Transcript: Use of Gaming Technology to Build 20K SF in 4 Days Part II

Hello, I'm Brittany Campbell Turner and this is the Constructor Podcast, session number three. Hello and welcome to this episode of Constructor. My name is Brittany Campbell Turner and this podcast is dedicated to helping property owners have certainty in their decisions about their construction projects. My goal is to help property owners foster trusting relationships with your design and construction teams. To help you take more risks in your construction projects, be under budget and on schedule and ensure that your end user's desires are exceeded.

Hello everyone, thanks for joining me again today. I'm excited to bring to you the rest of my interview with Chris Mattis from Dirt. He's an amazing guy giving us a wealth of information and without further ado, here's the remaining half of the interview. Now that you've sold us on the idea of Dirt, tell us how does pre-engineered solutions, how does this fit into your passion specifically about this industry? How does it fit into how you think and how you approach construction?

Sometimes it's the simple things. The ability to be highly, because of the way that we behave, leveraging software and so forth and the speed we move in, all of our information and so forth is at our fingertips. I haven't printed anything for work in over five years. I'm not a millennium. I'm not a young person that normally would do that kind of stuff.

I'm approaching 50. That's a big mind shift. To embrace that and understand that that really is a slower way to do things. It's not really efficient. When I hear people talk about sustainability, which has been a word that's been abused, just like the word green was abused eight years ago, it's unfortunate because sometimes it's just marketing glitz and glamour.

You can start to really peel off just one layer of an onion and you can realize that a company truly isn't thinking about true sustainability. When you peel back the onion layers at Dirt, it's amazing that it's the way we behave with the software. It's the way that that software not only tells a customer what it's going to do, but it tells our machines what it's going to do. The company that Logan's owned before, I mentioned at the beginning, was SMED International. At their peak, they had close to 3,000 employees and they were a street value of sales was 500 million.

That's exactly where we are today and we only have 700 employees. It's unbelievably efficient. We have three factories that all rely on the software to tell exactly what's supposed to be made and what's supposed to be built. Not only does it work that way, but we also understand that there's a better way to do things within our own given market. For example, if I'm going to do a project and most of the stuff comes from our savanna plant that's happening here in our market here in Chicago, but if we're ordering glass, there's no value for the client to purchase the glass from a plant in savanna, put it in a truck and ship it to here when it's the same thing as if we purchased it right in Elk Grove Village.

Our software creates a report for our distribution partner that they then send to their glass fabricator that they can purchase and ship it to the job site. It's more sustainable, less cost because freight is now less. It's taking up less truck space. Sometimes sustainability and being responsible isn't just because you can recycle it. It's also because you're smarter about the way that you're bringing the products to the client.

That's a perfect example. It's just glass. It's just glass. If we make the glass, how can our glass be any better? It's a bunch of sand rub together really quick.

There's nothing special until you start making it thick or laminated or do whatever. I think those are the things that we're talking out of both sides of our mouth. We're really passionate about it and believe in the cause that we're doing. Even though a lot of clients never move the stuff that they buy from us, which you can, you can pick it up and you can move it. There's a small percentage that it does.

The clients buy it because of what it does for them. It gives them flexibility for something that they don't know what the future is going to hold more than ever before. More than ever before. My dad, he got a job when he was 18 and he retired from that company. That was the norm.

I'm a Gen Xer and I've been with five different companies. Millenniums are going to be with how many? Fifteen? They're going to probably start two or three themselves. Why be tied into something that is so permanent?

It's impossible not to be passionate when it's just so obvious. There's just a better way to build than how we're doing it today. I would absolutely agree that sustainability and the way you're choosing to operate as a company is huge. I would absolutely agree that you're not just thinking about are you using a product that can be produced easily that's eco-friendly, if you will, but you're also thinking about is it smart to simply just reduce freight cost or reduce whatever it is. It's definitely a mindset shift that is different from what you typically see today in the industry.

Also the piece, when you talked about flexibility, lots of companies are changing now. They're changing the way they do things. They're planning for growth. They're planning for expansion. They're making decisions based on the ideals of how to actually get the younger generations in their company.

I'd be curious as to how much you actually discuss that with some of the clients that you work with. You know what? I would say it's almost everyone. Yeah. It's amazing and it's even more prevalent in the suburbs than it is in the city.

