Name: Optimizing Prefabrication: A Blueprint for Continuous Improvement
Uploaded: 2025-03-04T18:31:03.466Z
Duration: 1 h 24 s
Description: Optimizing Prefabrication: A Blueprint for Continuous Improvement

Transcript for "Optimizing Prefabrication: A Blueprint for Continuous Improvement": Hello? Can everybody hear me? Can you hear me, Andrew? We gotcha, Bob. Alright. So it never fails. Internet goes out right when when you need to. So welcome, everybody. I know that comment just kicked us off and went down through. So really excited, and we're gonna be done. Again, I'm really excited about this topic today, optimizing prefabrication, so a blueprint for improvement. We're seeing a large push of prefabrication shops around the country. It's not global. I'm really excited. I've had a pleasure of renewing things a little differently. I am on site down here, today with FSG Prefabrication to really, tour their prefab shop and continue to experience, really, what I think is a great revolution around the country. It's amazing the innovation that's coming out of these shops, but it's also showcasing a need for workflow management, for business process management, and connecting that with data. So I'm extremely excited to have Andrew and Nathaniel with me today as we go down through this, and you're gonna see really some of their, screenshots in what their application, some of their challenges are for it. So, I think we're about three minutes past. We'll kinda give it another thirty seconds here for anyone else that's joining. Again, if comment, I didn't already met, mention it. Please use the messaging, q and a. Let's make this interactive. If you have any questions for us, please let us know, and we'll make sure to answer that at the end of the demo as we continue to move on through. So, excited for everybody here to join us as we kick off March and hopefully everyone's out of the cold weather as we go forth. So alright. I think we should hit it and, we're gonna get into some of the meat and anyone who's straggling in, we'll get on to the next evolution of it. So perfect. So I think everyone can see the screen. Today's speakers, you got myself here. I am Bob Salaj. I am the principal industry advisor here, within the construction market. You may have seen me on some other webinars if you've joined that, before, but, my history and background, for those that don't know, really started with lean manufacturing and lean six sigma overall. So very interested. I'm very passionate about process mapping. I'm very passionate about what we can do within the construction market. Spent the last decade really primarily around electrical, but also working with GCs and other contractors around the country, looking up their processes, and prepack jobs as well. So, been diving into that, built a lot of quick base applications and realms, and now doing this full time for QuickBase. So excited to have you on board to talk to everybody here today. And please reach out at any point even past this webinar for it. So, thank you all again for your time. And, Andrew, I'll pass it over to you if you'd like to introduce yourself and we'll get understanding. Yeah. Thanks, Bob. My name is Andrew Layman. I'm the VP here at FSG Prefabrication. I I come from an electrical construction background, had about eight years in the field, and then came into a prefab role around 02/2010, and really took off enjoying what prefab is, learning how to make the processes better, and how we can, be more supportive of our projects in the field. That puts me, yeah, about fifteen years here in prefab, and and we're still finding new ways to do things, better ways to do things. And, I appreciate QuickBase for showing us a a new way to track how we're handling prefab. So I'll pass it off to Nathaniel now. Yeah. I wish I had a long intro. My name is Nathaniel Kevresian. I've been with FSG for coming on five years now. Have my journeyman's license. I kinda grew up in the electrical trade, and then prefab really attracted me just because trying to find the most efficient ways to do things has always kinda spoken to me outside of work, so it just played really well into prefab. Great. Again, I can't thank you both enough, for your hospitality as well and giving me the tour of the prefab shop. So, I'm excited to kinda go down through this, and we'll dive into really what we wanna cover today. So, I really do I think it's good that the audience understands a little bit more about FSG, Facility Solutions Group, and really maybe some of the journey, and just really some of the blueprint of who you guys are and really what makes you tick, your mission and vision statement, I think, is spectacular, and I think a lot of this really stems from really how we begin to treat others within these organizations as we go as we spearhead things like prefab in different value streams that you might be thinking about within your own organizations, certainly around electrical, but prefab goes across many industries and many different varieties of this. So, I think it's all important that we hear from each other our journeys and how we begin to learn from each other as we continuously improve as a group looking for, the next innovation. So, then I think just speaking some lean terms, we'll go to recurrent state of prefabrication. Just in general, the industry today, really some metrics that we were able to pull, see where it's heading towards, and really speak to the impact that we're seeing of really how it has an impact on the employees, morale, and everything else internally within your own four walls and how that can really transform your organization. From there, let's begin talking about some of the challenges and really the future state of the case study that really is before us with FSG, and we'll get into a little demo at the end. So, please bear with us, and we'll get through, and we'll end it with some final slides and talk about Empower as well while we're at it. So FSG prefabrication. Andrew, why don't you give us a little bit of backstory about really who you guys are, and really where it has taken off to this point? Sure. So, Facility Solutions Group Prefabrication opened its doors in San Antonio about, forty three years ago now. Now originally selling lighting. From there, they've grown into being an electrical contractor and to truly a a turnkey electrical contractor with everything from distribution to electrical construction, service, technology, solar, EV charging, and and prefabrication as well. We're we're based now currently out of Austin. We have offices covering most of Texas, California, Denver, Indy, New York, Kansas City, Florida, and we're supporting all those operations to the best of our abilities with prefab from our San Antonio facility. Great. And you say yeah. That's what I was gonna say. So you're supporting all of those regions out of that San Antonio fab facility overall. Was prefabrication always at the forefront really within FSG? I mean, when do we begin to start thinking about the prefab operations a little bit deeper, Andrew? Yeah. So I've been with the company for the past couple years. Prefab was something that they've been trying to kick off. They saw the value in it. I'm just not sure that we had the, you know, all the right pieces in place to get traction with it. So over the years, it's it's come and gone in popularity with FSG. I think we're making a pretty good run at it now, and we're actually starting to see a