Loaded: The Hahn Ready Mix Podcast
A podcast for the employees of Hahn Ready Mix
Loaded: The Hahn Ready Mix Podcast
84. Peers
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Andrea, Griff and Lex talk about an upcoming peer group visit, and making sure you call out inappropriate behavior.
Welcome to Load It, the Hahn Ready Mix podcast with Andrea Meyer, Griffin Hahn, and a very bossy producer, Lex already today.
SPEAKER_01I think that's a good sign. It's like he's invested in the episode and he's gonna be uh a strong contributor.
SPEAKER_02I bet all these silences you hear are Lex participating.
SPEAKER_00I'm here, guys. Don't you worry.
SPEAKER_02On another rainy afternoon.
SPEAKER_01Another rainy day. You know, we have had, I looked it up, we have had eight production days, so Monday through Saturday, uh impacted by rain and a holiday in the month of September. That is kind of unbelievable.
SPEAKER_02It is and brutal.
SPEAKER_01Ass. Yes.
SPEAKER_02That's what you're of all the things to contribute, that's what you come in with.
SPEAKER_00No more words.
SPEAKER_02But hey, you're getting to work at night. It's not been raining at night when they need you.
SPEAKER_00That is true. It did last night.
SPEAKER_02Oh, you did? You got what, huh?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, just a little bit. Not that it is good to get some night work done when we don't aren't all hands on deck. Although we were yesterday, obviously. But that is a good silver lining, let's say, of the rain. But yeah, we we talked about a little bit last week, but it's going to kind of compact everything and it's gonna be a it's gonna be a crazy, crazy month, I think, in October, especially if it stays dry.
SPEAKER_02So let's hope let's hope it dries up a little.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. All right. What announcements do you have for today?
SPEAKER_02I just wanted to remind everyone. I'm I'm like generally a mind your own business kind of person. Like I generally think you stay the most productive and efficient when you just focus on what you need to do and kind of ignore the rest.
SPEAKER_01We just talked last week about uh your curiosity and how you ask everybody questions.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah. I mean for other people. Other people should mind their own business most of the time.
SPEAKER_01This isn't a self.
SPEAKER_02No, no, no. But there's a few specific situations where I find that people do mind their own business and I want them to speak up. So there's some like simple things. Like if you get to a washout area and it's a disaster, like we want to know that so we can fix it. Like even if it's not your fault, even if you have no idea what happened, like let someone know so that we can get out there and clean it up.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Other situations, like if you see damage, like where a truck that had been there that day may have driven through the yard and there's a huge rut, or we ran over a mailbox, or something you become aware of some kind of damages somewhere, even if you had nothing to do with it, let us know. Yeah, we want to know to be able to fix it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And then another thing that doesn't come up very often, but it did recently. If you hear someone saying something that is offensive or could be offensive, I want you to either say something right then, like to that person, like, hey, hey, that was rude or something like that. Or come and tell me or you or some another manager right away. Like I know it's it's awkward, and like sometimes people feel like, oh, it's not my business, but it is like we're all responsible for making this a great place to work. And if someone's being rude, we want to handle it right away.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So and it's hard because we are pretty casual, right? And the things that get said around here would not fly at you know a bank or or you know, most like we think of traditional like office professional, you know, situation, right? It's very casual. We're we're rough around the edges, and we don't we don't want to lose that. That can be okay.
SPEAKER_02But there's mostly fun.
SPEAKER_01It's there's a a line that sometimes when you're that casual, it's it's easier to cross um into being disrespectful or or saying things that are offensive or hurtful or or and so you know that just flows back to the don't be a dick, right? We all know what's appropriate, not inappropriate. And if you question whether it's an appropriate thing to say or not, then don't. Right. That's that's pretty much the easy way to do it.
SPEAKER_02Right. And you never know who else is around, and if they're not comfortable speaking up for themselves or they don't know what to do. So if you do, then it's on you to to help everyone out. So just a reminder that we're we're all in it together. Let us know what's going on.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. All right. Is that all you got for renouncements?
SPEAKER_02That's all for me today.
