WGAN-TV Live at 5 Monday, April 6, 2020 WE GET AROUND NETWORK
James Duffy VP, Business PROvision.IFTI.comIFTI/PROvisionDevelopmentSolutions
WGAN-TV Guest James Duffy VP, Business IFTI/PROvisionDevelopmentSolutionsPROvision.IFTI.com
MSPs: How to Make Money Doing Weekly Construction Documentation
Weekly construction documentation [using Matterport digital twins] to basically assess where things are, to find out if they’re on schedule, make sure that if there’s any issues of work that’s been done that might be done in the wrong place, that they can catch it before it becomes a change order and costly, and they want to see that documentation throughout the whole life cycle of that build process.
James Duffy VP, Business PROvision.IFTI.comIFTI/PROvisionDevelopmentSolutions
| Guest: IFTI/PROvision Solutions Vice
Doing
- On the next episode.
| Episode: 68 | Monday, April 6, 2020 | PROvision.IFTI.com
- On the next episode. What is weekly construction documentation?
What problems does weekly construction documentation solve? Who are the stakeholders and users of weekly construction documentation? How is construction documentation used? Before there was Matterport, how was construction documentation done? How is weekly construction documentation done now with Matterport? And, how do Matterport Service Providers help with weekly construction documentation? I have so many more questions, we should actually just jump into it.
- Sure. So for a Matterport camera, you usually need to have the walls up because you need to have interiors in order to capture the actual walkthrough of what’s there instead of 360 photos. So usually just the buildup of the basic four corners of a wall. How to Make Money Weekly Construction Documentation President of Business Development James Duffy
WGAN-TV | MSPs:
Page 2 of 12 WGAN-TV | MSPs: How to Make Money Doing Weekly Construction Documentation | Monday, April 6, 2020
Got a great show for you today, how Matterport Service Providers can make money doing weekly construction documentation, and we have an awesome guest for the show today. Hey James, good to see you.
- Great to see you again, Dan. Thanks for having me.
- Oh yeah, sure, Dan. Thanks again for having me, and weekly construction documentation is usually for general contractors or owners to get kind of a weekly cadence of visibility on progress that’s happening on the execution of a construction site. So to get to that build level and they want to basically get a snapshot in time of a pause to basically assess where things are, to find out if they’re on schedule, make sure that if there’s any issues of work that’s been done that might be done in the wrong place, that they can catch it before it becomes a change order and costly, and they want to see that documentation throughout the whole life cycle of that build process.
- You bet. James Duffy. James is Vice President Business Development for I-F-T-I, for IFTI PROvision Solutions, and just to give you a quick flavor of the kinds of questions I’m going to be asking James on this show that he’ll cover, what is weekly construction documentation?
- Hi all, I’m Dan Smigrod, Founder of the We Get Around Network Forum. Today is Monday, April 6th, 2020, and you’re watching WGAN-TV Live at 5.
- That’s a lot, and I think you’ve even touched on some of the problems that weekly construction documentation covers. Maybe if we could take it a bit slower and talk about the entire life cycle for maybe the first time a scan is done and what that’s used for, to all the way to the end of that weekly scan and what that’s used for.
James let’s-
Weekly construction documentation [using Matterport digital twins] to basically assess where things are, to find out if they’re on schedule, make sure that if there’s any issues of work that’s been done that might be done in the wrong place, that they can catch it before it becomes a change order and costly, and they want to see that documentation throughout the whole life cycle of that build process.
Page 3 of 12 WGAN-TV | MSPs: How to Make Money Doing Weekly Construction Documentation | Monday, April 6, 2020
- It depends on the stakeholder who’s working with you. So if you’re usually working for the owner, it’s their project management team who needs that visibility of what’s going on on site.
- Let’s talk a little bit about price. The space perhaps is scanned either by the company that owns the space or the company that’s planning to lease this space or has leased the space. They send it to the general contractor. How can the general contractor use that to determine price?
- Let’s take maybe a retail store or a restaurant. That the retail store is thinking about a space to begin construction. I imagine they might send it to the general contractor in order to facilitate...?
So generally those project managers for the owners will be working with the general contractor having weekly conversations of what’s going on on a project.
