Supply chain and Logistics are one of the more complex parts of any operation, and construction is especially complex. James Swanston applies critical lessons learned in a military career to the problems of logistics in construction, and gives us some ideas for where supply chain and logistics will evolve in the future.
Hugh Seaton: [00:00:00] Welcome to Constructed Futures. I'm Hugh Seaton. Today, I'm here with James Swanston, CEO of Voyage Control. James, welcome to the podcast.
James Swanston: [00:00:11] Thanks to Hugh. It's really great to be here.
Hugh Seaton: [00:00:13] So I want to start with what Voyage Control is. You guys have done a bunch of things over the last decade or so, talk to me about how the company started and what you're up to now.
James Swanston: [00:00:24] Sure. So everything sort of started in a pure accidental way really. The original premise of the business was around passenger transport. And I realized that I got that horribly wrong. So we sort of did a pivot because our first client owned a couple of convention centers and they did an event scheduling solution for their logistics. So that's ultimately what we got paid to build in 2012, 2013. And then we've just gone from there, sort of getting into construction and a range of other sectors.
Hugh Seaton: [00:00:53] Interesting. And so in construction and, and these adjacent sectors, how do you guys enter the industry? What are you doing?
James Swanston: [00:01:01] In almost every case. Serendipity plays a very big role. When I first got into construction, three things happened. Firstly, we got introduced to Suffolk. Who's a big GC in the United States. We got approached by Procore to build an integration into their, sort of, early marketplace back in 2016 and Liang O'Rourke, who's a big client of ours in the United Kingdom had just taken on board a head of logistics who had come from Tesco, a big retailer. And it was sort of trying to understand how the construction industry approaches supply chain or rather doesn't approach the supply chain.
Hugh Seaton: [00:01:37] That was an absolutely leading end to that sentence. So let's talk about how the construction industry doesn't approach supply chain. I mean, obviously people are getting materials where they need to get, and buildings are still going up, but you know, a statement like that, I think a lot of people are nodding their heads and say, well, there's room to grow.
So let's talk a little bit about the room to grow.
James Swanston: [00:01:57] Absolutely. And as you know I'm a former military officer and anyone in the military studies logistics. If you think about all of the greatest failures in the last several thousand years logistics plays a big role. You think about Napoleon going into Russia. You then actually think about Hitler going into Russia. You think about multiple battles where there's a complete disconnect of logistics. So for someone like me coming from a military background, logistics is sort of hard coded into what you do as a person running a business. And certainly that is the case for many other industries.
That is not necessarily what happens in construction. If you think about it, there is no sort of sub profession within construction that is wholly focused around supply chain and logistics. And I think sometimes that comes down to the reality of who bears the financial risk for projects between the GC and the trades.
Hugh Seaton: [00:02:49] That's interesting. So you're seeing that, the way the approach to supply chain has evolved you think is because of how risk is assessed.
James Swanston: [00:03:00] Absolutely. It's, it's almost a question of, it's not my problem until it becomes my problem, which is probably not quite the right way of thinking about that.
In sort of more dare I say, vertically integrated manufacturers because ultimately construction is a manufacturing process, if you don't get your steel on time as a car manufacturer, you're not thinking about the process bill, you're going to be in trouble. If you produce sugar and you're not concerned about the raw parts and sugar you're going to get in trouble.
So I think in most other sections, There's a huge amount of work that has gone into this over decades. Whereas in construction, we're sort of still grappling with doing everything on whiteboards and spreadsheets, let alone using any form of digital technology to manage this.
Hugh Seaton: [00:03:47] Well, I'm going to take those comments somewhere that I will see if we can answer, because some of it's internal to companies, but you make me think of kind of scope of ownership.
I mean, one of the things from the outside, I know that certainly, the us military spends a lot of time thinking about, is what is someone responsible for and are they ready for that? And can they think that long can they handle that level of complexity? And I wonder if there's a little bit of a mismatch there, right?
