Imagine stepping into the world of construction, where the smell of fresh concrete mingles with the optimism of creating something new. Our guest, Amit Patel, Vice President and General Manager for the Vancouver office of Turner Construction, shares this world with us. Growing up under the influence of his father's construction business, Amit understands the heart of the industry.
The hustle and bustle of a job site is more than just noise; it's the sound of a thriving work environment. Amit leads us into the heart of this environment, emphasizing the importance of providing the right facilities and care for the workforce. We also get a glimpse into the changing landscape of construction careers, discussing the role of superintendents and the influence of technology on the industry.
Finally, we tackle some of the challenging aspects of the construction industry and the progress it's making. Amit talks about the importance of mentorship and role models, and how crucial it is to create a safe and welcoming environment for everyone in the industry. We also delve into the economic outlook of Vancouver's construction industry amidst the pandemic and explore the potential growth sectors. As we wrap up, we contemplate the increasing wealth gap's impact on housing availability and the need for a slowdown in infrastructure spending while looking forward to the future of this vibrant industry. Join us on this enlightening journey into the construction world.
PODCAST INFO:
the Site Visit Website: https://www.sitemaxsystems.com/podcast
the Site Visit on Buzzsprout: https://thesitevisit.buzzsprout.com/269424
the Site Visit on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-site-visit/id1456494446
the Site Visit on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5cp4qJE5ExZmO3EwldN1HH
FOLLOW ALONG:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thesitevisit
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesitevisit
Imagine stepping into the world of construction, where the smell of fresh concrete mingles with the optimism of creating something new. Our guest, Amit Patel, Vice President and General Manager for the Vancouver office of Turner Construction, shares this world with us. Growing up under the influence of his father's construction business, Amit understands the heart of the industry.
The hustle and bustle of a job site is more than just noise; it's the sound of a thriving work environment. Amit leads us into the heart of this environment, emphasizing the importance of providing the right facilities and care for the workforce. We also get a glimpse into the changing landscape of construction careers, discussing the role of superintendents and the influence of technology on the industry.
Finally, we tackle some of the challenging aspects of the construction industry and the progress it's making. Amit talks about the importance of mentorship and role models, and how crucial it is to create a safe and welcoming environment for everyone in the industry. We also delve into the economic outlook of Vancouver's construction industry amidst the pandemic and explore the potential growth sectors. As we wrap up, we contemplate the increasing wealth gap's impact on housing availability and the need for a slowdown in infrastructure spending while looking forward to the future of this vibrant industry. Join us on this enlightening journey into the construction world.
PODCAST INFO:
the Site Visit Website: https://www.sitemaxsystems.com/podcast
the Site Visit on Buzzsprout: https://thesitevisit.buzzsprout.com/269424
the Site Visit on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-site-visit/id1456494446
the Site Visit on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5cp4qJE5ExZmO3EwldN1HH
FOLLOW ALONG:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thesitevisit
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesitevisit
Welcome to the Site. Visit podcast. Leadership and perspective from construction with your hosts James Faulkner and Christian Ham.
Guest:Business as usual has been for so long now that it goes back to what we were talking about before and hitting the reset button.
Christian Hamm:You read all the books, you read the e-match, you read scaling up, you read good to great you know I could go on. We got to a place where we found the secret sirm. We found the secret poachin. We can get the workers in. We know where to get.
Guest:Once I was on the job site put a wow and actually we had a semester concrete and I boarded like a room finished patio. Oh, friends of the Site, chillers there just the same as me.
James Faulkner:The guy just picked me up on LinkedIn out of the blue and said he was driving from Oklahoma to Dallas to meet with me because he heard the favorite connect platform on your guys' podcast.
James Faulkner:We own it, crush it and love it and we celebrate these values every single day, live from the site next to you in Yellow Mountain. Let's get down to it, yeah. So that's kind of interesting, yeah, what we're talking about. I'm like, yeah, did you get any cannabis at the cannabis store downstairs? I mean, that's not my thing either, not your thing either, clearly, but it's kind of interesting that I was saying that Yale Town, where we are right now, is on the weekends. It's like you were saying that it's kind of died down that whole fad. And to me it's sparked up.
Christian Hamm:Well, two Coldplay concerts back to back probably fuels a little bit of that.
James Faulkner:Well, it's been every weekend this summer.
Guest:But let me ask you this what you see now, do you feel it was like that anyways, when it wasn't legalized?
Guest:No, no, because it's everywhere, on every park, bench everywhere, so maybe my view is skewed, because I grew up in East Van and my vivid memory is I and we lived near an elementary school and I would say when I was in my late teens I'd look outside my window and there's always be the same group of four or five guys smoking pot at the stoop of the back of the school and I just remember that. Growing up and the other thing I remember is growing up in East Van is every now and then you'd be a house that was completely draped up.
Guest:And one would live there, but you'd know it was marijuana grow up because a year later, someone would bust it and that house would be tore down and built a new house on after.
Christian Hamm:Oh yeah, exactly. So I've been around it my whole life.
Guest:That's why I never thought as an industry when legalized, it would blow up. I didn't think it was going to spark this huge. More people came out, I think, in the open to start doing it openly. But I didn't see it as it's going to be an industry that's going to change or have this big monetized value to it.
James Faulkner:So you were saying that the whole thing changed, like government wise, and you're saying friends are like trying to go do something else, or yeah, well, I mean you would know the detail. What is it? I know this is totally off top of this.
Christian Hamm:Well, I mean it relates to the construction conversation about building massive facilities for this stuff, right, Like Tillray and Aurora.
Christian Hamm:Yeah, I mean these are some of the big businesses behind it or that were right, but no, and just like you had known too, like when pot stocks were hot, when it first got going, and then that leads to, oh, my goodness, 2017. 2017 and 2018. It's like, oh, now there's this big as big distribution centers were blowing up for the last three, four, five years, or whatever. Well, that was about. You know, let's retrofit all these agricultural lands, let's get these warehouses going, let's build these massive facilities. And then, just like, as fast as it started, it was like boom.
Guest:And I remember it was all speed to market too right, and I was trying to be the first to do it.
James Faulkner:Yeah, and you were saying that. So you know Turner didn't lean into that because it's just a stigma around it and obviously wanted to do stuff that you're saying were socially responsible.
Guest:Yeah, that's what from our CEO down, it was like we don't want to chase that type of work. Right. There's other work that we were more passionate about that we didn't. We didn't chase it. Actually, we basically said no, we were not going to do that kind of work.
James Faulkner:Right, yeah, makes sense.
Christian Hamm:Well, I mean interesting conversation, and this is great because we have a fantastic guest here joining us today. We have a meat Patel from Turner, Canadian Turner construction.
Guest:So our legal entity name is Canadian Turner construction, but I always go by Turner construction, that's what I started with and from the US, so that's what resonates with me, I guess.
Christian Hamm:Oh, that's awesome and you can say you know what you do at Turner, but you are. You're the man in Canada, right?
Guest:Right, not in Canada, I would say oh and so I run the Vancouver office. Vice. President and General Manager for the Vancouver office.
Christian Hamm:Okay, that's perfect. Well, you're the man on the West Coast then.
Guest:Yep, I'll take the West Coast. The West Coast Very nice.
Christian Hamm:Well, we'll let you tell your story. I won't film the blanks because I'll get it wrong, sure, but I mean it's awesome to have you join us today. We have lots of mutual connections through some customers of ours at SiteMax, but also just through the industry, who have spoken very highly of you. Oh, that's good and said that we need to get a meat on the site visit.
Guest:Oh, nice, okay, yeah, yeah.
Christian Hamm:So it's great to have you. So I'm going to start off with a little bit of the Coles notes, of your story and your journey into construction and, ultimately, Turner?
Guest:Sure, yeah, I mean it started young. I think my dad, when he moved here from India, started doing house renovations, buying properties, flipping, so I was in construction at the early age of 10, basically following him on site. You know, free labor for him at the time, I guess. But I also learned the industry and growing up I always liked engineering. I went to engineering school at UBC and from UBC I graduated as a mechanical engineer and Turner was recruiting back when I was graduating from UBC and when I was looking for a job. I was a big football fan growing up, so I would see Turner's resume of like building football stadiums and big hospitals and these mega projects which got me passionate about interviewing. A long story short I interviewed for Turner got the job started in the Seattle office in my career in 2005 as a project engineer and about 2011,.
Guest:We had our first child my wife and I did, and she was battling postpartum depression, so we really wanted to come back home. All our family was for Vancouver, so it was something we wanted to do and Turner was super supportive. They said, hey, we're going to start an office in Vancouver anyways, would you be interested in going and help starting the office, and so I moved back in 2011, got to start the office here in Vancouver and the rest is history. It's been 12 years now and we have 140 employees and we're going to do almost 300 million in revenue this year. So it's been quick growth. It feels like yesterday.
Christian Hamm:The office itself here in Vancouver, or Turner Canada, the office itself in Vancouver?
