Mass Timber Group Show: Sustainable Building Experts

Taking Over New Markets: Hannes Blaas | CEO of Rotho Blass USA | #9

• Brady Potts

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Hannes Blass, the CEO of Rotho Blass USA, discusses construction technology in the mass timber field. He takes us through his professional journey from a childhood underfoot in the family warehouse to leading the company’s US division. Hannes tells us how Rotho Blass advanced products are shaping the mass timber industry. We also explore how he is growing a nationwide sales team, even through the pandemic. 

We address the ever-evolving nature and innovation of mass timber construction, explore the process of building a post and plate point support system, and take a detailed tour of the 1510 Webster project in Oakland, California - showcasing the latest and greatest in tall mass timber construction and its remarkable project savings.

In the final segment, collaboration and networking's significance in the industry takes center stage. Hannes is taking his company’s extensive educational resources and mass timber knowledge on the road with seminars and events all across North America. Lessons from a recent timber event in Philadelphia are discussed, including his passion for building in-person industry relationships. Hannes offers career advice for construction professionals, emphasizing industry events, personal connections, and as he says, hitting the streets - to make the most of our time in life.

As we sign off Hannes agrees to take Nic and Brady out on his new sailboat next time they swing through Philly – and they’re taking him up on it!

Connect with Hannes on LinkedIn >>> https://www.linkedin.com/in/blaashannes/

Looking for your mass timber community? Attend the 2025 Mass Timber Group Summit in Denver Co - Aug 20-22nd!

Speaker 1:

There's always a learning curve with, as with everything. If you do something new, you will have a learning curve. That's out of question. But what I find interesting is that I don't think I can really recall anyone saying I'm done with this. There's been projects with some problems but nobody came out at the other side saying, okay, I'm done with this. Everybody came out reflective of what they did, how they did it, Looking for the future, and said, okay, they got potential. I know what I did wrong and if I come across another project or do this again, I will do it right.

Speaker 3:

This is the Mass Timber Group Show, and I'm Nick and I'm Brady and we talked to sustainable building experts. Today we caught up with Honest Bloss, the CEO of Rotoblast USA, a world leader in timber construction technology. Honest grew up running around the warehouse dodging forklifts as a kid, moved into sales at a young age and now he leads an entire division of the family empire here in America. Honest was the first Rotoblast employee based here in the States. He's since grown an entire sales team across multiple territories and now has Rotoblast products featured in some of the most impressive builds to date. We talk about growing a sales team working with the AEC community and some of the projects he's most excited about.

Speaker 2:

And what else got me excited was Rotoblast's products are being used in a revolutionary 18 story column to plate mass timber high rise, topping out in a few weeks at 1510 Webster in Oakland, California. Part of what makes it so unique is the Freirez mass timber that is being used. They are building at a rate of one floor every two days, which also completes a project like this six months faster than compared to using concrete or steel.

Speaker 3:

It was an incredible conversation and I can't wait for you all to hear it. But first, if you like hearing mass timber experts talk about sustainable building, hit that subscribe button. So with that, let's get into it. So tell us, what was it like growing up in a family business?

Speaker 1:

For me, my earliest memory was running around the warehouse, dodging four forklifts and building cardboard castles and houses with my sister, and then working. And I started working over the summers and, you know, when I was 13 or 15 years old, in the warehouse or in the workshop. We have started out as a company, as a power tool importer from German power tools into Italy, and because of that we also have a workshop to repair those power tools. I've done some of my early experiences in that shop and then, yeah, it's, that's been part of my professional life ever since. What was it?

Speaker 3:

like working with you.

Speaker 1:

I have never really worked a lot with him because when in the warehouse and in the workshop there were other supervisors and then when I had my, when I went into sales. I went into sales Just when I was 19 years old, I believe. I went up to the UK before I went to school, went to the UK for half a year to do business development in Northern England and Scotland and, yeah, indirectly been working with him, yeah, but then also not. We have a very sales centric company culture. I would say the sales aspect is important because it is what it is our eyes and ears on the market so we can understand what's needed, what are the challenges in the market, and then we feed that back into the company and through the product development and the engineering process and then the outcome of that engineering and innovation process then needs to go back out to the market through that same Salesforce.