SPEAKER_01Okay. So I thought we'd talk today a little bit about the peer group that our company is in. We have a group of people coming in to visit that are ready mixed producers from around the country. And they're coming in as this drops on Monday. They'll be coming in uh Wednesday through Friday to see the area and our operation and and all that. And uh I'm very excited to host them. And they're a great group of people. It's a peer group I've been in, let's see, about a little over two years now, I think. It's been a really, really valuable thing for our organization to be a part of. So we get to host, so uh really want to make sure we put our best foot forward and represent ourselves well. But also it's an opportunity um to have some some really smart and experienced people come through our operation and uh they're they're gonna take notes, right? And they're gonna look at what we do and say, hey, we think you guys uh are missing this piece, or um, this could be done better, or you know, why do you do this? There's this other process we use that that makes more sense. So really that's that's a huge opportunity for us. And and I've been to um some of these organizations as we we've kind of taken turns hosting and learned a lot from from their operation. So hopefully we can share a lot of things about our operation that they can take back to theirs and that they will uh use their insights and experience to to give us uh ways we can improve.
SPEAKER_02I have mixed feelings about this.
SPEAKER_01You have mixed feelings.
SPEAKER_02Uh I love the concept of getting feedback and seeing how other people do things. I love that. But I maybe part of my problem is everything I have so far has been filtered through you.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_02So I guess this is a good opportunity for the other thing.
SPEAKER_01I'm excited for you to meet them and and have direct conversations. And yeah, I mean, the so it's it's always um, you know, the the concept of a peer group and like what what does that do? Right. And so you're you're basically uh sharing uh ideas and and processes and and data, right, to compare notes and and help everybody get better that's in the group, right? So there's a you know, a duty of confidentiality, right? So I uh you know I'm not gonna talk about who these companies are, uh, but I'll just say that there's uh a couple from the East Coast, a couple from the Midwest, a couple from the South. Um, and so we it's a cool um blend of experience from different regions where things are all done a little bit different in each region. We can all learn from each other. But we share, we share all this information. We get together two to three times a year, kind of alternate between like a neutral site, somewhere that's easy for everybody to get to, and host it at one of these locations. So they're gonna be coming through uh on a tour specifically on Thursday, um, the eighth. And so they'll be coming through our main office, going through dispatch, going through the shop, going through quality control lab, the plant, and then up to Eldridge, and then to the river plant, and then we're gonna do channel cat um and see the i74 bridge project. So yeah, if you see any of these people, be friendly, be nice. You know, if they have questions, like yeah, I'm sure some of them will and and just answer them truthfully, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I feel conflicted about the visit to like part of me wants to shine everything up and make it look as nice as possible. And then part of me wants to expose every problem that we have and say, Hey, yeah, what would you do about this?
SPEAKER_01Right. Yeah, so I think that there's like trying to be organized and clean just represents well. Otherwise, it can distract from the actual things that really can be useful, right? So I I I definitely want us to represent ourselves well, but I don't want us to misrepresent, you know, how we do things either. So I think we just need to be authentic and and uh I I'm of course very proud of the operation we have here. So I think there'll be things for others to learn from us. But uh what's most valuable to us is the things that they can give us critiques on. And so yeah, I'm excited for that. Really excited. And Lex is Lex is in a so we have kind of um a spin-off of the of this group. So the same companies are in it um for the quality control and technical services aspects of the companies. So Lex participates in that. And uh I don't know, have you found it helpful?
SPEAKER_00Yes, very helpful for myself. I'm very new still and don't know a lot. So getting with people who have very much experience comparatively to me is very helpful because I have a lot of questions for them to answer. And they're all willing to, and which is the best part of it is everyone's willingness to cooperate and figure things out. Uh they've seen similar issues sometimes and sometimes they haven't. And uh yeah, it's just been it's been good for me. Yeah. And it's helped me grow a lot, I would say, in my role, not just understanding the technical side, but also working on my leadership and understanding what it is an actual technical manager does from a day-to-day and from the operation side of it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And some of these organizations are really you know, pretty complex with their technical services, right?
SPEAKER_00And they're right.
SPEAKER_01And doing things really the right way. And and certainly we try to do as well. So yeah, I think I'm I'm really pumped about it. I think it'll be a a fun uh experience. And yeah, if anybody has any questions about uh what it means when we have a peer group in or uh how you can help or whatever, um, let me know. But um yeah, just just clean up and make things look nice.