- Yeah. There’s usually three different kinds of construction. There’s an existing space, which then will get turned down and refurbished like a remodel program. There’s a tenant improvement, which usually might start from like a white box or an existing space that’s going to be turned into something completely different with a new lease or owner. And then there’s new construction, which is basically starting from the ground up. So a pad putting up walls for the first time and going through. So there’s a lot of different types of uses for the monitoring depending on the project, but for a restaurant, say, they might have ones that they’re opening up, like basically breaking ground on a brand new space and are starting from the ground up and they’d like to see and capture the construction process from the start to finish so they can understand the price, the schedule and the work, and help guide that process through it as one of those kind of options.
- Who would use that first scan?
- So this may not be obvious, but if we’re talking about a company that has 200 locations across the United States, the owner is definitely not physically in 200 places. The general contractor may be multiple general contractors. So this is really to facilitate conversation with multiple people who aren’t necessarily in the market?
And rather than just maybe getting a picture from the general contractor cell phone, by having that ability to utilize a scan and walk through the space, they can really get a more of a feel of what’s going on, on the site and can have better communication with the general contractor.
- Well, I still want to go back just a little bit further, so maybe we talk about the bidding process of a contractor and the -subcontractors?Sure.Iftheowner already has an existing site that they already own and operate, a nice thing is to get the scan of the space
- Yeah, so if it’s done by the owner, the best thing is the general contractor has already been hired. So they already put in the price it’s going to take and their estimation of the timeframe to get the job done. So how does auditing of that space will help with the general contractor is, if they’re not on site and like the site superintendent to make the decision, they could see the space of how well it’s going and better communicate with their subcontractors and vendors of how good they’re doing on their job and if they’re staying the schedule, because when they start that out, the general contractor gives a price and a schedule and allows the general contractor to basically self audit themselves of how well they’re doing to that reality, and if there are issues that are coming around, it gives that transparency to communicate with the owner of, “Hey, we’re running into this issue, take a look at it here.
So right now it’s a phone call and maybe an email, or a text message for progress reports, photos taken from a phone, but being able to provide more rapidly, readily available information with a scan to leadership, whether it be at the general contractor level or the owner stakeholder level, which usually are project managers in charge of those individual spaces, that they can see overall assessment from the granular of one space to likely set up to those hundreds of spaces that are going on in construction, throughout the year.
Usually though there’s no windows in there and you’re using a lot of natural light to go through the space, but the first instance is really to capture the idea of what the pad looks like. Maybe they have the beginning infrastructure of some where the offline walls will be, scaffolding, that stuff of inside the space. But usually to get it started off, to know that they’re fully operational for the first scan.
This is my solution to that issue,” because none of these sites, it’s never perfect, and the better communication between that general contractor and the stakeholder of the owner, the better that understanding is and prevents friction.
- Correct. Yeah, they’re there depending on what that visibility is. There aren’t enough people that are involved in that process to keep that open line of communication through different mediums.
- Okay. Let’s stick with weekly, let’s stick with restaurants, there’s obviously money here that’s being spent to scan so how does scanning weekly save money or save time, or help solve some other problem?
And try to have that conversation with them saying, “If you have a chance to view everything once a week, you can catch a problem before it becomes a big problem.” And-
- Did you say a problem?
- When would be the next logical time to do a scan? The general contractor, he’s quoted on the project, or the subcontractors have quoted to the general contractor, contractor has quoted on the project based on all the subs, construction begins, weekly construction progress?
- And if you could save one change order, think about what those costs are and then now think about what it is my cost to go out there to that space.
James Duffy VP, Business PROvision.IFTI.comIFTI/PROvisionDevelopmentSolutions
Weekly construction documentation [using Matterport digital twins] to basically assess where things are, to find out if they’re on schedule, make sure that if there’s any issues of work that’s been done that might be done in the wrong place, that they can catch it before it becomes a change order and costly, and they want to see that documentation throughout the whole life cycle of that build process.