Speaker 1:

It's my dad also. He started out in sales, has always had an eye on sales. He's still heading up. He has always been heading up directly a couple smaller markets to not lose the feel for the sales and the field, and that's just as part of our DNA. Also, myself, I travel a lot out a lot on the market. I travel every week. So I'm on an airplane every week in different territories to keep an eye on what are the challenges in the market. What are we doing? What are we doing wrong, where can we improve and where can we create value for the industry?

Speaker 2:

So you have a huge company I think we talked about. There's 350 sales people globally and now you're the CEO of the Roto Blas and I hope I'm pronouncing that right, roto Blas right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's Robert Thomas Blas. So Robert and Thomas founded the company 33 years ago.

Speaker 2:

And so you're the CEO of the Roto Blas US market. What's the big difference between the United States that you've seen in overseas, in Europe?

Speaker 1:

I think so in the European. Experience was limited to the UK. I've done a little bit in a few months of sales also in Switzerland, but that market is structured a little bit differently. So our region of South Tirol, where we're headquartered, is in Northern Italy and borders with Austria the region of Tirol in Austria and the region of the Grisens in Switzerland. Just over the border there's the Davos, st Moritz and all those fun places, a lot of skiing, and after that I've been also.

Speaker 1:

I was responsible for a period of time for the Chinese market so I traveled to China four or five times to sell our product over there. Then someone else took over that market and we have now an organization also in China. Those markets are all very different. The Alpine markets are very. They're more smaller, structured, a lot of custom home buildings, a lot of single family and a very strong timber construction culture. And that heavy timber construction culture is also what gives birth to what we today call mass timber. It's been invented in that Austria Swiss Alpine region and it fell on fertile ground with that region having a very rich heavy timber building culture. So the codes were there, the engineering know how was there, the architectural know how was there. The builders know how was there. The fabrication capabilities were there and also solutions like the fasteners that we are heavily involved with was also there.

Speaker 1:

If you look at the majority of the supply chain of, for example, cnc machines or connectors and that we use nowadays in mass timber come out of heavy timber construction. That is, timber frame. The previously was mortise and tenon, but nowadays it's a lot of metal connectors in there. If you're in the Alps somewhere, you look at the, look at any building around you and you see a lot of heavy timber roofs. So that's the situation in there and I think that's also something that a lot of people don't realize.

Speaker 1:

Looking at the market in the US, the market in the US started out very strong with post and beam buildings, tall buildings, big buildings, and that was a stark contrast to what how mass timber got started in Europe. But we see now a lot of tall buildings also coming back and being built in continental Europe and that culture also changing, being influenced by what's happening in the UK, us, australia, and I believe what we also do see now is more and more smaller buildings in the US. So there's now healthier or increasingly healthy ecosystem and environment growing around leveraging mass timber also for smaller, smaller residential and also custom home buildings, and just leveraging the architectural benefits or advantages of this new material.

Speaker 2:

Thanks, L power. So I didn't mean to cut you off, but I was. I'm trying to figure out. So do you have a focus on small scale, residential, like single family homes, or? I've seen your catalogs shoot. You have four or five catalogs that are three, four hundred pages long and PN listeners and viewers. They can go to ROTHOBLAScom, roto Blas and check out all of your products. You have thousands of products, right?

Speaker 1:

Yes, so we, that is right. We don't focus only on on one market or the other. We really try to be diverse in the application of our products. So we are in the business of standardizing solutions, having increasing accessibility of solutions to a wider market. So there's new challenges in the market and we really come into play for anyone and that's not just a mass timber. Also, outside of that, we do a lot. We work a lot with custom home builders that try to do better, that try to deliver a better product.