They talk about it in the city because it's a competitive advantage, but in the suburbs it's life or death. We've got a huge company that is in pharmaceutical, so they have a lot of labs. They're trying to have the latest and greatest talent that's fresh out of college. Do you want to go out to the suburbs and work as a young 23-year-old or would you rather live in the city? It's obvious where you'd rather be.

These facilities that were built in the 70s and maybe updated in the 80s, they want no part of them. It's a constant conversation as it relates to not just obtaining new talent, but it's the retention of the incredible talent that they have. Yeah, I can absolutely see that. Kind of shifting gears, I do want to ask the question, what are some of the hesitations that some potential clients have when they learn about you the first time? Really, the hesitation that comes into play is preconceived notions.

A lot of times it falls on the A&D community at times because they put us in a different category. They put us in that, I hate even using the word demountable, but they put us in that category. I don't blame a client if they're a little concerned at first because if you think about that industry, all of them are ugly, why the heck would you want to buy something that you would want to sustain ugly? That doesn't make sense. A lot of times the architect is saying, well, our clients aren't really going to move them, so there's really no need to buy dirt.

In the last five years, I've had one client actually say, we're going to move our walls a lot. The other 2,000 clients, it's about potential flexibility, it's about what it does for the environment, how it makes them feel, cutting edge, all of those types of things, speed. So it's just breaking down those barriers. Can you tell us a little bit about the speed? I know we talked about the speed within the design process, but can you tell us a little bit more about the actual manufacturing and installation process?

Sure. Once that ICE file is completed, it's assigned to project manager at our dirt factory. From there, it goes, like I mentioned earlier, right to the shop floor. So it only takes two weeks for aluminum frames. That would have the power and data locations already applied inside of it, the frames shipped completely assembled and leave the production floor.

So glass and aluminum frames only take two weeks to manufacture. Then the finished tiles, millwork, show up the following week. We ship them disassembled for a couple of reasons and separated because generally a project job site, there is that flow. The frames stand up, the power and data is located within them, there still needs to be connections that take place, they're still going to need to have some plumbing that runs through and then there's going to have to be some city official approvals. If the frames came with the finished tiles already on it, you'd have to remove those, so that's double the work.

And then finally, those are the finishes. So the combs already painted or veneered or fabric wrapped or acoustical tile. So we want those to go on at the very last moment. It's common that people, our installations, we're putting those on just a few days before they move in, just so that the punch list is next to nothing because there's nothing damaged because it's just the aluminum frames there. The speed of manufacturing is huge, it allows the client to move real quickly, as you can understand that.

Then on the installation side, it really takes a lean approach of things. Our software is creating all of our shop and installation drawings instantaneously and every frame and tile is barcoded and labeled. So when you take it off the truck, by the way, it's just a simple skid and all the frames are stacked with what we call cookies and they're this reusable, very hard resin plastic that allows the frames to snap together and those all get collected and put into a cookie box. They get sent back to the factory and whoever sent us that cookie box gets a dirt thank you for being sustainable t-shirt.

So our packing material even comes back. So those frames have a marker and it literally goes right up to the job site and it's set right into place, stood right in place. So you're not, if you think about typical stick-built construction, bring in the two-by-fours, stage them, bring in the drywall, stage it, hammer up the two-by-fours, hammer up the drywall, right? That's really, and each time you're moving these parts in pieces to just, in a lean process right from the dock, right to the job site in that exact location.

So we'll do a 20,000 square foot floor plate that might have, call it 10 private offices and three conference rooms. A staff of six installers will stand every wall in one day. So it's pretty incredible. Yeah, if I were a listener right now, if I didn't hear this already, Chris, I would be in disbelief. One day that, yeah.

I know, that seems crazy. But the other part that makes sense of it all is the fact of what we're allowing the GC to do. We're just telling them, provide the warm shell. So we're even creating a new path, if you think about what a project manager is typically looking at as it relates to their Gantt chart, what would follow next and then what trades have to come back and forth. We're just saying, hey, get that warm shell ready and have all the walls painted, have the flooring down completed, have your grid in.

