Ep. 63 - Fixing Bad Data Before It Breaks Your Job

The fastest way to burn profit is to build off bad data. We sit down with Tylor Foster, founder and CEO of DirtLab, to unpack how rushed designs, mismatched elevations, and vague standards cascade into RFIs, idle equipment, and rework—and how to stop it before a blade ever touches dirt. Tylor draws on years at Granite’s large projects group to show why clean inputs and strong project controls aren’t optional; they’re the foundation that turns weekly WIP into real insight and keeps your forecast honest.

We walk through the real-world path from paper plans to usable GPS models: drone topos, machine control, takeoffs that become working documents, and constructibility reviews that surface conflicts when they’re cheap to fix. If you’ve ever tried to plug engineer CAD directly into your machines, you know the pain: broken layers, missing standards, unusable formats. DirtLab acts as a digital translator between designers and operators, packaging issues and files so engineers can respond fast—and so your crews build it right the first time.

Training is the multiplier. Not the “click here, then here” kind, but the kind that teaches the why, so your team can adapt when the perfect dataset doesn’t exist. Tylor shares ten-second tips that add up to months of savings, plus a frank take on dealer support gaps and how to build a support network that sticks. We also tackle the generational shift: younger leaders embracing base and rover and machine control to control costs, veterans guarding hard-won craft, and the middle ground where tech makes good operators great. The bottom line: technology is no longer about nice-to-have ROI; it’s about the feasibility of staying competitive as owners and DOTs codify digital delivery.

If you’re tired of finding problems in the field, want fewer RFIs, and need models your machines can trust, this conversation lays out the system: clean inputs, constructibility-first modeling, and training that scales from bid to blade. Enjoy the episode, then subscribe, share it with your crew, and leave a review to help more builders find it.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Opening And Sponsor Message
• 1:27 Meet Tyler Foster Of Dirt Lab
• 3:40 Big Project Lessons And Early Tech Wins
• 6:40 When Designs Don’t Work In The Field
• 10:20 Systems, Cost Controls, And Clean Inputs
• 15:20 Estimating To Job Costing Feedback Loop
• 18:25 Degree Vs Experience And PE Realities
• 21:20 The Rush To Build And 30–60% Drawings
• 26:50 Training For Models, RFIs, And The Why
• 32:20 Bridging The Generational Tech Gap
• 37:20 Support Networks And Dealer Shortfalls
• 41:20 Tech Is Inevitable: Compete Or Fade
• 46:00 Partnership Model And Scaling With Clients
• 50:00 Where To Find Dirt Lab And Closing
• 59:00 Final Takeaway: Ask For Help

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:09

Hey guys, welcome to the Blue Collar Business Podcast where we discuss the realest, rawest, most relevant stories and strategies behind building every corner of a blue-collar business. I'm your host, Sy Kirby, and I want to help you what it took me, trial and error, and a whole lot of money to learn. The information that no one in this industry is willing to share. Whether you're under that shade tree or have your hard hat on, let's expand your toolbox. Welcome back, guys, to another episode of the Blue Collar Business Podcast, brought to you and sponsored by ThumbTech. When you're ready to grow, but your systems can't keep up, you need a partner who gets how you work. Thumbtack delivers leads that match your strengths, plus data, tools, and real-time insights to help you make smart moves. Automation keeps you running smoothly. Centralized systems make scaling super simple. Every day, pros use Thumbtack to hit their goals. If you're ready to grow, visit thumbtack.com slash pro to book your personalized strategy session today, guys. And make sure you tell them you heard them, heard from the Blue Collar Business Podcast. Jump over to our website if you don't mind. Uh, hopefully you're either watching or listening straight from there with no subscription, but www.blue collar businesspodcast.com. Uh guys, I have an interesting topic today. Uh, another young gun that has put his time in uh in the industry itself before leading off and trying to help guide a major pain point that I have dealt with myself personally within my um civil construction. This is mainly going to be geared around um anything from training to essentially GPS modeling, the the major pain point for, you know, maybe you older gentlemen that are trying to get into this, or maybe you younger guys that are like, hey, I don't know anything about this, but I need to know about this. I have the guy for you today, um, Mr. Tyler Foster, founder and CEO of Dirt Lab. Basically, we're we're gonna go into how he's helping contractors stop losing time and money by bad data, rush designs, training that just never really sticks. And uh former, I'm sorry, founder and CEO of Dirt Lab uh focuses on construction data services and training. Like I said, 10 plus years in heavy civil construction over at Granite, um, had some pretty major project highlights too while he was over there. Uh for uh was a director of data solutions at his former company, uh leading to teams in machine control modeling and takeoffs. Man, healthy resume, my guy. Uh I really uh appreciate you joining me, dude. And I'm excited to give the audience the inside look of such a pain point that all of us civil contractors face. Appreciate it, Sai. Thanks for having me. I'm excited too. No, man. Uh, I've been watching your stuff on LinkedIn. He's a great, great follow on LinkedIn. He provides some actual input um in this pain point. And man, just kind of walk us through, you know, your story, your background. Number one, how'd you find out about this pain point? Because you really don't know it's a thing unless you've kind of been in it. You know what I mean? Um, walk us through from however far back, take us through kind of some of the experience, maybe some pain points that was like, oh, this might be a thing. Yeah, I mean, it it all started. Uh, you know, I grew up in the Midwest, went to Purdue, did civil engineering. That was what kind of founded my my background and seeing how things are built. I did some civil estimating, earth-moving construction classes for some electives, got me really excited about it. And then uh during one of the uh the halls are there for when uh they have the employers come in, the the expo halls, walk past the sign that granite had for a booth. I'm like, that looks really cool. So uh talked to them, ended up getting hired on, spent uh several years in their large projects group. Uh went on my first job in in Carmel, California, big dam removal project. Uh, then I spent some time in Reno, where I'm at right now. Big heavy civil new freeway project, went down to Phoenix for a year for an over$1 billion 26-mile uh 10 million yard freeway project, uh, and then came back up here to Reno, left the granite large projects group and joined just the local office here and was uh heading up their technology department. So that's when we started getting real big into modeling takeoffs, uh drone topos. But I think that that, you know, when we first started, I first