return on what we're doing here. Yeah. I remember the journeys that we've seen and had. It's it's really as we begin to jump in, we begin to disrupt what our current workflows are. And, as we begin to embed and and take on the industrialized construction market, market, it's going to begin to have an impact on our BIM modeling, our planning, how do we feed the prefab shops, how do we get orders, and really cover the gambit all the way through to getting the feedback from the field, which is crucial and and utterly important. So I know we're gonna get into a lot of that stuff, but it was interesting just to speak about the journey of who we are today, where do we go five years from now, and how do we begin to look at our employees in terms of the growth trajectory. And I think there's a lot of ancillary benefits of taking on something like prefab as we have a little bit of really a framework to begin training other people and begin moving in this, direction with our employees to really kinda help move the needle for that. So, really excited of what I saw this morning, and I know we're gonna talk a lot about the culture of lean in the next few slides. So why is prefabrication important today? So we can see some of the stats. I'll let you guys read the slides there. I think what was really interesting about this is the global prefab construction market is valued at $117,000,000,000 and only going up from here. I believe this, honestly and I'll let everyone else read the rest of the bullet points. But really speaking to what we're seeing as prefab, as we continue to reach out and attend conferences, this is an ongoing trend that I'm curious about, Andrew, from your perspective. Do you ever see it dying down? I mean, now that we've taken those leap, we began looking at construction as a whole. I came from manufacturing, and it was always about how do we continue to improve upon our operations and see that profit margin improve as we get sales and cost, and we're looking at that. But prefab is kind of newer when you think about the whole continuum of how long we've been doing things within construction, but it the market seems like it's going to continue to grow. So I'm curious from your standpoint, what are some trends? What are you seeing in terms of the current prefab markets here today in in The US? So traditional construction is just no longer sustainable. Our our timelines won't allow it. The workforce won't allow it. You know, the biggest generation of workforce in construction is retiring out, and we're not replacing them near as fast as they're retiring. And when we look at, manufacturing, where you came from, over the last three decades, productivity has has gone up about 70% in manufacturing. And you would think maybe the same would be applicable to construction with all the advances in technology and tooling, but it's actually been on a downward trend. We are less productive now than we were thirty years ago, hour for hour in construction. So we have to take construction and try to find a way to emulate what you're able to do in manufacturing. And and that's where prefab can come in. We can eliminate a lot of the wasted processes on a job site. You know, jobs are are spread out. It's harder to sequence the material and the equipment and the the workforce like you can in a factory. By moving that work off-site into a prepat facility, we can set up those processes and workflows, eliminating the waste in our steps and producing a sub assembly that's ready to install, with without all the waste on the job site. Yeah. I I think we're you mentioned a comment there. I just wanna kinda camp on for a second is the labor shortages. And as we talked about prefab in many conferences that I've been to, it's about understanding how do we do more with less, and how do we actually become more efficient. And when I started in my previous company within construction, you know, one of the biggest problems was trying to say, how do we get lessons learned from one job to the next job to the next job to the next job? And we kinda thought about this of of, okay. Well, we can send out a trainer and go out, but is that really the most efficient of taking these lessons learned and moving forward? Do you feel like prefab has a role within lessons learned to make all the other jobs kind of, like, a little bit more efficient? Are we learning anything in the prefab shop that we can take out? Absolutely. I think prefab makes a great corporate hub to share those best practices. You know, I've I've seen it on a local level, but seeing it on such a national level with FSG Prefabrication, you know, being able to share a best practice from New York with, with how we're doing things in San Antonio or from here to Denver. Technology these days allows us to share these best practices so much easier. And and to speak on the shortage of the the workforce and getting quality, electricians and people in the trades, prepad is a great place to use as a boot camp for that. You know, a lot of these these apprentices are brand new to the workforce, and they may not even know what ended the hammer to hold yet. And we're able to take them in here. We teach them about safety day one. They learn the material. They learn how important it is to build quality product that's accurate to the drawings and the specs. And after a year, we're gonna turn out a pretty high quality apprentice to the field that shows up and and is ready to jump right into production and install and start learning the rest of the trade. Yeah. I I think what's huge I think as we begin to kinda, like, understand what are the standard operating procedures that we have in our own organization, we want to instill that, if not more, within prefab. And what got me excited about prefab is really the level of innovation that we can do. We can do a lot of innovation out in the field, but it's impressive about what we can actually bring in technology wise, what we can bring out in just the standard operating procedures and techniques to make ourselves learn that in in a climate controlled environment that's safe, that you can see how are we actually supporting multiple jobs at once. But I look at that last bullet for the audience. It's about key trends, and it's just about the materials, the three d printing, the robotics. It starts to unravel so much more around what are the standardizations we have and how do we embrace new technology. You now have that boot camp like Andrew is actually mentioning there, and it gets us excited. It gets the next generation excited to see what how can we actually implement this new technology with supporting the jobs and then going out to the job site and implementing it further. So, super excited to see where we go from today, and can we just imagine where this is gonna go five, ten years from now with the technology and the processes that we're establishing. So really excited about that. But you and I have actually spent some time talking, Andrew, and and I'm a big firm believer of lean. And one of the things around lean that we continue to talk about is respect for people overall and how do we actually encourage this behavior and the impact that we see on the culture in the employees we have. I would love to hear from you about, really, what has been the FSG Prefabrication approach? Have you seen the cultural impact prefabrication has on our organization? And what are some of those ancillary benefits that you're seeing? So if the first