Guest:Oh, wow, yeah, I mean Turner as a corporation. It's the largest commercial construction company in the world. I think we're going to do upwards to 17 billion in revenue this year, which would be larger than any of the major contractors here in Vancouver or in Canada in general. Yep absolutely.
Christian Hamm:It would be Sorry. Are you a Seahawks fan?
Guest:I am a big Seahawks fan. You know what's funny. Moving to Seattle I wasn't a Seahawks fan. I loved the Steelers and the Steelers won the Super Bowl the year that I moved there against the Seahawks but growing up there and then actually seeing the Legion of Boom and how great the Seahawks became, I became a huge Seahawks fan when I moved back.
Christian Hamm:I haven't been to actually any games other than a game in. I guess it's Lumenfield now, but what an atmosphere. It is loud, it changes the outcome of a game, like we saw even on the weekend there, with all the offside calls at the end.
Guest:There's a passionate bunch. It's funny when you go to a game live there. There's a lot of the folks that own season tickets, that have been there forever, that just know each other by name. It feels like you would at Yankee Stadium or one of the major baseball stadiums where generations have owned tickets for years. Well, that whole thing is.
Christian Hamm:Did you play football.
Guest:No, my son does now. But I never played growing up and as a football dad now you get so into it, even at the kid level of football. For sure you show up at all the games.
James Faulkner:Oh yeah, oh yeah. All the time. I don't think I'd miss a game.
Guest:My daughter plays soccer and I have to rush out of her soccer games usually when you watch her play football Nice.
Christian Hamm:You coaching or coaching from the sidelines? I can't coach.
Guest:You deal with people all day at work, so I don't think it's something I want to do in my non-work life.
James Faulkner:You're dealing with other parents. Yeah, and the kids are easier.
Guest:There's more politics than other parents in soccer, than in sports in general, than corporate politics.
Christian Hamm:Oh yeah, well, you're in the volleyball world.
James Faulkner:Oh yeah. Well you got three X on me.
Christian Hamm:The hockey wall, just hockey hockey.
James Faulkner:Two X's worse. Oh, hockey is worse.
Christian Hamm:Yeah, it's crazy but it's fun. It is. It is good and there's lots to learn from team and sports and stuff like that. Maybe we can get into that, even as we unpack a bit of the team and culture dynamics. We had Regina, oh yeah. Yeah.
Christian Hamm:We had her on back in the summer, yeah, or prior to that, the spring actually and she was sharing a really cool story about how you guys have here in Vancouver we had a job site, but you guys actually built a dedicated room for the trades to come all hang out and join together and have lunch, and it was very atypical of a large construction site. I just heard that I was like man that's such a cool vibe for a construction company to put on.
Guest:It's interesting. In the last couple of years our CEO has been really passionate about creating the right environment on our job sites, which really entails, like you want all our partners, trade partners and our own workers to feel like it's a safe place to work, but a clean place to work. Especially with COVID we learned that. So the simplest thing is all our sites have to have hot water, a proper restroom facility, not just porter parties, but also give them a great place to have lunch, have a microwave, have an ability to feel comfortable when they're at the site, not to have to worry about where they're going to get their meal warmed up or have to buy out meals. Try to get them coffee service in the job site and it's taken as far as even giving like physiotherapy service in terms of like a muscle movement, stretch and flex. They're trying to keep them healthy and engaged as a workforce so that it's a place they want to come to.
Christian Hamm:No, there's a lot of angles to go at from that. Because that is okay, would you say. That is fairly atypical of a general contractor to be. It's almost like okay, maybe like the tech world, when it was like oh crazy, and well, you talked about it earlier, I think.
James Faulkner:Google one of that.
Christian Hamm:Yeah, the Google stuff where it's like, oh my goodness, you can eat all the food.
James Faulkner:That's from Las Vegas. Yeah, making mistakes.
Guest:Right, I built a lot of those, so I know what you're talking about there you go.
Christian Hamm:To an extent it has a return right, but then to an extent it also is kind of like yeah, it's like whatever, people don't maybe care as much. But I would imagine in construction, when you're coming from nothing, the baseline is very low on a job site. To provide any step up is like oh wow, this is attractive.
Guest:I think you nailed it. I think we think of it as just like. This seems like common sense. Why wouldn't you do that? But for construction, it's never thought about. I don't think we thought about the worker in general. So now, when we do just do simple things as hot water and just even a small thing like microwave or having clean water to drink from having misting stations when it's super hot, when we had the heat dome, we think it's just normal that we should have that. But construction hasn't been doing it. You're right, and I think, hopefully, that we keep pushing that bar forward to make it a desirable place to work.
James Faulkner:When you obviously your trade partners or sub-trades, they their employees. So you, it's essentially your resort, if you will right when you think about it from a resort point of view, if you can make it more of a you know all inclusive as opposed to you know what I mean.
James Faulkner:Like because it's basically the trades are bringing a tour group and the tour groups they're they're a customer. In this case, the trade has their employees and they're bringing them to your place. Yeah, so you know, controlling that narrative and making sure that when I guess what your, your goal is as an organization is, is when job comes for tender and people hear, oh, I think we might be getting this project, and go, oh, it's a Turner project, I would say yes, yeah.
James Faulkner:You know they go. Oh good, we want to go there because it's like, as you said, I can heat up my lunch there. I can. You know, got hot water I can, yeah, and so the physiotherapy stuff. I mean I think we're we're. This is just the beginning of this stuff. Because we were talking about this on on the podcast we had earlier today was that somebody went to the MIRIY field worker has been so overlooked for so long, and at SiteMax we have a lot of initiatives we're doing to help our customers with that.
James Faulkner:So there is I think it's the time where we've got interest rates super high, we've got inflation, everyone's feeling the pinch and if the job site just doesn't really adapt to that, it's kind of difficult right.
Guest:We have a long way to go still. I think these are just the basic things, but what we try to train our workforce is more empathy towards trades too. As a GC, we're the first one to say we need it faster, we need it yesterday, and I think we have a long way to go in terms of just having more empathy towards our trade partners listening to what their impediments and challenges are and then actually doing something about it, because trades just want to be their work respected and us understanding that, why certain things take as long as they do or why things need to be in certain sequences. I find that as new entries come into the workforce, that mentorship is gone.
Guest:That was teaching the next generation how to get things done and how things are sequenced, and we as an industry have a long way to go to teach that to the next generation of workforce. But for our trades? Whenever I meet with our trades, I'm always more listening than talking, because we can learn a lot from what is causing them grief and not being able to be as productive as we need them to be. And we have more work than we've ever had as an industry with less people to do it, so we need to work together. Mm-hmm yeah.
Christian Hamm:Yeah, how many. Sorry I know you probably said this earlier employees Turner in your office in Vancouver, 143,. I think yeah, 143 right now, and how many of those are on-site employees.
Guest:I would say, our operations team is about 90 out of the 143 and another 25 are self-reformed, like our own carpentry labor force. That's what I was gonna ask yeah, okay, cool.
Christian Hamm:And is that? I mean this plays into the whole bringing in new, younger talent, the next generation, all kind of stuff. So that's cool. So you've got a contingent of your staff that is self-reforming carpentry. Is that part of the? Is that a pathway of development for your field staff into whatever upper operation staff?
Guest:Yeah, I absolutely think so. I think what we're trying to do with our SPO group is to build the superintendent of the future. Those folks who are actually working with their hands and seeing things put together make great superintendents, and I think the business units in Turner that have a good superintendent pool come from having a strong self-reform and a carpentry backbone where they can be taught to then lead the crew and the forces on site.
Guest:So that's definitely the angle we wanna go. The other reason I like it is we're partnering with a lot of high schools right now and their carpentry programs to show those kids, hey, you may not enjoy engineering or you may not wanna go to a project management program, but if you love building, there's also other paths for you to be in leadership and construction. It's not just going through a four-year engineering school, there are other ways. And I love that engagement we're doing with high schools right now because it's kids who may necessarily not wanna do engineering but wanna do construction and just need a path and see how they can get there.
Christian Hamm:And you, kay, you personally, mechanical engineering as you're, and prior to that hands-on construction, did you come out with a?
James Faulkner:yeah, did you have any of that With your family's business, were you?
Guest:actually making stuff. No, I have like two left thumbs, you know you'd laugh. I'd run a big construction company. But if I had to do something myself, I probably wouldn't even know how it was more managing the work than doing any of it.
Christian Hamm:I mean, did general labor the stuff that your dad would trust you to do? Yeah, exactly. And yeah, I wasn't asking to check your technical proficiencies out in the field or anything like that.
James Faulkner:Yeah, how's your miter?
Christian Hamm:skill Bad, very bad. Well, I know I mean like I did five years in the field, going through university and forming and framing, but like I'm un-ticketed and you did what you needed to do to make your paychecks in the summer and pick up enough of it, but always with the sight of, okay, there could be something more. But to have a plan and a pathway for people and going to schools like that's pretty is it? Are you guys finding great success doing?