Is it sounds like. You know, if you're the foreman or the superintendent, you feel like you own your job site, but you may not, you don't own. You know, all of the, all of the processes that get materials to you. So do you think maybe that's one of the areas where people might look is that the scope of control is optimized to keep risk away and not to keep the system flowing.
James Swanston: [00:04:33] So I think there are two parts actually to that. The first is, when I was a young platoon commander as actually 18 year old, logistics was an important thing. And I had my platoon Sergeant who was responsible for the full logistics. And then as I became a company second in command and the company commander logistics was always part of the planning process.
And so as an officer, it's a core part of training, but also for soldiers, it's exactly the same. So within a platoon, in a rifle section, the second in command is in charge of logistics in a platoon. You know, the platoon Sergeant is in charge of logistics. So at every stage of going through your career, logistics plays an intimate role. And I just don't think you see that at all in the construction industry. And so you sort of build this body of people in the military who, for whom logistics is very important because it's also a life and death situation in the military. It's very important.
Hugh Seaton: [00:05:26] I wonder in manufacturing though, logistics is obviously critical, but I don't believe it's part of what you learn on your way up. If you are running a... well, you must be if you're running a factory, but I wonder if maybe the stability of supply chains in manufacturing makes it a little bit less of a critical point.
Cause you, you establish it and you you check your numbers and away you go. Whereas in construction because every site is its own thing. It's a little bit closer to how the military might view things.
James Swanston: [00:05:59] Maybe, I mean, I think the thing with a big manufacturer is, there's a clear established set of standard operating procedures, that have to operate throughout the whole business because ultimately they're trying to manufacture things, so they need to have standardized approaches. I think one of the other problems in construction is you end up with projects doing their own thing. And so even though the branding might be the same across a very big construction company, at a site level, people just do their own thing. And there's no enforcement of sort of standards, whereas with the military or dare I say manufacturing, you have to have the standards in place. Yeah, perhaps you use a military analogy. If it'd be like, sort of on one side, you're using 7.62 ammunition and on another site using 5.56 ammunition. It actually just so I sort of think that lack of standardization in construction permeates a lot of the challenges, not just around logistics and supply chain.
Hugh Seaton: [00:06:58] It certainly does on the data side. I mean, you hear that over and over again, is that different project managers will enter data differently or have their people enter data differently. Which, you know, results in a real difficulty with dashboards and kind of executive control, which you're hearing more and more companies try to address, but it's not that easy.
It's not that easy to go from. Project to project and, and enforce these things without it becoming, you know, a real strategic initiative. Yeah. And again , you do see that. Well, one of the things I think that construction is also maybe learning as as an industry is the idea of company-wide strategic initiatives and how hard they are.
James Swanston: [00:07:37] And that's also where it comes down to unders... I was actually thinking about this a lot over the last couple of weeks, because you know, in the military, when we've spoken previously, you have this idea of commander's intent. So you understand what the senior leaders are wanting to do. And so what you're trying to do tactically has to fit in with that strategic plan.
And a great example of that probably these days is around sort of sustainability, where a lot of very big construction companies are very keen to focus on net zero emissions at some point in the not-too-distant future, but that doesn't necessarily permeate down to a construction site, but then the second thing which became a bit of a military concept, I don't know, 30 years ago, was this idea of a strategic corporal and the idea there was someone at a tactical level can have strategic effects by virtue of what they do or don't do. And the negative example of this is where civilians get killed and where I think that plays into the construction world, is probably a little bit more negative, in that you have people at a very tactical level who are preventing strategic decisions from being made.
And the example you just gave about people doing their own sort of data collection is a perfect example of that. Where a construction company wants to capture all the data in the same way to understand how they're operating, but you have someone on the job site whose view is they've been doing something the same way for 30 years, and that's the best way of doing it.
And they're not willing to look at industry best practice. So you almost have that challenge there as well, where someone at a very tactical level is actually preventing the strategy from being implemented appropriately across an organization.
Hugh Seaton: [00:09:18] And I think this is, coming back to manufacturing as our kind of counterpoint, isn't really unique to construction.
