Hello, we're back for episode #11 of The Building With Brevin
Podcast and Back with the The Beginning duo, Brian and Steven.
So last week, dad or Mike and I talked about weatherization and
energy efficiency while Stephen was having a whole lot more fun
over in Europe versus working on the business.
So, Stephen, what What'd you get into over there?
Yeah, it was. It was an incredible trip.
My wife Sidney and I both went to Europe.
Yeah, I got to spend a long week over there.
Basically. We were there for a friend's
wedding in Paris and did a couple days in Paris, couple
days in London and a couple days in Amsterdam.
So really, really fun trip. Got to see all the sights and
eat a lot of food and drink a lot of drinks and all that good
stuff. So yeah, really really awesome
trip and just a lot of time to. Reflect on our business and
yeah, ready to come back and hit the ground running.
So and that's exactly what I did.
Got back and had a lot to clean up.
But yeah, thanks to you and Dad for holding down the floor while
I was gone. But yeah, we tried.
Maybe we need to take some of the European architecture and
bring it over here to Central Texas, so.
Oh yeah, yeah. We just have to rewind the clock
about 1000 or 2000 years, right? Yeah, we could.
We could build some of the the the quality that they have, but
it would cost a whole lot more and they have some buildings
that would stand the test of time, that's for sure.
Yep, absolutely. Yeah.
That was honestly one of my favorite parts, was just seeing
the incredible architecture all over the place.
So yeah, really, really cool. Eye opening trip.
Good. Well, let's let's jump into this
one. This week we want to talk about
our construction management software and how builders stay
organized. If you have talked to a custom
home builder at length or are about to talk to a custom home
builder, you probably wonder how do they how do they do this when
you've got 510-3040 projects? Especially when they're custom,
right? If it's a if it's a production
builder, they they have their systems and it's rinse and
repeat on the same home being built multiple times.
But with custom every home oftentimes has never been built
before. So how do builders stay
organized? There's obviously a lot of
different ways to answer that question and what what works for
one builder may not work for another and that's perfectly
fine. But what we wanted to do in this
in this episode is really just talk about how we stay organized
and the construction management management software that we use
to do so now there there's a lot of other pieces and processes of
our business. That is managed outside of the
construction management software, but we like to look at
this as as the hub of of where all all things related to a
particular project reside. So it's important to note that
this tool, one of the goals of many is to really make sure that
we reduce and hopefully eliminate any miscommunication
with all the details that go back and forth during the
particularly in the preconstruction phase, right
when a lot of things are being decided upon with selections,
design, this goes here, that goes there.
And so that's what we wanted to wanted to jump into today.
Yeah, yeah. That's a great topic and I'm.
I'm glad we're covering it today.
You know, I've always said and I still stand by it, is that any
builder can be successful if they have very good organization
and efficient communication. And I truly believe that a good
construction management software is paramount for that.
So a good topic to talk about today.
We'll open the eyes of listeners on different options for
construction management software and unfortunately it's not their
choice, it's the builder's choice.
But most of them function the same to be honest, you know, so
the difference between 1:00 and the next is not that great.
And so for that for that matter, we're going to talk about our
construction management software, others that we've used
and all of them are very similar.
So it it should give listeners a good idea of what they should
expect if their builder is and hopefully should be using
construction management software to help manage their particular
builds. Yeah, absolutely.
So jumping right into it, I mean, from a from a homeowner's
perspective, why should they care about this?
Let's jump into what, what does a construction management
software do? And we'll we'll tag team this,
but what does it do for them that makes the experience for
the homeowner better or easier or more convenient?
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of things, and we'll break that
down in this episode, but I would say the main things are.
Really, like we said, organization.
And that helps the builder and then it also helps the clients
be able to refer back to whether it's a iPhone or Android app on
your phone that you can reference whenever you want to
know more information about where your build is currently or
what's going on on the job site that day or whatever else.
