INTERVIEW

JAMES: All right, all right, all right. Another beautiful Friday here with the ConTechCrew. As we record this, it is Friday, August 14th, 2020. It has been a year! We are eight months through it folks. We might actually complete 2020 in one piece. And we got with us, my brother from another mother, Mr. Jeff Sample, coming live from the mountains of Colorado. What is going on Jeffrey?  

JEFF: Well, we are going to call them the smoky mountains of Colorado here right now, unfortunately. Got a big wildfire, just West of here a little bit. Unfortunately, it is currently the nation’s top priority fire. So, it got I 70 shut down right through the center of Glenwood Canyon, which is a tough one from a supply chain perspective. So, if you want to bring things back to construction, we can talk supply chain, man. That is what it is all about there.  

JAMES: Cool. 

JEFF: You know, but hey look, it is 2020. What have we learned throughout this year? We going to make the best of what we have got. I am making the best of it. I am hitting my Peloton. I am joining my friends online. We got Boris here. I am stoked, man! 

JAMES: And of course, Jeff, what we have learned is it is 2020. It is the year of Murphy’s law. So, what can go wrong will go wrong. Whatever happened to the death, was it the death hornets?  

JEFF: The killer hornets or something? 

JAMES: The murder hornets. Whatever happened to that?  

JEFF: Oh, that is still a thing, man. In fact, if you walk by anybody and you say anything around here, it is like, murder horn, it is fire, whatever, it is 2020, I can handle anything.  

JAMES: Yeah.  

JAMES: I think we got to look at positive. It is what we have always done with the crew here. We are looking at an industry that has a lot in front of it to innovate. We look at the world this way, we are making a resilient country. We are going through a lot of things where we are figuring out that you can smile, grit it down a little bit, and get through it. So, 2021 in my opinion is going to be the new year. We got to come up with a cool name for it, but I am just looking forward to making it through a couple of more months, buddy.  

JAMES: I agree too. So, and also with us from beautiful Montreal Quebec, the heart of the French population in Canada. 

BORIS: Yeah. Wow. Was that you? 

JAMES: Yeah. 

BORIS: That was pretty good. That was an interesting way of saying, in French right, so, I mean, it is good to be here guys from Montreal. Beautiful up here. 28 degrees, we do not have the smoke or anything that you guys have out in Denver, but it definitely is a beautiful day. We have full sunshine today. 

JAMES: Nice. And that is Boris Germanov with us. He is of course with Civalgo and we are going to have a good chat with him about all things, Quebec and Canadian. We are going to talk about poutine and his love for fries with fatty cheese on them and gravy. We are going to talk about the Canadian and particularly the Quebecois, leaning of cussing every three words. It is funny. All of my Quebecois clients on SmartBid, you know, you had to prepare for the stream of cuss words. They just love him there. And of course, I grew up in Louisiana, which is the Quebec of the United States. They may make you learn French and such, so, all kinds of fun there. So, we will have a good chat about that. But not just yet.  

Not just yet, because I wanted you to remember that you can never, never miss an opportunity to have the episode sent straight to your email inbox. Just text ConTech to 66866. It is not just the audio. You are getting the weekly email, the links to the show notes, the articles we discuss. Again, text ConTech to 66866. And if you have a question, comment, or suggestion, make sure to get in touch with the crew. You can text me on the google voice line, by texting (979) 473-9040 with any questions for the guests or the crew. Leave us a message, we might play it on the show. You can actually call it and just leave a voicemail. And if it is funny or interesting, I will actually play it on the air. We get a lot of texts, regularly. We did have a really phenomenal all crew episode, a couple of episodes ago. And we got a boatload of questions for that one. We are going to have another one of those. We are going to do this every month. End of every month we are going to have this. So, you can, if you want to save your questions out for the crew for then, feel free to, and we will have all kinds of fun on that one. All good.  

Before we get started, I want to remind you of the cause of the show. According to the CDC construction occupations have the highest rate of suicide, as well as the highest number of suicides across all occupational groups. To combat these stats, contractors, unions, associations, industry service providers, and project owners must work together to stand up for suicide prevention. The Construction Industry Alliance for Suicide Prevention is raising awareness about the risk of suicide within the construction industry. And providing suicide prevention, resources, and tools to create a zero-suicide industry. Visits PreventConstructionSuicide.com for more information. Before we start our interview, I spoke with David Francis. He is the Chief Technology Officer of ICT Tracker on how they are using augmented reality for real-time progress tracking. So, it is interesting because augmented reality is viewed by many as a toy. Of course, the reality is, if it is used in proper capacity, it is a real tool that can deliver return. And so, you will hear David and I talk about this in our first segment from the show sponsor ICT Tracker, which we are going to play right now. 

INTERVIEW START 

JAMES: And we are here today with our illustrious friend, David Francis, the CTO over at ICT Tracker. I am just curious, tell me the origins of ICT Tracker and what problem you all set out to solve.  

DAVID: So, this started as just a conversation with my co-founding partner, Tim Duncan and I. We were discussing technology and he wanted to do something with AR. He was just feeling, it was the future. We started talking about it some more and we said, what if we could use it to verify installation and assign installation status? So, the fact that you could look up, verify, it is there from an augmented reality view, but now we can change the status of it. And that’s really what kind of kicked this whole thing off two years ago.  

JAMES: So, what are the advantages of using AR to track percent complete in production?  

DAVID: The advantage we have over the other solutions you see out there is the fact that we are already starting with the data. We can also allow the user; they allow the verification elements in the model. So, they actually see what is in place and verify the installation at that point. And you have the user input. So, if I have conduit, I can have someone identify yes, the wire has been pulled into conduit. Plus, we are the only AR app that also allows the user to do what we call free flight modes. So, you can actually do a flyover in a 3D.  

JAMES: Yeah, so it really turns into a mobile model viewer at that point. 

DAVID: Exactly. So, we kind of give you the best of both worlds. 

INTERVIEW END 

JAMES: And we are back. And it is time for our interview with our special guest, Boris Germanov from Civalgo. Boris. Again, it is so good to have you on the show. So good to see you. Glad to hear things are doing well up there in the wintery Northern wilds. Of course, not so wintery right now. This is the nice time of year to be up in Canada. I just got back from the summer studio up there in Michigan. I went from 62-degree mornings to 92-degree mornings and went to a lot more humidity. I know you are enjoying things up there in Montreal. How are things going with business? Let us just talk about business in general, up there in Quebec. 