started getting into the modeling and stuff when I first came here to Reno on the project that I worked on. Super big projects, super complicated, different types of material on the job site. There's actually contaminated material, uh, different levels of mercury contamination from the old gold rush days. So the model was really intricate and it was super cool to be able to see how you know these lines on this computer translated out into the machines on the job site, and how important it was that those machines were in the right spot. Because you know, you got old inspector coming behind you telling you whether or not you put the dirt in the right spot. So that really sparked my interest in this whole thing. That also was the time that drones started coming out, that's when 107 came out. You know, we were out there flying a 3DR solo with a GoPro on it, doing just job site photos and video and stuff. Uh, you know, over the years of that technology progressing, and you know, the the next project I went down to in Phoenix with uh that huge that was actually the largest project in Arizona history at the time. Uh, just a lot of, you know, we were on the segment that tied in the new freeway to the existing freeway. So you had all kinds of flyovers, HOV ramps, MSC walls, a lot of front edge roads. I mean, it was it was something cool being out there watching all that dirt getting moved. Uh and then after I kind of left the field work uh and started in the technology department back here in Reno, that was day in, day out, takeoffs, models, and drone topos in our area. And it always seemed that we were running into the designs just not working. You know, we we try and build this model, take it to the field, and either where they have stuff matching up to the existing, it's not matching up, or even just on the drawings, we got two lines of curb coming in at different elevations, and it just doesn't work. And there really wasn't anybody uh, you know, the the typical chain of command sending in the RFIs, waiting several weeks or sometimes to get an answer back. Uh it it's just a huge time suck. And you know, time is money in this industry. We're we're it's physical work, and if you're not doing it, you're not getting paid. Uh, and nobody likes equipment sitting around. So it was always like, hey, we need this yesterday. You know, I know everything's like that. I think that's uh I think I might put yesterday as a uh an option for a delivery date for our services because it seems like that's when most of them are needed. Uh but you just you you end up having to basically sometimes re-engineer the design while you're doing the model building process because there's a gap between what's on the plans and what works in the field. So, you know, you just get that kind of spurred this thought of like, look, these are problems we got to get in front of. Uh and these are costly problems when you're reactive to them instead of proactive. So, you know, over the past few years at my my previous place and and now doing this, like that's where I think we fit in really well, is when we're going through and building this stuff and doing these takeoffs and building the models, we're basically doing a constructibility review. Uh, we're gonna walk through, we're gonna find the things that don't work because the last place you want to find out it doesn't work is in the field. And now you're again you're back to this thing where you're stopped, the equipment's not moving, your guys aren't moving, you're waiting for an answer, and uh it just doesn't work well for anybody. And coming from the contractor world and being in the boots of trying to perform the work, that's just not fun and it costs a lot of money. So I want to take my experience from all that and my and the knowledge and stuff that I've gained from that and try and you know put that through in my services and try and you know really serve my clients to help help them battle this stuff and and get wins when sort of the cards are stacked against them. Dude, incredible, man. Incredible. Um, so I don't want to skip over something that you said because it's probably not as seen as the way to acquire new help nowadays as you know, the old job fairs at these expo halls, and and not necessarily a job fair. It may have been a an awareness, you know, job for the college or whatever it may have been. And you know, for you to sit there and walk in and go, hey, I'll go travel the country and figure out this trade. And I just talk about a little bit through your experience of working at such a massive company, like right off the bat. It wasn't the the structure you probably had is what a lot of us mom and pops are missing right off the bat, and I struggled with. But I I always wondered, you know, what it would have been like coming out and going straight to a large company like that, or Key Wit, or one of these companies on the road. But man, the amount of experience you were opened up to that a lot of us may never even even get through or look our entire career. Yeah. I mean, first off, I am extremely luckily, lucky to have gotten that opportunity to do that right out of school. Uh, not because I had any idea what I was doing at that point or what I was getting into, but now looking back at the exposure that I had uh to the work, I mean, I I'm forever grateful for that because I definitely would not be able to do what I do now if I didn't have that foundation of information and experience and exposure. Uh and you know there's kind of two parts to this answer. And the first part is getting onboarded with that big company to start off. Uh my my first memory there was engineer coming in just sitting in a room full of old-time estimators, and you know, everybody's in their office, uh 24-7. There was no field work or anything like that. And he and a guy, Steve, needed me to do some takeoffs. And he came in with a printed out 11 by 17 or 24 by 36, whatever they were. He set them on my desk and handed me a rubber bandit group of colored pencils. And I'm like, okay, you just handed me a coloring book. Like, there's gotta be something better here. And, you know, I coming from right out of school, I'm like, how many labs I was just in and how much stuff I how much time I spent on computers and stuff, I'm like, how is it that I've now backed the colored pencils on paper? I'm like, I feel like I went back 12 grades and now we're just coloring stuff. So that immediately I'm like, look, there's got to be a better way to do this. That's when I found Bluebeam, one of my favorite tools, and I taught myself everything I could because I very quickly started working myself out of a job because he was giving me takeoffs to do, and I was cranking through them. And it wasn't now handing him a stack of paper that's all colored up. It was here's this printed PDF with all these nice highlighted areas, and oh, here's the Excel sheet that ties to this whole thing. You can just plug this into your estimate now and go from there. Um, but aside from just getting started in takeoffs, what I really got a huge helping of was project controls, systems, cost tracking, quantity tracking, forecasting, all the project controls. So I really started off as what they called a cost engineer for the first two years. Um so that was like you're in the weeds of the dollars, the