Speaker 1:

We are addressing new needs in the market. If you're looking at, the codes are changing. Massachusetts, for example, was in last two weeks ago. It was in Massachusetts and people have to hit their lower door targets now and they don't know how to. So they need to turn to new solutions getting better tape, better membranes, better gaskets. So that's where we also come into play. And prefab modular penalized Anyone who's who cannot just walk down the aisle at Home Depot to get what they need to meet their needs. That's where we come into play. We also do a lot of acoustics and also fall protection. We have a 250 page book of fall protection that is touching also timber, but it's also has 90% of that product line is in infrastructure projects bridges and the stadiums, but also industrial buildings, but then also roofs maybe a timber building, maybe a concrete building, maybe a steel building. We see ourselves as a building technology company and we're really good at mass timber.

Speaker 2:

That helps paint the picture a little bit more. The way you put that, though, if you can't walk down Home Depot and because you specialize not just in mass timber, but it doesn't matter if you're a high rise skyscraper, single family home. But also, we were having dinner out in Denver not too long ago and you talked about how some of the public out there they think of you as a premium brand with also premium prices, and not to say because you are a premium brand, but you've talked about how you're absolutely competitive with everyone else out there on across all of your products, right?

Speaker 1:

Yes, one of our strengths is logistics. You don't not only work with and some people may think we just deliver just to apply these big mass timber buildings we love also small buildings we have. We handle every year over 100,000 shipments through our logistics networks. That means that on average our order volume is $2,000 of material that goes out. Some orders are just $10. Other orders are $300,000, but there's a very widespread of orders that go out our doors.

Speaker 1:

Then what we're able to leverage is our the width of our the width and the breadth of our products range. We're able to scale up and down the product specifications because we have so many products. So we can really you don't have to over engineer something and we can really target the needs of any given project. And on top of that, we also partner a lot with a lot of our clients on a wide range of products. They start looking at our tapes, then our membranes, then our fasteners for insulation, then our brackets, and so we're able to develop comprehensive relationships with our clients. So we're not sending out just tape, not just sending out screws, it's a whole package. That then also enables us to be competitive on providing value.

Speaker 3:

So you're like a one stop shop for people that are looking for all these different products in a build. Who are the people that you work with the most in the ADC community?

Speaker 1:

We interact with everyone. Really, we believe that to make innovation happen, everybody needs to be on the same page. We believe in transparency. So that's why our books have very comprehensive product data and they not only try to just have product data on there, but they also try to convey concepts so that people feel comfortable. People look at it and they say, okay, you have.

Speaker 1:

Everything that happens on a construction site is a complex decision making process.

Speaker 1:

There's not one single person that makes a decision on something.

Speaker 1:

If someone decides to change out the windows and swap out the window manufacturer because the architect wants it, the owner wants it, but then the guys on site complain A lot of companies, they go back and go back to their own window producer and on top of that, for change to happen, there's always internal advocates within every organization and these internal advocates need to support their decision to try something new and also support it within their own organization. And then they need to be comfortable, because they're maybe also sticking out their neck and they have resistance of people that always try to do the same thing, the same old way. So what we do is we do a lot of site visits, a lot of visits with offices of the design community, but also with contractors, and to try to raise that comfort level for the and the openness to innovation within the decision making process, the decision makers- so you got to get in front of a lot of different types of people and expanding into a new market, like you are here in America.

Speaker 3:

What's your sales team? Look like you were the first person to come from Rod of Last to America and now you're leading a team. What's that process like?

Speaker 1:

Hard, A lot of work. There's obviously a lot of ups and downs, but you have to pull through. There is challenges of the sorts. We had COVID. We founded Rod of Last USA in 2019. We've supplied our first project in the States in 2012. So 11 years ago. And then we've supplied and we served our local clients just from Canada, but without a local presence. And then 2019 we have started building our local presence. Then COVID hit and again the innovation happens when you build those relationships within the industry and the relationship building was really hard during COVID. We still had strong growth throughout that whole period, but it certainly didn't make things easier. Then there's the challenge of building that team. It's all new things for the local market and there is also local culture, building culture and we have to try to integrate into that. And we're working really hard and we've done a lot of work to achieve that. And then but yeah, it's been a fun process Coming back, I will do it again over and over.