It's a little bit unique to construction now, but across the last 30 or 40 years, you've seen this in company after company where they've had to really rework what people think is important, what they think is valuable and what they think is absolutely necessary for them to do. I mean, you know, the extreme example of that was when Jack Welch when in the very beginning of the eighties fired something like 30,000 people. Actually, I think the number's bigger than that. I just don't want to over quote, and the reason for that was they found that in their operations, people just wouldn't take the retraining. And he said, I need different teams. I need different people. That's an extreme, expensive way to handle something. And I think he exited some businesses too. So it wasn't just a net, a net loss of staff. But this idea that, you know, how, how do you make a big dispersed organization of people, all of whom have their own experience and views and goals and values, change? I don't know that that anybody's ever going to talk about firing people so much as.
You know, how do we retrain them? So, so, you know, great example of that is in the soft drinks business where I've spent some time with Pepsi and some other folks I've worked with somebody in the U S where they're the people against whom they were competing changed. And they had to go from basically going against one of the big major companies to locals. And it was in the water business actually. So in other words, instead of fighting Coke, they were fighting local bottlers and as a result, everything that was important and everything that had to get done needed to change. And it took them like 18 months of constant talk and constant explanation of why this is important. And here's how this trickles down to what you're doing, mr. Salesperson. When you're talking to a mom and pop store.
James Swanston: [00:11:10] Yeah, and I mean,it's also interesting, you know, you talk about someone battling against others.
The reality in business is, businesses don't have to survive. There's nothing that says that a business has to stay in business. And, and the reality is business is not an exam, it's a competition. Yeah, it's not a pass or fail. It's you survive or you don't. And I love sort of quoting W Edwards Deming.
You know, some of his things about survival, isn't mandatory, but it's, it's true with business. And, you know, I think ultimately, businesses that don't make those hard decisions will at some point die or get taken out by competition. And that is a reality. And we haven't quite seen that in the U S construction industry.
Whereas in the UK...
Hugh Seaton: [00:11:56] You totally have what's it mean there were a couple of recent big failures. Right?
James Swanston: [00:12:01] There was Corillian. But there are others who have had massive profit warnings and have had to be bailed out. I mean, obviously Katerra in the U S had to get bailed out as well, but that is reality. And the industry, particularly with GCs operates in such a way that the GCs are the, probably the least profitable part of the whole industry.
Hugh Seaton: [00:12:22] There's the old deal joke that two guys are running and there's a bear behind them.
And one guy goes, man, I hope I beat the bear. And the other guy says, no, I just hope I beat you. So at the end of the day, you're right, it isn't an exam, it's a competition. And you know, in this case the bear is bad things happening to low margin businesses that don't have the ability to absorb it.
James Swanston: [00:12:41] Correct.
Hugh Seaton: [00:12:42] So coming back to Voyage Control and how you're working with logistics. Talk to me a little bit about how you're working with companies and what you've learned along the way.
James Swanston: [00:12:52] I think the biggest lesson is that it's a massive behavior change activity. Yes, we're doing it through the medium of a technology platform, but it's all about behavior change.
It's about highlighting, you know, for people who are keen to understand this, that there are technology tools that can help them do their jobs better. And that's probably the carrot. And then I guess there is a stick component to this, which is sort of to say, well, you know, a point will come where the way you're operating, isn't going to be competitive anymore. And you're going to get in trouble at some point. And that both works at a GC level and a sub-contractor level and arguably at an owner level as well.
The last few years, and I'm sure for the next few years, there's a lot of things we want to do, but we just feel that we shouldn't do them because the industry isn't ready for them, like fully connecting a logistics and supply chain platform to BIM and project schedule is absolutely something we want to do, but none of our customers remotely ready to do that in any meaningful way yet. So we need to be slightly ahead of where the market is, but not jump ahead too far that it sort of looks like vaporware .
And we have to ground our solutions in reality of what the industry really wants us to do.
Hugh Seaton: [00:14:11] And what it's trained for. I mean, one of the things that, that makes you know BIM now a little bit more prevalent than it was, is just the sheer number of people that can work with it.