That's one of the small perks. And then it also just makes the
communication synced up between the homeowner and the builder,
so. I think that's basically the
gist of it is it's truly software.
It's a tool to help connect the builder with the job site and
the client and the client with the job site and the builder.
But there's a lot of different construction management
software. So we're familiar with Builder
Trend. That's the company that we
currently use and the software that we currently use.
There's Coconstruct, which was just bought by Builder Trend.
There's Procor, there's Build Pro.
I mean, there's a slew of them and they all do very similar
things. So if your builder's not using
Builder Trend like we are, it's it's not a red flag by any
means, you know, but we're just going to talk about the one that
we use and they should all be very similar.
So Yep, great. So let's just jump into a few
few things here. We don't want to drag this, this
podcast out and bore you with all the details, but just share
with you what what it does. So in no particular order of
importance, let's spend 30 seconds 60 seconds talking about
scheduling and what it can do. Yep, Yep.
So one of the things that these construction management
softwares do really well is scheduling.
These schedules are typically real time or they're live
schedules. So as one item in the build
pushes to say, your foundation which.
The home starts with you know your foundation takes a week or
two weeks longer than it should due to weather delays.
Whatever else, the construction manager should be shifting that
on the schedule. That pushes the entire schedule
back. Sometimes you'll only see phases
of the build, foundation phase, frame phase.
You know, however the builder chooses to do their scheduling.
But yeah, basically it's it's a really nice tool that is real
time and it shows you the progress of your your particular
home. And I'm sorry, go ahead.
No, it's okay. I was just gonna wrap it up by
saying that you know, it's a good tool, but just be aware
that you know, schedules are always fluid, so if your builder
is using this tool, don't get married to the end.
End date or the finish date of your home because it's more than
likely going to change many, many times throughout the build.
So when you see it at the beginning versus when you see it
at the end, that end date is most likely going to push around
quite a bit. Unless you work with a builder
such as us or some of the rare builders that quote you a fixed
end date you know and give you a final time that your home is
going to be complete. That's hopefully reflected in
the scheduling. Yep, great point.
And I think the take away from that is that from an
organizational standpoint, this is how we're looking at Okay.
Hey, something was delayed, but this is how we can still
forecast into the future when is this home going to be complete
and a builder like us. So one of our one of our
guarantees is is on time. So while the end date is going
to shift throughout any build in our schedule that's that happens
on 100% of of the homes we build, we still have a promise
or a guarantee that we're going to finish the home before a date
that we agree upon before we begin.
So even if we shift, even if there's delays that push us out
three weeks, well as long as we're ahead of the the date that
we've guaranteed at the beginning, we're still on on
time. Yep.
Yeah. Good point.
So talking about another topic here in this one, I think this
one's also important but a little bit more on the financial
side estimates, We use estimates to determine in the
preconstruction phase or in in our process the preliminary
building agreement of of what is the total cost of this project.
So this is where we manage the numbers of every aspect of the
build, every phase of the build how much it's going to cost and
and and so that's what the system we use and not super
relevant to you to you if if you're one of our homeowners
because we do fix price and you wouldn't wouldn't see that it's
not necessary it's more of just that's this is also part of the
one of the features in the tool that we use to get all of our
costs organized to be able to provide you with a fixed price
before the build begins. Yep.
And I think that's a good segue
into the next topic. Those estimates eventually turn
into budgets, right? So you can cover budgets and
actuals there. Yep, good point and really don't
need to spend any time on this. But we as a builder regardless
of what contract we signed with you have to measure the the
budget or the estimate which is the estimate turns into the now
turns into a budget and how are we doing compared to the actuals
right Because if we've under, if we've underestimated something
under under budgeted that and we go over it then that's got to
come out of somebody's pocket either yours or ours depending
on how the contract is is written.
And again in our case a fixed price contract the the risk is
on us not you as the homeowner. So we also utilize builder trend
currently for for measuring the budget to actual.