BORIS: Well, actually, to be honest with you, from a business perspective, I think this COVID put quite a bit of a dent actually to businesses, out here. But I think people are rallying and people are resilient. So, we just get out there, we do our business and, things are looking forward and looking up. It is nothing special, I think. The Canadians and Quebecois people here, they are just as resilient as any other country dealing with this pandemic, I think. It has been a challenge for a lot of small businesses, and I think we are going to see the real deal in 2021. I think that we are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes down to businesses, small businesses going down or closing, or things like that. I think it is going to be really coming up in 2021 that we will see the real repercussions of what we have been going through, but from a tech perspective and tech businesses, I would say that it has been a great time. Technology businesses have been doing pretty good in my opinion. 

JAMES: Yeah, sure. Cause people have had to go digital, and they now have a mandate to go paperless in a lot of cases. And so, there are some really interesting repercussions there. I agree with you that right now, people are still working on backlogs and things that have been approved. And the reality is if you look at Los Angeles permitting right now, it is way down, new permits are way down. So, there is going to be a reckoning next year when the backlogs are done getting worked off and we have to got to make sure that we prepare ourselves. But certainly, one of the ways that construction companies can prep themselves for a downturn is by driving a lot of efficiency in their operations and really getting their ops in order. And there are a few ways to do that. But certainly, software is one of the big ways to drive efficiency. Before we jump into that subject and talk about Civalgo, I really want to talk about you and your background. 

BORIS: Yeah. 

JAMES: You have got an interesting background. Like many people in Canada I meet, you are not from Canada. That is like, when you go to Miami, you always ask people, where are you from? Because they are probably not from Miami. And it is the same thing with Canada because you have a pretty large population of folks who have immigrated. That is also your family. My grandmother immigrated. But your parents directly immigrated with you. And so, let us talk about like, where are you born in raised, what did you study, what did you picture yourself doing when you grew up? You got to study in Canada for college, but before that, where did you grow up, where were you born and raised, what would you envision yourself doing and how would you wind up here? 

BORIS: Yeah. So, this is an interesting question. This goes back to my youth and it is always nice to talk about it a little bit where you are coming from and where are you going. I grew up in Bulgaria in a small town called Plovdiv. And it is really about two hours from Sophia (which is the Capitol) and then, in 1994, my parents immigrated down to Montreal. My dad and my mom, they are both doctors. Basically, my dad is a surgeon dentist and my mom is in a biomedical field. And they immigrated down here in Montreal and then from there, it is a complete change of culture. If you look at Eastern Europe, and how you were educated when you come down to Canada it was a true challenge. I did not speak a word of French or English in that matter. Did not speak a word of any other language besides a Bulgarian or Russian at that time.  

So, it has been a very big cultural change when you come to a new country and you have to basically make new friends, make new acquaintances, try to learn the language, and then try to go somewhere with that. It is your culture and what you have lived for the first 14 years of your life, then trying to adapt to a new way of doing things, new way of thinking. It is not always easy, but I kind of, went through that challenge and then started studying, and to be honest with you, my mom and dad, they wanted me to look at becoming a doctor, cause our whole family was doctors. Back home as well. My grandfather and everybody else were doctors as well. So, I am like the black sheep of the family if you wish. Kind of decided that, I started playing with computers as soon as we arrive here in Montreal. I had the first computer, Tandy SX. I still remember it, that my dad purchased from me. So, I started programming, at that age, playing around and trying to figure out how things work.  

And then after that, I kind of went to, thinking about, what else can I do? And I am like, I just stuck with computer science and technology and all of that. And I started doing software programming and got myself a little technical degree first. And then decided to kind of get into a more into the bachelor. And then at the end of the day, it was really about, I like building stuff. I like putting things together, finding solutions to problems, that kind of stuff. So, it was an enjoyable moment I would say. And from there I always had the entrepreneurial vein and me too. I really liked starting stuff from nothing and building them up. And I think all of that ties together. So, that’s kind of my path if you wish, to where I started. And then, kind of studied school, I was doing computer science and software engineering and that is, that’s kind of how my whole story started if you wish. 

JAMES: Alright, so nerdy question. What was the first programming language you learned?  

BORIS: The Programming language that I learned was Cobol.  

JAMES: Yeah. Which is still used way more than anyone would like to admit.  

BORIS: Yes. Yeah. And I would tell you that, I would not go back to that though. 

JAMES: You know, it is funny. It has been a while since I cracked some code open. It really has. And I started writing code when I was 11 and in GW-Basic, and really got into GW-Basic programming and then got to know QBasic and Pascal, Fortran, Assembly, C, just jumped into all these different flavors. And Jeff, you will love this. Last week I was like, you know, I got to crack it back open. So, I installed VS Code on my Mac and installed all the node JS extensions. And, then I created a free Azure account for me personally just to tinker with it, so I would not mess with my corporate Azure instances and spun up a Node JS environment and wrote some node code. And, I had a lot of fun with it, man. I mean, it was so much easier to write code. It is so much easier to spend… Literally, it was like two lines of code and I spun up a web server, Jeff, and I was like, dude, this used to take me a week. And it is like one line of code create a web server. Oh my gosh. 

BORIS: Yeah, that is right.  

JAMES: Like what the heck? It is a different thing. But you are a really neat hybrid of someone who likes to build things. You spent years at Kiewit. From 2003 all the way through to 2018 when you were Director of Digital Transformation. 

BORIS: Yeah. 

JAMES: So, you like to make things. You like to build things. Like what was your favorite… Cause you had some interesting roles there. Systems Engineer, Director of Audit, Director of Continuous Improvement, then Director of Digital Transformation. What was your favorite part? I mean, Kiewit is a very progressive organization, very tech-forward. What was your favorite part? What was your favorite job or your favorite project at Kiewit? 

BORIS: Well, that is a good question. I actually, everything was my favorite, to be honest with you. Kiewit as a whole is an organization that I, I stayed there for a reason because Kiewit is a trainer. To be honest with you, you get into Kiewit, you have got to be open to learning new things. And they will put you at a place, they will put you in places that you would feel not comfortable at first. They will put you through things that other organizations will not put you in. They will give you the opportunities to accomplish what you want to learn and where you want to go. I think Kiewit as a whole, is a tremendous organization to learn, to understand and to really get, not only from a business side and operational side but also on the technology side, they provide you the ability to really grow into what you desire and what you… And there is really no limit to what you can accomplish with them in the sense from a perspective of personal, but also professional. And I got to give it to them. I mean, they have been, in my opinion, one of the best organizations from a training perspective. And, in my career when I started, I started really developing their Canadian payroll system. We started as MS-Dos, and Visual FoxPro Environment and things like that, that is old school and everything. 