quantities, the time tracking, the what I think, and what I think is widely not valued as much as it should be, is your initial input for all of this work and everything that you do has to be the most accurate and clean information because that's what every decision down the line comes from. So when time cards were wrong, now you're charging wrong equipment hours, you're charging stuff to the wrong cost code, and when you look at your cost reports, it doesn't make any sense. And now you're looking at daily costs, well, that ties into weekly costs, into monthly costs, into forecasting. And now you're like, hey, we're projecting we're gonna make 20 million on the end of the job when in all reality it's gonna go the other way because your inputs are off. So a mix of understanding the quality of those initial inputs and um and then understanding and helping build a lot of project control systems. I learned a I got I was lucky enough again to uh I learned a lot from uh a project controls, a senior project controls guy over there that you know he opened my eyes to Excel coding and VBA coding. And I'm like, this is sort of out of my wheelhouse, but I see where this stuff is going. And I, you know, I remember one story he told us that they used to do quantity audits uh at 25% completion of a project, and they were accurately be they would be able to tell how the project was going to do three years down the road based at 25% completion, just because of how well everything was tracked. So the systems and the processes, like they're hands down some of the most important stuff, and I'm grateful that I had that foundation uh because it's led to my success over the last 10 years of being able to systematize or gamify my own work and turn it into uh you know an input-output system and be able, you know, we're all I feel like at the end of the day in construction, we're always looking for an answer for something. And it's like if you can build the system that generates the answers based on your time, your materials, your quantities, like uh, I think that's what sets you up for success in this industry for sure. So super grateful for that, and then grateful that it transferred right into field work and dirt work and roadway and and grading management and stuff like that. So I was able to then take a lot of those systematic skills to build takeoffs that I actually used to work in the field, and they weren't just something static that died on a PDF or an Excel sheet. Those things were used as a tool in a working document to track the work that was happening in the field. So that way, you know, I had one quick thing was uh on one of the last projects I worked on. We unfortunately weren't the lead on the project, so we didn't have all of our direct access that I used to have to all the accounting and all of the cost reports and stuff. So I ended up having to build sort of my own accounting software to make sure that my items of work were uh on track and on budget. We finally ended up doing some forecasting after nine months, and on the$40 million of uh work that I was tracking, I was off by about 50 grand from not having any access. And I, you know, it it was just a testament to setting that stuff up in the beginning. Because if you don't set it up in the beginning and you're trying to do it later, it just doesn't work out too well. No, you're you're hinting around what uh I've been preaching on the show here lately, and you know, it's taken us, we I didn't have that foundation, you know. I I would have done anything to have that kind of foundation. I just fully sent, hard nosed, here I go, you know, mini X and Skid Steered it and got it to what it is today. But accurate estimating and job costing is everything to success, to moving forward, to growth. And if you're exactly right, there isn't enough highlight shown on cost engineers and the folks that really track to know that's crazy when you said they know a company like that has it down to such a privy that they can forecast from 25% of completion to know what their profitability is going to be at the end of this project on whatever sum of contract. That's insane. But you're right, it's all about as estimators and those pre-contract guys ensuring that every number from their bid sheet and how they not just their number, but maybe some notes of why this number is maybe a little bit elevated, maybe it's a little softer, whatever it may be. Oh, here's our contingency money to deal with this manhole issue or whatever it may be. But that all has to be labeled clearly when we want to go back and visible, you know, transparently look at how he bid the project. Thank God we use Plan Swift and tools like that, that we're gonna get into here in a little bit on the show. And I hope you kind of shed light. But on the earliers, uh for these guys in the zero to five category, year category, like they don't know anything about that. They're just trying to get more work, do more work, get more work, do more work. And I was the same way. Nobody taught me that, oh, job costing is like literally the key to profitability, and you know about if you're making money, you know, with you know within a week or two into that project if, oh my gosh, our gravel budget's gonna get destroyed. Oh my gosh, we need an extra crew just to deal with this. And you know those things right then, not after the job or six weeks into the job, or maybe never until you get to the end of your PL, because I've been there as well, you know. But the job costing through the entire thing doesn't matter if you don't have a clear, accurate point from that estimator moving forward. Now the PM team can figure out oh, okay, the estimates like this. What can we work around and what monies do we have to play with in this contract to do whatever? And I know I'm getting a little far off here into the weeds, but the last link of that into that work in progress is having uh and what I struggled with as well is making sure you have a perfect internal accounting, not perfect, but accurate, and and be able to go back and really get privy with the numbers after contract, during contract, coming off that, but ensure that it gets all the way back up to your estimator. And that's what job costing is for is those three pieces estimate, production, and counting, all talking on the same. And I'm just now getting to a point where our weekly whip report is there every Tuesday. You know what I mean? But it's taken almost 10 years at this point to understand the importance of job costing. So that's and did I skip over that you graduated with a civil engineer degree? Yeah, I did. So I did civil engineering, got the bachelor's there. I uh did the PE test, didn't pass it the first time. Uh, but then as I was like kind of transitioning and in the GC space, sometimes it's not uh it's not really necessary. And and if I'm being completely honest, uh I find it sort of disheartening sometimes when I'm like fixing a lot of the issues that make it out on these plans from these stamps. And you know, I I don't want to talk bad about professional engineers, and you know, there's always good ones, but there's always bad ones in the bunch. And uh unfortunately, it seems like there's a lot more of those. Installers, uh, you were talking earlier about downtime and finding out in the field, and yeah, you're