Guest:this. It's at its infancy, but we are finding success. We have some great stories already of carpentry students that have done a one week practicum and then started working with us on our SPO Nice. You know what I'll say is I would change my upbringing for that. Like I remember, you know Indian parents, so they were like you need to study you need to do that path.
James Faulkner:I don't want you to do so. Spo student placement oh no, it's a self-perform operation. Self-performing operations.
Guest:Okay, but we're getting students in the program by doing one week or summer practicums to then see who's interested after the program to actually do it. But I would change it. I would love to have done what you did. You know, growing up like just having a program where I worked with my hands and kind of to see the industry before choosing where I wanted to go. So I encourage that for, like my kids, I would love for them to have hands-on experience in whatever craft they want to choose.
James Faulkner:Totally. Would you with your kids? Are you pushing them towards construction? Would you think you would do that?
Guest:Yeah, I'm not pushing them towards it. I have two very different kids and I think the one that really likes building and putting things together actually it's my daughter. And.
Guest:I would be like if she genuinely enjoyed it. I wouldn't push her against it. I think I would love for her, if she likes to do construction, to do it. My son's more sauce-boken. He's more artistic Like he would be. I don't think he'd want to do construction but, if he changes his tune later and he wants to. I want both of them to have a lot of broad experience younger, so they go. Actually I wanna do this and when I grow up, so we were also on the previous podcast.
James Faulkner:There was a comment where Katie Fairley was saying that the 20s are the new 30s. So, like kids are sorry, 30s and new 20s no, what was it?
Christian Hamm:Yeah, what she was kind of expecting.
James Faulkner:People are pushing off getting serious.
Christian Hamm:Yeah, they're pushing off getting serious about whatever they're doing in life and stuff throughout by like a decade, cause we were talking about this very thing about are we seeing younger, the next generation, getting involved in trades the way that we maybe have in previous decades, or whatever? And she was kind of alluding to the. I think it's pushing further into. Later years Later years of the start of their career into getting that way. So I don't know.
Christian Hamm:I mean like, obviously, jumping into schools you are dealing directly with that next generation Right like you're hitting those and it's even that is something that I know that there was always ways of getting into like a technical school with PCIT and they'd be partnering with different school, whatever in grade 11 and 12 in certain ways, but to be offering actual, even like it feels like cause you're self-performing operations or whatever, like a co-op almost.
Guest:Yeah, that's exactly what we try to do For like a summer or whatever it happens to be.
Christian Hamm:There's no better way to expose a generation but it's dealing with, you know, is that generation even willing or wanting to?
James Faulkner:Well, it's also the culture shift as well, because construction inherently is meritocratic.
Guest:It has to be, you're right.
James Faulkner:And it's the proof, is standing behind you, whether or not it's up or not.
Guest:Yeah, Right did you finish your work. You know, I mean it's so the results in your face. It's so absolute yeah.
James Faulkner:It's not. You know, we're in the stage of culture right now where everything's subjective. Well, construction isn't.
Guest:It's so true, we don't even give letter grades anymore till you're like grade 11, right.
Guest:So you know it's interesting, I think. For what Katie said, I agree that it has shifted that way, but what we're trying to do is just give them more awareness early. So, outside of our self-reformed division, the other thing we're gonna do starting this spring break and this coming summer is a one week high school program where kids come on a voluntary basis to come on one of our sites to see the different career paths in construction, like accounting, marketing, and so they can say, hey, you know, this is so-and-so and they're in marketing and this is what they did as their educational background and this is so-and-so. That did accounting and this is what they did. And it's more just to get the kids' awareness on what are those professions, what is like the salary expectation, where did they go to school to give them that awareness? Cause I remember being a high school kid here.
Guest:I didn't know what was out there for me and what school I should pick. So we're targeting that for grade nine's and 10's so that they can at least get more awareness. So I think Katie's right Like, by the time kids are out in the workforce for the first decade of their lives, they might not even know what they actually liked or wanted to do.
Christian Hamm:Which is the crazy thing and I mean I keep bringing it back to just my personal experience cause it's what I know, it's what I went through and that you go through university and you had your students in accounting and they would go do their articleing for four years at a big four or whatever, or they had a family accounting business or financial or finance, rather than they'd go do financial planning or again family business style stuff. But everybody else was kind of left to like I don't have anything to go and do and continue to cut my teeth or whatever it happens to be. And so you get through that and sometimes students take five, six years to finish school Totally. So now you're in your mid-20s and it's like you still don't have any even hands-on experience or exposure to there's so much variety in construction. Now that's beyond hands-on and actual trade work.
Guest:There's so many different roles. You can be in an construction company. It's like an organization where there's so many like there's various different career paths you could take. How do we?
James Faulkner:maybe you can sort of shed some light on this, but we asked this question many times. How do you position? There's obviously the need of headcount for the amount of GDP we're supposed to be creating and construction's part of that in order to achieve those goals. So we don't have enough people to do this, so there is a self-serving need of the industry, for sure that. How do you change the sentiment of parents?
James Faulkner:So let's just say, when Turner shows up at a high school and the parents are like no, I want my kid to go to medical school, I want him to do something else, for whatever reason, there's probably so many macerations of different motivations, of why people parents want to do that Obviously want their kids to have a different life than they did. Even so, how does it for a brand to show up at a school? How does it not position well, they, oh, they need my son or daughter's future, and you know what I mean. There's this very how to the people who don't understand the opportunity of construction themselves. You know what I mean. So you might be parents that have no idea. All they do is just walk through buildings all day and don't even think about the cranes and the people and all of the infrastructure had to go together to put that. So they just don't. It's not even in there. They just hear construction, hard labor.
Guest:My child's not doing that, it's true, and I mean I think it comes with conversation and awareness at the parent level too, right.
James Faulkner:Well, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. How do you change that sentiment? Cause it shouldn't be stigma. This is about building the country.
Guest:Yeah, you're right Cause when I the kids that I have interested coming to this program are the ones that their parents understand the value of the program but also that construction would be an opportunity that they want them to explore. I think the more we can educate the parents on where construction could be a good career path, it could change. But I think the stigma is it's hard labor, that's it. They don't see the various other roles in construction that there could be, that not just hard labor.
James Faulkner:Well, the different paths that I think can go on with a career in construction is either you decide, for either you're really interested in construction, or design or engineering and you go to BCIT or you go to one of these trade schools, technical schools, so there's that. That's just what I want to do, and there's going to be two out of a hundred that want that. Then you have the other ones that are like I could make money here.
Guest:So there's the financially.
James Faulkner:If you can show that there's a pathway to not having much of student debt, to blah, blah, blah, you can go. But that path is you got to learn school of hard knocks. That is labor to begin with, and you work your way up the ladder and you work your way through from regular tools to power tools, to big machinery, to you know what I mean.
James Faulkner:I mean, that's pretty simplistic, but yeah, organic ascension of going through the ranks. But and then there's the other ones that are I don't know. I got just on the, on the stereotypical male thing. I got my girl from pregnant. Now we're split up. I got this car, I got bills.
Guest:You have to do something, I have to do something.
James Faulkner:So there's this big mix of motivations why people show up to work. That, I think, it makes it very complicated. It makes it complicated for for there to be a cohesive, meaningful message that resonates with everybody's life situation.
Guest:You're right, I think for us it's just we look at it as in our roles as leaders in the industry, we just wanna give awareness to that next generation of what is out there and let the parents and the kids make the decision at the end of the day. So by no means is it like a full-time recruiting thing. It's more like here's a pathway into just showing you what this career could be in. And what we're hoping is other industries do the same. Law firms and other industries wanna show kids. Okay, this is what a day in the life of a family doctor is this what a day in the life of just even architecture is. So we're trying to do that with other industry leaders as well.
Christian Hamm:Oh, totally, and awareness makes sense. It's the first step, but the cool thing about construction is and again to use that word, co-op you can actually offer, especially a company like Turner, something like a meaningful next step.
Guest:Exactly, for sure it's there.
Christian Hamm:It's like here you go, Can we give you the awareness? Were you interested? Cool here. Don't commit your life to it. Maybe commit a week to it, yeah.
James Faulkner:I was interested. Before doing Sitemax I used to do employer value propositions, so it was basically and I did them for big banks in Toronto and it was about how do we get people to work somewhere, and what I find interesting about this is that I think that the message is that, when you were saying that, like labor, hard labor or the dirtiness I guess of the message should be, it's getting not as hard and less dirty every day. Yeah, Because of technology, it's true.
James Faulkner:And it's becoming more and more and more exciting from a technical intelligence point of view of thinking before moving machines and you got robotics coming down that it's gonna happen very quickly. There will be for sure. We had the guys on.
Christian Hamm:Super Droids, super Droids.
James Faulkner:Yeah, that's just sort of starting there, but once there will be, there will be a Tesla of something in construction at some point that's going to transform everything, and when that starts to happen, you're going. This will become more like tech companies.