Yep, Yep, excellent. And then yeah, another thing to
touch on too with construction management softwares is
construction updates. Typically it's the task of the
construction management manager or the onsite manager for your
particular build. They are the ones that are most
likely going in and updating pictures and the schedule and
the budgets and all that good stuff for your particular build.
In those construction updates are reflected in the
construction management software, which is really nice
to see for people that are building a home in a different
city or, you know, not local to where they're actually living.
They can get pictures, they can get comments.
They can leave comments as well, you know, like what happened on
the job site today or I see this picture, you know, I thought our
driveway was going to go down the left side, not the right
side, you know? Whatever it is, it's an open
communication through there. But yeah, those construction
updates are really cool for folks that don't live close to
their particular job site. Yep, you cover that.
And it's also goes hand in hand with just the two way
communication and the messaging. And along those same lines,
change orders. So when a change order comes up
and in in the middle of construction you want to make a
change to some piece of the the build.
We we do like to utilize this to monitor the change order, how
much is it going to cost, collect that payment up front
and be able to see Okay, how does this change order affect
the total, the total price of the build both for us and for
you. Yep.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
And on that same note, I mean, change orders all stem from
selections usually. And so when one selection or a
design choices change, that's what initiates those change
orders. But those selections are another
thing that can be tracked through construction management
software. There's a section in there that
builders can go through and allow homeowners to make their
selections in, in our case, builder trend.
And those homeowners can log into their portal, they can see
all the selections that they've made.
They can sign off on selections that still need to be made.
And it's a really, it's a good tool in that sense that
everybody knows what has been selected.
They're locked in at a certain point in the build before
usually construction starts. And then anything that needs to
be changed after that is what initiates those change orders.
So those selections are useful because everybody can refer back
to them. They're all in one place and
they can even be shared with trades.
So if trades are looking for the particular tile in a certain
room, or the tile lay pattern, or the grout colors or anything
like that, those trades can reference the selections in the
building software as well. So kind of a cool all in one
platform. And it's it's nice to tie the
trades in as well. You know they can look at those
kind of things and there shouldn't be any questions if
they're using the the software correctly.
And that's a that's a whole can of worms in itself.
Yeah, yeah. But I think we cover the most
important topics here. Really, the point of this was to
share with you a little bit of how we stay organized on the
back end again at the beginning of the that episode.
I briefly mentioned that there are other tools that we just
have to use, right? There's as a as a builder,
there's no one software that does it all.
But we found that if your builder does not have some sort
of construction management software, it doesn't mean that
they're a bad builder. It's just I think you just need
to dive in a little bit more and you have every right to ask some
more questions on, hey, how do you stay organized with all
this? And there are builders that
successfully do it via spreadsheet.
But and yes, we use spreadsheets on certain things as well.
It's a great tool. But you know, if you've got 10
projects and they're all on spreadsheets and you have
nothing else, it just begs it. It makes me ask the question of
how are you staying organized on all that with all the changes
and making sure that everything's being communicated
to the right people at the right time.
So that was, that was what we hope we were able to get across
on this episode. Yeah.
Absolutely. And on that that caveat there at
the end, I like that you say that because you're right.
I mean no one builder is using one tool and one tool only.
And while Builder Trend and other construction management
software, yeah, are really, really cool tools that encompass
a lot of things, none are perfect, right.
They They get you close, but they don't get you all the way
there, so. There are builders that need to
supplement with other things like spreadsheets and like you
know other messaging software and things like that.
But you know overall they are good tools and just to your
point you know it's it just helps builders stay more
organized with each build. So yeah, cool topic, kind of an
easy one. You know it's it's pretty
straightforward. But you're right.
It begs the question that if your builder is not using
builder software. How are they gonna manage your
project and how can you feel at ease that they're gonna do it
efficiently? So, yeah, great.
We'll wrap this one up then, with no further ado.
Yeah, sounds great. Well, thanks, Brian.
Thank you.