thing we learn in lean is respect for people, I think it's important to practice what you preach. I'm very thankful that I I had some very good mentorship coming up through my career as I started learning about lean, and and they made some huge impressions on me to have your boss, you know, finish a conversation with you and then ask you, what what can I do to help you? That was that was new to me at the time. And and at first, I I was kinda uncomfortable. I didn't know how to respond to that kind of a question. But over time, I I realized how serious he was about that, and he he truly meant it. What can my boss do to help support me? And that that made a big impact on me, and I try to carry that on in what I do here. I see Nathaniel as the prefab manager doing a fantastic job being a servant leader. I see Pam out in our shop as a shop foreman being a servant leader, and that's practicing what you preach and and letting these apprentices come in day one regardless of their history or their background and truly letting them have a voice. We we call it it's common used term, but fix what bugs you. Right? So as they're working the process, they see something that bugs them, help us build a solution to that. We have a problem solving board where anybody can come and input an issue that they're having, and we can work together as a team and talk about it in our huddles and and try to come up with a solution as a group. And then when they are part of that solution, they take ownership in it. And and they they need to understand the why we're doing something. And and then when they take the ownership in it, we just continually improve from there. Absolutely. It's huge. And and I think everyone on the line can see that the screenshots down below. Opening up that space for feedback and capturing it. You know, one of the things that I've learned really quick a long time ago, twenty years of my career, was it's okay to ask for feedback, but if you're actually not taking action on any of that or you're ignoring that feedback, it can be very detrimental. And so making sure that we can understand, maybe we just need to have a database to capture that feedback in, but what are we doing to open up that space to talk about that? Are we doing the morning huddles? Are we cleaning up at the end of the day? Do we have a checklist, and are we actually taking time throughout the week to improve and work on the business, not just in the business as well? And I'm really impressed with FSG Prefabrication and walking around about, really, you're opening up that space. You're creating visual boards about quality production, about material handling, all the things to really keep the operations running that I know within all of our hosts. It's hopefully, we can take some of these best practices and do something similar out on the job site as well. So but opening up that feedback chain and just saying it's okay to come up with ideas. We encourage these ideas. I have seen more innovation over the last few years in just prefabrication alone that is just outpacing a lot of the other industries. And so just kudos to FSG Prefabrication for what I've seen. The respect for people is so critical because that's what drives us that's how keeps us safe and profitable at the end of the day. So really excited, really impressed with the shop that I've seen and excited to see the continued growth there. So thank you. Thanks, Robert. But everything is not without challenges. Right? I mean, I think, iron sharpens iron, and we gotta make sure that we understand, okay, what where are we coming from? What are some of the challenges that we're seeing? We'll click over to it. Obviously, from my past life, and I'll speak to really kind of the starting point of what I've seen, Andrew and Nathaniel, but would love your inputs on this as well. We showed this slide before, and it's really about how much time people are going to search for information, especially as it relates to prefab as we talk about this, and all of the different systems. In my past life, we had shared drives. We had Excel spreadsheets, we had fillable PDF forms that we had to fill out. We had the whole gambit. And then, hopefully, at the end of the day, we try to input that back into an ERP system with all of these different processes not talking to each other. I mean, simply just getting job numbers and how do we actually kind of funnel that in was a nightmare as we begin to kind of talk and expand upon this. Imagine within prefab dealing with, planning, with the BIM department, with supply chain and maybe working up purchase orders or invoicing, we begin to extrapolate how many different workflows this begins to touch, and it's quite extensive within the operation. What we had beforehand in my past life was really two flows within prefab. We had what we called straight to fab kits so that the foreman can take a picture of a napkin, send it on in, and say, okay. Can you make these bends for us per se as a prefabricated kit? Then we also had a very large stream that was pushing everything through BIM and making sure that we had our planning team looking at everything so that we make sure that we're laying this out correctly in tracking quality controls. And then, obviously, you had your entire workflow stepping through every phase of that gate, whether that be in how we're planning, how we're actually looking at the drawings, planning material to the actual assembly steps, all while somebody's asking us where the heck is my assembly and what status and stage is it in. But, ultimately, we're just not doing this to just for fun and going all the way through. We need to track those metrics to say, are we actually seeing actuals versus estimates? Are we saving money at the end of the day? So we have a little funny blur about, does prefab actually save us money? Right? We're always asking ourselves that question. But can you actually quantify that? Can you actually move in that direction? Andrew, Nathaniel, are you getting asked the same questions? I know that we all have varying degrees of actually workflows, but what were some of your challenges that you're seeing within your current state that is making us say, hey. Maybe we need to take a look at our operations internally. So what what are your thoughts in terms of that? I I think transparency is is very critical. It it's one of our core values as a prefab department that that our team came together and agreed upon. It's paramount in our success. When when we take work from the field and we move it into a prefab shop, we are transferring risk, but we are also transferring trust because that's a that's a project manager that may have thirty, forty years experience and they know how to put together a job and they know how to manage it. And we're asking them to go ahead and take their eyes off it and trust us to do it right and deliver it just in time, where if it's wrong, the schedule is busted, but if it's right, it's there just in time to install. So we have to be transparent at where we're at in the process, which has always been a struggle in the past. I I joke, but it used to be, hey, Andrew, I'm checking on my order, where is it at? It's always it's in process, you know? Hey, you put in the order, it's in process. I couldn't really tell you exactly where it's at. And that was a huge tool that we were looking for when we were shopping and and something that QuickBase is bringing to the table for us is the ability to