour. So it’s like, it really is how fast, how fast you can walk is the limitation, you know,

Speaker 1: (22:36)
One 12th of the amount of time. I like

Speaker 2: (22:38)
That it’s much faster. And then everything just kind of gets, you know, chugs along. But the point here is that, um, it’s AI definitely that time that you save can be spent trying to make sure that you’re on schedule and you’re you’re on budget, um, or to be able to kind of look for opportunities to improve productivity, make sure that the flow of work is much smoother, right. That RFI, um, you know, get, get, get stuff cleared up, um, and get a crew scheduled up. That’s the point of this is to reduce time so they can spend more time collaborating.

Speaker 1: (23:11)
Nice, sorry, I kind of jumped the gun on this next slide, but, um, just keep going. Cause I’m like I’m digging this. So,

Speaker 2: (23:19)
Um, you know, definitely wanna talk about some of the benefits of, of tracking. I mean, um, you know, first and foremost, you know, you want to be able to leverage your data that you track, you know, tracking what’s what happens, um, allows you to make sure that you can leverage that to pay out your vendors, perform cost analysis, productivity analysis, really, and being able to gather that more quickly, more frequently and accurately, um, is important so that you can say, um, trend your production against your, at your man hours, for example, so that you can make sure that you’re on budget because you know, you know, what happens like, you know, the estimator will go and, and, and assume certain product production values. Um, and so like, how do you know that you’re meeting those, um, those values? How do you, how do you know that you’re making money?

Speaker 2: (24:05)
Like, how do you answer the question? Did you make money today? Yeah. Right. And it really, you have to be able to track things and track them frequently and, and, and detailed enough, um, as well, and like tracking things to a high level detail is really critical when you’re tracking things. You can just roughly say, yeah, we’re about half done, you know, on this floor with all the, all the drywall drywall, for example, you know, there’s different productivity rates for top-down partial drywall versus full high production drywall. Like it’s a lot harder to install. It takes, it takes longer to install the top gun because you have block guts for MEP. It’s hard, you know, it requires special equipment to get above the ceiling. So like critical path activities like this can really make or break, um, your, your budgets or schedules.

Speaker 1: (24:49)
Yeah, definitely. And like, I love, I love that mixed, especially with this last bullet where, you know, as humans, we’re actually really bad at judging how productive we are or how productive we can be. And when we, you know, set out to do, you know, some top-down drywall, we might, you know, when you get really good at the trades and you’ve been in for years, you kind of know you have, you have a better idea, but as humans, we still always underestimate or overestimate, I guess, depending on how you look at it, like how quickly we can get things done. And if you think something’s going to take 20 hours, there’s actually a good chance it’s going to take 30 because you’re not necessarily factoring in all the other stuff, especially with coronavirus going on. There’s a lot of changes in how productivity works, how much time things taking, how you need to bill a little bit differently to be able to make up on those costs and be profitable.

Speaker 1: (25:35)
Um, and having this accurate historical data of tracking the projects, knowing when I do a room this big with this type of drywall, this is actually how long it took. And this is actually where we were on day three versus day 15 on a bigger project. So having that and being able to look over it is going to set you up for success. Like even beyond like this billing and in a current job, how you bid on jobs later, how you really understand, like what needs to be done and how long it’s going to take. So really good to have that historical data.

Speaker 2: (26:08)
Yeah. And it’s not, it’s important not to just, you know, track what God done for, for the payout, but really like in between that time, um, you know, it’s important to get like a good as real time as possible on the pulse of the, the current jobs, um, you know, production rates and productivity rates, because rather than waiting until things get blocked and delayed, you know, and then that, and then a pay up or, you know, being your cashflow then disrupted. If you can look at your trends frequently enough, you can react faster. You say, Hey, you look like we’re running behind here. You know, maybe, maybe this other trade is blocking, blocking this piece of work, knowing, knowing where things are slowing down. That’s why, um, you know, when you don’t want to track properly, you do want from a map. Cause like at the end of the day, we’re, we’re building, we’re building something physical, right. That has a location. And like, you know, the flow of work is, is a huge part of productivity. Um, so being able to see that allows you to, to proactively address those and then really allow you to help, um, cultivate relationships between, you know, the project stakeholders, um, versus just spending all your time, doing data collection, if you can, if you’re able to leverage technologies to like help, help, uh, reduce that time and, and get, get something that’s, that’s even more thorough and frequent, um, that’s that can really improve relationships.

Speaker 1: (27:29)
Yeah. W 100%. And like this, the technology element is awesome. Like it’s definitely, really cool, especially with y’all are doing over instruction site. So the idea of just like really good, detailed, done really easily. Um, but you know, in, in reality, a lot of people aren’t able to like go and implement these technologists, smaller businesses and stuff. Right. What would you say to someone who, you know, maybe can’t implement technology either because of like monetary reasons or they’re just don’t want to do it? Like what, what could, you know, people do without technology? Um, and what should they be doing? Um, if they can’t use technology.