Page 4 of 12 WGAN-TV | MSPs: How to Make Money Doing Weekly Construction Documentation | Monday, April 6, 2020 for the current as is conditions, and what they can do is then put that out as part of their pre-bid, so they can have a virtual walkthrough of the space, so the general contractor can then price out what they think the cost is going to be.
So thinking about how you’re able to save them with direct costs is always important. And then the secondary thing is, really, what are their needs? And it’s really important to understand what their needs are, and you can ask them these questions of, “If we were able to get there to scan it every week, how often do you usually have a change order because you miss something?”
And then you can take it a step further, it starts with the general contractor after they’ve been awarded the bid, they can pay and get the scan done and they can use that for their subcontractors to then bid on. So depending on where you start the process, it is very important though to have that scan so you can basically understand what the prices are going to be, or on the latter, if an issue arises, you have a primary source of truth that you’ve shared and you can communicate with, what happened?
How come you didn’t notice something? And be able to have an open dialogue about it.
- This one is a little bit more that we’ve noticed with our clients for the construction monitoring. It really depends on the visibility that is needed. It’s not a one size fits all program because obviously the more scans you get, the more the price is, and that end client customer has to realize the benefits and risks of adding upfront costs to knowing what something is or will be. So some have a higher threshold than others. So weekly monitoring, say maybe for a restaurant, might be worth it because the turnaround time is, say 60 days, which is two months, so maybe weekly is only eight scans, which may be palatable. But for a larger size project, which would be done over maybe three months to a half a year and spending that amount of money, maybe it’s not. So working through that with your clients and figuring out what’s their threshold of visibility of the amount of work completed, it could be weekly, it might be biweekly or it could be something like phases of construction. So when something is done and another trigger of a pain where it’s onto the next branch of subcontractors where you stop and pause, it could be something like that as well.
The great part is, compared to in the real world where you just do a physical site walkthrough, you might be looking at a space for a half hour or an hour, to ascertain what our total costs are, and when you have a snapshot in time virtual walkthrough, you can spend as much time as you have to know the nitty gritty details of the space to make sure your pricing and schedule and evaluation is done properly.
- Sure. Going to scan something weekly, you would look at it two ways. How often would somebody, if you were the one scanning it and giving that snapshot, save somebody on a trip that would be otherwise going there? So you should consider, is that person getting on a plane, staying at a hotel, getting a per diem for eating out while they’re on Andsite? also their time. That person is now instead of maybe managing multiple projects, is just there focusing on one.
- I would say, at the end we’re the agency that goes out to get the visibility, I’m not the one checking on somebody’s work to make sure like, you did a good job or you did a bad job, that goes to the end user. But the contact that we’ve had with them, how is this working for you, seeing a lot of visibility? Most of the time, it’s catching the little things that aren’t a big thing yet. We don’t know if that person would’ve caught it later on and then fixed it, we don’t know, but they would speculate of catching where the outlets are going to be, to making sure they’re spaced apart the right way, or where the plumbing is, is it supposed to come on the inside of a stud or on the outside of Allsomething?ofthese
- That’s the $64,000 question, Dan. I would say overall, this is just speculation of what I’ve heard from the clients that we work with. It’s usually between five and 10% of the project overall. What their tolerance is, is to accept that is another story, kind of depends on the issue, but in general, that’s the numbers that I’ve been hearing on what that extra budget is allowable for thresholds of contingencies that happen on site.
things that happen day to day, if you are just sitting there walking through of what your expectations are and to meet them, you’re improving that visibility and communication so you can feel confident in the work that’s being done that when they close everything up, they put the walls up, they put the paint on, and somebody is in there, they know exactly where everything is in the space and they’re able to hand that off to the facilities team and say, “You have a perfectly buttoned up project, because I’ve seen it throughout its whole history.”
- And it may be, it’s not quite clear whether that’s a, on average there were so many mistakes, they get compounded between the different trades that are working on the project that we have to allow money to fix it or whether there’s just changes that they decide to make in the design on the fly.
I guess what I’m probing for James is, it seems like perhaps before there was a Matterport Digital Twin done on a weekly basis, that there were problems on a construction site that happened that perhaps one trade, may be the mechanical, conflicted with the electrical, conflicted with the plumbing, and that problem didn’t get caught soon enough, so work had to be redone by one or two or three of the trades because of that problem.