James Swanston: [00:14:21] Yes, absolutely. But that's taken decades, so yeah.
Hugh Seaton: [00:14:24] Yeah. It really, it really has. And it's, and it's taken some decisions from everything from labor unions, all the way to universities and so on.
James Swanston: [00:14:32] Regulation in Europe has helped with that as well.
Hugh Seaton: [00:14:37] Yeah, certainly the UK, right. Itwas a decade ago, I think that the BIM was.
James Swanston: [00:14:42] Definitely.
Yes. So, and that hasn't only helped, dare I say, practitioners in the industry. It's also helped people providing products to get more certainty about providing those products, because that's always a challenge for someone trying to build new products. You need to know that there's going to be a market for it.
So having that sort of regulatory framework in place in the UK enabled a lot of UK companies to sort of build solutions around that.
Hugh Seaton: [00:15:11] And argue for, I mean, to your point about building something, someone has to argue for some money. Whether it's to a VC or whether it's to a grant making body or somebody, but being able to point to the fact that the entire industry, or at least a major segment of the industry, because I think he was only for government buildings and government related buildings. Correct?
James Swanston: [00:15:27] Correct. Yeah.
Hugh Seaton: [00:15:28] Which is a big deal.
James Swanston: [00:15:31] Yeah. There's some great grantmaking things that happened in Europe with innovate UK and so on. I think the challenge for tech companies sometimes is they can get, drawn way too much down the rabbit hole of almost having the reason for being around where they get their next grant from as opposed to commercializing a solution.
So that's always an inevitable challenge, I think for, for tech companies.
Hugh Seaton: [00:15:54] What an interesting perspective, because in the US you don't hear that. You know, in the US you hear at a, a mirror of that, where it's all about getting the next VC check. And instead of commercializing, not commercializing they're over commercializing sometimes get, you know, that that gap between seed and series a is often all about hyping up your marketing and trying to really drive revenue to the detriment potentially of product development and other things.
James Swanston: [00:16:21] Yeah. A bit. And it's an interesting thing where you sometimes have to wonder, and I talk to founders, who've raised lots of money and you sort of wonder whether their primary customer is the next investor, as opposed to a construction company.
And I don't think that's necessarily the right answer either. So, and it's great that people are raising lots of money and like hiring lots of people, but ultimately you do need to think about building a sustainable business model that you know, where you want to have profits and a decent EBITDA.
So but that's often not spoken about by tech founders.
Hugh Seaton: [00:16:55] Well, and I think just as we explore that little rabbit hole for a minute, I think some of the issue is models that make sense for some sectors might not for others. So if you're thinking. The returns and that the pace of returns and core operating metrics are going to be even remotely the same for construction as they might be for something consumer or something a little bit more mainstream B2B, I think it's a problem. And I, some, I know some really good VCs who get that, who understand that it isn't so much that it's faster or slower it's that the process is different. Yes. And you get, you can get to a place where you're moving as fast as you want to move, but it isn't quick, and you don't get to that point as early as you might with some other, whether B2B or, or B to C.
James Swanston: [00:17:42] Absolutely. And I think a lot of truly successful companies that operate in this industry have been going at it for 10 years before they've started to become really successful financially, because it is very hard. I think that time is getting a bit quicker now. It certainly, yeah. I mean, you know, Procore is often held up as a, you know, given how long it took them. .
And that's the reality of this industry and it's not an industry that's going to move magically overnight to embrace technology in the way that other sectors or indeed consumer businesses can do.
Hugh Seaton: [00:18:14] I had a fantastic chat with someone from Suffolk yesterday. And just talking about that, that, I mean, you know, he's in the middle of it.
And kind of talking about exactly what you're you're describing, which is just because you had a good pilot doesn't mean that it goes anywhere else. And just because you've had a good meeting with one site doesn't mean it goes anywhere else. So that the complexity and need for redundancy in construction sales is almost unlimited.