Speaker 2:

And you're growing more and more into the US and I know that you're working on a really a cool project in downtown Oakland, California, the 1510 Webster to 18 story, almost 200,000 square feet on top of a three story concrete podium, but not to mention in a very high seismic area, the West Coast of California. What jumps out at you at that project? What comes to mind?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think it's a project that's unique. It's the first tall building on in the US that showcases the potential of post and plate point support that system. Most other projects that we've seen have been done in post and beam style construction and this one now showcases the potential of this new approach but also old approach. So the famous Brock Commons project in Vancouver has also been built in a post template construction method. But I really enjoyed working on that with the team, with our team, with the team at Wow DCI makers and at the stairs, because it's a web core, because everybody was really motivated and pushing the limits on this one and I want to say the limits as we know them right now. For example, they were able to bring that bring. The original specifications were a seven inch floor plate and then they were able to bring that down to a five inch floor plate by doing some testing and it's just and in the end they have been able to deliver the whole project at an expedited time line, six months faster than a comparable concrete building and even at the discount, at the significant discounts monetary discount compared to a comparable concrete building, and on schedule and six months, six months faster. It was all throughout a very impressive project process and team and I think there will be a lot of.

Speaker 1:

We have already seen a lot of fallout effects. So what we've done is on that project. How we got involved is with. The biggest piece was the column to column connectors. It's called the pillar connector. So you have the floor plates. You cannot sit the columns onto the floor plates, Otherwise it will crush those floor plates because the columns are in end grain to each other and end grain wood is very strong in end grain and it would crush the panels that are sitting on the side grain in between those columns. So we have here this metal connector that brings down the load from the upper column down to the lower column. And yeah, it's made a lot of headlines in the industry, certainly.

Speaker 2:

First off, that's flat out incredible to finish six months before some of the traditional methods like concrete. Any idea what the monetary value you said, like how much cheaper it was coming in versus a traditional way of building.

Speaker 1:

I think probably the final count is not in yet because I think they're now a few days away from completion and they're building one floor every two days, so moving really fast.

Speaker 1:

And but I've heard numbers floating around of 15 to 30% and savings on a traditional build that's due to the speed of the process six months, less rent on gear, less way smaller crew. The particular location also required a pretty big and expensive foundation for building that size and the lightweight nature of timber building cut down the cost of the foundation significantly. Then also, when I was inside, they told me they need two and a half. So for one concrete because it's a three story concrete podium they had 15 trucks of material coming in for one floor and for one floor of wood they had two and a half trucks of fiber coming in. Oh wow, there's a lot of parts and you get the savings out of a lot of little things. And also the team was just. They pushed really hard to deliver this on schedule and the team was also very big factor on getting this on budget and on time the project team.

Speaker 3:

A lot of people have talked about mass timber not being cost competitive at being more of a pretty factor or a green factor and not building it to save money, but it sounds like this project is changing that. What are some of the lessons that you've seen in the mass timber industry? They're leading to that push in our innovation.

Speaker 1:

I think projects in general are incredibly complex. We need the right material, the right people at the right time, at the right place in the right quantity, and it's pretty amazing how these things come together. The mass timber process is even more complex to manage because you have much more on the prefab side of things. That's a strength and also weakness. It's not like you can. If something goes wrong in the planning stage, you will pay for it in the execution phase. There's a lot of friction in the system. Still, a lot of it has been worked out. We have new codes. We have a lot of engineers now getting familiar with the product and the process and the delivery methods and how to make it really work. The supply chain is developing.