Speaker 2: (28:10)
I mean, if, if they don’t, if they can’t use technology or don’t currently use it, I think first and foremost is to, to at least do some progress tracking, um, you know, even just highlighting papers. Cause that’s, I, I definitely think that’s better than the not tracking things. Like some people will maybe track try things at the beginning when, when the activity started until the end and then just kind of like guesstimate in between, but that’s really robbing them of, um, you know, data they need to like, you know, it’s, it’s hard to control profitability and then also future profitability when bidding projects, um, getting like accurate, accurate activity rates. That’s why, that’s why lots of estimates are not correct. Right. Um, and the more, the more accurate you can make them the more competitive really you can be. And, and, you know, the higher likelihood you’ll, you’ll make money at then a day.

Speaker 2: (29:00)
Um, so like really having that historical record, um, you know, companies need to leverage that, you know, especially in the, in the longer term so that, you know, rather than by being, I mean, there’s definitely some very experienced people, um, you know, in, in construction and, you know, estimating a project, um, definitely goes, it goes off of a lot of experience. A lot of it also, you know, to be Frank it’s is based on gut feel. And there’s a lot of, you know, room for error. There’s overestimation, um, as, as you’re talking about Alex and so really having accurate data to back up, um, your estimate in a day, it can mean the difference between being in the red and being in the black in terms of your profitability. Definitely.

Speaker 1: (29:42)
Very cool. Well, we’re coming to the end of our time. Um, is there anything else you, you know, first of all, thank you so much for, for joining us on this film. It was really, really great to have you here talking about this stuff. Um, is there anything else you wanted to chat about? Um, any, any final plugs perhaps? Um, and if we have any questions, um, in those zoom can answer those as well, but yeah, take it away while I have questions.

Speaker 2: (30:07)
I definitely appreciate the opportunity here to, to talk about, you know, the benefits of progress tracking just in general in a, with or without, uh, technology. Uh, we definitely didn’t get to keep things at a high level here, wanted to focus more on the business side and not to get too specific on the software. Um, but if anyone’s interested, we’re actually holding a summit on the 12th and we’ll be talking in much detail in terms of like how that could work if, if you’re nursing. Um, otherwise I hope that this, this discussion on, on just tracking progress in general was pretty helpful.

Speaker 1: (30:36)
Excellent. Very good. Well, thank you again for joining us and we hope to do this again sometime soon and thanks for everybody who came in after their lunch hour or during it, or before it, if you’re on the West coast and, uh, hopefully we’ll see you next time.

Speaker 2: (30:51)
Are we going to be asking questions during this call or I don’t

Speaker 1: (30:53)
Think we have any questions. Um, We have a raised hand from Nan. I’m sorry. I’m having a hard time getting all my zoom controls here.

Speaker 2: (31:07)
See if I can,

Speaker 1: (31:10)
I had a raised hand from Nan R Nan, do you have a question? I have permitted you talking responsibilities. If you want, you can also chat in if you’d prefer

Speaker 2: (31:25)
C can you hear me? Yes.

Speaker 1: (31:30)
It’s not actually Nancy Doron started starving. Hey, so, um, pretty cool. Uh, so I was kind of listening. I wasn’t super, uh, paying attention. Uh, how, how does how’s that work out? Do you have this three 60 degree camera that you just walk around with? And, uh, you said that, uh, you kind of went through a job site, walked in, uh, it took six hours to document it the old school way, but with three 60, you essentially were able to do it in a half an hour. Right. So how quickly does that camera, uh, capture everything? Because when you’re, so you’re going to download this information and you’re going to essentially, uh, I can look at if I’m the project manager at the home office and I can, can I stop at any point just to kind of look at things and zoom in to see w uh, details and stuff like that?

Speaker 2: (32:23)
Yeah. The way it works, you know, you can get one of these, uh, three 60 cameras right here. They’re, they’re selling the best by Amazon, um, pretty cheap. And then, um, yeah, you, you walk around, so it like creates the, you ever see it like a Google street view type of thing where you can kind of, it gives you literally like, like a Google review type of thing, but for your job site. So yeah, you can stop, you can look around as if you were physically there point of time, and then you can compare that to, to whatever, like, um, you know, you know, quantities, I, it, it said it was installed. So then what is your company view? Is it just the, uh, the software that integrates with the three 60 that makes it easier to document things? Is that what your company does?

Speaker 2: (33:04)
Structure construction. Yeah, sure. Yeah. So I can say, well, we’ll take integrates with the hardware it’ll, it’ll, uh, it has the mobile app that integrates everything and puts on a drawing, and then it also, um, pull out the quantities, um, automatically and what it, the texts got installed using using artificial intelligence. Cool. Oh, he’s still charged for something like that. You guys charge per user, is it per company? Um, it’s as per project and per company and, you know, you can, you can definitely hit me up. Um, I mean, email, uh, Philip extract aside.com, if you’re all right. That sounds good. We’ll do that.

Speaker 1: (33:41)
Thanks for the question. Much appreciated. See if we have anybody else out there, um, who has any questions?

Speaker 1: (33:52)
All right. I think that that’s probably it for us. Uh, well, thanks again for everyone for joining, appreciate the questions. Um, our emails are here. If you have any questions about Levelset, um, you know, managing your payments are structured site, uh, tracking your jobs and, and, and keeping things move in with lots of great documentation. Uh, we have our, our emails there at the bottom. Um, you can always give us a call as well. Sure. The, each of us have a, some phone numbers on the website, so everybody have a wonderful weekend and a great weekend stay safe out there.