I mean, it isn't really, it's just way more than you expect it to be. There is no, even though there's an innovation team and they're critical to the process. They're not, they're not there they're necessary, but not sufficient, I think was what he was saying.
James Swanston: [00:18:54] Absolutely. Yeah. And know, I mean, it's, Suffolk was interesting.
We sort of ended up being across a dozen sites before we sort of really connected at an enterprise level with them, which is, which is good for us. But at the same time, that also creates a challenge for construction companies where you have the shadow IT, of all of these sort of little tech solutions in one or two different projects where they could actually be business critical, but the business has an actually vetted them from a, is this product actually going to survive or is it causing security problems and everything like that.
So it is a bit of a conundrum for these guys, but you're absolutely right, I think the name of the game is actually, you know, getting to those bigger enterprise deals because having one off pilots is never going to assure any company of true success.
Hugh Seaton: [00:19:43] And, you know, speaking a little bit more generically, how have you found that process go? I don't want to hone in on, on Suffolk too much, but across some other companies that you've seen, how, how has, how have you made that work? How have you made it go from a couple of good meetings or a good pilot to something a bit more large scale.
James Swanston: [00:20:00] Every company is a bit different where we're actually about to sign a very big enterprise deal with another very big construction company in the U S and what's unique in this situation is they're going to mandate our software on every project.
Because I think a lot of other companies, even when you get to an enterprise discussion, it's still very much up to a site level to think about what they want to do or not do, which going back to our earlier point, is a little bit counter intuitive.
Whereas with this one there'll be at least 50 sites that sort of all brand new sites that start from the next couple of weeks will all be on our platform. And so that's, that's a great step forward for us. And ultimately that's where we want to get to with every other construction company.
What we've sort of found as an interim sort of step is almost putting in place the enterprise pricing framework. So that whilst the discussions are going on, which can take a year or two to sort of ultimately end up with some kind of master services agreement, the businesses still benefiting from the volume pricing discounts.
So that's in place with multiple other construction companies , as well at the moment. I mean, ultimately I think, you know, they'll all become enterprise customers, but you almost need to go through that interim step. Cause at the same time, a lot of construction companies feel reluctant to force their sites to do anything that's standard as well.
So that that's just another challenge. Another roadblock that sits in the way of a tech company, trying to get an enterprise deal in place.
Hugh Seaton: [00:21:30] Do you think some of that is because early experience with some of what they call ERP is kind of left a bad... I mean, I hear that anyway... that it left a bad taste in everyone's mouth a little bit that you know, six, seven years ago. Primarily accounting, I mean, they call them ERP, but I think they're more like accounting in my mind software suites were sort of pushed out into the field, but they weren't really built for the field. So they imposed as much cost as maybe they saved. They just didn't impose it on the office, they imposed it on the field. Do you think that has something to do with it? That there's now a sense that they're a little sheepish about pushing something out until they're pretty sure that it's gonna fly, and it's going to unambiguously add value.
James Swanston: [00:22:08] Yeah, I think there's a bit of that, but I also think there's almost a bit of a lack of leadership around some of this as well, where, you know, a point comes where it's ridiculous to not think about standardizing procedures and I'm not talking about us as a business necessarily, but you know, it's, it's crazy when you have different projects with the same company, invoicing in different ways or, you know, having different procurement activities and stuff like that. And that, yes, that affects us a little bit, but it also affects all their suppliers. One of our customers in other countries, but not in the UK, they have five different processes in London for logistics management, depending on the site that you're on.
So that is absolute insanity for anyone in their own team, because they then need to retrain every time I moved to a different site and their entire supply chain has to go through multiple different processes, which just does it. And then they can't collect any data in a standardized way. So, so I think there's a point sometimes where senior leadership just need to say, "this is the right thing and get on it," as opposed to, "oh, I don't want to offend, you know, someone who's been with the business for 30 years" just because.
Hugh Seaton: [00:23:19] Because there's an inherent respect for the problem solving and experience of the individual, which I think maybe gets in the way a little bit, right. That, that you can still have that, but also say yes, but we're a $4 billion business that has to behave like a $4 billion business.