right. Uh, before I get off this college question, though, do you think even with all your experience that you had, do that you needed your college experience? I said this in a post the other day. I said, College teaches you what you what you what to do, and experience teaches you what not to do. That's a great way of putting it. Wow. I am one of probably not very many people who get to say, yeah, I actually used my degree. Uh, you know, with with our modeling and we do roadways and stuff, like I did, you know, highway design and building out horizontal, vertical curves, and doing the calcs. I have my reference manual that I've pulled out from time to time because the information I need to build something isn't there. I can always go back on it. And I think it's super helpful. I don't I don't know if there's a 100% need, but at least for me, it has helped me tremendously. Well, moving a little bit on, I was I hinted around about it. You were talking about downtime and finding out these uh PE problems out there, and I can't tell you the amount of things, especially in the last two years. And I don't think it's necessarily the engineer's fault. I think they're just trying to adhere to their client. I think we've got into this now generation of you said it best earlier with your yesterday timelines. We're putting pressure on you to get a model back to us because, oh, they want to start Monday. They wouldn't cut me a contract four weeks ago or four months ago or four years ago when we first started talking about the project. Like now it's, oh, we want to do construction. Let's rush all the documentation through. And that's why we're yelling at you, like, dude, we need we got to get this model in the dozer on Monday. We like I think it's I think it's so far up the spectrum that the expectation is set that we can push 40% construction documents out to the market and get us a 100% answer, no to a T and hold them to a contract a year from now when materials doing this up and down from the tariffs and all the other things that we dealt with, and materials from COVID and backlog and all the things that we've already walked through. It's just um the finding issues out there in that field is the worst possible pain point, not just for the contractor, but working back up that ladder all the way to the exactly. So I'm just throwing some flags here, guys. If you guys are developing a project, make sure interview a couple engineers, not just because your buddy had a homeboy design sidewalk because he plays poker with them. Like, for the love of God, take some time, do a little research. Yeah, you might have to pay a little bit more, but what's the product? How much hassle are you gonna have with the city? How much hassle are you gonna have getting a price out of a contractor if you're self-performing this job, whatever the case may be? Like, do I don't know if engineers are maybe at fault here, and maybe you can help me here because are they offering some lower-tiered package to make budgets work and keep design rolling? But the, you know, I know they're clearly saying, hey, this won't be able to be enough for construction, but I think it's a tornado effect that gets rippled all the way down to us because the things that you know we're fixing to talk about that you do from the takeoffs, the amount of takeoffs that are going into one project before it makes now. I know you probably see a project two or three or four times before you're like, man, is this job ever gonna go? Like, you know, and then we finally get to a model and it's go, go, go, go, go, because we just got the contract yesterday. So, but talk a little bit about moving, you know, we've talked about where your experience came from. You figured out um, obviously, drones are just cool. Number one. Number two, there's a major pain point. I want you to kind of highlight, you know, the training so these guys can maybe avoid those downtimes and what solutions that you guys offer to maybe find those um problematic areas within those plans without being a civil engineer, but as close to as possible as possible, and going, hey, push back on your engineer on this. I caught this on the model. Can you make him do his job for me, please? Go ahead, my guy. Yeah, I I think uh just to kind of reiterate what you were talking about there before is with this tornado of stuff. And like you said, I don't think a lot of this falls on the engineer. It does go up the ladder, and I think it's just a trickle-down effect of hey, we need this now, and it's just I need it now, I don't care if there's issues, and I think it's really comes from a lack of understanding of what kind of problems happen. I think it's a lack of understanding from the owner and developer side of like, hey, these are the problems that end up happening when you keep pushing this and saying 30s are good, 60% drawings are good. And I get the luxury of talking to a lot of these engineers when we put together an RFI. And every once in a while I'm like, hey, like, can you help me understand how this like works inside your company? Because they're like, well, we had one person designing the roads, one person doing the lots, one person doing the intersections, and I'm like, okay, so nobody is reviewing anything. What I really think is happening is the peer review inside a lot of these things is just non-existent due to the the speed of want from higher up. Uh but I think that comes back to a bigger problem, something I just posted about the other day of like in all reality, my job should not exist. I mean, it shouldn't. It should not exist. Because the drawing should be in buildable fashion. I mean, they are the instructions to the Lego set that we're gonna go build out there in the real world. Why is it okay that those instructions haven't been? I mean, we're not talking about pulling a six-block and changing it from a four-block like on a Lego set. Like these are real dollars and big dollars at that. I mean, I just had a project yesterday that's on its fourth physical re uh redesign, and they're ripping out concrete and pouring new concrete, and and they just keep changing it because there hasn't been that thought that goes into it up front. And I think a lot of it stems in this space and in the engineering space, it just feels like it's been so commoditized. And everybody goes, I'm gonna charge the same hourly rate as somebody else. So now my incentive to do anything better or go above and beyond is just washed away. And, you know, even in my space, there's people that will build a model per plan knowing that there's issues and these things don't work, and they'll send that out to the field. And there are contractors who will knowingly go build something wrong in order to get a change order to find the cost that they forgot in the bid that they left on the table. And then I think the same thing happens in the design space where they're they're just not they're not putting in the due diligence and the effort because, again, just coming down from the owner. So, like what I what I think where we really fit in there is we find those constructibility issues for a fraction of the cost of the potential down the line of ripping out stuff that's already built, um, stuff that's getting ready to go get built. You know, you push a schedule by a couple weeks, everything, it's