So what I could imagine is that a Matterport Digital Twin, if it helps a project team catch a problem soon enough, when it’s just a ripple on a pond, then they might prevent a tsunami of cost overruns without-
So I can’t just assume that you’re going to make the deadline, I need to see the work being done, because every time I delay them ... Every one of those delays, when they write out those construction contracts, they get paid on time and delivery, so if they’re not there for that time, somebody’s getting paid ... for that. So as early as you can get that and work something out with other vendors and everything else, kind of helps keep the process moving along and keeping that friction low.
And usually having those kinds of questions and answers, and dialogue with the owner for those weekly ones, if you can save direct costs for travel, for what the work they would normally do, and save on their contingency budgets, which usually a lot for some sort of change orders, or problems that arise where, if they had visibility they can catch it, those kinds of two things would go through their head of, why they would want weekly monitoring?
- How often does a Scan, a Matterport scan, catch a big problem that was worth doing that scanning weekly?
Page 5 of 12 WGAN-TV | MSPs: How to Make Money Doing Weekly Construction Documentation | Monday, April 6, 2020
- Yeah. You mentioned the contingency budget. Is there a statistic about how big a contingency budget generally is or how big the line item for mistakes that have to be fixed?
- Absolutely. Absolutely, and for that contingency, and part of that is also scheduled delays. So if they’re looking at that scan and say, “Well, I’m supposed to have the plumbing in next week, but if we’re not finished with where all the walls and studs are, we can’t put the plumbing in there.”
- So as Matterport Service Providers, we need to be thinking about where the pain points are for clients, and those pain points may be either exceeding the contingency budget or perhaps exceeding the time that was in the contingency budget for the project or both. So, money and time are pain points that might even save a client time, save a client money, if these clash detections or problems are identified soon enough. - Definitely, definitely.
- And so the pain points are generally going to fall into money, and that money may be related to what we just discussed, but it also could be related to the amount of travel by... So who would typically ... Let’s say that we’re at a major phase, that of a construction project, the dry walls just about to go up, perhaps you could comment on why it’s important to have that scan before the drywall goes up, who uses that, and maybe also a discussion of travel of how that might fit into that moment in time.
- Correct.
- Correct. Yeah, so if you stay here, right now you’re in a scan, and we’ve actually taken it out of the Matterport to create this time lapse effect. So at one point ... If you go up to see those arrows on the left and the right, you can go to week two, week three, yeah, you can just go right. Yeah, right over where that arrow was, that’ll be even easier.
- Ah, and another stakeholder.
- If we could go back for a moment, to just before the drywall goes up, I could imagine that the IFTI PROvision Solutions has clients that are using your services on a weekly project management meeting, construction project management meeting, can you give us a flavor of like what are the kinds of people that attend those meetings and what kind of things are they looking for, and how are they using that Matterport tour?
Landscaping when you get towards the end, which are also things the general contractors are responsible for and you want to make sure before you send a marketing team for grand opening and pushing out a launch, that this space is ready for it. So there’s a lot of quality visuals that that Matterport camera can get outside as well as inside, to give them the whole ... If they’re looking for the whole last set, and that involves the landscape of the work that’s coming in and out, and usually where they leave those things too is important.
So if you turn around the other way, if you look on the outside, you can see basically what’s going on on the construction site of
Page 6 of 12 WGAN-TV | MSPs: How to Make Money Doing Weekly Construction Documentation | Monday, April 6, 2020
- Yeah. So just scroll down. This is the website.
- I guess I’m trying to think of, does it make sense to talk about stakeholders? Does it make sense to talk about the different weekly construction progress reporting or both at the same time?
- Yeah, they’re both valuable. There’s different levels of interest in what you’re really capturing, because right now we’re also talking about what’s going on inside the space. The nice part is, and beauty about the Matterport cameras, you can bring it outside for high level 360 quality photos. So even though you’re looking at the inside, that general contractor, what they hired them for, also wants to see what’s happening on the outside. So if they see pallets of woods still there on week four, they’re still there on week seven, they haven’t been touched, that tells them something.