be transparent in where it's at in the process. Transparent and show the QAQC checks along the way. And you know transparency is important with you asked did we save money on prefab. We have to put a hard estimate out there, put a hard number out there and we've got to deliver on budget. And if we bust that budget then we're not doing prefab right. Or maybe it wasn't the right opportunity to utilize prefab. Yeah. I think that's a good point. I think there was always a negotiation of, okay, how much are we estimating? What do we think we're actually going to prefab? And then what hours are we gonna reallocate from the actual install to what we think we can actually pull off. But the hours associated with it, we need to make sure that we're tracking really from the planning, the BIM, the shipping logistics, and the prefab. I mean, all of these hours that we're seeing capturing. And I love the QAQC that you guys are performing within what I saw your actual environment here today. And I was really impressed with how you plan to proceed to actually put those checklists in QuickBase. So it's not just starting off with a high level of tracking the assembly from beginning to end, but you're looking to take it in terms of inventory. Right? Correct me if I'm wrong, as well as QAQC and other aspects of it. So, is that kinda where you're going with the with the application as well to see how it can scale and grow and be a little bit agile and nimble? Well, again, speaking to continuous improvement. Right? In a a plan, do, check, adjust type of cycle, we built the app out to the you know the entry level starting point for us and the more Nathaniel uses it the more he identifies that he can do with it. So it allows us to continue to build and grow the application to better suit our needs. Not not just to track prefab through, but like you mentioned to track the material that's coming and going to automate and digitize the QAQC processes as we all, like a lot of prefab shops try to move away from the analog, handwritten spreadsheet based and try to get into something that's a little more automated and and user friendly. Yeah. Absolutely. I saw in the chat message, Micah. Micah, glad to have you with us. Good to see you again. Empowerment and and all of that. And so speaking through how are we empowering our organization to come up with the change, and what are the guardrails and how we kinda keep within lanes so that we make sure that we're swimming in the same direction, but also not inhibiting that growth because there's a continuum. It could be a free for all that causes chaos, but then it's also, well, what are the guardrails and how are we actually gonna plan to move this trajectory up? So, really excited. I I think all the planning, putting all the mechanisms in place so that when we ship out a prefabricated unit and we get that feedback back, we're closing the loop along the way without causing as much pain for duplicative entry or going down through this. You might see that in the beginning stages. I mean, we don't all have a silver bullet right away. Hindsight is twentytwenty, they say. So we're going to make mistakes, but as we learn from those mistakes, how are we doing parallel development and does your system actually accomplish that? And I'm excited to kind of see the growth because honestly and correct me if I'm wrong, Andrew, and Nathaniel, but, really, we're starting off on our journey with the QuickBase. We're starting the current state, and you guys have created something over the last few weeks and months that's really kicking us off. So it's amazing. I'd say let's have another webinar in in a year from now to see what this actually has come to, but you guys are just starting off this journey overall. Is that accurate? Yeah. Very much so. Sorry, Nathaniel. No. Go ahead. I think that's what I like the most about Quickbase at first. I've I've seen so many, hey. We've got the perfect product. It's tailored exactly to do everything you could possibly need to do in prefab. And then you get it, and it's really good at seven things, but it's terrible at the other three or whatever that may be. Yeah. And I think I I honestly may have passed on it a little bit, and I I'll give credit to Nathaniel for really being the one to push to to continue trying with, QuickBase. He he saw the customizability and how he could apply that to the processes that he's helped develop here at FSG. And I'm excited to see where he's taking it to. I'll I'll I'll just be the first to tell you. It's probably a little over my head at this point. It's just I'm letting them build it out and, show me what they can do with it. And, Nathaniel, do you wanna speak on, you know, how the process is going with you to to start off? Yeah. I mean, kinda to what you are talking about earlier, I was using Google Sheets, Google Drive, taking stuff from Gmail, text, phone calls, chats, and, I felt like I was scattered all over the place. I I had templates set up for, certain jobs as much as I could, but it was still there's only so much you can do within the Google Drive universe. So it's still just a lot of manual entry having to, like, duplicate the same information. Yeah. So it was just very frustrating. And I went to advancing prefab in 2023, and the contractors I spoke to, they're all having the same issues where it's all just spreadsheets, Google Drive. So, one of the things that Andrew and I tried tackling was finding something that could tailor to what we needed. Because, again, we're so we have so many little things that aren't the norm. One, at least in Texas, prefab isn't the norm, let alone electrical prefab. And then all the little things that we wanna track with QCs and inventory, there was just way too many things that most programs couldn't, couldn't fulfill us in. So Quickbase really helped kinda capture all that stuff into one. On the slide up above, the I set up calculators as best as possible within spreadsheets, and that was pretty much my world for, you know, the past two, three years is just spreadsheets, setting up formulas, trying to, make it as efficient as possible, but still, there's so much restriction that you just can't get around because of how, you know, Google Drive is set up. You know, I think about Nathaniel on that, and and not to digress too much, but I always wonder, like, why do we all start with spreadsheets and Google Drive and stuff like that? And quite frankly, it's it's not that it's bad. It it's about this is where we're starting the the journey of a new process and a new value stream. Right? When we implemented prefab, everyone's like, great. We're gonna do prefab. What the hell do we do next? Right? We we had a small little shop, and it was just what we have. We had to create the processes. We had to create what it was not knowing 100% of where the hell it's going to go to at the end of the day. Quite frankly, you can argue that we're always at 90%, right, with continuous improvement and where things are changing. But was that something similar? I mean, as you've kinda stepped on, I mean, it's about creating the processes. How does it connect into accounting and other areas as well? And we didn't have that silver bullet. So we default back to Excel or some of the things like that until we can prove out the process. Now we know what is some of the system capabilities and features that we're looking for overall. Can Can you relate to that? Is that kinda like some of the defaults? Would