SPEAKER_02Is there an agenda like other than the tours that you're doing? Is there are there topics that are Yeah?
SPEAKER_01So we have a bunch of meetings. So like every time we bring uh a list of burning issues and recent activities. So the recent activities are just you know, maybe five big bullet points on things that our company's done since the last time we've met, which is, you know, this time we met in last meeting we met in Washington, DC in April. So there's a lot that's happened since then. So over the last six months, you know, what what what have we been up to? What have we been working on? And then our burning issues are um, you know, things that uh keep us up at night, right? Things that we don't have a solution to or or we want people's advice on. And that really takes hours and hours of conversation as we talk through everybody's burning issues, and it's a um, it's a good time and really valuable. So, like a topic I'm uh I brought up last time was diesel fuel, right? Is a burning issue is how do we how do we control that? So uh we'll have some guest speakers a lot of times, and then everybody will present uh kind of a best idea, the best thing that they've come up with since the last time we've met. And those can be like really valuable ideas. And some of those we have instituted here or or things that maybe we've thought about and uh we're on the fence, or or and it really kind of said, all right, let's let's accelerate this because it's something that's really working for somebody else. Um, and then we're gonna tour the the facilities and then the I-74 bridge. So that'll be fun to showcase that project. I think that that there aren't very many companies that have done a project of that scope and scale and and complexity. So showing that off will be a lot of fun. And um yeah, that's gonna be the gist of it. And we do a like a financial um benchmarking. So we'll look at the company's financial performance versus everybody else's, and that gets really granular, like into details so we can just see where we're spending money versus other people or where we're making money versus other people. And it's really useful data for me in particular to you know help make decisions on you know what we're doing different than others.
SPEAKER_02So when we see people, do you want us to like tell them how much we like you and uh no like working for you?
SPEAKER_01No, they'll see right through that. So just be yourself.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Uh so yeah, so that's the that's the peer group, and it's been it'll be good. It'll be fun. So make sure you say hi if you see see folks coming through. They're uh all owners of um the respective companies or all family businesses like ours.
SPEAKER_02So very good. Do you have a word of the week this week?
SPEAKER_01I do have a word of the week. Interesting word to use considering it's raining, but our word of the day is water demand. So we talk a lot about water demand and concrete, and what that is, is how much water does a mix need to be workable, right? And so you you have to have a certain amount of water to hydrate the cement and the different cementitious materials. So if you if you add more cement, right, that mix is going to have a higher water demand. Um, the more surface area on your aggregates that you need, the more water demand a mix will will need. So if you if you use a sandier mix than a rockier mix, you'll have a higher water demand. Um, how clean those aggregates are, what the absorption of those aggregates are, what admixtures you use, all uh change the water demand of a mix. So a lot of times you'll hear about a you may hear about a mix that has a high water demand, and it just means one of those factors is really means you have to add more water, which the more add water you add, you know, more shrinkage or potentially strength issues. Um so managing water demand and selecting constituent materials and proportioning correctly to have the lowest water demand for a given mix is is an important thing that Lex does. So we found out. Yeah. Uh you fell asleep during that one, I think.
SPEAKER_02So uh we're having we're having a crisis, uh uh drone inventory crisis. Oh no. And we only have a few minutes in between raindrops. So I'm trying to multitask.
SPEAKER_01You're prioritizing Sam over me. I I get it.
SPEAKER_02Over every all of over all of us as we when Sam calls multiple times, it's definitely there's something urgent happening. So I think we're I think we're making it happen.
SPEAKER_01Okay. All right. We can't lose another drone.
unknownNo, no.
SPEAKER_01So all right. Well, that's all I had for today. Very good. Keep it short and sweet this week.
SPEAKER_02Well, maybe we'll recap our visit.
SPEAKER_01We should, yes. And hopefully I'll be able to bring on the podcast some of the ideas that they had and specific things they saw that um that we could do better or things that they were really impressed with.
SPEAKER_02So that I'll come back for.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, that'll be good. So thanks for listening, everyone. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02We'll talk to you again next week.
SPEAKER_01Thank you.
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