again, time is money. So that's where we fit in, is we're able to take those drawings, find the things that don't work, add that real-world constructibility. Okay, how is this actually gonna get built? Um, and now we can send those assumptions and things that we've made to the engineer. We can send our design files to the engineer. And a lot of times now, especially in our private workspace, we get a lot of clients who are like, engineer, just send me this stuff because we're gonna fix it, we'll send it back to you, and then we'll get buy off. Because we're we're the ones now taking it from 75% drawings to 100% drawings, and they're constructible, and it's in a format that contractors need because there's a whole nother realm of stuff of contractors thinking they can just pull an engineer's file into their system and it all works just hunky-dory out there. And aside from errors and elevations and stuff, you're talking there's no there's no um SOPs for organization, there's no standards for layering and coloring. So the usability of that data is not what contractors need, but sort of how this all long-windedly ties together into the training thing is like I think a lot of times in this space with this technology, people buy the tech, but then they skip the training and they just don't do it. And I think sometimes I I don't really think it's like the cost of it, because in all reality, I think the cost compared to sometimes the purchase price of the hardware is so much smaller. And you know, this kind of stuff is gonna guide, you know, through the life cycle of that, let's just say a GPS rover, uh, through the life cycle of that piece of equipment for seven years, let's just call it, how much work is that gonna help you build? And we're scared to spend 2,000 bucks on a training to learn how to use it. Like, I I don't think there's a lot of downstream thinking. And part of what we try to do in the training too, like especially when we do model building training, is really trying to teach the why, not the how. Uh, I think the how is the stuff that you forget because you're like in this box where you're like, okay, I need to do this thing, I need to click this button, then this button. Well, there's probably a couple ways you can do that. Let's understand why you need to do this, and then you can figure out the how. Uh and something that I try and do in our trainings is I don't want to wait until you ask. Uh I want to kind of push that in front of you and force feed you because that's like really what I found, you know, just getting, like I said earlier, getting involved with Bluebeam early on and tools like that, where I took the time and taught myself everything that I could with that software, found the use cases for all these things. So now when somebody's walking me through something they're doing on Bluebeam, I'm like, hey, did you know you can do this? I know you didn't ask me for any of this, but I gotta let you know that this is a possibility because you know, sometimes it pains me when I watch somebody play around the computer. I'm like, hey, there's a lot of things we can be doing, you know, and I just I just go, this is a 10-second tip that over your career is gonna save you maybe a month. And if you can stack up a lot of those 10-second tips, you're talking years of time savings down the road. So um then, and the last thing I would say on like the the training is you know, these are like real projects that we've worked on. Uh it's real information, it's real learning, real details. I think a lot of times in some of these trainings for takeoffs or modeling, you're working with the perfect data set and the perfect CAD file and the perfect PDF. And yeah, it looks great. But then what happens when anybody tries to do something new for the first time and they run into an issue? It's it's all shoulders or hands up to the sky. And that goes back to when you just know the how, you learn the one way to do it. Well, when there's something that interferes with that, you have to know the why in order to figure out the way around it. So um I I think it's it's invaluable. Uh, and it really, you know, to the force feeding thing, like I've had clients tell us I had one the other day, because we do video reviews of our RFIs and we'll send videos where we walk through the model and stuff. And my clients are learning things that they had no idea about. And I think that's something that helps us stand out is uh it's not transactional. Like I'm here to build a relationship, a partnership with my clients. And if I can help you learn along the way, like I want to learn all the time. I sometimes I struggle when I'm sitting here working in the business instead of on it, because for me, on the business is a lot of learning. And when I struggle, like if I can help teach people while I'm doing this, like it just it makes me warm inside. Literally why I built the resource, dude. It's uh I went looking for resources to help me learn things like we dove straight off into GPS technology. I knew I had to have it, um, but I didn't just tiptoe lightly. We bought a couple basin rovers, bought a full iMachine, brand new machine control. Uh I of course got sold, I'll put it that way, an extremely powerful software that's I just thought it all seamlessly talked together, you know, just being a ditch digger in my thinking, like, okay, well, if the estimator can do his stuff up here and the guy in the field can do this and they can report this, and we can get it all the way through. And everybody's talking on the same set of uh or the same layers, you know, same model, no big deal. And that's just not it. It it's just not it at all. And they all have their piece of utilization, no doubt about it, but it took um, man, I would have loved to have known you two years ago. There ain't no doubt about it, because we uh we kind of struggled. Uh we we spent all that money and the software guy within the dealer um no longer worked there uh before we even got the basin rovers delivered to us, between the time when we sold the paper and signed the paperwork, anyways. It was it was pretty rough transition and um put a very bad taste in my mouth. Literally set it aside, we'll just we'll just go back to what we were doing. And I'm like, I couldn't stomach that the amount of money we invested into this technology. And we had uh luckily, man, truly luckily, the people that we've had uh on the team embraced it. I've had other guys come from other outfits that were very uh accustomed to GPS, whether it be Trimble, whether it be Leica. But the to your point, where I went with that is knowing the why uh is key and crucial with all of this, not so much the how. We don't need to be so focused on, hey, you need to click this button to go here, to click this button to go here. And that's a lot of that, uh, should I say, dealer support training that you get. Uh, and it's so common. Hey, we're gonna train you just to do this. And I get it why they do it at the same time. They don't want to create any more problems and questions for themselves. A lot of these guys, uh, where I'm leading with this is the industry gap. I'd hope hopefully you can talk about in your in your clientele base is that we do have this aging out generation, you know, that the dirt guy isn't a white-haired overall, you know. But literally, you