Guest:I agree with you.
James Faulkner:So the message to the youth is is that AI is gonna take over all the stuff that didn't have to be used with your hands, and now what's going to be is going to be the hand transformation into you might be sitting operating a machine and you're not even on site. Yeah, like this is where it's going and that's exciting. So I think it's like it's not selling what it is today, it's what it's gonna be. Yeah, and if you get on that now and you increase your stock value as a person in this industry, you can really really do well.
Guest:You know you describe it really well because some of the best superintendents I work with were able to take a drawing set and just create the best sequence of work and plan to orchestrate a group of people to build something more efficiently and quicker. That's the most powerful role in our industry, I feel, is those superintendents that were in orchestrating all of this in the background and they don't get enough credit, I feel, in our industry sometimes.
Christian Hamm:We've been doing a lot of superintendents shoutouts in the last couple of episodes. Yeah, I mean that's super critical, yeah.
James Faulkner:I think you know we've talked to a number of construction leaders about having interviews like this with their superintendents. Oh yeah. Because I find what really can happen is the knowledge just gets retired out and has never recorded or captured, or it's just gone.
Guest:You're right. I mean I gotta give a shout out to. I have the pleasure of working with Rick Egert, who's our general superintendent, and he's probably one of the best builders I've ever seen. If you're gonna bring someone on the show, rick should come because have a good idea. Yeah, he's just a genius when it comes to how to put things together and how to build the big project and break it down into simple pieces.
James Faulkner:That's cool, the, you know, I always think of the way the younger generation views the older generation and whether or not there's, you know, in, you know those, the blue zones that you hear about in the world where people live the longest.
Christian Hamm:Yeah centenarians.
James Faulkner:Yeah and that's because they celebrate the elderly people, right. So there's more purpose. Like, these people aren't just sitting there, you know, watching Netflix, they're out doing things right, gardening and doing all that stuff. So I think in you know Canada, united States specifically, you know, once you're, you're sort of you're you have like an expiry date, that where you're just not interesting, you're kind of invisible, you're not attractive anymore and you know there's a whole bunch of values that are knitted into older people don't count. Yeah.
James Faulkner:That's not what I believe, but there's just this sentiment, all year old, whatever, where, and it's the same with I'm gonna get into a little personal thing here it's the same with music. Like I do music right now, right, music as a hobby, and you know, when we play as a band it's like, yeah, like that's the guy in his fifties, right, why should we pay attention? But what is happening shortly? If I had had not put our public persona out there and had an avatar of myself of 18, or 20 or 25, and that's all the internet ever saw, and they heard that they wouldn't know the age.
James Faulkner:So what I'm getting at is is if you make avatars of these, the 20 somethings versions of these superintendents yeah that they go. Wow, that's what they used to look like, but here's the knowledge so it connects, do you remember? It connects the wow to the whoa, you know what I mean.
Guest:So I was thinking, I don't know, I kind of just always get a little bit you know out there when it comes to concepts, but that's sad that we have to do that, though, like you have to trick people, all my construction knowledge came from great senior superintendents that you know now are retired now, but I learned so much from that wisdom that they were nice enough to pass on to me. They didn't have to mentor me or teach me what they did, and I think I hope that the next generation also sees them.
James Faulkner:But you came from a family of values, yeah, maybe. So values are a hard commodity to come by these days. We respected the elderly for sure. Exactly.
Christian Hamm:But I had the same experience, though I had this. I'm gonna give a shout out to Hamad Rustah as an Iranian gentleman, amazing guy, such a good guy. He taught me so much that I needed to know Many years my senior at the time, as a very as an early young PM. But I would never have made it any further in my career if I didn't have the wisdom coming from a guy who's been all over the world, building massive projects in a variety of cultures under a variety of management and operation systems.
Christian Hamm:I believe he's still out there active too, crushing it, but we can't lose that. Obviously, people need to move on and retire and enjoy the other parts of life, but we need and that's the beautiful thing about construction is there's not many other places that have so many different generations working so close together Yep day to day.
Guest:It's true, it's true, it's like it. I don't know of another industry where you put that demographic of people together to on a common goal right, which which is also nice about being on a construction project is you get a lot of diversity of age, ethnicity, everything.
Christian Hamm:Yeah, speaking of that, what's? Um, we let's get back into some Turner sure stuff in terms of and we want to talk about kind of like the makeup of your team and like who's all involved and everything like that, because you guys have some initiatives, I think, around All that. But for background of Turner in your office, what kind of projects are you guys working on? What are you looking for in the next couple years, like, what sorts of things are you guys trending towards? Sure?
Guest:Um, right now, I mean, we have a good mix of work. You know, our largest project is Confidential tech client at the, you know, the biggest, largest TI in downtown Vancouver right now. It's a million square feet in downtown Vancouver, so it's it's a behemoth of a job, but a great. We have a large team on that job, about 33 people active, wow. And then we're also building a brand new office building for Kingswood capital in Burnaby. That's gonna home Electronic Arts a new office base right across from Electronic Arts campus in Burnaby.
Guest:Yeah, we also are in pre-construction with great northern way there. It's on no great northern way was another TI we did for EA. They have another expansion space in Vancouver. The one that we're doing is in Burnaby.
James Faulkner:Oh, I'll burn to be, so excuse me okay.
Guest:And then we also have we're doing pre-construction right now with the city Burnaby for Confederation Park rec center, which is, you know, a hundred eighty million dollar rec center that the city of Burnaby is building. So we have a good diverse range of work Right now. But primarily, when we started, it was we started as an interior. Ti company, just because that's the type of work we had at first yeah. But now we're basically doing it almost anything in here in Vancouver when it comes to commercial construction.
Christian Hamm:Commercial construction, though no high-rise. No, no, we don't do, we don't do residential high-rise.
Guest:That's not an air market that we're in right now or we're looking to get into, but we are, you know, wanting to do. What Turner's Rooted in is more healthcare. We have worked at the airport. I want to do more aviation work as well. Another area where we do a lot of work is higher education. We've been in almost every main campus in BC, ubc, bc, it, sfu, and we really like that type of work.
Christian Hamm:Okay, you, one of the other things that we kind of chatted before for Bore coming on here but talking about. We've talked about youth, we've talked about Just the kind of importance of certain roles and construction. But you guys, was it the 5050 split male?
Guest:female.
Guest:So in terms of leadership team, yeah we're 5050 male, female, which I gotta say there's so many benefits to having a diverse leadership team and we just came back from succession planning as a company and they asked about it and I and I equated to. We have a very empathetic leadership team and as leadership team that has a better Perspective when it comes to the needs of our employees, and a lot of that comes to what comes from the fact that we have strong female leadership representation in our business, like where we we understand what it means to go on, pat leave or matley, we understand what it means to have work-life balance, or someone who needs to have Flexible work hours and working from home, and that all that only really comes from the fact when you have female leaders who have representation and a voice at the table.
Guest:We wouldn't have that without it.
Christian Hamm:I definitely have some questions around that. This is a bit of a side question. Does that Not those numbers, but just some of these values and stuff? Does it permeate like right down from the top it and all through it, all the regional offices and stuff like that, or are there things that are unique to certain offices and certain areas?
Guest:No, we're very fortunate. Our CEO really resonates it down from the top and he's, you know, he's always been clear about the importance of diversity from a leadership perspective. I think from Vancouver We've also had had great fortunate opportunity as we were growing We've had some strong female leaders join and that have been a fabric of our growth and that's allowed us to have that as well. And Vancouver is diverse to begin with to save a nice diverse pool to pick from.
Christian Hamm:We always Not because it's not a series is a serious thing, but we always people throw around different numbers about the men and women in construction. Of course it varies in the field, yeah right, or in the office, yeah, but in terms of that's at the operational level or the management level, what is in terms of the female representation, representation even in field and up in the operational role, like not, maybe not just turning it. This isn't sort of supposed to be like.
Christian Hamm:Singling up. But we're always curious because some people throw around big numbers and some people don't, and we're always because we want to unpack.
James Faulkner:You know the why and that number the big number the big.
Christian Hamm:Never, yeah, we've had people say as high as like oh, there's 50, 50 representation in the field no no, it's not.
Guest:No, I'll give you our office number because we just went through it in succession plan. We look, we, that's the one thing from our CEO top down. He looks at every offices. Break that breakup of, like, male, female. Yeah, so we're 66, 33 and if you were to take out the superintendent family, then it's closer to 50 50 because out of out of the 90 operational folks I told you, superintendents make up almost half, like 40% of it, and in that demographic we only have one female superintendent and she's an amazing superintendent, it's just, and it's one area where we definitely want to get more diversity.
Guest:Yeah it's just we haven't had that to date.
Christian Hamm:Well, it's a yeah, no, go ahead. Yeah it's it's a that's a tricky role. Well, it is because you need, you do need a certain Type of individual, not not male or female, but you need a certain type personality.
James Faulkner:It's super, unless you've earned your stripes.