So, from there I built the Canadian cost control systems, and things like that. So, there is a lot of things that they expose you to, but not only that, it was only the first couple of years. And then after that, they kind of put you into all sorts of other roles that kind of groom you through different aspects of a project life cycle. But, really the most interesting project, and I have done quite a few of them over the years, was the Owen Gas, a project that we are involved down in the Oil Sands in Alberta and there were some tremendous environments. I mean, building anything from scratch like that, that was basically an empty field when we arrived, and it was really amazing. So, that’s kind of where I stand. I mean, Kiewit like I said, is a great organization to kind of put you through school if you wish, but it is the actual school of life. And it is a real-world example. Well, this is not like something you learn in school. So I see construction managers, project managers coming off fresh out of school, but then you talk to them and you’re not making sense at all sometimes because you have not experienced what it is really about when you are out there and dealing with all those people. There are multiple stakeholders in that industry. So, I think that is important to understand and Kiewit, I think that is where I got to give it to them is like I said, it is the best training organization in my opinion. 

JAMES: Yeah. And they are one of the few construction organizations that have been able to successfully pull off a technology M & A strategy. Because they took Kiewit Tech and then bought InEight Inc, and then did some good things with it. And they took their CIO and made him in charge of the tech company. I mean, not a lot of companies would be willing to sacrifice their CIO and put him over in their tech company because he was a really good CIO at Kiewit. We have had him on the show. So, it is really fascinating. It is really good grooming for you. A couple of years ago you had a big change and you went to being Principal of Boris and Associates, then you also have, this TradesFactor and then VP of Strategic Development Civalgo. So, three things started within a year. What was the impetus for that? What happened?  

BORIS: Well, this is the beautiful part. I think at one point in time, you realized that there is a lot of stuff that you can accomplish and other things that you can do. And so, as I said, I am always a builder, always thinking about new ways of doing things. And, at one point in time, I wanted to start something new and I created Boris and Associates, which was actually starting in 2016, but really started executing in 2018. And Boris and Associates is basically an optimization company for construction companies in the infrastructure business. So really, it is anything to do with project management optimization. It is a consultancy company. And basically, what we do with Boris and Associates, we take construction companies and we will look at not only digitizing them, we are looking at their operational models. We look at how their processes work. We understand how they actually affect technology and how mature there are. 

And then we build a track record of their digital transformation on how they should interact on digital transformation in their business. So, it is really about business remodeling, understanding how the digital transformation will impact them, all of that stuff. And really try to transform them. Because there are so many companies out there, that are just digitizing themselves. That does not help them. I will tell you if you really truly want to start a change in a construction company, you got to look at how mature the company is, where they are at and really understand their business processes and understand how well are, they done. I mean, that is the key here. I can put tons of technology in the business and still not be efficient. So really, it is about business remodeling. So that is what Boris and Associate do.  

And from there, what I did is I kind of talked to a few of my colleagues and started TradesFactor with a Brady Bagwan, which was one of my ex-colleagues at Kiewit, and Michael Zanetti, who is our current CEO. And Civalgo is another guy from Kiewit, which, was an intern back then, called Alexander Champoux who is one of my partners at Civalgo. And we really started building these. And as you see, I have different places for different problems to different solutions. So, TradesFactor really takes care of labor shortages and reorganizes the new way of hiring skilled labor for the industry. And that company is in Florida. We are doing pretty well. It is still on the emphasis stage in the sense that it is a startup, but it has been pretty good. We have some really nice traction out there. And then Civalgo really is answering the second problem of the construction industry, which is productivity in the field and operational productivity. There are tons of solutions out there that deal with, project management that deal with trying to solve bits and pieces of the workflow or the end to end process for heavy civil contractors, but really, our Civalgo solution is about an end to end process for operational project management for the heavy civil industry. So that’s kind of how that things work. So, gives you a kind of an umbrella or an understanding of what Boris and Associate does and how it kind of tackles into my other startups.  

JAMES: Right. That is great. I mean, you took a big entrepreneurial leap. Jeff? 

JEFF: Yeah. I mean, if you sit back and listen to yourself when you listen to this episode, you are going to hear, I hope what I hear, and that’s just, you’ve since childhood, be comfortable being uncomfortable because you were thrown into it by your parents, with the big move and not speaking the languages and having to adapt and then going through life and then landing at a company like Kiewit, that sounds like once you get comfortable, they make you uncomfortable. And I think you are taking that to the trades. And we were talking before about this. Talk about some of your approaches. How have you managed to not only survive but obviously thrive through that un-comfortability? I mean, I think that is where we see a lot of construction companies or, and I do not want construction to feel singled out in this one. Every industry I have been in, some groups just fall over in that. And how did you, I am sure you probably did fall over, but how do you fall over, get back up, dust yourself off and keep going? What is the secret sauce for Boris?  

BORIS: To be honest with you, there are no secret sauce guys. I mean, it is pain, it is constant pain. It is constantly battling with your own mind, but the key here is always to surround yourself with the right people. There is not enough else to say. You cannot execute by yourself, nowhere in business, or anywhere you can execute by yourself. So, the key here and to any startup out there, my message is very simple. Surround yourself with better people than you and surround yourself with the actual people that will make your life easier, because you can have the best idea out there, but if you do not have the key people to execute with you and that have an understanding of where you want to go and how you do it, you might as well abandon right away. Because really the key here is people. People is what makes products, it is what makes things work. And if you do not have the right people, well you are not going to go anywhere.  

JEFF: I like that. One of my favorite statements is, if you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room. That is right. You need to get some more people around you. Personally, I’ve tried to do that over in my own career and tried to teach people that then too, I think like, there are so many people in the industry that hire for a fit or a culture or what they think they need. And it is like, no, sometimes you got to hire the smartest person and then let them do what they do. You know, Steve Jobs, that was one of my favorites from him was like, what do you want me to do? Hire smart people and tell them what to do? That does not work, hire smart people, and let them do what they do. And you know, it sounds like you have business partners from Kiewit and across the board, and I have to congratulate them for allowing people to grow. I just experienced this. There is this fear of training people and leveling them up. We were talking about it with a bunch of the construction dorks about like, they grow up and they leave. I educate them, I put all this money into them and then they leave. Kiewit’s obviously dealing with that. You have got two companies now where you are going to deal with that. What is your approach to that?  

BORIS: Well, it is actually a good question. I mean, my first and most answered that I will give you is that I always hire people to tell me what to do. If I have to hire people and I have to tell them what to do, they do not bring value to my business. And they do not bring any value whatsoever. If I have to tell you how to execute, that means, why did I hire you? And that is the key. Then the training, there is obviously training and mentality, and I’m going to give you the specific processes and things like that, that I want you to follow, but really the reality is, I want you to tell me what I am doing wrong, because that is what brings value to a business, to any business. And at the end of the day, how I am going to be dealing with the fact that the person changes and decides that after all of this training decides to leave, well, that happens.  