when you walk up, you you think dirt guy, you think older gentleman, white hair overall is the typical dirt guy, and that's just not the typical dirt guy anymore. You've got young guns, and I'm not talking about myself. I I came from lunch earlier with a guy that's uh got five times equipment I've got, and he's only been in business for half the time, and just different business models for different different folks, let's put it that way. But they are going after it machine control, keeping labor costs down, and they're competing with this old timer who barely has a basin rover, um to main dirt companies here locally. And so I'm seeing both models still work, but you cannot argue that it is more efficient to put something in with GPS one time. There is still a process, you still need a gentleman that has moved this earth and knows the process. Yes, this machine can do it in place, record it, give you the information and data, but at the same time, they still need to know how to get it done along the way. But if you understand, you know, the why of the how, I know that's kind of hard to describe um within the pain point, but being able to jump on and help, you know, my estimator during those topcon magnet struggles, like we didn't even get to the modeling side of things. He was just trying to get proficient at 3D takeoffs and feeling comfy and comfortable. There's just one pain point from jumping 2D to 3D that is such a mind-blowing gap. And it's growing every day as the industry keeps cycling new things. Uh, you know, they have 2D. I was at the cat demo days the other day, and the 2D stuff that they have built into these equipment now for efficiencies, where you know, you can benchmark yourself with these auto hydraulics and the amount of gravel waste and and and things like that. I mean, overdigging. But what it's doing is, yeah, a lot of guys will say, well, uh a true operator doesn't need auto. No, you're right, it doesn't. But to keep a job on job cost, like we were talking about earlier on this, we don't need that extra spillage because that extra spillage is one to two percent in the overall project cost. You know, it can get into that. But do you see a lot of guys reaching out to you from younger and older generations? Kind of kind of talk about this industry gap you're facing and where we all are facing. Yeah, I think you hit it right there on the head. There's the old timers that are phasing out, the newcomers that are coming in. And, you know, luckily we work with a lot of small to medium contractors. There's a lot more of them in the country. Uh, and what you're seeing is a lot of the sun's coming up now. The kids are taking over and uh they're coming into the spotlight and they're starting to hand over the reins. But like you said, they're now coming with a technology lifestyle. That's what they started with. Uh I'm kind of in that middle ground where I didn't have technology as a young kid, but you know, through the 90s. Yeah, through the 90s, it's like, hey, this is a self. Oh, okay, this is cool. Computer screen. Like, we've seen a transformation of that, and I think it helps. I it's hard not to think that it's like uh, you know, the show Alaska Last Frontier. Like, I feel like we're the last frontier of the old school physical way, and I but I think it's so important to translate how the technology works. Like, before we even hopped on here, we were just talking about all these the tech that comes out, and it's like, hey, we're here to solve this problem. You're like, that's a problem? What are you talking about? Uh, and it's just it's just not the case. So there's this gap, and from my own experience of when I was in the field trying to push even just digital plans out in the field on an iPad, it was it was so difficult because of kind of like you mentioned, the ego of the guys. I know what I'm doing, I I see it on TikTok all the time with people with a a blade or something with GPS on it, and then you get the comments, that's not a real operator. Yeah. They oh, dude, uh, anytime I post that iMachine, uh, YouTube froths with hey, dude. It's ridiculous. But it's it's it's true, and uh I think that the the the ego and the we've done it this way forever, but then when you have somebody that is going to still push you to do it anyways, like that's what I'm like, look, I'm not gonna go print out a paper plan and bring it to you. This is your plan set, it's in the iPad, and then what two weeks later, when the internet's down or something, they're like, hey, where's the plans? Where oh, you don't want paper anymore? Like, until they've had somebody to help them, because I think that's what happens. I mean, it sounded like that kind of happened with your stuff. It's like, hey, you sold us this stuff now, where's the support? Like, the support piece is the missing piece in most of this. There's nobody to turn to, nobody to ask questions when you run into something. Uh, I was in that when I was doing this stuff internally. I was living on YouTube, living in forums, having to self-teach everything that I could because there wasn't anybody to ask a question to. You go into the forums, it's three days for the first response, and it's like, well, what computer version are you on? It's like, oh my goodness. So, you know, the the answers don't come quick enough because everything is needed yesterday. So the support piece is going to be huge. Uh, that's where I like to think that we fit in because we can kind of talk both worlds. We've seen the physical stuff, we know the digital stuff, and we can kind of be the translator, even the design piece when we're talking to the I have no idea what you're talking about. Can you just talk to the engineer? Yep, you got it, and then I'll translate that back, and vice versa, because the engineer doesn't know the constructability issue you're running into, and vice versa. So that gap, I mean, there's one side of the story that people think technology is taking jobs and keeping people out of there, but I like think that it's filling the gap that exists, and for the existing operators, it's just gonna make them better. Uh yeah, you can get some operators that can hit great on that first cut, but they're also a dime a dozen. Why don't we make them like five times as many people just to be able to cut at once? And now all those costs, hey, you guys want those party barbecues and stuff after the job and like swag and and rewards and stuff like that? Like, that's what all it adds up to. So that gap, uh I think there's gonna be the the younger crowd is gonna be making the push for the technology, and you know, the older crowd is gonna make the push against it, and you just gotta find somebody that can be that middleman and that support piece in order to marry both of those together. Because without that, you either got really expensive paperweights or you just got problems you can't solve. So the support is hands before anybody buys any, like I say it all the time. I don't care if it's Trimble, Lica, TopCon, GeoShack, whatever. One, it doesn't work without the data. And two, you're never gonna have success with it unless you have a support network or person or the dealer or whoever it may be that you can rely on to help you implement it, help teach your people, and help just answer questions when they come up. I think