Christian Hamm:I mean, it's that simple and you got to be a driver and you got to be a, but you also need to know how to.
Guest:Bring. I think it comes down to just society, like you guys have said, like you know what, the way we've held this image of what the superintendent role is, it's not really what it is, you know it's not the person who's like taking a huge sledgehammer to site it's.
Guest:It's the person who's actually planning and leading a crew of people to execute. I mean, the one female superintendent would have is she's amazing because it's such a strong structural mind and so smart it just now. I'm encouraged with the fact that a lot of university students I Interview now, and especially female candidates, say they want to be superintendents because they enjoy building and I'm hopeful that by having other role models and seeing that a superintendent actually is Building a project after reading it on paper and then planning ahead and is and the mentorships there, we can grow that and slowly change that number.
James Faulkner:Mm-hmm you know, I mean, it's all it comes down to the top of the funnel. There's only so many. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's, the superintendent thing is kind of interesting man, unless that, unless that job role, because you have so many in order to To be that conductor on on the job site, right, the unless you're just a complete, I don't know anomaly of a of a conductor of an orchestra is like a conductor of an orchestra, but a lot of the people who are in playing all the instruments want to know you know what it's like to Strong, you know strong that bow that on on the violin.
James Faulkner:Yeah and they're like if you haven't done that, I'm not listening to you. It's the street cred stuff.
Guest:I know you're absolutely right and I think there's an industry like. It's unfortunate to say, but a lot of our industry folks have this mentality of why should I listen to you, especially when you're not a strong male like a loud voice person. It's a hard time because I've seen some of our folks, even coordinators, that are female, not get the same level respect they deserve as their male counterparts and one thing I will say it's nice I've seen superintendents when they see that, they squash it very quickly and and make sure that they treat everyone equally.
Guest:But as an industry we have some work to do. To get you know with the times I would say what do you think is required for that?
James Faulkner:I mean, is there when, where, if you, how many layers of the onion you have to peel back to find out what the reason is like? It seems pretty deep rooted why it's so. You could call it Chauvinistic. I mean, that's the probably the nicest word to say is recently, sure chauvinistic, right, I guess.
James Faulkner:So I mean it's. I mean here, there's, there is. There is one thing to consider is is that, you know, let's just talk about one section of male Female relationships, just I don't know if can I even say at least so, male female relationships, that Healthy relationships have space mm-hmm men and women typically are different, and Sometimes men. The job site is the place to bro and be with other dudes.
Guest:I shouldn't be that way.
James Faulkner:I'm not saying it is, but it has been, yeah, and I Just find it. I find it interesting for the hierarchy of power over time. It takes a long time to change, like human nature, yeah, human nature of I think you know where I'm going with this. I'm not trying to like hang myself on this here, but it is true.
Christian Hamm:We'll help you out, don't worry, yeah you'll help me hang myself. No, no, we'll bring it together. But it's.
James Faulkner:I think that there's. You can't ignore the human nature side.
Guest:But you know what? I'm hopeful, I think to your point where it starts from the top. Our leadership is very clear. We have a zero tolerance. If there's an incident like that on our job site, that person's removed and is not welcome back.
James Faulkner:Yeah, but so what kind of incident? I mean, I wasn't referring to one.
Guest:If there's a incident where someone is not being disrespectful to a fellow worker for any reason and we've done that, and even as simple as showing lack of respect for that person.
Guest:we've done that and I think you're not wrong in what you're saying. It's gonna take a long time and it's gonna take a united effort, I feel. But if, like we just talked about, why would a parent want their child to be in an industry? If we're that backwards, why would a parent like I have a daughter? I would want her to be safe and welcomed in the construction industry if she wants to be there. But that requires us to really make a big deal out of it and keep pushing forward to make quality happen on our job sites.
James Faulkner:But isn't it the fact that united tribes act a certain way when they're in numbers and if it's a bunch of guys, guys act like idiots. They just do. They always have, they still always. Will you go to a football game and anywhere in Europe? They all these, they act crazy.
Christian Hamm:Okay, so I know, like I see where I'm going, I know where you're going with that right, but that's where, and if that's the way construction always stayed, where representation was like majority male, let's just say 95% or higher right, you might actually end up with, yes, a certain type of behavior. It's just, you might, it's true, but if you change the numbers, then people are forced to then say yeah, the tribes get smaller.
James Faulkner:Oh, that's getting yeah.
Christian Hamm:And then you're like I do see what you're saying right, and this is more stating objectively. If that's, if the numbers are far lower than people are saying in terms of a split, especially in the field, then you will get some of these behaviors that persist. It's just what happens. But if you're making a concerted effort to be like, hey, we wanna make again, starting with, you know, the next generation, this is available to all. There's so many different pieces that can fit into the construction, the new construction company, and now you start seeing a very diverse company in terms of male, female or whatever. You can probably transcend and change a lot of that.
Guest:Well, I hope so, because I'm a minority. There has been times, even when I first moved to Vancouver, where and it was an eye-opener for me because I was always a believer oh it's Vancouver, we're so multicultural. This doesn't happen here. My first job coming back, there was an incident where a trade basically I don't have to listen to you, you're brown and said that to my face and I was running a job and I was very fortunate, my superintendent stuck up for me and we kicked him off the job site. But it shook me. I was like, wow, how long ago would that have been? That would have been 2011.
James Faulkner:Okay, I was not even sure, but that's just stupidity, right, I mean, you know.
Guest:But you're like you said about tribe mentality. Like you, it's funny if someone says that and it's in a larger setting and no one defends that person it almost becomes like wow, I'm the single person out Right yeah, I know what you're saying.
James Faulkner:I mean for anybody to be. It's not so much about the direct behavior or so unacceptable. A direct insult to anybody for any reason, kind of like that, whether gender-wise, racially, any of that stuff. I mean I can't believe we're even talking about this. That should have been gone 20 years ago. It might have been.
James Faulkner:It isn't you know in what I think of things, but I still do see. Once off the job site there's still this like lingering oh yeah, no, so and so and so and so. Yeah, I had to listen to them today, or whatever.
James Faulkner:There's that Like that undertone, the underneath is still there, regardless if we have policies to squash it on the site level, it's still on the other side of the hoarding. It still happens and I just don't know why that is. And so the reason like kind of in these conversations like to unpack this is because, ultimately, we wanna fix these things. Yeah for sure, Right, and unless you kind of peel back the to get to what?
James Faulkner:these things are. So talking to you is really helpful, but do you not feel like just what's happening in society?
Guest:over the last five, 10 years, we've become more polarized ever. Yes, we have.
Christian Hamm:Yeah totally, and that's part of the unpacking here, right Is, we're not just talking about, like, construction and technical things. Oftentimes we uncover things that are more cultural, societal, with a construction perspective, and what is construction doing to address this? In society, that's a good point Right, so you're bang on. Of course we're becoming more polarized, and for you to say, oh, that comment should have never been made to you whatever. Well, that's not necessarily a construction issue.
Guest:No, it's a society, it's a societal issue right.
Christian Hamm:But I mean, yeah, I mean construction does have a vibe right In terms of, like, how we behave sometimes or have behaved and it's like, okay, well, we don't need to be the rough and tumble the. I mean, yes, it's physical hard labor, yes, you gotta be tough, but you know what I mean Like everything that follows, that doesn't necessarily need to persist decade after decade it's so funny after talking to you guys about it with just the construction site is basically the world all in one small site representing what is outside it is.
Guest:yeah.
Christian Hamm:And I know from, and I'm sure this hasn't really changed, but, like you see, a lot of the good and the real ugly, yes, on a construction site.
James Faulkner:You do.
Christian Hamm:To your point. This morning we were talking with Katie is like is there a connection? Okay and I'm not again, we're not trying to paint stereotypes or anything like that but is there a connection between, let's say, it's the CEO of Turner goes, it, does a site visit, versus a guy on the that comes up to show up for the rebar company who just needed, needs a job, needs to make a paycheck, you know, like, is there any correlation between, like, what he's doing right now and what the CEO of Turner might be doing there or whatever? Right, that's a pretty big gap in terms of and it's not putting anybody in any places, it's just the range of what you see on the site the range of what you might see and what people might be experiencing.
Christian Hamm:Everyone's got their hardships in various levels of life. That's a given. But like that's a pretty broad spectrum. You're not going into a boardroom where everyone is a C-suite or everyone is a VP, yeah Right.
James Faulkner:Well, it's the hierarchy thing. Because there is obviously, for safety reasons, for financial reasons, for progress reasons, there is a hierarchy at a job site. It has to be Mm-hmm. This year I went to Japan and I looked at the construction sites and talked to some people in construction in Japan Christian's example of the field, guy from the rebar company, knowing the builder CEO is coming, it's stand up and salute. Mm-hmm.
James Faulkner:Yeah, because they know that that's the hand that feeds, yeah. I know it's an extreme, I know, I know I know it's an extreme, but like we are trying to shove through the sausage maker, meaning that out there and the rest of Canada is lost.