Speaker 1:

There's been some bumps in that road, with some recent bankruptcies as well, but overall it's going in the right direction. If you look at what happened over the last 10 years, there's a lot of the contractors really anyone in that process could screw it up and everybody needs to do it right to make it also success in the end. For the most part, we see that things are working out. There's always a learning curve, as with everything. If you do something new, you will have a learning curve. That's out of question. What I find interesting is that I don't think I can really recall anyone saying I'm done with this. There's been projects with some problems, but nobody came out at the other side saying, okay, I'm done with this. Nobody came out reflective of what they did, how they did it, learning for the future, and said, okay, they got potential. I know what I did wrong and if I come across another project or if I do this again, I will do it right.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so there's a lot of moving pieces in these projects and it requires a different level of collaboration. Part of the fostering of that environment is getting all these different kinds of people with interests in the mass timber market together, and you guys are doing some different things about that with some events and meetups and stuff like that across the country. I know you just have one in Philadelphia. Can you tell us what you're doing with that?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, if we meet a lot of people and then they say, okay, you guys have all these parts and pieces and these solutions, but I need some designer who knows what they're doing, I need some contractor who knows what they're doing. The networking part is and again we come back to how we do things, how we like to do things. The process of developing those relationships is a really important piece of the puzzle and we want to enable professionals to make these connections because when that happens, then you unlock a lot of potential, because the collaboration and the cooperation within the industry and within like-minded people then can result in projects and projects being successful and being successfully delivered, also Trying to connect and also trying to educate. Everybody got the story, everybody got experience and we talked about that learning curve. So what can we do to share that learning curve or the lessons learned, insights across the industry, to contract that learning curve for everyone, a little bit at least?

Speaker 2:

So you had a little over a hundred people show up to your event and it wasn't too long ago. What were some of the keynote speakers, and did anybody bring something to the table where there was just a really good discussion? Or what was the takeaway that you learned at the event?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we had a lot of speakers from across the whole spectrum of the industry really from also from all over the country. So we touched on all the aspects in the design and structural, in fire, acoustics, in also practical aspects like logistics, and also we tried to have a very healthy mix. We had one guy, joseph, with Red Falls Timber. He's doing these small buildings, so he's he's tried to bring also that notion of, okay, great big buildings, but there's also this opportunity in delivering, delivering architecturally attractive smaller buildings very efficiently in certain markets. And that that was I think. Yeah, I think we had. We tried to craft a healthy mix of impressions for the audience and think that worked. It was a lot of work to organize the event but we are very happy with how it turned out. The feedback was great. So we're we'll do something. We'll do more of those, certainly.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's cool to hear and we won't let the cat out of the bag. But I know we're already in talks of maybe doing something down the road out here in Denver with you, so we'll have to keep that that ball rolling. But I noticed that, if someone didn't see the event, you had dinner on a really big ship and we also know that you just took up sailing recently and bought like a 25 foot sailboat out there. Was it right next to your sailboat, or what was that all about?

Speaker 1:

Yes, yeah, I like boats, I like history, so we went on to a historic ship here and on the Delaware River, on Penns, landing in Philadelphia. I live in Philadelphia, so I relocated here a little over two years ago. We love the city and the Muschelou it's called they turn it into a restaurant back in the 80s and also featured in movies like Rocky and also the Godfather, and so it's a really cool setting. It has a saloon and and you can have drinks on the on the deck of the boat. And yeah, and I also I have I've always wanted to do some some sailing myself.

Speaker 1:

I bought a sunfish little dingy two weeks before I left Italy for good, so that was, that wasn't a great plan, and then it sat in my mom's garage for two years until I sold it. I didn't really want to give up on that, on that dream of like just getting out on the water, looking at the wind and play, playing it with that and it's yeah. When I came here to Philly port city I saw there's a school that some lessons found. It found a good price to boat the older, but for my first boat I thought it's out too bad on it on Facebook Marketplace and now I'm spending my time on there when I'm not done the computer or on an airplane. Yeah, been a fun process.

Speaker 3:

You went from working in the warehouse to work in the repair shop, to being a salesperson, being the first salesperson in different countries, to leading a sales team. Now you're the CEO of this entire market over here in the United States. If somebody, if you were talking to somebody that was in your shoes 10 years ago, is there any advice or anything that you tell him?