you said it best, dude. Um, a great way to describe you is a digital translator. And there is so many miss like it's not just, hey, teach my guys. It's no, they're the engineer CAD file is terrible. Will you please call the engineer? Oh, yeah, no, I know how to speak their language. What are we what are we talking about? Oh, I found this area. And a lot of times we feel a little overwhelmed because we're still learning about modeling or whatever we're paying for, right? And we're just trying to learn the lingo and we're like, whoa, now we're supposed to pitch back on the engineer. Why? What did you find? Teach me, let me learn a little bit. And so you're helping learn along the way, but translating all this new lingo verbiage is number one, intimidating for a bunch of normally, most generally simple-minded folks that dig ditches for a living or push dirt for a living. Like we never thought software line items were gonna grow to what they are today. It is unfricking real what it takes to internally take off appropriately an accurate takeoff. Like it's not just one software if you're doing it accurately, in my opinion, from my experience. Um, but you do have these 90s kids that are embracing tech life because we're much, I guess, um, I don't know the exact word for it, but I guess we're more willing to embrace it quicker. Um, they're eventually going to have to embrace it. And I think that's maybe what we know. It's like, oh, okay, once it's here and it's implemented, it's not going away. And it's and if it really is that truly efficient, educate yourself, I think, is where I'm going with this. Is once you truly educate yourself into the GPS uh realm, it literally sells itself if you're going to do this for a living. And and now that GCs and developers, now that they're figuring out, oh, well, you have base and rover. Well, I'm only paying for one version of staking, and that's quickly became the industry standard that it's required that you have your own. And I'm not talking on big mega highway projects. Obviously, you guys come with your own licensed survey team, but I'm talking at these smaller scale commercial, like commercial projects. Now it's even, hey, if you're a utility guy, you better have your own base and rover. Can I not just get the engineer to come out? No, we're not paying for that 4,500 bucks staking package anymore. We're done with that. And in and it's just going to be forcibly um, you got to deal with it. And so I think obviously being more techie driven and the things that we have had to embrace, and not just the 90s, the 80s, whatever generation, I think we're just more willing to dive in more quick to embrace it and go, this is gonna suck. Let's endure the suck, get on the other side of it, because if it's truly that much more efficient, I am eventually going to see the ROI from it. But you are exactly right when you said that the support piece of this is the missing link. I would have seen ROI within six months. I would have seen the things that I see now from pure experience and minor education. Don't get me wrong, we had our couple of training days that they come out and helped us localize, and that's on the YouTube channel and and and things like that. But man, I didn't get any proper step-by-step training. When my estimator ran into something that he's never seen, he can't. I mean, he recorded every phone call that I paid for extra training sessions, and he and he would go back and watch them and read the scripts and transcripts and search through and find his problems and really dive in. But it still was never enough. And there was not somebody that you could just pick up the phone unless it was fifteen hundred dollars for the hour uh through the dealer or whatever. Um, it was extremely tough to get him, his questions answered. And so um, you know, training is such an afterthought in our industry, or maybe it has been up to this point. You know, you have people like Buildwit, you know, people like yourself um building these training systems and being that soft landing point for these major investments that these guys are purchasing, whether it be GPS or whether it be leadership or whatever it may be, but there is an absolute need for training our people. Hey, you I've had really good people leave because I didn't have a train, just in run-of-the-mill training handbook. Like, what was the employee handbook? You know what I mean? Stuff that was so simple that I should have had figured out if I had the right people in place. But now we're even, you know, with the the video stuff that we're doing, we're doing 15 to 20 videos of me sitting at my desk talking about literally my pet peeves, how we handle safety, how we handle job side awareness, trips, slips, falls. Hey, we wear PPE. And they have to sit there and watch it. But it I the overall, in general of our industry, it's such an afterthought. It's oh, you you can hold a shovel, here you go. And we expect them to just go screaming towards success. And that's just not um the generational pool that we have anymore. And we need to, as employers, figure out how to invest in services like yourself, my dude, and get these people the right training because they are starting to become available. Obviously, you know, the podcast, I started trying to shine light on every little uh layer of something that these guys could run into on their scale and growth, especially excavation guys. And you're a main key and point to it, man, because it was such a struggle for me. I've shared in length the implementation was absolutely such a struggle, boss, man. I hated it to be honest with you. But the one of the last things I'd like to ask you, how are you just approaching all of that conglomerated mess? I just talked about it differently with Dirt Lab. And what advice would you give to other blue-collar leaders that are trying to upskill their teams, that are trying to be different with such a fast moving tech environment, my guy? It's not a simple. I think everybody's stuck on simple right now. And as simple as it can be to get in touch with us and you know we're train your people, it's not like everybody wants the the quick three points and the thing that they can just pay for once and never have to go back again. And it's like like we were just talking about with the rise of technology and it coming in and now it's here to stay, and you're you're you're not even talking about ROI anymore. You're talking about feasibility of existence. Like you're not good, like contractors are gonna have a hard time existing, whatever the time I don't know what the timeline is, if it's 10, 20 years, when everybody else is using this kind of technology, it's gonna be so much harder to be competitive. And it's one of those things like it, even if you don't like it, you better figure out how to use it because you know the industry isn't gonna just halt because you don't want to put a GPS rover on your machine. Like, this is the way it's going. I mean, when you start seeing it get into government, so like we've seen DOTs are writing this stuff into specs, as they should. I mean, it should have happened years ago because you're talking public dollars that just get blown on some of these projects of rework, miscalcs, estimates are off, and uh$200 million project turns into a$300 million project. Well, everybody else