James Faulkner:Yeah that's a good point. Do you know what I mean? Like we're trying to make this micro-organism of perfect ethical skills, perfect discourse, perfect communication, no bad behavior in this place. That is like rampant of uncertainty. Yeah, the job site's the most uncertain place you could possibly go to and to kind of tidy this all up.
Christian Hamm:What it does um depict is that construction has a really unique opportunity. It does it does.
James Faulkner:It can be the example.
Christian Hamm:Yeah, yeah. Cause we're just unpacking. And if you put that all into here, it all is. This is the site, and that these people all go back to their various families and places in the community and society.
Speaker 4:They can be a yeah, totally, construction can be, and especially with a Turner cause.
Christian Hamm:I think one of the other things you want to talk was like this community and citizen group and stuff like that. So like the way you can impact society, the things that you can do, the lives at different stages and places you can reach is not like everywhere else Sometimes.
Guest:Yeah, it's true, we have um. I feel like we have um a responsibility to actually give back, cause you know, in construction, you you're in a part of a lot of events and um a lot of dinners and golf tournaments and you're like wow where's all this money? Yeah, where's all this.
Guest:We're spending all this money to generate business back to make more money. And uh, it was funny. One of our Christmases we were given out client gifts, and I was. We just saw the gift baskets on the floor and I was like, wow, there's people out there that can't afford a meal and we're we're giving out gift baskets to people who probably won't even use them.
James Faulkner:Yeah, or giving or re-gifting, or re-gifting it Right.
Guest:So we decided that year that was two, three years ago that we're going to take that fund and really just give back to communities like especially the East side, um food banks, charities, and actually not just give money, give our time. Yeah.
Guest:So we created a community and citizenship group that is uh full of like-minded people that just genuinely want to find charities that are local, that we're near and dear to our staff, and then we give our time and effort and our comp like our money to it as well. And so it's been two years now and we've given almost $50,000 away and, more importantly, we've actually spent probably 300 staff hours on just charitable ventures and the groups taken off. We have more success doing those events than social events with our staff because they're passionate about it. So it just, it was a small idea, but I love that we moved funds from something that's not positive to society to this.
James Faulkner:Well, I wouldn't want to be in the wicker basket business.
Christian Hamm:What would you say? And this is just. This isn't often any sort of a questionnaire thing or anything but what? What are you most proud of of your, your team over the years, or even just recently?
Guest:You know, I'm, I'm, I'm just proud of the work that they do together, Right Like I, I look when I walked that office. There's so much great energy and engagement and genuine care for one another and I mean that might sound cheesy, but it actually. I just walked in today and I just felt that energy from the sales team, from the ops team, from the leadership team and just you genuinely see happy people, which that's always been my motivation as a leader is. I wanted to create an environment where we're an environment where people actually felt valued, where they came to work, not just a cog in the machine and that's. That's not to say we're perfect.
Guest:There's, you know, probably people who felt lost or not aligned with the culture and you know chose to leave, but overall I feel like we have a pretty good group of folks that we work with.
Christian Hamm:Yeah, do you have like how in this you know to unpack all the the last three years of the COVID years? But you know it does sound like you guys obviously have a very strong culture throughout Turner but also in the Vancouver office. Do you guys have you know how people adapted? You know, coming through the last three years people grow closer together or people is part of your office team like as people working remote. That was a very hard thing in construction. A lot of people gravitated back towards the office.
Guest:Yeah, we've been pretty flexible with that. Yeah. To be honest, the approach we took is if you're productive from a home and you're able to just do your work from home, and it's. It's not even a question, we haven't questioned it. There has been a policy sent out in terms of which departments get certain flexibility, because you know it's easier to be accountant and work from home than it is to be a superintendent.
Guest:So it's not it's not a one size fits all, but we've also shared with those departments that hey, we, we leave it to the department heads to find the most effective way that works. And there's been a lot of stuff that value that flexibility and to be able to do some things that they wouldn't be able to if they had to be in the office five days a week. And actually we've been able to recruit people that have said other companies have taken a stance that you need to be here at eight and leave at 430.
Christian Hamm:And this goes back into kind of our conversation about, like certain things that persist in construction. Well, aside from maybe the more hot button things, this is like construction has always been like.
Christian Hamm:Oh, you have to be here, you know you are here between here and here and I get it Like it's we're physically building things, like there's a lot of highly collaborative, interpersonal things that require physical presence, yep, all right. So I understand that. But I mean, if you can figure it away, to keep culture strong, keep projects moving forward, not affect profitability, because that is still important in terms of running businesses.
Guest:Totally.
Christian Hamm:Yeah, I mean, of course it can be an attractive thing for people.
Guest:Yeah, and if you trust your employees and they're actually producing the work, absolutely. But there are times where you have to tell someone hey, you've been working for home, but your productivity has dropped and you're just not able to be as functional as you were before. I think you should consider coming back and I think you need to try it.
James Faulkner:How do those conversations go, yeah?
Guest:They don't like them at first. But then when you say, prove to us that you can do it, that you're able to still be productive from home, and we'll open that door. But it's not a fairness thing.
Christian Hamm:No, what's cool about that is like that's just accountability, yeah, and accountability means there's this trust enough in an organization that you could call somebody and they would respond positively to it Right. Like they would bounce back and say okay.
James Faulkner:That's interesting, though, because the workforce these days considers the work from home to be a right yeah, they do so, and then when you're basically right out of the gate giving a consideration of trust right away, like it's basically an all, like a branch, you're like we don't distrust you, but if you prove that you're not, it's not a matter of trust actually. It's trust of time, perhaps, or trust of time management or whatever it is, or it's really accountability.
Guest:Like you said, it's accountability yeah.
James Faulkner:So if they, if they don't quite do what you think they could be doing at the office, the question is is, would they be doing that at the office anyway? Like I just wonder. Like some people are just not cut for it and you know, if you come back to the office, then eventually you know, once, once the working in your pajamas wore off, then the commute to the office started to take its toll. There's always going to be something that's going to get to them eventually. Maybe I don't know.
Guest:Yeah, I know, I think it came down to just feedback and being able to say, look, and you're right, it's hard to KPI to measure Really hard.
Guest:But that's the one thing about our team. I feel like there's such a high bar and work ethic that the people that don't strive to that stick out pretty quickly. Right, and those you know the ones that are working hard are the ones at first to say, wow, this person's not cutting it. And we've worked really hard over the last few years to give feedback and work on effective feedback from leadership down that. I find it just weeds itself out over time.
Christian Hamm:What do you think about the next little while here, not just for Turner, but in terms of the outlook for economy, construction, commercial?
James Faulkner:Vancouver, vancouver. The current status, yeah, what do you think? The state of affairs it's interesting.
Guest:We're still busy, yeah, and it's funny Anytime you get panicked about the economy, something different picks up. Yeah, right, like I see a pipeline of healthcare work. That's a long pipeline, you know, and we're not in those billion dollar hospital projects, but you know a lot of. You know a lot of large scale GCs are going to be busy and what that does is it opens up the door in the middle scale work for the rest of us for sure, and I see the airport getting busy again and you know, as more passengers flow through they have work coming up.
Guest:You know higher ed we have so much foreign student demand and those institutions are constantly growing and they're seeing good growth. The one that I'm not I don't have a good pulse on because I'm not in the market as a residential, but I still see condos being built. Now, with the rental housing laws that are being passed and removing of GST, I think that's still going to be strong because of demand.
Christian Hamm:Yeah, I mean that's the whole thing. I mean that could be one of the hottest sectors, right. Yeah. Low income or social or whatever. So I don't know.
Guest:And what's keeping Turner busy is we're doing a ton of EV work now, including machine critical data center type work, because as AI computing needs are growing, so is the cloud computing side of that, and we're seeing a lot more data center projects and EV projects in the US at least. Yeah.
Christian Hamm:Does that touch that's in the US? I mean, is there networks of things here in BC that you're touching as well?
Guest:Not in BC as much, because of the seismic zone. Ontario has quite a bit more, but not in BC yet no.
James Faulkner:What do you think about the I'm going to? This would all be a guess for us. I mean, indications are saying not the media, by the way, but the people who are doing it what they're talking about. They're saying interest rates are probably continuing to go up.
Guest:Yeah.
James Faulkner:You know, could we see the eight, nine percent situation you?
Guest:know what's funny you ever want to hear. Interest are going down. Talk to Realtor, every Realtor. I've owned in my life oh don't worry. Next year they're going to go down a percent. I'm like where do you get this data from?
James Faulkner:Yeah, they get it from the yeah, I want to sell more houses.
Christian Hamm:They are the eternal optimists of the world right.
James Faulkner:Yeah, exactly Like just that yeah.
Guest:Oh, but then slowly there's less of them doing it. Well, I think it's like what you said. What is the end? I think the end is when we see economic slowdown. Right, the whole reason we're increasing interest rates are we're like, hey, we need things to slow down so things can come down in pricing and costs, so that it balance shifts. It doesn't do that, but it's not doing it.