And maybe if I have done everything I could to train you properly, that means I have done a pretty good job because somebody else saw value in you. And I am really happy about that. At the end of the day, if I can be a training organization and I can actually help the industry with the people that I have trained and the people that actually believe in what I offer, good! But there are still going to be people that we will be able to train and to redo the same process in the same environment because that is what makes a company great, is how much you train and how much you give back to the industry. That is the main number one. And yeah, I would love to keep all people that I hire in the company of course. Who would not? But the reality of the market and the reality of everything around us, it is very simple. There is the man, and there is who pays more. 

JEFF: Well, and you are setting yourself upright, by creating a training environment. You have created an environment where people want to go and those that leave in that situation and you wish them well on their way, they are going to say, now go to work for Boris. It was the best thing I did for my career. It helped me grow and I loved the company, but I reached another one. I think there is this fear of that. And you are right. You are right, it is about creating a culture. It is about creating a process that works over and over and I think the statement is, well, what if I spend all this money and train them and they leave, I think that is the opposite. What if I do not train them and they stay? This is not good, but you hit on one more thing that I think leadership, because, obviously for me leadership in the industry is I think the key to the success is, having the ability to be humble enough to let other people teach you. That is a tough skill for folks. That is a tough skill to do what you said. To hire somebody, to tell you what to do. It is your name on the company. You are a founder. How do you handle that? And how would you suggest other people create that sort of humility around it?  

BORIS: So, to me, humility is one thing, but the reality is that when I hire people to tell me what to do is really because no human being on this earth, and I am telling you no human being on this earth can know everything. And therefore, if anybody does not know everything well, I definitely need people to tell me what to do. So, with that perspective in mind, you got to let yourself understand that there are people out there that are coming out of the new ranks that are coming out with new ideas, new technologies, and even though we want to stay on top and always be learning, there is somebody else that will always be able to teach you something. Sometimes some people are younger than me, that is 23 years old and know better stuff than me when it comes down to how to do things. Why would I not consider that? That is the key to actual innovation.  

And if you were able to do that, and you can step back and say, okay, maybe I am doing things right, but maybe there is somebody else out there that it has even a better idea than that. Why not just consult them? Why not integrate their top process? And maybe their top process is not complete, but maybe integrate some pieces of information. And I consider everybody. Nobody has something that I would not consider. Why? Because everything has something to be considered. No matter what the idea is. So that is kind of how I do it. I just basically go open-minded and just wait and understand where they are coming from, why they are telling me this, all of that. And it is, that is how you learn. That is the process of learning.  

JEFF: I think that is what you have really mastered over time is the ability to learn and the ability to adapt. And then, I do not know where, if it was Kiewit or school or what that gave you that really good ability to learn, and then incorporate other people’s ideas. That is a great skill. James? 

JAMES: Yeah. Bring it back to tech. So, let us talk about, Civalgo. Tell me what it does and let us talk about the guts of this. 

BORIS: Yeah, absolutely. I can talk to you a little bit about Civalgo. Civalgo is basically an operational productivity platform for field operations. So, what we noticed over time, is that the construction industry has all sorts of tech out there. You got products out there that do certain things. Inspections. The other guys have, some of the guys have plans. Plan viewers, 3d viewers, all of these things. Great. But the problem is, is when you are on an operational level, you do not want to be having to look at integrating multiple products. All of these guys that are in the field, they do not know, they do not understand, integrations and technology the way a software engineer will. They do not understand how these things would work.  

So why would we do that? Why would we have multiple will systems to do all sorts of things? No, Civalgo is about building an ecosystem, but inside the same system. It is an end to end process for operations from estimate to basic construction and to delivery. And really, and it is directed towards the heavy civil industry from small to medium-sized businesses in construction. And really this is a mid-market environment that a lot of the players out there do not consider right now. To be honest with you, everybody is talking about these products management systems that they would create, and these things that are out there, but the small to medium-size market, do not have the necessary cash sometimes to get themselves to $600,000 a year subscription to a product.  

JAMES: Yeah. 

BORIS: Do not have this amount of spend on technology. Do not have the IT maturity, or even the IT personal that we will be able to handle some of that stuff. So, when we talk about these businesses out there, that’s how Civalgo compares. Is, we decided to build a product that is actual an end to end process for construction, for the heavy civil market from 50 to 500. And the beautiful part is everything is coming from the field. From planning to scheduling to daily launch to the way that you do business, through intercompany collaborations with multiple stakeholders, all of that stuff is integrated into plan viewing and 3D visualization, all of that integrated into the same platform. So really, that is the main course of where we were answering the key here. We heard from the industry, but there is a lot of fatigue in the market because there are tons of solutions out there and people are just like, okay, well that answers one of my problems, but does not answer the rest. How am I really actually planning just with one product when that product does not have everything? 

JAMES: Yeah. And the small to midsize civil market is not one we talk about a lot, because there is not nearly as much activity in the tech sector for it either. You have a significant number of companies that do flatwork and asphalt and highway and local roads that are small to medium contractors all over the country. This is a big part of the construction and we spend a lot of time talking about commercials. Here and in general. But the small to medium civil market has been fairly historically underserved by the tech community. So, how is the response being? 

BORIS: Listen, the response been phenomenal. Since I arrived back in 2019 when my partner asked me to come and join the group, at Civalgo, we grew that company from basically last year to now, in a very short amount of time, I would say, from zero to basically $1.5 million in ARR, which is a tremendous feed if you look at that because, even though we are a small player right now, we have a tremendous team. And we are going to be making some, hopefully, some big impacts on the construction guys, in the construction companies out there that are underserved because really, at the end of the day, to be honest with you guys, my main thing and my main focus right now are how can I give back to the community of construction guys out there that are not being helped by anybody. And they are struggling. They are not meeting margins. They are not making money. And with this COVID deal, it is even worse now. So, we are there. We are trying to help them out by providing them with technology that is honestly on top of the food chain. The technology stack that we have and the way that we do things, without going into the details of what that is, it is by far something that currently on the market does not exist. 

JAMES: Awesome. Jeff, final question. 

JEFF: That is really slick. We got to jump, you know it is a tech show, right? We have got to jump forward. So, you have started two different businesses. So, you obviously are looking at the problems. Let us look at the tech. What tech in the future, and it does not have to be something you are going to apply at any of the companies you are at right now, that just gets your goat. You are going, we got to get that working and we got to get it like really working.  