you agree with that statement, or or what do you think with that? Yeah. For me, I you know, going through schooling, I grew up in Google Drive, using Google Sheets. And so that was my deep hold is how do we track this? And it's free. It's very easy to share. Yep. As as I progressed throughout, you know, my prefab career, I realized that we just can't do everything that we needed to, especially more of the complex things like sending out notifications to PMs when products are hitting a certain percentage done. That's just not something you're gonna get with Google. So I realized that I need to find this is almost like, me learning how to crawl, and now I'm kind of in the walking stage with Quickbase and trying to get that set up to where I can start running. Yeah. That's right. The notifications at certain times, reports and dashboards. I think we're gonna go into your demo here, very briefly, and I wanna make sure we have enough time because I want the audience to see what you started so far and really where you're going with it. I see some of the 11 step processes you talk about this, but if you were to categorize this, right, I mean so what does FSG Prefabrication's prefabrication look like? I mean, it looks like you're dealing with bid estimating sheets. It looks like you're you're getting a proposal from the customer. What are some of those high level categories? Like, where do you start and where do you end just to kinda set up so we know what the audience is what we're talking about process wise. Yeah. So, our first step is taking in an order. And, you know, Andrew created a catalog where they can fill out information on certain sheets, but a lot of times, they may just be in phone calls and emails. From there, we put a bid together. So that's me looking at previous history, how long certain builds took, getting a quote from the vendors, and then it'll offer approval, hopefully. Once it gets approved by the PM, then we order the material, start assembly, track assembly all the way through with QCs at each step. The next phase is delivery and making sure everything got there correctly, checking in with the PM to make sure he's happy with what he got. And then from there, we're getting money. Then we get the money. Right? Yeah. PM's always happy with what they got. Right? You know what they're doing? That's a that's another webinar for another time. Perfect. Well, thank you for going down through that. I think we can all relate, and I think we've all seen some pretty impressive spreadsheets and, really where it moves forward with it. I think a picture says a thousand words. I think why don't we take a moment here? I'll stop sharing the screen and and hand it over to you, Nathaniel. If you don't mind, walk us through what you guys have established today, in terms of as much level and detail you're comfortable with. Okay. Let's go. Stop sharing there. Okay. Perfect. So so this is what we have set up so far, and this is still in the infancy. There's still tweaks that we're having to do. So you may see some numbers that don't look right. Obviously, this week's projected hours is not at zero. The guys are, in fact, working the full 40. But just to kinda give a quick rundown of the different tables that we have set up, Similar to the structure that I just mentioned, we have, you know, jobs, orders from their bids, all of the different assemblies we have listed out, our material tracking, all the different tasks within the build types we have. And there, that's where we store, like, more time, stuff. We we are in the process of beginning to track our errors as well as digitizing our QC. Right now, like they were saying, the QCs are very analog paper, stacks of paper that we have to scan at the end of each project. So we're in the process of digitizing that right now. This is where we list out all the historic build types and the tasks, QCs, drawings, all associated within them. One of the things that was a struggle for me is when I had an order come in and we had done this order hundreds of times. And maybe it's just my own fault, but I just trying to gather that information that was necessary for that order again was a little bit of a pain. Now I have it set up to where if I click that order, the drawings, the QCs, the task, the process, any notes are automatically uploaded every single time. Very nice. Nice. One recent event was your records. So we are UO certified to be a panel shop. So we have to keep track of our UO records. So I have all their UO labels listed there, where they're gonna go, the drawings associated with them, warehouse locations. Then we have just some employee information. This is where we keep, you know, how many hours they're working per week, when their birthdays are, you know, the sizes of their gloves, stuff like that. Well, don't don't glaze over that. I mean, it it's funny. Right? I mean, things like that go a long way that we would be hunting down, and and it doesn't look amazing. Like Yeah. I cannot tell you how many times we gotta go back. What's your shirt size again? We forgot. And it's just a waste of time. And it also helps with keeping inventory on, like, safety supplies. Like, okay. We need this many this size of this vest, this size of these glasses or, sorry, gloves. So it is important. No. That's great. Yeah. We we track our, you know, vehicles and trailers, our, you know, big equipment that we have, vendors, contacts, divisions, pretty much anything you can think of that were one stragglers in all these different realms. I've I've really tried bringing them together here. I think it was great. I think I'm gonna cut you off a couple times, Nathaniel, and then Yeah. I think Tom, Nunn, and Andrew keep us on time with with tracking, where we're standing. But, really, this is like the categorization of all your Excel spreadsheets and and kind of thinking, okay. How do we relate a job to an order, an order to an assembly? And then your dashboard was helping to be was that your dashboard in particular? So you and Andrew will be looking at really, like, the projections of manpower and what we're looking at time wise of schedule overall. Is that kinda what you're thinking? Yeah. My biggest thing is, really, I don't need to be in the nitty details of things. I just need the high level are the guys working, you know, 40 this week? Or did I bid too many hours this week? Are we, short on work? What's the delivery schedule looking like? So that's kind of over the dashboard that I have set up. Got it. Yeah. And to kinda hit on that, you know, beforehand, when we get quite well, how long is that gonna take? It it was more of just a, well, you know, I think we could get it to you at this point. You know, we have other things wrapping up. So I it was more of just a feeling. Eventually, I wanna get it towards hard metrics. Like, no. We have, you know, sixty labor hours available this week. Yes. We can finish it out, you know, by Friday. Or, no, it needs to be pushed out to next week. Because that's always a constant question that we have is when can you get it to us? And there always went in it ASAP. There's a it's always their answer. Always yesterday. Yeah. So what I can do is I can go through and put together a bid to kinda show how it captures, you know, the build types and what what it loads up and how it looks like once, when something's been approved. So I'm gonna start my bid. I have all the jobs saved that we currently have going on, so I'll do just our