James Swanston: [00:23:35] Absolutely, and I mean, we haven't really delved into the labor shortage challenge that exists in construction. I can remember a couple of years ago I was going around and talking to a lot of very big infrastructure projects in the US, and the biggest consistent message was concern over the future workforce for construction. And the reality is that construction companies have to digitize. Otherwise, they're just not going to have enough staffing to do a lot of the things that they want to do.
And by the way, if you have a labor shortage, the cost of labor goes up significantly, so the use of technology also becomes an important thing from a price reduction perspective. So yeah, this, this is one of those big macro issues in the industry that doesn't necessarily filter down to someone at the tactical level such that they really care.
Hugh Seaton: [00:24:25] Yeah. And you can imagine there's a short-term versus long-term problem, right?
As you don't want to annoy the guy who you can't afford to have retire today by digitizing. But as a result, you may bring in fewer of tomorrow's leaders and workers, because they don't want to work at a non digitized or at least, you know, not modern feeling place, which you hear over and over again, you hear that a big reason for digitization and adoption of new things is for millennials and for younger people.
But obviously there's a tension right between short-term and long-term.
James Swanston: [00:24:58] Exactly. And that becomes a bit of a pyrrhic victory though, because if, if companies don't recognize that and sort of communicate that in their teams, it could be a bit too late. Right. So yeah.
Hugh Seaton: [00:25:13] So you're providing software and you've started the conversation by talking about mind shifts and different ways of thinking about things.
How do you support companies that you work with in that way, how do you, do you provide training? Do you, do you provide consulting? What's it? How do you help them to change the way they think about it? Or does the software kind of lead them there almost naturally?
James Swanston: [00:25:32] It actually has to be a bit of both.
I think I think there's a tendency of tech companies to feel that you can sort of do a fire and forget type of thing with this. And, and certainly the last 12 months of not being able to visit sites has made that a little bit challenging, but I sort of still firmly believe that, you know, we're still in the early years of helping the industry to transform. So it's important to spend time with our customers and talk about industry best practice and what we're seeing, both in the United States and globally. And where there are opportunities for our clients to improve what they're doing.
So I think that's an important thing. Something that we're planning on doing is also helping to look at how we can professionalize this a little bit through having more accreditation around training so that people can get sort of continuing professional development credits and stuff like that.
Because I think that will help to to sort of raise the profile of logistics and supply chain in the industry. And I think that's certainly resonating with some of our customers where you have people who are members of professional bodies and stuff like that. And, and I think that'll be a real useful tool and, you know, Procore did that incredibly successfully with sort of a lot of the training programs they've done.
So, you know, it's useful to borrow from thatand R.I.C.S. does a lot of this as well. I've been very fortunate to have a good relationship with R.I.C.S. over the last few years, too.
Hugh Seaton: [00:26:57] That's great. It'll be interesting to see where you land on that because on the one end Procore essentially does at least the kind of stamps that you get on LinkedIn, I've got a couple of them.
They basically do a really good walk through their product. You don't really know how to use it at the end. Cause if you, if you don't understand construction management, they haven't taught you that. So, I always liked as an ex marketer, I always liked the fact that it was a fantastic product demo that you could then go brag about.
I was like, well, that's a neat trick. Yeah. Whereas someone like R.I.C.S. You're going to walk away with a deeper, and probably broader set of skills and understanding. And I think, you know, given what you're looking to do, it'd be interesting to see where you land kind of in between those two, right?
Because you want people to think differently as opposed to apply their existing experience and not other that too, but, but you want them to think differently about their existing knowledge and experience and think more broadly, but at the same time, understand your product.
James Swanston: [00:27:52] Absolutely. So, and then, you know, in a place like the UK, you then superimpose on top of that, the issues around regulation that people need to be aware of.
And particularly in a place like London. So there's a lot of other sort of little bits and pieces to this as well that I think will hopefully help in this process.