BORIS: So, I will tell you, it is a twin modeling. It is basically anything to do with reality, a reality capture of the work environment, anything to do with basically being able to gather a real-time in my opinion is quantity tracking, real-time modeling basically. All of that stuff is where the future is about is, is how can we gather the necessary information either from sensor devices, either from drones, either from in an environment that I can process the data. Cause that is the problem right now. There is a lot of problems in the processing of data. It takes time. The information is not in real-time. To really create an environment of collaboration in multiple, intercompany environments between multiple stakeholders, but in real-time in a 3D environment, which it is currently not done. And not only that, you have now contract problems because a lot of the clients do not have these requirements written, the risk specification in their contracts, so there are multiple levels of why this is not currently working. But that is where I think the future is. The future is in real-time provisioning in an environment where you would have an environment of 3D creation. And the 3D environment and twin modeling of everything that you build. From the get-go. And that would accelerate planning, that would accelerate margins, that would accelerate everything, and your construction environment would be better. 

JEFF: Yeah, I think that is that end goal. And it would have, hey, look at, it would expedite payment too in the end.  

BORIS: Oh yeah absolutely 

JEFF: That is that goal, baby! Get that money passing faster. But based on facts and you are right. And I think the industry is headed there. We all want it there. We are techno-optimists. We want the world to digitize completely, but you know, you look at things what you are doing, the sensors that are out there, the laser scanning that we have, the robotics that is coming out, the passive ability to scan and capture information through IoT devices, etcetera. It is just going to take a little bit for us to ingest it all and especially, while we will travel through these new times. But I like your answer, man. I appreciate it. James? 

BORIS: Thank you. 

JAMES: Yeah. So, please hang with us for the news, because we have got some interesting news stories that Boris, I know you will enjoy chatting about. Before we continue, we do have to wrap this section. We are going to jump in the news, but just want to remind you, this is the JBKnowledge podcasts network. Do not forget. We have another podcast that is the InsureTech Geek. If you are in risk management, if you are a construction company, please listen to it. If you go to the IRMI Construction Risk Conference every year, you will enjoy that podcast. And we have our second part of our discussion, with the CTO of ICT Tracker. Mr. David Francis. We are going to hear from him right now.  

INTERVIEW START 

JAMES: And I am back with David Francis CTO over at ICT tracker. Is this really easy to use in the field? 

DAVID: Because I come from construction, it had to be easy to use. It had to be easy to implement. We use iPads. So, we kept it simple at that. We have a very friendly user interface. It is easy for you guys to collect field data. I mean, it is just really doing a virtual highlighter. That is really all they are doing. And so, we have eliminated the dirty paper. We have streamlined the whole front of installation tracking process. That was piece one to make it simple, to collect data, so that people start doing it again, and now let us take that data and really make it work. 

JAMES: What data is available through your reports and how are construction companies putting that data to work for them? 

DAVID: So, we take our data from the model and we pull it out and we pull our database and we tie it back to model. So, we are tracking status on every single element in your model. With that option, you can generate what we call a CSV report. You export a CSV report. And we worked with the teams to build a power BI report, so we have got standard power BI reports set up. And everyone has got their own little quirks on how they want it, so, we start with that. We work with them from that. We can also do visual status models. So, we can take that round trip back into Navis works. If you are a Revit user, we collect element ID, so you can bring it back into Revit for that. And then the other big piece we are working at by the end of this year is, we are trying to streamline that process even more, is we are going to a cloud-based reporting system. So, we are limiting this whole CSV export, and getting you a BI that’s actually cloud based. So, you will be able to look at it anywhere, anytime, anyhow. 

JAMES: Oh, so fully integrated cloud-based BI. 

DAVID: Exactly. We think that is really the future and just simplifies the whole process. You can still get the CSV reports if there’s other things you want to do or your export/import, but just the whole mantra is real time. We have a couple of customers that say they asked for reports and within 15 minutes they know what is going on at their job. 

JAMES: Yeah. 

DAVID: It used to take that long just to take it off on paper.  

JAMES: That is awesome. David, how can someone find out more information about ICT Tracker? 

DAVID: Our page is ICT.Tech and from there you can request a demo and we will get you set up and show you what we can do with your data and your information. 

JAMES: That is awesome. Well, thank you so much. It was great to have this conversation. I hope people go check it out at ICT.Tech. 

INTERVIEW END 

JAMES: And we are back for our news. It was a busy week. We have got some good shout outs to throw out to people who are doing innovative things in construction technology. Mr. Sample, what do you have this week?  

JEFF: Well, I am really excited. Cause we have had Dominic Daughtrey on. I have had the ability and the pleasure of meeting and rapping with him. And if any of you have ever met him, I just want to bottle part of his energy and sell it on the open market, cause the world would be a better place. But I was just coming across LinkedIn and I saw this Phoenix Innovation Lab, which is Dominic’s company. And they did a preview of their new Beam Bot and everything we are doing in the industry is about getting the information to the field and making it more functional. And basically, it is a natural language ability to ask and it is ingested, and I am not going to go into all of it, but it is ingested, all of the different training and resources available through Bluebeam, so that you can ask it questions to learn things on the fly. Have not we always said in training, James, it is not about giving me eight hours? It is about giving me what I need when I need it. So how do I do this? And boom, it gives you that, but then, just like with Dominic, he has to go further. He is actually integrated into what I think, if I am not mistaken, is the API behind Bluebeam and it is their studio API. I think it is called the prime API actually. So, he can commit functions from there. So, things that people want to do, like start studio sessions and invite people that take a bunch of clicks inside of Bluebeam.  

And not that it is even really that hard in Bluebeam, but again, it is all about simplicity. So, you can ask it to do certain things and do them for you and it will do them successfully. This is a great video. I know he is teasing out that he is got a PlanGrid bot, a Procore bot. I just imagine this Phoenix Innovation Lab becoming this access to your training. Access to getting things done. As Dominic’s always proven over the years, he just wants to get stuff done. And then it is fantastic. The only feedback I got for you out there Dominic is, is you are definitely one of those guys that we know is in modeling. Cause you are always typing in capital letters. So, stop screaming at me when you are typing! Now, that is just that good old inside joke there between those, anybody who is in Revit all the time has always got their caps lock on. So, we could see it. But I even, I also love technology that has a cool feel to it. So, he has put some really cool responses in there. Double exclamation points at the end of things because that is just his way. I mean, what do you think, James? This is pretty cool.  