in house job just just for testing. Bid name, we'll just set it up as test. You have your bid date, estimated start date. Let's do it today. Estimated end date. Let's shoot for about a week from now. Yesterday. Come on now. Why are you putting it out all week? That's good. Our order status contact. So this is gonna be the PM or superintendent or foreman or whoever receives those notifications that, hey. Your order is 25% done, 50% done, whatever. So this, I'll just put myself. Assembly quantity, let's just select one, and then this bid is currently in progress. So I've just set up kind of the framework of the bid. And here below, I'll start adding the different line items. So here is where I select our build type. So this is gonna be assembly. Well, again, we'll just name this test panel. So I already know which build type I'm choosing. So this is all the different build types we have. So we have in walls, and within in walls, we have very specific categories because, you you know, depending on if they want wiring or not, if we're gonna be using Wago's, it could vary the time drastically. So in walls, miscellaneous, temp power, overhead panels. For this one, I'll choose I think it's source. About that, that kinda, like, feeds the rest of your stuff. Now that you, like, build out those build types, then you can create work instructions, your standard material list, your standard QAQC. It begins to kinda funnel all the way down. Right? Correct. Yeah. So everything now that I chose this build type, like you said, everything's gonna be preloaded into that. So now I'm just gonna add some time and material to this bid line item, and we'll get it approved, and then we'll see what the end result looks like. So this is gonna be labor. It's gonna be for electrical. Again, one assembly, and we'll say this takes about four hour four hours per panel. And you you went past it. I just wanna kinda reference. So in the lower right there and we don't have to drill into your metrics too much, but, I mean, pulling in the labor rates, the hours, the labor costs to help give you that visualization, how would you have done that before overall? Would that been at your fingertips or different spreadsheets? It it was the spreadsheet. Yep. And one of the the huge thing was just tracking our current labor rate, which is changing, you know, because we have apprentices in and out of the shop. It's always changing, and being off on that on a huge project can can really throw you off. So luckily, with QuickBase now, with the employees table, it has all the labor rates stored. It automatically knows the average labor rate, you know, daily Perfect. If any changes happen. That's amazing. I'll leave it I'll leave it at labor, and I'll go ahead and push this bid through. So we have one panel at four hours, and it's gonna cost, you know, us this much with a profit of this much. But you coulda added other material associated with that labor material all the way down. Got it. Okay. Yeah. So let's change the status to approved, and now you'll see it drop off of our bids table. What's really cool is the reports that you can see. This is another kind of tangent, but one of the issues that I have were active orders, active jobs, which ones are done, and having to manually control that. Now I have certain parameters to know when it knows when a bid's active. It knows when a job's active, and yet it can still store historical information just elsewhere because I no longer need to see see it on a daily basis. But, you know, let's say five months from now and you look back at it, it's always available. Yeah. That's huge. And I know a lot of times, even with pictures, I don't know if you guys have got the pictures, but looking back at your past history, you still want the data. You want the lead or save a spreadsheet and put it somewhere else, but you want their system to continue to kinda make actionable data on your dashboard. So I love it. Correct. So now I'll go into my task tables, and as you can see, that test order it's set up with test panel one, it's it it it auto loaded all the task names, from here, and I'll show you you can assign people to it. Another table is showing the percentage complete, if the task is fully complete, how many hours have been put to it so far. Wow. And, if I go to let me go to a different screen to show you what it looks like. A lot too, so I appreciate it. Thank you. I'll go to what an apprentice would see. And, to kinda hit on that, one of the issues that we had was who's gonna spend all this time tracking the individual assemblies, the individual tasks, making sure each apprentice is doing what they do. So put all that responsibility on one person really eats up so much time. So QuickBase has allowed us to kinda spread that responsibility across all the apprentices to where it's maybe eaten up in total, you know, ten minutes of their day rather than one person, you know, a few hours. So it's really helped in that aspect as well. And it and it By the way, I I don't don't wanna get off the side, but using gauges, kanban reports, the timeline, and you have tabs up top to kinda, like, filter all the way down through. I'd be curious, like, your projection of, like, how did you mock this up? Did you, like, mock it up and have a dream? Did you kinda, like, feed it in as you were building things through? Or did you always have a vision of what it could be? Or did you it was kinda more agile and more lean just kinda, like, creating it as you went? I always knew what I wanted it to be. But as I started building it out, that's where the tweaks started coming in. So now it's just constant. Oh, actually, I think this would make sense. Or, no, that would be better. Or what makes the most sense for, you know, Pam in the shop? So it's always just constantly changing. Although it started with an idea, it's it's never gonna be fully complete. Well, I I always found that interesting because someone would always say, what do you want? And, Like, I had to make every single decision on day one so I can tell a developer to code me up something or have it. And as we built the process, we begin to realize, well, it'd be pretty cool to have a tab here for unassigned tasks so I can quickly go off and see that. And move forward. I didn't have that idea in the beginning, but you're able to scale that up as you grow out your process and refine it. So I love it. I think this is incredible. Keep going, Nathaniel. Right. So as you can see that that test order is now on the Kanban board. As it progresses, it moves all the way down. Certain parameters are set up to where it will automatically move. So once all material's been received, you'll see all the material you see it move to material received. Once it's been delivered, it'll move all the way to delivered. So let me take to this screen. And what's also neat with QuickBase is they they have an a mobile app. So, again, it's not having to do an an iPad station or it's not having to go a hundred feet away to a computer. They pull it up on their phone. It takes fifteen seconds. They're clocked in. So this is the web version, but it looks it functions the exact same way on the mobile phone. But I'll go ahead and give an example. So this is a job that we have set up. You go and start your clock. You let it run for a few minutes, however long the task ends up taking you. You hit stop. And this screen is really nice because what we've tried to do is make it as simple as possible