- PROvision.ifti.com p-r-o-v-i-s-i-o-n-.-i-f-t-i.com
Weekly construction documentation [using Matterport digital twins] to basically assess where things are, to find out if they’re on schedule, make sure that if there’s any issues of work that’s been done that might be done in the wrong place, that they can catch it before it becomes a change order and costly, and they want to see that documentation throughout the whole life cycle of that build process.
James Duffy VP, Business PROvision.IFTI.comIFTI/PROvisionDevelopmentSolutions
- Sure. Usually right before the rough-in stage, which is the adding of the drywall and basically walling up the building, it’s usually a time that’s a phase turnover time at rough-in, where somebody from the ownership team, some usually a project manager, will go on site and sign off that things are buttoned up and ready to go. So if you could give that person that visibility before they go, that this thing is ready, they can review that site inspection in advance of going. So you might not even be ... You’re letting them know that it’s okay to go rather than just taking the general contractor’s word for it, which is just, you have good ones and you have ones that are wishfully thinking that by the time you get there, things will be completed, which you don’t want someone to be that deliberate with your time and money of, I want to go when it’s ready, not when you think it will be ready, so to speak. So by capturing all that before the walls go up, by seeing it, you can have a pre-walkthrough before you even go on site, and then that’ll enable you to have the information you need of, if there are issues or questions or something that you see, but you don’t understand, that you need to ask a question when you’re onsite. It’ll give you all that information ahead of time, so you can basically have your cheat sheet notes of these are the things I want to discuss before I approve this, and then that nice thing is, once you have that scan and the wall goes up, you capture that and that has a residual value to someone else on your team after the ... facilities.
- Yeah, sure. So we have on our website, we did create a time lapse of one of those weekly ones, so we can look at that either now or later. - Sure. Let’s go take a look. Tell me which tab you’d like me to go to.
- Yeah, so one of the basic solutions is, you have an individual project manager that’s in charge of one site. One of the nice things is, for a company that might have these all over the country is, they have a dozen, maybe two dozen project managers handling all of their ground up, new build sites, working with their vendors, their GCs, everything else. One of them that we do the weeklies for, we would go scan every construction project on Thursday after they finish working and we would scan that site.
- Yes, they like to see. And when they do the phase turnovers at those phases, that’s usually when another check is cut, just to give you an idea. So they want to make sure that they’ve seen it, have gone on site, and these are just those added values of, nobody’s perfect, and when you go on site and you do an inspection and you’re seeing everything, you’re doing the best you can with the time that you have. So if you’re working on behalf of the owner and you’re the project manager, you’re walking through a space to try to see everything you can in just one shot, to walk through it. You might miss something.
Usually it takes about 24 hours to get the scan back and we would send it to the client over the weekend because on Mondays, they would have a weekly project management meeting. And all of them, and what the nice thing is about the Matterport is, they can just share their screen like you shared that screen with me, and they would go through their individual sites of, somebody is on schedule, like week three of a program and they’re walking through of how well they’re doing and what’s going on.
- So that project manager that might be, it’s probably for the company, is reviewing work that’s being done by the general contractor.
So then basically leadership knows, no, when they expect to see something before, might be just on a spreadsheet of on schedule or not on schedule, they can have much more clearly defined answers of where they are on a process, on time, on budget and they can feel more certain than they’re on schedule plus contingency, rather it’s on schedule, on budget, so to speak.
The other thing is, you probably have somebody walking you around, telling you what they want you to see. Like a general contractor pointing out all the good things and maybe failing to point out something that they’re having a difficult time with, kind of depends on the relationship.
So having that scan provides a real value because that person will be able to look at their work in a bubble to identify and define really how it is from an objective standpoint and not a subjective one.
- So a project management team and maybe if I just go back to ... If I can do this. Yep. Right before that, those dry walls went up. We’re in a project management meeting, who’s in the meeting and what ... We’re looking at 360 photos, but this would be a Matterport tour that you could walk through.
- Now, while you’ve been describing this, part of what’s been going on in my mind thinking about this is, gee, that project
- Yes, exactly.