James Faulkner:No, because you know, if it costs more to do business, prices of products have to go up. It's not simple, because otherwise companies can't be profitable. So you end up with, as I said earlier, $6.50 for four potatoes.
Guest:But when does it drop? When demand slows down, right, right, but I don't know, but then you have.
James Faulkner:We're getting into the weeds here, but then you have, you know, inter-international monetary struggles that are going on. So it you know, and you know, with the internet and the fact that information and money can flow all the place, very I mean, it's very complicated. It's not like we've been in this before.
Guest:Yeah.
Christian Hamm:You're right. What's so strange and again like the risk of getting into like a completely polarized political conversation, but just general sentiment about like we don't even know what's real anymore, like in the sense of you can't even say, oh, like in 2008, there was a recession, like it actually happened, right, and oh, and guess what? Before that there was another recession that actually happened because of certain things cycles, whatever, bubbles, whatever it happens to be but for some reason it's like there's no admitting it. There's no admitting it, yeah, there's no admitting that this is going to happen and this should be a matter that we're in it or that it's looming or whatever.
Guest:The wording is. You know what it is? It's exactly what you said. Anytime we even see a sniffle come along, we're going to try to be like oh no, we're not sick, we're going to suppress it, suppress it. Suppress it Sure. Yeah, print more money, you know. Make more work. Exactly, it's going to come to a day where it's going to catch up, Like anything that goes up has to go down. There's going to be the cyclical, for a reason, right?
James Faulkner:Yes, Vancouver is a weird place though. It is, you have to admit, because it is after going to other places and traveling that you're in Europe over the summer. I mean it's Vancouver when you come back. It's so weird when you, even when I was in Toronto, was there for a week, I landed in YVR. I'm like, oh yeah, I live here. You know what I mean. Imagine the people who just saw this for the first time. They must be like what is going on here.
James Faulkner:You know what I mean. It's such a special jewel that real estate wise. Yeah, we might go through a little, and the interest rate's the only thing, and actually per square foot is still going up. Well, for downtown anyway, it's surprising.
Christian Hamm:I mean there's something to be said of like we're consistently on the top five desirable places and best places and most livable places to live lists in the world. So that means that international influx of attention or money or whatever is naturally just going to come here. So even 2008 was like a blip for Vancouver.
Guest:We had the.
Christian Hamm:Olympic kind of shelter too.
Guest:We did.
Christian Hamm:Yes, we did yes, and I wonder where we are on the happiness scale.
James Faulkner:What do you think Like are people happy content?
Guest:Were you guys both from here, yeah, oh no, he's from England.
Christian Hamm:Okay, well, but I was 10. Come on, james, but yes, I'm a Surrey boy.
Guest:The reason I ask is, like, as a Vancouverite, I always say, yeah, we're different, we're special. But are we really like? Are we just waiting for something? Is our time of reckoning worse Because we've been so suppressed for so long?
James Faulkner:I think from a topographical point of view we are yeah Mountains 100% Ocean and we're sheltered from natural disasters, somewhat minus this earthquake.
Guest:This is amazing yeah.
James Faulkner:To look down and see downtown. Stanley Park the bridges, beaches, the pools from Second Beach, like the summer shots. They're like where is this? Yeah, You're right.
Christian Hamm:But we're also like because it's a good point, like I am from here, right. You guys came from places that have history that goes way deeper than the Pacific Northwest does. Yeah. Right In terms of modern society and culture and stuff like that.
James Faulkner:You were born Eastman. Yeah, oh, you were born Eastman.
Guest:Yeah, my parents migrated in 1978, but I was born here, you were born here.
Christian Hamm:Okay, so they were born and raised here then, yeah, okay, okay so that's why I'm like I agree with you guys are what you're saying.
Guest:It's like, okay, all of a sudden the Hong Kong thing happened and we missed a major crisis. And now that we had the Olympics in 2000, it missed a major crisis. Now we have all this foreign investment, we're missing a major crisis, but at some point it just like from growing up here and what houses used to cost to now seeing my kids and how are they going to afford. Something is going to change. The culture has to change because regularly people cannot live here.
James Faulkner:Well, here's something that I just I struggled with and then I just accepted the other days is that how we don't actually care about millionaires anymore, it's billionaires? So that's, why it's going to be $10,000 a square foot.
Guest:Yeah.
James Faulkner:It just will and we just. It's the mindset of billion, a million to billion. It's just going to happen over the next 10 years because people want to go to these best places.
Guest:What about us regular people? Where are we going?
James Faulkner:It's going it will be out. Yeah. That's just it I think it's a Manhattan situation. It's a central park Manhattan situation. It's going to be the elites and everything's going to be pushed to the outskirts. Is that simple, I think you're right, it can't not be. Look at the stuff that's going on Alburni Street and the rest are Georgia. Yeah.
James Faulkner:This is all like that Kingswood project that. I think you had a client's Kingswood right, yeah. Well, the one they're doing with Boza, oh yeah yeah, that's $3,500 a square foot. It's a nice building, too Beautiful, but I'm just still saying like I'm not buying that, you're not buying that. But who's going to? Build these things, then Boza's building.
Christian Hamm:I know what you're saying I know, I know, I'm totally with you.
James Faulkner:Yeah, because, we're, yeah because put the gap between the haves and haves and odds is just getting bigger. Yeah. So I mean that I got the same nervous feeling you feel.
Guest:The reason I say that is I talked to some clients that come to me as Turner and say well, you have so many people from the US, bring them. I'm like, first of all, the US dollar is much better than the Canadian dollar. Where am I going to put these people? And then you got to pay double tax when you bring them here. So no, it doesn't work that way. You don't just bring Americans across to build something in.
James Faulkner:Canada.
Guest:I don't know what people think, just because Turner's, there's some clients who have said this to me, like you should chase this job because you could bring Americans over, and it doesn't work that way. No not easily.
Christian Hamm:That is a really, and we don't have to go deep down on this one. But the question of who will build, it I love it. Yeah, Because it's literally. I don't think people understand just in terms of the pressures on anyone below a certain income level might not be able to afford to live close to where a project is being built, like to be able to even travel there.
James Faulkner:Well, I think, get there Some of the things that were well done in. I don't know it could have been done at a better scale. So Concord Pacific, for instance, they had to have mixed income buildings in order to have that many buildings within that area.
Guest:And that's one area in Vancouver or the Brentwood one.
James Faulkner:No here show Yaltown Marina side. So there's buildings there that are pretty innocuous in terms of that one's lower income, that one's regular like you can't really tell Little bit, tell about how nice the balconies are in the emissions but, and how many pots are on the and Chochka's on the balconies.
James Faulkner:But it's interesting that that was kind of done well and you and I always had this idea of how the government could get involved with construction companies and developers in order to provide tax incentives really great things for the people who built something. So I don't know if that's gonna really defend against 35 hundred bucks a square foot, but I think it will can level set a little bit to give people an advantage to move into construction. So there is the people who built this can afford to have more. But you come down to profitability and what people are trying to achieve. I mean Turner has to make money, the field worker has to be able to afford to even get to the job site to be able to feed. But there's still, I think, in construction that you people make pretty good money compared to other industries. Right, definitely we do so I mean. So what is like starting a wage like general labor site cleanup?
Guest:I would say they probably make 60, 65,000 a year.
James Faulkner:Okay, so okay, Like what do you make a Walmart?
Christian Hamm:Well, okay, so that also just goes to you know what I mean. To say like that almost answers a bit of the question of who's gonna build it is well then, maybe just wages, just go through the roof for everyone that's in the construction.
James Faulkner:And that's where the million to billion happens. Right, Because everything just does this.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's basically the dollar. You're just defining inflation right now.
Christian Hamm:Yes, exactly, I was just gonna say it takes you what a dollar is worth, exactly, exactly, so you keep printing money and the million turns into a billion.
Guest:Like I've always, and maybe this is not a popular thing to say, but why not just slow down?
James Faulkner:Yeah because the rest of the world's on it.
Christian Hamm:But that's a societal thing too, is we don't want to, we're almost afraid of.
James Faulkner:We can't, we don't know how to. Humans don't know how to do it, Even in life.
Christian Hamm:yeah, you can't get home and not pull out your phone, like people are terrified of having silent time and like non-distracted time. Yeah, it's true and that permeates through. People run businesses, people run. You know, it's all about growth, it's all about growth, it's all about the next.
James Faulkner:And this thing is like this phone I'm holding up here is the. It's just the answers to everyone's dysfunction, like you'll notice if you go, if you go into the elevator with one person and the elevator ride with any one other person is just typically uncomfortable, cause you don't know them, you don't know if they're a threat, you don't know whatever, right? Yeah, yep, I'm not saying that everyone's a threat, but you get this kind of feeling in your mind. It's the unknown of being close to someone else that you don't know who they are, and everyone does this.