JAMES: Yeah, it is. I get excited when you see experiments like this. Of course, the challenge, and this is a guy who has been writing code for 29 years is supporting all these things you build and then turning them into a supported scalable product. That should never stop you. The fear of having to build those should never stop you from building things like this. Cause what will probably happen is one of these will be of a large amount of interest to a particular committee. And so, my hope for him is that he can identify which one of these really has legs, but it is always exciting seeing work coming out of innovation labs. Of course, the big step is, can that work be built, deployed, scaled, at a production scale. And so that is really what my hope is, is that it is continued to be supported and scaled out because, anything connecting the dots is traditionally of a lot of value to people that are using technology, Bluebeam is probably the most popular. It is hard to tell because you have different ways of studying market share, but they are probably the most popular PDF tool. And so, anything that integrates and snaps in with that platform is going to have a pretty large user base to play with. 

JEFF: Yeah. And I would say, they were some of the beginners in this industry too. A lot of the first adopters that I have found of anything that really found success was in Bluebeam. And we owe a lot to them and Dominic was their Innovator of the year, last year, I believe at Bluebeam XCON. And so, it is natural to see him doing that, but I also like that he is playing in other areas and really transforming and pushing, and I am with you. I hope it scales. So. You know, to Dominick, let us know what you got going on out there, and look forward to seeing you again soon!  

Not to be outdone. I had to grab this one and I stole it from Jonathan Marsh. As Boris said, you surround yourself with smarter people. And I consider Jonathan Marsh to be a heck of a lot smarter than me. He shared this one this week. Researchers create a new model that aims to give robots humanlike perception of their physical environments. We are always watching MIT. We have to. If you are in technology and you are not paying attention to what they are doing at MIT, then you do not realize where we are going to be in say 5, 10 years from now. Because it is cutting edge, but this is really interesting because it is all about taking where we believe and where I believe and have been on stage for a long time, talking about the reality of robotics in our world for at least the next few years. And small appliances that do things to get stuff done. But this is really about, can we envision robot home helpers and other things doing Alexa like tasks, like go get me a coffee, go fetch me a coffee.  

And to achieve that, obviously no one’s thinking this is easy, but there are an ability and a need to model between 2D and 3d. 3d models allow us to do one thing, but 2d models allow us at least historically to pick things out like chairs and tables and people, and those are really hard to do in the 3D world. And they have been able to bring together a mapping mix here, to really combine the 3D abilities and the 2D abilities. And it is based on something we covered before James, which I always find fun when they do something that then they build on top of and that’s Kymera. And Kymera is an open-source library, that the team had developed and constructed a 3D geometric model of an environment. So, they can tell kind of what the likelihood that it is a chair, or a desk or a table, or a person. So, it is really taking what they have built and then meshing it into the real-time ability for a robot to analyze. Really start to operate in our environment. What do you think, man? I mean, this pretty cool! 

JAMES: Boris I would love your feedback on this. 

BORIS: Well, I mean, all of that stuff is, I would say it is great. My concern and I do not know if you guys hear me well, but my concern with this is, how long. How long before we get there. I like to dream about things and make things happen, but I always look it from an entrepreneurial side. All right, so, what it would take for us to be able to get there. You look at the market, you look at the limitations that there is, and when it comes down to regulations to things like that, should we write a brand new law or regulation about what it should do, how it should be doing it? What happens from a safety perspective? I mean, there are tons of things and categories that you got to be looking at and thinking about before we can put something like that in action.  

Even though honestly, I love this kind of stuff and I have some really nice ideas of applicability, but the end of the day is, how far. How far off and what are the metrics that we need to put in place to really put that in the forefront and really make it happen. Because the technology is here, but are we ready for it? And I go back to my main comment before where it was about the maturity of the industry and maturity of people, and maturity of how well we are ready to abide by what this technology is going to provide us. And that is, I think something not to forget, because even though the technology is nice and we dream about these things, when are we ready to get it and how we should be putting it in place? 

JEFF: Yeah. And, I have to stay with you there because I think a lot of what we love to see about MIT is about this possibility of it being, human robotics, etcetera, but what we end up finding, and it’s just like when we went to the moon originally, a lot of what we did, a lot of what came out of it that helped the world was ancillary. And I think the ancillary piece of this may actually end up being the ability for the 3D mesh and mapping to then allow people with AR goggles, etcetera, to know things that are going on a job site, etcetera. So, it would not be the robot necessarily walking around and doing that, but it would be one of the sensors that they invented or the Kymera programming and what they built there, to allow the digital twin to happen. Those kinds of things really happen in advanced sites. So, for me, that’s where it really took me is, they went into AR and I was thinking, they’re looking for your coffee mug and I’m thinking, man, it would be cool to have an AR Goggle that said, watch out, there is a truck coming. Like you did not see it coming. Or that could, using other sensors. Say someone is in a bad position right now, someone is in an unsafe position, etcetera, instead of having to find it the way we currently do with either after the fact or just a lucky catch. So, for me, there was a lot to it, and I dig it. James, anything before I jump. 

JAMES: No man. You are spot-on brother.  

JEFF: All right. Well, and this is so cool. And I grabbed this, and I apologize. I grabbed this off somebody on LinkedIn this morning. I know. I think actually, even the crew guys, shared it out, but USC launches a master’s degree in construction tech.  

JAMES: Hear, hear! 

JEFF: That is right. We have grown up something that did not exist before the ConTechCrew, a contact or a construction technologist, now has a master’s degree at a major university. That is incredible. And it is also for me, the predication that this is what we are going to see in the future, and this is what we are going to expect. I hate to do the, you know, we have got to wait until certain people age out or leave the business, but we really were not refilling them. I mean, I know there were programs across the country, James, that were trying to incorporate technology and trying to drive technology forward in the construction industry, but this is a master’s degree that really provides not only a focus on the engineering side of things and the building side of things but then the technology and the innovation and the entrepreneurship and the ability to look at and evaluate new technologies and be there. And we have talked about this. I have talked about this on stage a lot. I want you to get Computer science. I want you to get a data scientist out there. People who specialize in AI. Other things like that on your teams to help build you out. Well, now we are going to start giving people those tools before they get out of school. So, I do not want to belabor this one, but it is super cool to see this maturing in the industry and the industry and academia really grabbing ahold of it. 

BORIS: Yep.  

JAMES: Yeah. And Texas A & M among others have been hiring computer scientists to teach in their programs for some time now. I know Auburn has, A & M has there been quite a few programs that have been hiring computer scientists that come in and teach graduate-level classes and even some undergraduate classes. We have, I want to say three or four at last count at A & M Construction Science Program, but they have not pulled it together into a degree program, despite somebody there strongly advising them too! 

JEFF: I have no idea who that would be.  