is paying for it. And this kind of stuff, you know, especially when it starts coming from there, and they're gonna say, hey, you can't bid on this unless you're using technology. Because we know it's proven that you're gonna do way more things right the first time. Caveat, it means you have to have good data because that stuff will build things wrong if the data's wrong. But it's understanding that, like you said, it's here and it's here to stay, and it's only gonna keep growing in uh absorption from the industry. Everybody's gonna be using it more and more. You're gonna have to to stay competitive. So the way that I like to try and separate ourselves in this is that I don't want to be that transactional relationship with any of my clients. Now we can do that from the beginning when it's services, like you know, when we're doing overflow stuff for contractors that's already got in-house resources, that's definitely more transactional. But when they have questions, we're here as a resource. Um I I want it to be a partnership and I want to grow because when you start doing this, yeah, I have one client that I look at when we I started working with them, you know, six years ago or whatever it was. It was like base and rover. Well, now they got base and rover. They've got a dozer, they just bought a new excavator that's lit up. Like they're gonna keep growing. Well, now their demands for the technology and the support are gonna keep growing. Like, though, you know, I want clients to be able to hook their trailers to Dirt Lab and be able to use us as a resource as they scale and grow. Um, you know, like I said before, we got I'm not trying to build a multi-billion dollar corporation. Like, I want to be a small team to make sure that our service is very personable and it's very relatable and it's current. You know, we have to stay current in the technology and what's happening and what's new because we're providing those types of services. And a lot of times that's really difficult for contractors and anybody who's trying to learn this is like, when do I spend my time learning about it? You know, everything's hair on fire all the time. Like we said, the timelines are yesterday for everything. So it's like, when do you do this? Well, you can either find the time, which means something else is gonna have to come off the plate, or you can pay down your ignorance debt and work with somebody like me who is spending the time currently to do these things and stay up to speed. And it's our job to regurgitate that stuff in a format you need, in the length and amount that you need, and in the language that you need, so you don't have to fight that uphill battle. I mean, like it's essentially uh, you can think about it like going to class almost. Yeah, you could learn a lot of subjects on your own, but you go to a place where somebody can take all the information and put it, boil it down to what you need to know and how you need to know it. So that's really like where I want to fit in is really thought of as part of the team. Like it, not just a service provider that we're just flipping invoices back and forth. Like, I want to be part of the team and I want to be able to grow. I want to be able to serve and help contractors grow. And because, you know, I just love this industry at the end of the day. I think it's one of the best industries uh around and it's fun, it's dirty, it's physical, and you know, I don't get as much physical stuff anymore. Just I got soft hands now from working on the keyboard and the mouse all the time. I call myself the keyboard warrior now when I get out there with the boys. You know, they expect me to get in the machine, and uh I can still hang with them, you know. Uh, you know, every once in a while. They uh uh those things I get to enjoy when I get to get out there and do a little bit of work. But man, um, where can we find you? Uh website dirtlab.io. Uh that's our website. Um, and our contact information is on there. There's it's really simple right now. There's basically, hey, if you're a contractor, click this button. If you're a designer, click this button. And that puts us in contact, uh, puts you in contact, and we'll reach out and start chatting to see how we can support you. Man, I really appreciate your time, man. Uh, seriously, what an interesting, interesting, unique model and super needed. Um, what a solution to a great that is uh a problem that we're all running into, whether we're starting, whether we've been in the game 60 years and we're trying to embrace it. So covering all the bases, man, and uh and helping designers along the way too. That's uh that's really cool. My last question for you today, buddy. Blue collar performance marketing's passion is to bring attention to the honest work done in blue collar industries through effective results driven marketing. Tactics. They specialize in comprehensive digital marketing services from paid advertising on Google and Facebook to website development and content strategy. I started working with Ike and the team earlier this year, and they've had a huge impact on our specific marketing campaign and trajectory of our overall company. Their expertise in digital ad management, website development, social media, and overall marketing strategy has been an absolute game changer for our sales and marketing at Sycon. If you're looking to work with a marketing team who does what they say, does it well, and is always looking for ways to help your company grow, book a discovery call with Ike by going to bcperformancemarketing.com backslash BCB podcast or click the link in the show notes slash description below. Thanks, guys. I ask everybody that comes on the show, what's the takeaway for the blue-collar worker who's just sick and tired of being stuck in the mud? And that could be physical, emotional, or or mental. Ask for help. Don't be afraid to ask for help. That's really good. That's really good. You're right. Um we talked about that a little bit earlier. I think we're we're quicker to ask for help, you know, the younger generation. You're right. We do need help. Quit acting like you got it all figured out because pride becomes for the fall. I've been there, you know. I mean, everybody's doing life for the first time. So it's, you know, sometimes it's easy to say, oh, that person's got it all figured out. It's like, no, they probably don't. Uh, you just don't see that part of it. So it's like, look, everybody's trying to figure this out for the first time, and usually the people that you see up there, they're the ones who kept asking for help. I really appreciate your time highlighting such a problematic issue. Uh, we will be super fans along the way. I'm probably gonna get you in with our own estimator and probably get him a little bit of trainability after the struggles that we've had. So, guys, I'm gonna also be reaching out to Tyler over Durlab. Um, follow me over there, uh, Durlab.io. While you guys are searching the web, hit up blue collarbusinesspodcast.com or if you're on a streaming platform, podcast streaming platform, any of them, if you wouldn't mind dropping us a rate and a follow. Go check out uh Tyler on LinkedIn as well. Great follow. Uh enjoy his stuff over there, guys. Until next time, Mr. Tyler, thanks so much. And we'll thank you, Sai. This is awesome, super fun.