Guest:Always yeah.
James Faulkner:Or, and I've actually watched it is this, okay, my floor? And they didn't actually look at anything. They just scrolled through the icons Cause. If I ask hey, how are?
Christian Hamm:you. Oh my goodness, this might lead to more than a one word response yeah yeah, I don't know this person.
Guest:Why should I talk to them? Right? That's what society is becoming.
Christian Hamm:Yeah, I mean that's a good place to when you said why not just slow down?
Guest:Yeah. But I know it's not a pop anything. So what is? So what are the?
James Faulkner:factors of slowing down. So slowing down in which way, like we don't need to grow as much, we don't need to build as much, yeah.
Guest:I think, yeah, why not reduce infrastructure spending? Why not reduce? Why not look at you know where we spend government money and actually reduce that? So we tax less that we need, like all of it, just slow it down, right.
James Faulkner:I'm, yeah, I'm all over your program.
Guest:Yeah.
James Faulkner:However, you know we have an we have an industry of jobs around those things. We slow that down. People lose their jobs in government. We've got more government oversight and jobs we don't need than ever.
Guest:Yeah.
James Faulkner:Right. So yeah, we're just in a sticky place, yeah.
Guest:We, as society, need to look forward and say, okay, technology is changing you know, AI is changing. Everything's changing. Where should we be focusing our intellectual prowess? You know what kind of work is out there, and sometimes we do make work projects and we need infrastructure spending to create jobs, but there's other things to do when it comes to retraining and repurposing people's ability to help society and make money.
Christian Hamm:Yeah, I mean, that's a solving big world problems, right. And you start to unpack that you know. You say smaller government. Well, you know, those people got to be moved somewhere. But what is meaningful? Yeah, work on meaningful things. It's a lot to unpack in there, not to say that any of that is wrong, yeah. Or thinking that we shouldn't be pursuing a little bit.
James Faulkner:Yeah, I think we should definitely try and to make people's general life happier, don't you think? That's yeah.
Guest:Oh yeah.
James Faulkner:It just seems like everyone's just on this, like everything's. Even when I drive downtown, I go. Whoever thought all of this was functional? You know, you've seen those ads.
Christian Hamm:I know every time I drive into town.
James Faulkner:Yeah, you've seen those ads for those games where you try and get the thing to flow and it breaks and oh you can't you know those puzzles? Yeah. No one was doing that for the city at all, like it was like, yeah, it's broken, broken, broken, broken. Next stage, next stage I can't comment about the bike lanes.
Guest:I'm not touching that one, but I know what you're saying. I totally agree.
James Faulkner:Well, it's just, but the thing is that what it does do is is that we're in a city where, for most of the time, it's uncomfortable to ride a bike because it's raining. Yep.
James Faulkner:And then only some people wanna ride a bike. It's gonna completely crush our fashion, that's for sure. Cause no one wants to wear nice clothes. I know it's very sorry by every nuanced comment, but on top of that, just in terms of the environmental impact, if people did all bike, the people, the trucks that are still delivering everything, the cars that do have to come into town, those are sitting idle way longer because of the congestion that's been made from bike lanes. So it's like antithetical to the entire point.
Guest:Yeah, and maybe you flow it through a certain lane versus everywhere right. Like you know what you're right about the planning part of it like. I'm not an urban planner, so I could be totally wrong.
James Faulkner:I don't know, yeah, wouldn't be in your best interest or anything anyway, but I will say it, but it's just on top of it. The last piece of that is is it affects people's mental health, mental happiness. It's like I'm sitting there PO'd the whole time. Yeah.
James Faulkner:And going. Oh, I'm just so angry. And then we got EVO cars everywhere that people don't know how to drive and it's like, and Ubers that are stopping in the middle of the road to pick people up. They're like. There's no oversight for training an Uber driver in Vancouver. I know, this is not construction.
Christian Hamm:Well, I mean urban planning is part of it In terms of where the question was where is Vancouver going?
James Faulkner:I think we got a lot of thinking to do.
Christian Hamm:Yeah for sure. Sounds like we need to do a round two on a tour. I really enjoy this. No, seriously.
James Faulkner:All the little pushback pieces like I think I love the conversation Cause it's yeah, it gets the wheels turning.
Christian Hamm:But it's, we do it all the time. We you know, this was a fantastic conversation and then we come back and we do a circle, back in three or six months or something like that and catch up on where Turner's at, and then we can also discuss are we in a recession yet? Yeah, you know.
James Faulkner:Were we admitted. Were we here yet? Yeah, were we totally wrong.
Christian Hamm:But we're not gonna let you off the hook cause we're gonna go through our rapid fire round of questions Did you? Are you okay with the first question?
Guest:I'm fine with it. I don't know how I'm gonna answer it still, so I'm gonna wing it.
Christian Hamm:But Okay, well, let's try and break it down to not be so daunting. But I mean, what is something that you do, okay, that is unique to you, that is maybe insane to others, that's just different than what people do in there Maybe daily routine but what is something you do that others would think is insane?
Guest:I watch a lot of reality TV.
Speaker 4:I was thinking of something, oh okay, what's the one thing that you?
Guest:don't want people to know about you that you probably will share, but yeah.
James Faulkner:Selling sunset. What's your guilty point? All of it Like honestly, like Selling sunset's my favorite.
Christian Hamm:What is that?
Guest:The trashier, the more like.
Christian Hamm:Are you a Kardashians guy?
Guest:Yeah, I was a Kardashians guy Not anymore. It's too many seasons, but like Too much K. Yeah, I guess maybe when your drama is so much at work, that comedic drama makes your life feel better.
James Faulkner:So what's your favorite reality show then?
Guest:I like the Real Housewives of Anything basically Like. If it's a Real Housewives show, I like it.
James Faulkner:I knew a couple of.
Guest:Vancouver women. Oh, did you know? Yeah, watch those. There were two seasons of those that I've been Interesting.
Christian Hamm:It was there a particular city or location that was the best one, or is there the one that's the most beautiful? Orange County is pretty interesting.
Guest:Orange County is, I think, new Jersey's funny.
Christian Hamm:Oh.
Guest:New.
James Faulkner:Jersey.
Guest:Atlanta's funny. My sister lives in Atlanta, so I always liked the Atlanta one yeah.
Christian Hamm:Oh and still goes, these things still go yeah, oh man yeah. All right, good one. Take it from the reality expert over here. Oh, that's a great answer. No one's ever answered like that. Perfect, you nailed it, I made fun of it, I knew it. What is if you weren't in construction? Okay, if you weren't doing what you're doing right now, what would you be?
Guest:doing. It's funny. We did an icebreaker as a team about this question and I would I'd be a teacher. Yeah. It's funny I always make fun of, like a lot of my friends did different things in university and then said oh shucks, I can't get a job, so I'm gonna be a teacher. But now, when I live, reflect back, I actually love teaching kids things, and maybe it's because I have two young kids now, but I would have been a teacher.
Christian Hamm:Well doing what you do as well. There's a lot of education involved in mentoring and leading and everything that you're doing, so it kind of probably is a natural fit to all your experience. For sure, that's cool, All right. Last question Instruction podcast. What is your favorite or most memorable story from the job sites or past project?
Guest:Oh, you know, usually you have a client that gives you a scheduled date and doesn't really have a reason why. But my last project was Teles Garden. We were building that office space and our deadline was tied to Sarah McLaughlin singing at the opening, and so I remember that it was it actually made me want to meet the date more, knowing that there was something tangible that couldn't move out of it so Nice that's cool, so she didn't need steel toe boots to get in there.
Guest:No, we had, yeah, wait to get it done. It was done, done. It was done, done. All right, nice, nice. So we made it, so it was nice.
James Faulkner:She's like oh, these polished floors are amazing.
Guest:I hope she said that Did you get to go? No, what? But? But that's a bit of a, that's a bit of a blow?
Christian Hamm:Did you get a t-shirt? Did you get like, what is her thing? I got the pride of knowing she got to sing for Tellus, but that's about it. You're like yay. Well, that's also awesome. We've never had any answer like that before. That's fantastic. I mean, like this was. I know it's a long time coming and, like I said, lots of people speak very highly of you in the city and clearly what you're doing with Turner is incredible and we appreciate you coming.
Guest:Yeah, I don't think you're having me. This was really fun. I'd do it again. I hope you guys are easy to talk to.
Christian Hamm:We will do this again Likewise. Thanks a million, you're welcome.
James Faulkner:Well, that does it for another episode of the Site Visit. Thank you for listening. Be sure to stay connected with us by following our social accounts on Instagram and YouTube. You can also sign up for a monthly newsletter at sitemaxsystemscom slash the Site Visit, where you'll get industry insights, pro tips and everything you need to know about the Site Visit podcast and Site Max, the job site and construction management tool of choice for thousands of contractors in North America and beyond. Site Max is also the engine that powers this podcast. All right, let's get back to building. That's amazing.