Can have a conversation with the general contractor, a subcontractor, the whosoever financing the project. I imagine they’re interested to know when to release money, at what stage that the project is at, perhaps?
what’s going on outside, as well as inside, and you’re seeing everything being built as it goes.
Page 7 of 12 WGAN-TV | MSPs: How to Make Money Doing Weekly Construction Documentation | Monday, April 6, 2020
So when the walls come fully up. We’re getting the dry walls coming up and you want to capture what’s going on in there and you can see the phase and time of all the work that’s happening, and then even when you get towards, now we’re getting closer to the end and you need finishes to come in, so flooring, mill work, cabinetry, things like that, the lighting fixtures, things are starting to move.
- What are different people ... Who’s in the meeting, who’s looking at this, what kinds of things are they looking for? How is that helping them?
So depending on how often they need that visibility, you can let them know this is where the site is, and we’re getting closer and closer. So, yeah, for this one, kind of like 16 weeks from start to finish, the basic visibility of where things are.
And they’re asking questions of the other parts of the project management team. So the nice part is, they really get that whole group think experience. So the newest member of the project management team, will also be able to share visibility with the most senior person on the team to notice any issues, to see if there’s anything, or best communication practices with what’s going on. So the nice thing is, when you have the scan, those project managers can interact with that site. So sharing something, utilizing the edits to take measurement verification here or embedding a tag for flooring specifications, so they make sure what goes where and really having a true sense of comprehension and dialogue around a space.
There are large general contractors that might be regional or national, that would also have that same benefit of keeping track of their work and progress to make sure basically at their level, it’s their reputation that they care about, and they’ll be willing to spend that money to ensure the quality of work is being done and they’re able to talk to their clients at a level of, I won’t just tell you what you want to hear, I’ll show you the work.
- Cool, and then there’s different stakeholders, so I imagine ... I’m even thinking even a safety manager could probably be looking at this site and immediately walking through it from a standpoint of, are they doing things safely?
- Yeah. There’s the people that will see the effects of it because it will transform their daily life, which is project managers, senior project managers that oversee the Andspace.then the people from the strategic point of view, its director, VP of construction for the owners, would see this as a new value and they’ll be able to ascertain what’s going on and have a real idea of their schedules and budgets of what’s going on with those projects.
- It can be. I haven’t had a chance to really use it so much. It’s more on the visual spectrum and the measurement tool that’s Forthere.the As-Builts of getting a new space too before they remodel it and then do construction. That is where they want it. They already have plans for how they want it to look like. And over that time they’re getting any sort of visible information, sending an architect on site that needs to sign off.
Weekly construction documentation [using Matterport digital twins] to basically assess where things are, to find out if they’re on schedule, make sure that if there’s any issues of work that’s been done that might be done in the wrong place, that they can catch it before it becomes a change order and costly, and they want to see that documentation throughout the whole life cycle of that build process.
James Duffy VP, Business PROvision.IFTI.comIFTI/PROvisionDevelopmentSolutions
- Well, how about Matterport MatterPak? The data file, is that of interest in this space?
- Yes, and that’s very good for the internal team and to pass along to know that basically when they’re around the site, they can look for hazards that might be happening in the construction site of, they can see where things are and so know right away if there’s an issue that they need to catch and basically save them from any future fines that could happen before an inspector goes on site to check on it.
- So is this at the restaurant? Is this at the general contractor, or is this the architect? Who’s got the most pain? Who can save the most money the most time? Where do I begin that conversation?
Page 8 of 12 WGAN-TV | MSPs: How to Make Money Doing Weekly Construction Documentation | Monday, April 6, 2020 manager who maybe was managing multiple projects, was spending a whole lot of time on an airplane and now perhaps they don’t need to spend as much time traveling and could actually manage more projects.
Usually it is at that title of construction of a VP of construction, director of construction for an end user.
- Yeah, the best part about Matterport is it’s good for everybody and everyone can find that value in that construction process.
- That’s right. It really helps those project managers manage more projects, but really manage them more effectively of all that time that’s lost just in between, in the air, getting back and forth. It is important for those project managers to have a relationship with the general contractor, but the frequency of that amount, just going there to check in to say hello, with where we are with the technology and what we’re capable of providing them from an efficiency standpoint, is really, we’re at a level where they can have their cake and eat it too of, still going there when they need to, to keep relationship, to keep the work going, but not having to go there in between.