Hugh Seaton: [00:28:12] The legal framework around supply chain is actually something I'm just appreciating even now. And an example of that is things are regulated as products if they're manufactured until they're installed. Which is interesting because most people in construction, their intuition is towards kind of construction regulation and concerns. Whereas like in modular construction, it's a product until you put it into the wall or into its space. So at that means that the regulatory regimes across the supply chain, there might be overlapping regulatory concerns.
I'm sure that they're not conflicting too often, but nevertheless, it's, it's more that you need to think about that, you know , the average procurement officer probably doesn't think about it.
James Swanston: [00:28:56] Yeah. And the other thing that people probably don't necessarily consider is the sort of insurance implications of a lot of this as well.
I know that some big insurers are now starting to look at risks in construction supply chains. And how a tool like ours can help to mitigate some of that risk. But also the reality is if people literally don't have a clue where things are in their supply chain, then who would be responsible for them financially and, and from an insurance perspective.
Hugh Seaton: [00:29:24] Let's end with how Voyage Control helps with that.
James Swanston: [00:29:27] So I think at the most fundamental level, it's about providing a digital platform to collect a lot of this data because ultimately if you're not able to collect the data and I'll come back to the sustainability thing in a second, but if you're not able to collect data in a meaningful way, that's pretty much real time.
You almost can't do anything else with it. The Lord Kelvin quote about, the need to be able to measure things before you can manage them is absolutely correct. And you know, when some of our customers are thinking about the sort of net zero sort of environmental and sustainability initiatives, and then they sort of think, okay, well, how much lumber or concrete do we, consume or purchase every year?
And they don't even know that basic question. They can't even then start thinking about how they can apply that data to making better management decisions in the business. So almost if nothing else, our platform is there as a collection. I mean, funnily enough, given that I've worked in the intelligence community, it's sort of a bit funny that, you know, our platform is almost just there to collect information for our customers, but ultimately that's it because it's not just enough to collect data on how many trucks showed up or how much lumbers shown up it's about what are the decisions you need to be able to make with that?
And it could be from simple things like, okay, when does it transfer ownership from a sub-contractor to a owner or to a construction company. And then who has the insurance risk on this particular day?
Or if we know that something is going to be on time, does that help to mitigate you know, an insurance problem? Yeah. Or if we have the data, what does that in the context of liquidated damages? If that sort of comes up as a problem. So it's really about not just capturing the data in a platform like ours.
And again, this isn't just a discussion about supply chain, but then how do you think about taking that information and using it for business?
Hugh Seaton: [00:31:17] That's exciting. So at the end of the day, some of the change you're talking about is having people think about where things are as an active status, as opposed to a, a plus or minus delivery point. Among other things. I mean, I don't want to oversimplify it, but, but some of what you're doing is asking people to think about the supply chain as an ongoing active process, instead of...
James Swanston: [00:31:39] And it's sort of saying, okay, well, who are my three suppliers for this particular product in 2020 and who performed?
And, and then saying, okay, well they should be on the next jobs. And the person that didn't perform, who probably was the cheapest on that particular job, you can sort of say, okay, but they charged us 20% less, but actually it costs us 10% more because they failed. So we're not going to use them anymore.
So I think over time any platform is going to help construction companies make a lot of better decisions about their procurement. And I think that's, that's something that hopefully we can help our customers with, but that's not an overnight thing by any stretch of imagination.
And in many respects, it's a multi-year strategy because once you've picked your suppliers for a project that might last for years, you're not really going to switch. So it's starting to think about the value of the data that you've collected over the last few years.
Hugh Seaton: [00:32:35] Yeah, and I mean, it's worth keeping in mind, all of these processes, all of these changes, you know, everybody wants you to change quickly, but the reality is there's so much complexity that it's an evolution, not a break point.
James Swanston: [00:32:48] Yeah. Yeah.
Hugh Seaton: [00:32:50] Well, James, thank you so much. This has been really enlightening. I've learned a lot and I've appreciated having you on the podcast.
Well, thank
James Swanston: [00:32:55] you very much. I really appreciate it. It was great to chat again.