for the apprentices to where they're not having to jump around to different screens. They're not forgetting information. So I have it set up to where they have to put, you know, how many did they complete? What was the what was the name of the assembly? And then really any notes. And this is important because they're not always gonna come to you with issues, for a variety of reasons. Maybe they're just not comfortable with it. Maybe it can be a number of issues. So we actually found that putting these notes here has really helped kind of spot issues as they're coming up. More to the empowerment, it gives them, like, direct, direct way to communicate with Pam, with me, with pretty much everyone in the shop. Like, hey. This is having this issue. Here's the proof. Why did you require it and tell them to put it in NA? Just curious about your thought pattern on that. Well, I think I mean, we're all similar where we see something that isn't required and we just kinda blow it off. Like, I I'll admit that I do that often. Like, if I don't need to put something in whatever, because it requires you, at least for me and a lot of the apprentices, it's like, okay. Well, since I'm here, let me go ahead and put in what my issue was regardless of how big or small that it was. But those those small issues for each apprentices can really affect your timing on things. So it's it's it's been a nice way to kinda discover some things that we wouldn't have otherwise. Take the path of least resistance, and at least that reminder is right there for you to kinda say, oh, okay. Let let me add it in a note. Yeah. And and, yeah, one of the really cool things as well is, they're able to talk directly with them on the issues that they're having for the builds, and then they're able to see immediate improvements. One of the builds we had going on, they were having to mess with small components and small wires, and and it was straining their eyes. Next day, we have those, what are they called? Like, hobbyist magnifying glass, glasses that connect to your table and it zooms in and it has a light. We really try to make it as simple as possible for them. And it all that all came from that notes block. Like, hey. Eyes are being streamed fixed the next day. That's incredible. That's kind of the gist of what we have set up right now. Of course, if we need to, we can go back and look at historical times. If there are any outliers, we're able to quickly pinpoint, you know, certain things. And, again, all this information is being stored. So Yeah. If I ever need to refer back to it, I I I can. And and it's been really good for evidence as well. Like, hey. The past year, this has historically taken one minute. Why does it take me twenty? So it's been really nice at holding the apprentices accountable when before it was just it was just you saying, you know, how long it takes. So Right. Now you actually have historical reference information on estimates and actuals and and begin to start using that as a baseline overall. Yeah. And even with data. Yeah. Even silly stuff like, hey. This took, you know, thirty minutes. Oh, it's because it was a bathroom break in between there. So it it really helps just make everything very transparent. Well, we all know as we lay out, really, the job sites, let alone manufacturing before, where the restrooms matter if we're actually gonna be walking 10,000 yards to go get to it and wasting time. So, Yeah. But I think that's It's just, Daniel. I'm just looking at the time. I just wanna make sure, if you wanna touch on maybe one or two more key points, and then we'll kinda start wrapping this up. No. I think I I think I touched everything important right now. Perfect. I think it looks spectacular. Thank you. I was just gonna say to stop sharing if if you want, but, it it really is incredible. I mean, so how long have you guys been using QuickBase to date overall? So we started in about I believe it was October of last year, like, late October, early November. And we started we we spent the next, you know, two months building things out. And then beginning of the new year, that's when we kinda took it live into the shop. And, you know, I'm not gonna sit here and say that it was perfect from the beginning. At the beginning, we did mirror our our ways of doing things. So as we're running through QuickBase, we're still keeping track with the same way we've been doing it just because we knew there were gonna be mistakes and mess ups and things that needed to change. But at this point, it's pretty it pretty much all flows through QuickBase, and there's maybe those occasional outliers that we still do on our own off the side. Got it. So yeah. And, like, two months of planning and then three months of actual utilization, and now we're going back and continuous improvement and add to it Yeah. Which kinda speaks to really next steps. And I think one of the things that we could have talked about a little bit more and maybe funnel I mean, what do you think are some upcoming use cases? We put out there as an example of a warehouse, but where do you think you're gonna kinda, like, move forward with it? Is it streamline what you currently have a little bit more? Is it identifying future use cases down the road? Any visions that you guys can share with us of where you think you might wanna drive this next? My biggest thing right now is getting our QC set up, because that is the most, I guess, labor intensive when it comes to managing papers and just time spent. So getting that set up and then eventually, having metrics connected to our QCs, Like, seeing being able to spot the problems, like, hey. This this build is constantly having this issue right here. How can we fix that? That's definitely my next big step. But, eventually, you know, we wanna get probably build out the warehouse side a little bit more, maybe the delivery schedule. Yeah. Eventually, I'd like to have, like, a parts list in there because some just to standardize things. Yeah. That's that that's that's what comes to head right now. I think that's huge. I think, Andrew, if I can put you on the spot, we have a bullet point of continuous improvement, plan, do, check, adjust, and act. Do you see, like, the approach of what you've taken? Is it does it mirror? Is it parallel into lean culture improvement like Quickbase? Like, talk to me a little bit about, like, can you see Quickbase and, like, really coming together with your just any ties in efforts or just how you guys think today? Is there a parallel there? Yeah. I think both you and Nathaniel, more or less said the same thing and that he knew it wasn't gonna be perfect day one. And and you said earlier, I'd love to see where you guys are at with this in a year. I I envision it looking a lot different a year from now. Nathaniel and the the team in the shop are gonna find ways to continuously improve this, and it's exciting to just, you know, try to imagine where it's gonna be a year from now. And, we really encourage tracking those moments so that at the end of the year, we can look back and and go, man. Look at how we were doing that back in March. You know? It's so much better now. Take those pictures now, take screenshots, and then say, remember it when it looked like this overall? Yeah. That's good. Well, thank you both for really going down through this. I know that we have eight minutes left overall. I think, really, I'd like to encourage anybody at this point, if you have any questions, we do