JAMES: I do not know who that would be. I actually finished my five-year appointment with them. And so, I am not on faculty anymore at A & M, so I can even speak a little more objectively, although I am a bit of a fanatic. I love the program. They have had construction technology classes. It is really exciting. What is exciting about this becoming a degree plan is now it will be, become an option at a lot more schools because there is a lot of mimicking behavior between graduate programs. So, I think that will be really exciting. We need to move on to our next news story. Thank you for all those Jeff really appreciate it.  

My first one is actually about a company that started its life as a company with big, big technology innovation. And if you do not know its history, this company, and their origin date back to 1836, when they invented the first, the very first steel plow that could till American Midwest Prairie soil without clogging. And again, I want to remind you all that technology does not have to have a semiconductor to be technology. Technology can be anything. The wheel was technology. The axle was technology. There is a lot of things that are technology, the steel plow, that could plow without clogging, was a major innovation and that is John Deere. Again, origin dates back to 1836. And they have done some fascinating things recently and I have talked about extensively, one of their acquisitions was an artificial intelligence company that put camera sensors, and computers on a device that was towed behind a John Deere tractor, that would identify what was a weed and what needed herbicide. And it reduced herbicide utilization by 90% by using cameras and AI to say, hey, we do not need to spray, except on these things. It turns out only 10% of the things that this a trailer was dragged over, 10% of the plants it was dragged over, needed herbicide.  

And so, John Deere has been using machine learning, artificial intelligence and they have been making major acquisitions. And this is the latest announcement from them. They announced a new operating model to help integrate tech driven features. This is from Construction Dive. And again, these innovations are all focused around the onboard computers, sensors, enabled software, computer vision, and connectivity. So, we are seeing the same set of tools being bolted on to traditional heavy equipment, and of course, Boris, this is big because this really impacts heavy highway earthwork, your civil business in a big way, right? 

BORIS: Yeah. 

JAMES: So, the firm’s worksite technology. So that we are talking about grade control, payload, weighting, autonomous systems. And really, they are all moving. John Deere and all the other major players are moving towards fully autonomous systems. And they are getting there quickly because they are getting pressured by startups, like Built Robotics. Built took a ski attachment for a car, and then put it on top of a piece of heave equipment and said, hey, we are going to make this autonomous. And so, it has been really interesting seeing them integrate their production systems, their technology stack, their lifecycle solutions, and smash it all together. They are doing this internally, and they are doing it through acquisitions. And so, you are seeing them, I believe this is not insider information. I believe John Deere will continue to acquire machine learning, artificial intelligence, computer vision companies while making a lot of these innovations in their worksite technology internally. So, it is really exciting from a software developer, hardware enthusiast perspective. Boris, I know that you play in the civil space. You are very familiar with John Deere; this has got to be exciting news.  

BORIS: Oh, this is tremendous news. You will see that from John Deere, but also from all the major players out there, I think that they are doing the same thing as well from a Caterpillar standpoint or any of the other ones. You will see more and more of that and that is exactly the direction of where we are going to is. We are going to be able to connect all of these platforms from those major OEM systems directly into our sabbatical platform, so that would accelerate a lot of what we do. So, it is exciting news. It is beautiful to see. 

JAMES: Yeah. Yeah. And what is also neat for you because you specialize at Civalgo and working with the small to medium market of the civil space, is the data you are going to have access to through this, because John Deere and CAT are opening up a lot of this through APIs, so that providers like you can snap-in, and instead of people having to key in all this production data, you can literally read it off the machines. And that is an absolute game-changer when people… and not only do you not have to fill this out on a paper sheet, you do not have to fill it out at all. Because we are just going to snap into the machine.  

BORIS: That is exactly it. And it is exactly what we are doing. Actually, one of our modules inside of the system, is that we are planning to do is a complete IoT solution that integrated multiple other solutions out there, with all of their data. So, it will really combine multiple systems into one platform. And that is our goal, remember. To be able to really interact with the field properly.  

JAMES: Yeah.  

JEFF: James, to talk about not to predicate your next one, but I think the arms races that we are seeing across the board, just, it makes the end user win. I think something we always have to embrace, as capitalists and as entrepreneurs and as techno-optimist is, fight with one another. You all do it. Why? Cause in the end that I get really killer tech. So, it is super cool to say. 

JAMES: Now, you guys know that I served in the city council here, I was in politics for two terms, locally. I love politics, but what I say regularly, forget Republican, forget Democrat. I am a Capitalist. So, can we just form a Capitalist party? Cause that is the party I want to be in. Just let me be in Capitalism. Which honestly is fairly close to libertarians because it is like, Capitol is like, leave me alone. Do not tell me what to do with my personal life. And by the way, stay out of my pocketbook. And so, I am in the Capitalist party. And definitively, that is what you are seeing here.  

And it is a technology arms race, but between Caterpillar and John Deere and everybody else. Mind you, the Japanese heavy equipment companies, the Korean heavy equipment companies, the Chinese heavy equipment companies, Mahindra. This is a global technology arms race. At the end of the day, you are going to see agricultural production continuing to skyrocket. You are going to see things like herbicide usage plummeting, and you are going to see all kinds of other things that happen because all these companies are racing towards an automated future. Cause they just cannot find enough labor, and we have to keep driving field productivity up. So, not just in construction, but in agriculture. And you have to look at both of those together because all of these heavy equipment companies work for both construction and agriculture and the innovations. They share them.  

BORIS: Yeah. 

JAMES: Moving on to another technology arms race, and yes, you did preempt me a little bit, but I am okay with that Jeff. It is like a little Sample LAAB-up. I am going come and hell you up and stump slam dunk this one down.  

JEFF: Man, that is teamwork! 

JAMES: Exactly. It is teamwork. Teamwork makes the dream work and this case, the slam dunk to you are all you, is that following on the hills of StructionSite, and I am going to say that. Following on the heels of StructionSite, because StructionSite came out first on this. OpenSpace is launching an artificial intelligence-powered production tracking platform and object search. And here is the thing that I have not seen yet from some other players. Cause they kind of did a little one up here with the Object Search from 360-degree photos. And so, Production Tracking came out, and StructionSite about a month and a half, two months ago, OpenSpace, which has a brilliant solution. We had Jeevan Kalanithi from OpenSpace on the show. Great interview, go back and listen to it. They are doing progress tracking for framing and drywall. This is the same place the others started. Why? Because framing and drywall are the easiest to train a machine on identifying. Like good luck, good luck doing this. I mean, it is going to happen, but good luck doing this on electrical or on HVAC. Because that is substantially harder to train a machine to identify electrical progress, but tracking walls, I mean, try again. Framing and walls and drywall. That is a lot easier. So, they are using AI to determine how much each room has changed from one day to the next. And they visualize on no plan with a little heat map and quantities and percent complete. It is tied to the takeoff though, and that is really where they are setting themselves apart.  