They're talking large, expansive football fields of open space that the GC can work in. So that's one of the other reasons why we condense that construction schedule, is for that huge reason alone. Now, I do have a question regarding any limitations that you could have with compliance. I mean, do you guys run into any issues with unions or anything like that, municipalities? Yeah, on the municipality side, unions and so forth, no.

Because we have solutions that fit within those municipalities. There are code areas that we fall into, like we couldn't be a positive pressure room just because of the way that we connect up to the ceiling and down to the floor. There isn't that perfect seal. We can be negative pressure. We are in a fire rated wall because our frames do come together.

It's not a continuous, you know, finished piece on the outside. So those are just some of our simple leadlined wall. We wouldn't be that. So those are some of our straightforward limitations that we're upfront with our clients about. We're never eliminating all the trades.

We're just reducing them and then speeding up that process. Yeah, you know, from a GC's perspective, I would definitely be concerned about that. Just to understand what the competition is, I mean, to be honest. But now that you say that, you know, it's just a different way of sequencing the items, if you will, and understanding what's needed in a specific area, like a fire rated door and wall and things of that nature. Yeah, there's just a little bit of conversation that has to happen.

We're kind of a super sub because our finished tile is compainted. So you're reducing that or eliminating it depending on the scope of the job. We're integrating technology in the wall. So your technology reliance part of it is changing. Power and data, that's coming from us.

So there's all these things that we're performing that's taking some of those trades that normally you would have 15 or 20 different trades for cutting that down to maybe only eight. So you're managing less people. It's still a cost to purchase dirt. So a general contractor is still putting their fees, right? Because they're managing that whole process.

So it's not like they're managing their fees on a lesser cost item. They're managing their fees on the same cost item. So from a general contractor's perspective, what's cool is they're making the same amount of money in a shorter period of time with less people to manage. It's a layup. So can you talk a little bit about, I mean, we kind of started talking about cost, if you will.

How does it compare to a stick built? So to traditional stick built construction, we can be same price or less, depending on what we do. And so when I say depending, that means when we're providing the plug and play power, when we are providing the full dividing, demising walls between the offices or patient rooms and so forth, those types of things. And then when we start to talk about the construction schedule as we just did, if we're on the early part of that conversation with the client and the general contractor and the architect, everybody now starts to understand where our pricing comes into play.

If we get involved later on, the general contractor is not going to get a credit, a full credit or any credit for electrical. Their painter is, they're not going to get a full cost for their painter. To float the floors and make sure that they're level, those are things that the dirt wall does automatically. Without knowing that, you wouldn't take that maybe $10,000 or $20,000 line out of there. Dirt shows up with no packing materials.

So dumpsters and bins, that gets reduced by 40%, 50%, 60% depending on how much we're doing, or maybe even more. So all of these things start to add up that as you look at it, yes, as it relates to a drywall wall to a solid dirt wall or more, but when you look at the whole construction picture, we're the same. Okay. Yeah, I think that gives a better sense of the cost comparison. Definitely helps to clarify.

So I think we covered most of the questions that I have. Great. I do have a question. How can someone get in touch with you, Chris? Well, a good old fashioned telephone works the best.

So you can call me at [phone number removed]. And at that point, we'd love to start things off at our Dirt Green Learning Center, which is located in the center of the city of San Diego. It's located at 325 North Wells. We're on the 10th floor, a beautiful space. Come for breakfast, lunch, maybe an afternoon snack, or Chef Aaron will make a great meal.

So it's just an incredible experience. Shoot me an email, which is cmatus, C-M-A-T-U-S at dirt. And that's D-I-R-T-T dot net. So that's how you can get a hold of me. That's great.

And the last thing that I want to ask is how can someone start thinking about using pre-engineered solutions? What would be the first step, I mean, outside of getting in contact with you, how could someone start doing research to understand more about it and the implications of it? Obviously, our website has a ton of information, which is dirt.net. But there's other organizations that are out there, modular building, design, lean construction, LCI, Chicago. Those are great resources to start to look at other ways to build things.

So I think just get the Google machine fired up and spend some time looking at those different ideas that are out there. And once they come across something to actually go and see it in person, I think it's really critical. Okay. Thank you. And thank you for participating in the interview.

And I look forward to populating the show notes with your contact information and how people can get in touch with you as well. And we'll talk to you soon. Thanks, Chris. Thanks.