have some, preloaded questions in there, that I'd like to go down through. But, thank you both. And let's kind of just move into some of the chats or the questions that we have. And I think just some of the ones, will it be recorded and sent out? Absolutely. There's going to be, I think, a posting as well even on our website, but they will be sent out for it. We have, what are some ways to standardize processes and continuously improve for this? I I think that was kind of like a preceded question there, Nathaniel, but I I think I really wanna ask, could you imagine, does it help pulling people in from the apprentice level or dealing with who's actually working the process right now? And talk to us about your approach of how do you create a process and then how do you digitize that overall And whether or not it's now or in the future, but is there anything that you would like to share with the the audience about your approach in terms of standardizing and continuously approving for your next evolution? Yeah. For processes, a lot of it's just trial and error, you know, fixing what didn't work best, you know, the last time. Even getting the apprentices input and and because they're the ones doing it. We're the ones just kinda guiding them on how to, you know, on what to do, but they're the ones actually doing it. So they they constantly have, you know, really good ideas of how to speed things up and, yeah. So keep taking their input pretty much. I think at Lean, they say go to the Gemba. Right? Let's understand what is actually working and and be honest, and and let's actually get to the root cause of certain things. And I think that's the worst case where we can do is just when we don't give feedback or just when we're just not giving anything or we're just being quiet. Like, involve. Let's fix the process. It's not just a system issue. Don't just blame the system. Let's come together, and let's figure this out overall. So Yeah. And and just to hit on that a little bit more, it Yeah. It it's been really helpful walking out to the shop myself and talking them about QuickBase because they're getting that direct feedback with the person that's setting it up for them has been very helpful as well. So I know that's Yeah. That's made them feel empowered with, you know, seeing change happen in front of them. Being bought into it of just not being said, I mean, it's huge. It it gets them bought in as opposed to just like, here's the software. Go use it. We're gonna force feed this all the way through. So Yeah. It makes it a little bit different conversation. The question that is out there is how has the app helped with overall productivity? I think you walked us through that. I think my question maybe just as a next level of this is how are you seeing in terms of like you mentioned notifications. Are you using a lot of notifications? Do you plan on using more notifications? Or how does it help with communication? I'm gonna change that question around a bit. Yeah. I mean, kinda to hit Andrew's point from earlier when, you know, PMs or superintendents are asking what step this is at instead of having them, you know, need to call you, email, and text you, having you they're just able to get that information without even being asked. Right now, we don't have a lot of notifications set up. It is very standard, 25%, fifty % complete, that type of stuff. But, eventually, I would like to tailor it, you know, to say, like, all your material's been received, your delivery truck just left, here's the ETA, All the things that I would normally text them on the side, I would like to automate that as much as possible just to be completely transparent with them and not have them feel like they're having to come ask me every time. That's always a huge thing. I will, I'll step in and and say the automated notifications about invoicing and whatnot have been have been nice change and and helpful in setting up the envelope and to spend time sending that email when he opens that, and then they do what they just it's an automated process now. I just received a notification that it's happened. Yeah. All the other different departments and maybe over time create dashboards and reports for that, but streamline that communication as best as we can, helps out tremendously. Any other questions? Please feel free to use the Q and A. I know we're running late on time. Andrew and Nathaniel, you guys have been absolutely spectacular. Thank you for for being open and transparent, showing us your application. I think in just three months' time, it's spectacular what you've accomplished. I know that there's always going to be ups and downs and that we're here to support, so I wanna make sure that we continue to kinda work together to see where this goes and evolves. Is there any final thoughts from either of you that you'd like to just share with the group, at this point, just some final thoughts to kinda, like, put a capstone on where we've gone so far? I just think prefab needs to be the the spearhead in automation and technology, to support construction. So kudos to to QuickBase for helping us be that and and Nathaniel for all your dedication to, making our prefab best in class here. Absolutely. I think, yeah, we had a initiative around pre February, as we called it, and, we continue to see this evolve and hit a lot of different workflows, across the teams like we've mentioned before at the at the start of this. So I think going back, I think we were just sharing the Empower slide overall. For those that don't know, we have our in person Empower, actually, at the end of the month. I do encourage everybody to please check that out. If you haven't talked to your account executive or go online for more information, we will be there. We will be presenting across a couple. I I have a panel breakout session. Encourage everybody to attend that as much as we can. But also just open communication. Feel free to reach out directly after this, webinar and with anybody else, and we'll get you in touch and ask answer the right questions for you. So we've talked through some of the q and a. Also, for those that don't know, we do have a foundational prefab application tracker out there. As we look at what FSG's created, I'm blown away. I think where we can kind of, like, visualize when we get into a room and we ask ourselves a question, we have a blank stare because we we have the thoughts and ideas in our minds, but we don't know where to drive it. And, hopefully, out of this webinar, we've gotten ideas of what your process could look like. There is a foundational prefab tracker that out there that I've built, from a past life. Your operations can look different, and we can work together to tailor and customize this to kinda suit what your needs are for that. So take a look at that. Steal as much as you want out of it and break it and and download that into your realm. Encourage everyone to get some ideas as it can kinda suit your needs for it. So I think at this point, if there's no other questions, I just wanna wrap this up and say thank you to everybody for taking time, at the end of your lunch, and, really, I look forward to seeing everybody on Empower and moving into the year. So I wish everyone a great 2025. Thank you for taking the time today. Andrew, Nathaniel, I can't thank you enough. Thank you both again. And, at this point, we will close it off. So thank you, everybody. Really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.