Okay. And I want to give OpenSpace credit. They are setting themselves apart because they are integrating this to their takeoff, to determine overall project progress. And if you remember what we talked about with, the rest was production tracking. This is really percent complete, and there is a difference between production tracking and percent complete calculation because you have your percent complete calculation, you have to identify where you were supposed to be. And how many quantities there were supposed to be. And so that is really what they are doing. And, they have some other features. I am not going to dive through all of this. The other thing I really like is Object Search. It allows you to draw a boundary box around an object in a picture.  

And then OpenSpace, this is so cool, will search through the entire project catalog to identify other instances of that object in photos. So, you are not typing by name. You are literally opening a picture, selecting the object you want to search for, and then it shows you all the other photos with objects, similar to that object in the photo. So, it is a different way than the way SmartVid does tagging. This one’s neat, man. And I, Jeevan, if you are listening man, good on your brother! I want to remind you. OpenSpace just announced a 15.9 million series B Round led by Menlo Ventures. And so, they are dumping a lot of money into their platform and they are doing some serious stuff. This is, by the way, reported by our good buddy Shane Hedmond over at Construction Junkie. Shane, if you are listening, what up brother? I hope he is doing well. But look, OpenSpace is doing some cool stuff. Jeff, I know you have got something to say on this. 

JEFF: Well, I just think he is kind of funny because I know why they are doing that with the objects, cause it is like, where did I lose that lift? I mean like we are trying to solve like these monumental problems. And there is one that is like, where did I put that thing? Dang, it. 

JAMES: Dadgum it! 

JEFF: How many of these do I have? You need another lift and I do not have one. What do you mean I do not have one? I could see, I hope those guys are listening, cause you know, that means they are still listening in, but it is like, I had 12 mixers. How did I lose my mixers? Where are they? This is a really common problem that they have come up with a really high-tech solution for that I find a little bit funny, but I also, I have to say like, this is the arms race. This is what it is about. Everybody is going to try to one-up each other here. And I encourage that. I want them all to win, and all to push the industry forward so that we can do something with it. So great article, great technology, great arms race, and it is good to see.  

JAMES: Yeah. Awesome. Onward, Our last article. A big shout out to Tauhira Ali. The greatest! She is amazing. She has led the effort at One-Key for quite a while now. Milwaukee Tool has integrated One-Key, which is the largest network for object tracking in construction, just by the sheer number of devices tracked. They have embedded Bluetooth tracking and more devices than anybody I have seen, and they have gotten people to use it. And they have now integrated with Autodesk Construction cloud BIM 360, which allows people to share information between One-Key about all of the stuff they are managing and its location, with their asset tracking project management reporting. It is a really important integration. We talked about the importance of integration. And master records like projects and contacts can be imported directly into One-Key now.  

So, you do not have to re-key products and contacts. You can just import it directly into the One-Key, which it is not just a one-way integration. It is two way. And it keeps them synced. And then like users of Milwaukee’s new M12 Fuel Digital Torque Wrenches. You can actually upload torque reports directly from One-Key into BIM 360 docs. So, and that is a big deal. You are talking about, these are all reports you had to like manually write down and upload and submit, and now it is like automatic. You have to submit torque reports, right? You are required to do this. And so, there are some really interesting things they have done around this integration. Of course, this is just version one of the integration. Boris, I know that you got to geek out on integrations like this. You talked about integrations and the importance of connectivity. What are your thoughts on Milwaukee and its wonky program in general? 

BORIS: This is really exciting because Milwaukee is just one of many. I would say that the integration parts of any assets I would say is so important with any project. If you can correctly, correctly, and I mean, I put the emphasis on correctly do that, it would save us tons of time. Milwaukee is just one example of what they have done with that, but really it is the most important place when it does specifically in the commercial and residential, in building vertical construction, if you wish, when it comes to small tools and supplies or anything like that, to be able to track those up. And I think that what they have done is really amazing because if we can do that with every other item that we have, we are gaining definitely an advantage. And especially for everybody that is out there in the construction industry. I mean, to us, even in Civalgo, the number one rule is how can we integrate and embed everything into one, easy to use solution. And that is exactly what the type of solutions that will actually help the industry. 

JAMES: Yeah. Yeah. Jeff? 

JEFF: I have to hand it to Milwaukee again. And you know, it is by investing in people like Tauhira and our team, that are building things out and the rest of the team they have. We have had lots of Milwaukee folks on. Really forward-thinking, and this has to be V1. And I was just geeking out on it, thinking, imagine all the things tracking tools, that tract tools can then provide, right? This is a passive collective mechanism so that we can get more information. And now you have connected it to the model. You were talking digital twin before Boris, you know, digital twin is one thing, but just knowing the fluid activities of a job site, and we go back to Burcin talking way back when about the connected IoT environment and everybody talking to another and knowing where things are, these are the basis of it. And I think Milwaukee has taken a really measured yet innovative approach. So, hats off to all of them. Love V1, and I think, to Autodesk, you cannot forget, this has been 360 in the forge platform.  

And they are really maximizing on what they are doing and how they are doing it and how they are integrating. There have been some claims that they are not necessarily as innovative as they need to be, by those that shall no longer be named. However, I think they are. I think they are just innovating in other places, in other spaces. And you got to watch what everybody is up to and when Autodesk leads, we talk about the arms race yet again, you know, when they lead into integrating this, there are going to be others that are chasing behind and that is good for the industry. That is good for the data. That is good for what we all do. So, great article, great tool, and I kind of like to dive back into One-Key here soon. You know, I do not have enough Milwaukee tools myself. Plug, plug? 

JAMES: Yeah, I know. My whole garage is red and black, so, they sold me a long time ago. Well look, Boris, thank you for joining us today. I appreciate it. 

BORIS: Yeah, thank you very much, guys. It was really appreciated talking to you this morning. For sure.  

JAMES: And thank you out there in listener-land for tuning in to GeekOut out episode 231. Our interview with Boris Germanov from Civalgo. To read more of our news stories, learn more about apps, workflows, and hardware, subscribe to our newsletter at JBKnowledge.com or texts ConTech to 66866 Thanks to Jim Greenly, our Podcast Producer, Kara Dalton-Arro, our Creative Producer, Adéle Waldeck, our Transcriptionist. That is right! We do a full transcription of every show now online, and our add coordinator, Tish Thelen. To listen to this show, go to the show website at theConTechCrew.com. This is the ConTechCrew signing out until next time. Enjoy the ride, and geek out!