And that transparency is really important for a lot of those upper echelon general contractors that want to say, “We’re confident in our work and when we say and how we do something, and we’d like to even show you how we’re doing that and give you that visibility on behest of you.”
- Okay. I’m a Matterport Service Provider in Atlanta, I have a lot of big brands from, let’s say, restaurants in Atlanta. Where do I begin in terms of, what are the right titles of the people that I might reach out to, who perhaps have not been doing construction documentation quite like Maybethis. they’ve been traveling quite a bit. Who are the people that might just go, “Wow, this is crazy. Yeah, this will make a difference in our weekly meetings on construction progress.”
- That’s right, because just think of it, all the existing construction projects, the people that are doing the construction are localized. They are already there and they can keep working. When they can’t work, usually when somebody that’s at the ownership level and their stakeholders, usually have to travel to these sites to inspect to make sure they’re okay.
- In fact I see you’re working yourself out of the house, out of a spare bedroom.
- So the answer is yes, and great question, Dan. So yeah, we do have over 300 plus technicians across the United States and Canada, and we are able to help them scale with our own group of project managers, quality control, to oversee all those other projects that you can’t handle. So the nice thing is, we’re comfortable working as a subcontractor for you, if you’d like to be the end client that works with the relationship or we can take the lead and we’ll make sure that we’ll work with you for your region and area of visibility.
- You mentioned no travel necessary. Obviously today, Monday, April 6th, 2020, here in Atlanta, we’re under a shelter at home order related to COVID-19, the coronavirus pandemic. Nearly 50 States are under those kinds of orders. That said, there are many markets where real estate construction has been considered an essential service to keep moving forward. Where does this Matterport scanning fit into weekly construction documentation today?
- Yes, yes. This is not my normal office. So we’re all doing this and taking it very seriously. In terms of providing that visibility to those essential businesses that still need to operate, for a large portion of them, construction is part of that essential business to keep things moving. So we are still fully operational and working around the clock to help those places get to the information and work done that they need. So if it’s anywhere from a convenience or grocery store, gas stations, healthcare facilities, supermarkets, these types of financial institutions, this visibility now actually has never been a better time to help people know that this solution exists because there might be a bottleneck in that slowing down that progress, because before they might need someone to travel on site to approve something or to get visual information to start something or move to the next phase.
So at the time, this is a great way to share that there is an opportunity to keep the work going if the only thing that’s encumbering the work is the ability for site inspection or travel, so to speak.
- Maybe it might be helpful to have a bigger picture understanding of IFTI PROvision Solutions.
- So a lot of large companies, whether they’re large general contractors or large franchises of the categories that you were describing, they in their mind may think, “Oh my gosh, how do I get the work done? The work needs to keep going, but I can’t fly.”
Our PROvision Solutions, in the retail and restaurant and hospitality industry, has been around for over two years, and we basically have been an expert project management solutions company, and we utilize Matterport as one of our primary vehicles to get our end clients the visibility and documentation that they need for their work. So we work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, and we offer a no travel necessary fixed rates solutions for the clients to make that job a lot easier.
- Since you and I did a previous show on how Matterport Service Providers can make money scanning for As-Builts, let’s just refer our audience- Sure. Yes.
So regardless of the construction, the time frame, how often that’s there, IFTI is a 20 year company with great relationships and reputation in the industry and has the ability to give that consistent visibility for you or your client.
- Yeah, sure. So, yeah, we’ve been around for over 20 years, IFTI.
- That specific show. So the challenge, the good news, bad news, but I walk into a major restaurant group, it’s got multiple restaurants doing refreshes across the United States, and I show them this, and they go, “Wow, this is great, but we do have 200 locations we’re going to refresh this year across the United States. Can you help us with that?” That’s certainly beyond my ability.
So where does IFTI PROvision Solutions fit into that conversation? What is it ... Can you help us and how do I work with you?