Speaker 1:

I would say yeah, I think I would say just take all the opportunities that are presented to you. It's not it's it's not always easy. Sometimes you're the CEO means you're the chief, everything officer, and if you have to pull, if you have to hop on a forklift to pull stuff out of a container, then you have to do that. But as long what I find really great about us, about this industry, if you're, if someone, if someone is willing to and pushing hard, there's so much development in this industry and there's so much change in construction in general and construction itself is such a insanely big industry If you think about it. It's it's most people's biggest, or probably all people's. Rich people have bigger houses, it's for more houses, so it's it's everybody's biggest investment and that they're doing and they have a mortgage, paying it's for decades and living in it. And and it's a really important part of everyone's life For who owns a building, but also for people who build it.

Speaker 1:

It's about durability. You want to make them safe. You don't want to deliver a project that where the owners then after five years have, you know, have huge bills to get expensive repairs. So there's also a lot of responsibility and a lot of people complain about the industry being slow. I get it. Sometimes you want it to be faster, but also get it's such a huge industry that it's hard to move by if it moves in a big way, and then it's also it's about people's lives, people's livelihoods and and a lot of money and risk involved. So naturally you take a step at the time crawl, walk, run and yeah, there's lots. There's still lots left to do.

Speaker 2:

Speaking about the US industry and Rotoblast trying to make a, make their footprint out here and just grow and expand. What's on the horizon? What are you after next professionally, on more of a two, three, five year scale? Are you trying to double the sales team and then double that again, or where your goals?

Speaker 1:

I think we have it in our DNA that we always keep pushing. So again, 33 years ago, we started out with a guy in a truck buying power tools in Germany and selling them into the Italian region of South Terrold, and we've had a strong, very strong mission of innovation and keep innovating, keep building solutions and then increase the access to these solutions in across different geographies. And, yeah, that will be our path forward. We've taken on a lot of nowadays tools.

Speaker 1:

The power tools is probably a vanishingly small part of our business in the US. We're doing, we have some, we sell some drills here stateside, but the category we started out with 33 years ago is now probably less than half a percent of our sales and tools in general maybe three, four percent and of our sales and the rest has been all the products that we've then developed over the course of time and we have an amazing product team. They're pushing out a lot of innovation on a very high pace. We have an amazing team out in the logistics, in on in the sales and and also in the organization and operations. So I see they're pushing on all ends and we have, we've been, we've been building in the last over the last 16 years, 17 years, all of our subsidiaries, so everything is integrated also in the IT system. So there's a lot of work in the back ends that really sets up us up for further growth on all the areas that we're working, that we're touching.

Speaker 3:

Part of what we're trying to do here at the Mass Timber Group is take that learning curve that you talked about shrieking it down, and a lot of the people that we're talking to are either young in their career or they're new to the mass timber industry. Based on everything that you've learned, everything that you've done, is there something that you could point them to that you found to be exceptionally helpful a book, a podcast, a lecture series, an event, something where you could go and point them to go learn and get the answers that they want?

Speaker 1:

As well as then ask your CV. We're always hiring and always looking for people. And secondly, I'm a big fan of going out there. Think life happens on the street and that's where it's at. You have to be out, and I'm not a big fan of remote work or work from home. Even when I'm off work, I'm pretty much I try to be on the boat instead of in the house. It's where you make connections and that's where the magic happens. That's where you make your. It's also amazing. It's not always the guys that make the biggest noise out there that are doing the best works. Sometimes it's also the people that are under the radar. They maybe do some of the most fantastic work because they have repeat clients. They have repeat architects and owners that channel them business and they don't have to have a nice website. I know I encountered a ton of these people and you find them on the street.

Speaker 1:

So go out to conferences, go out to shows, go out to I think a lot of the conferences also have reduced costs or reduced fees for students and for young people and then go out and talk.

Speaker 2:

I can't agree more. You make the relationships in person, shaking hands. I know the pandemic and whatnot shook everybody up and everyone now meets online, if you will, but there's nothing better than going to the international mass timber conference amongst 3000 people and just spending three days getting to know people and building different relationships, speaking of different relationships that got you to where you are now. Does anyone come to mind, maybe earlier in your professional career, who inspires you?

