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