So, it is that level of where that missing stop gap is, that 3D imaging, scanning the space, to help that documentation of what’s going on, because nobody wants to skip a beat on what their expectations are and visibility because they’re not going to say, “Well you just keep going and tell me when it’s done, and I’ll just hope you did everything correctly.”
Page 9 of 12 WGAN-TV | MSPs: How to Make Money Doing Weekly Construction Documentation | Monday, April 6, 2020
- Yeah, no, it’s a good question, and it’s a harsh reality of what we’re living in right now with the shelter in place orders. There are a lot of essential businesses-
- This solves yet another problem that we didn’t talk about earlier. Earlier, - Correct.
- Do you have any thoughts about how this pandemic affects weekly construction documentation, once we emerge from this -pandemic?Sooncewe get there, and I’m always looking for that light at the end of the tunnel, like so many other people, is when we get there, the people that will have understood that this solution was out there, that they’ve had visibility on looking forward, because right now people are in their bedrooms, in their home offices trying to figure out, how am I supposed to work now in this new environment? These are one of those new solutions that they might not have heard of, or maybe heard of, but didn’t use, that this gives them an excellent opportunity to judge, to say, “Wow, going forward, maybe I don’t need to travel as often. I can utilize this instead and I can make my work be more efficient overall because I’ve basically archived my Digital Twin of that physical space to help me with our progress and monitoring of the work.”
- We talked about saving time, saving money, reducing change orders, now we have this new problem, how to enable work to continue when travel is not happening.
- Yeah, I think overall it’s called out, it’s part of their business continuity. So how are they able to keep functioning during this crisis that we’re in, and this is one of those measures where visibility is part of that continuity that Matterport scanning providers can provide.
- Thank you. So actually IFTI PROvision Solutions, when you do have 300 Matterport Service Providers in your existing IFTI Network, and when you can’t find a Matterport Service Provider, you’ve actually been sourcing the Matterport Pros in the We Get Around Network Forum community. So great that we can all collaborate together to help lift all boats. James, are there any questions that I haven’t asked you about weekly construction documentation, I should ask you about?
Page 10 of 12 WGAN-TV | MSPs: How to Make Money Doing Weekly Construction Documentation | Monday, April 6, 2020 It doesn’t work like that. So if you’re able to ... If you had a client in the past that you’ve got done work with, if you work with a general contractor before, maybe only for a grand opening, to show off the space for their portfolio, now’s a good time to reintroduce yourself and let them know that if you need visibility and you need to interact with your clients, maybe that are, they would have to travel usually, this is a great stop gap for you.
- Great. All right, James, thanks for being on the show, appreciate it.
- No, I think we covered the whole gamut of the whole thing, Dan, so great work.
- Thank you, and I look forward to hopefully you’ll have me on again sometime.
- Someone wants to get in touch with you ... IFTI PROvision Solutions, what’s the best way to contact you? - Yeah, so you can always just go to our website. It’s PROVision.ifti.com ... You can also email me anytime at James.Duffy@IFTI.com ... or you can just call our phone number, which is up there, the 800 number, anytime, 800-490-3657 and we’ll be happy to help. We also have social media, LinkedIn, Twitter, you can find us any which way and you can also find us on the We Get Around Network. So if you need anybody, I think there’s a guy named Dan that could help us if you need to.
- Yeah, that’ll be awesome. We’ve been visiting with James Duffy, he’s the Vice President, Business Development for IFTI PROvision Solutions. IFTI PROvision Solutions. We’re James in the San Francisco Bay Area. I’m Dan Smigrod, founder of the We Get Around Network Forum and you’ve been watching WGAN-TV Live at 5. James Duffy VP, Business PROvision.IFTI.comIFTI/PROvisionDevelopmentSolutions
Weekly construction documentation [using Matterport digital twins] to basically assess where things are, to find out if they’re on schedule, make sure that if there’s any issues of work that’s been done that might be done in the wrong place, that they can catch it before it becomes a change order and costly, and they want to see that documentation throughout the whole life cycle of that build process.
Page 11 of 12 WGAN-TV | MSPs: How to Make Money Doing Weekly Construction Documentation | Monday, April 6, 2020
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