Speaker 1:

And then maybe, as there's somebody who inspires you nowadays, I work with a lot of great people and you take bits and pieces from everyone. I'm not like the kind of person that I would like to describe myself as a pragmatic person and not so much an idealist. I don't tend to idealize things, I think, because I think that's dangerous. A big takeaway that I get from that I took from some people is that everybody's talking about how nice, how beautiful mass timber is and that we should build mass timber because it's beautiful. But mass timber hits actually a lot of metrics in terms of sustainability, in terms of utilizing natural resources in a sustainable way. Also, the beautiful, the biophilic design aspect, absolutely.

Speaker 1:

But I think there's a few companies out there that really try to leverage also the digital technology aspect of it, the digital planning and fabrication and delivery aspect of it. Simply the efficiency, the beauty and the efficiency of the process, of the product itself. And then, even if you put everything behind drywall, I think it's better to have wood behind drywall, even if you can't see it, rather than concrete or steel. I think that's what we're moving towards in biophilic design. Everybody thinks that wood is beautiful, so everybody built a while for it with it, and I hope we don't lose the sustainability aspect of it, just because maybe the architectural taste changes, because that architectural taste will change. We've seen it over thousands of years. It changes all the time and people are not dressing anymore like they did in the 70s and 80s, so people will build differently also in a few decades from now in an architectural point of view. But if the material becomes competitive in a lot of other metrics, then it will survive that the fad of design tastes.

Speaker 3:

For sure. So, before we ask our last question, where can people connect with you and where can people connect with Rodolassette?

Speaker 1:

So, yeah, you can connect with me on LinkedIn, of course. And then we have the website Rodoblastcom, and on that website there's a contact us page. You can reach out to us, to our team. We have outside sales people all across the country, all across the world. In Australia, we have sales course presence in 50 countries worldwide. You can reach us wherever it looks like. We have now a project in Antarctica as well. We can check the box as well to supply projects on all continents. That's not going to be a mass timber project, unfortunately. That's going to be something else. Yeah, over our website is probably the best and most need personally on LinkedIn.

Speaker 3:

Awesome. So last question if you had a magic wand, you could wave it and change one thing about the industry. What would it be and what?

Speaker 1:

I think that friction that we are experiencing in these projects.

Speaker 1:

If you go to the building official in Oakland and show them an 18 story concrete building, that's probably the bread and butter.

Speaker 1:

If you show them some like a 15 story wooden building, then that will raise some eyebrows and obviously that process is going to be a little longer and it still causes some delays on projects and extra work.

Speaker 1:

But I think everybody who is in the industry maybe we shouldn't take away the friction, because I think everybody who is in the industry is also in it because they're trying to push the envelope. They're trying to do something new and to have an impact and make a change in the way we built and be part of this transition. But it would certainly be beneficial for the industry as a whole, for people, for planets and also for profits when that friction goes away and is completely cleared out. And we have to say we have done amazing progress on this. I remember my first Masternberg conference I think it was in 2017, we had a 10 by 10 booth and we had maybe 30, 40 people stopping by and one or two people had a project. Now we have hundreds of people stopping by at a booth and hundreds of people who have projects completed or in planning and design. Again, it's a slow industry, but for being a slow industry we've done amazing progress for the past five years, 10 years.

Speaker 2:

Before we hop off, brady and I, we come out to Philadelphia. Are you going to teach us how to sail? Of course, I like it. I did it for a split second in the Caribbean out in Antigua at our honeymoon last year, and it was sailing. It was so much more exhilarating than I ever imagined. It was a lot of fun, so we're going to take you up on that, all right.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely.

Speaker 2:

All right, matt, it's been a blast. It's always a pleasure talking to you, hannes, and I'm sure we'll see you around the industry soon, so have a good day out there, all right, all right, you too, guys.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for watching and I will speak with you one more time if they're interested.

People on this episode

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Brady Potts

Host
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Nic Wilson

Host