Construction Brothers

Building UGA: Coordinating Campus Construction (Melanie Ford)

This week we're re-airing a conversation with had with Melanie Ford last year.

Introduction - Melanie’s backstory
Melanie Ford is the Senior Director of Construction for the University of Georgia Office of the University Architects. Before her move to the university, she worked for 20 years as a contractor and a Vice President of Whitsel Construction Services. She’s the Georgia Chapter President for the Construction Owners of America and one of the co-founders and current President of Athens Area Women in Construction.

Melanie shares about how a stressful project in an architecture class drove her into building science. She shares about how the dean of a professor told her that a woman wouldn’t be able to tell “some 50-year-old, hard-hat-wearing man where the hell he can put his steel.”

She shares about the challenges of finding a position in construction when she graduated, but a couple decades later, she is still happy with her choice to go into construction. She then tells us a bit about her family’s move to Athens, Georgia.

Melanie’s work at UGA
Melanie explains what it is that she does at the University of Georgia. She oversees all construction on campus, including major capital projects and major renovations. She and her department are responsible for ensuring architectural and construction continuity across campus.

She tells us a bit about the significant increase in sports-related construction, including large softball and tennis stadium projects. In addition to that, there are the ongoing renovations of buildings constructed in the 1950s.

Eddie asks about how the challenges differ between different types of projects. Melanie talks about a few of her favorite projects.

Project Managers
Eddie asks Melanie to provide feedback to project managers from an owner’s perspective. She starts with thoughts about the importance of doing your research ahead of time in order to be aware of current conditions in a building set for renovation. She talks about timelines that were unnecessarily extended due to school-year schedules.

She points out that many PMs tend to keep information and problems to themselves. This can be frustrating to people in positions like Melanie’s because they often have resources and connections to solve those problems.

Eddie asks about the bidding process in the university domain, which leads to a conversation about task-order contracting. She explains how this approach works with smaller contracts and lists of pre-approved contractors. We explore the ins and outs of the approval process for this group of contractors and how it is used by various governmental entities. Melanie says that owner-contractor relationships result in task-order projects being completed on time more often than hard-bid projects.

Melanie discusses the types of feedback she provides to contractors who ask what changes they could make in order to increase their chances of future work with the university.

Project initiation and design-build
Eddie asks about the process a project goes through from the point of conception to completion. Melanie talks us through the process that sometimes involves legislators, wealthy donors. She gives an example of an unexpected connection between botanical gardens and a porcelain collection. She then walks us through the steps of a hypothetical project.

Eddie asks Melanie for her opinion on design-build. She explains that she’s not a huge fan of this approach in most cases. She says that she feels like the owner loses a certain amount of control because of the chain of command that results. She prefers for the builder, the designer, and the owner to perceive one another as peers. She...

Duration:: 1h 7m
Broadcast on:: 10 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

Do you know what haunts my dreams? Stock, video, footage. The shiny yellow hard hats, pristine boots, brand new flannel button down from J. Crew, people standing over drawings and pointing at stuff in the distance. What are you even looking at, guys? If you have any industry experience, you know those stock videos don't look right. That's not real construction, and that is why Story Builder exists. Story Builder Creative is a video production company that makes construction look like construction. Story Builder's mission is to destroy those cheese ball stock videos from the face of Planet Earth and show construction and all its raw and rugged glory. We've helped companies like Dell and Trimble create real looking video for their products and help smaller service companies tell their stories, and we can help your construction company too. Go to storybuildercreative.com and book a discovery call to destroy stock videos from your brand. Give me your opinion on design build. Do you really want my opinion on design build? Yes, I desperately want your opinion on design build. Based off of that response, definitely. Yeah, I'm probably gonna get some people upset about this, but contractors are more practical most of the time. I mean, they see schedule, they see the budget. They're, you know, that's just how you're trained to think. And architects are like, yes, I'm gonna put everything I can out there that I wanna see in this, and then leave it up to the contractor to try to have to cut this out, right? You don't have a good balance when somebody is underneath somebody else. (upbeat music) - What's up, everybody? We had Melanie Ford with us today, and she is the senior director of construction at University of Georgia. We got to peer over that fence that so many of us wanna peer over and look into the world of an owner to see what she deals with every day, get some opinions on construction delivery methods, which is interesting 'cause we go over CM design build and even learn about a new delivery method that she schooled us up on. Great conversation, really felt like it gave us some perspective, we hope you enjoy the show. - You're studying if it was masters in landscape architecture. - Correct. - Okay, which I think is really cool 'cause you're already like senior director at UGA and all of that stuff. Okay, have you looked up the Crystal Palace at all? 'Cause we did an episode on this recently. It's okay if you didn't listen. I won't hold it against you. - Good, I'm glad to watch it for some of your episodes, not all of that way. - This way you might actually find fascinating. So the guy that designed the building was a landscape architect. - Okay, wow. - And it was like basically modeled after a greenhouse. - Okay. - So I don't know, I just thought it was an interesting-- - Is the Crystal Palace the one that it's all glass and steel and they-- - Burn down and it's no longer in existence. - Okay. - But yeah, so we covered it. It was 1850, guys, I'm gonna have to remember this. - I'm gonna have to look it up then. So I don't think it's the one I'm thinking of. - Yeah, this, I mean, it's fascinating story and hearing how he approached it and was a landscape architect that ended up building this amazing structure back in the mid-1800s. Just kind of resonated with me. - Doesn't surprise me because the way they did things back then, I mean, it was really all about what your craft was and it was all learn on the go. I mean, like you might have been trained in something but it was really a completely different art than it is now in some sense. And so it doesn't, I mean, people that were good at that were able to do a whole bunch of other things. So it doesn't surprise me to hear that. - If you like period pieces, like BBC stuff, like there's a lot of history that plays into it and yeah, we could me and her after that, like all day. - Way to go, Tyler, nice setup. - Hey, I'm just saying, you said landscape architecture. I just wanted to know. 'Cause that's a really interesting part of that story. But anyway, that, I thought that was cool. But thanks for coming and joining this. - So give us a little bit of background on you. Like you started out, well, you went to Auburn first. - So I grew up in Alabama, my dad was an engineer. He actually, his degree is something like mechanics of engineering and really smart guy has his doctorate, he went to Purdue and Cornell and then he went first undergraduate at Purdue. Cornell, he went for his master's and then he ended up with a doctorate University of Florida, which is kind of how we ended up in the South and then he got a job in Huntsville, Alabama, which is where I grew up, very high-tech town. And I had planned to be an engineer and I was going to be an engineer because that's what my dad was and I just, it was natural fit. And then just before I was about to go to college, my dad said, don't be an engineer. I don't think you'll like it. And it literally like threw me for a, you know, just kind of threw me for a spin 'cause I didn't know what I was gonna do then. And this is kind of silly, but I decided from one day in an art class and I drew a window using a ruler and I went, you know, I should go into architecture school. That's what I'll do instead of engineering. And so I ended up going to Auburn for architecture. I went through two full years of it, started my third year and the person that kind of always like talked me through things, kept me grounded, had decided to co-op. And so I was there by myself kind of floundering and we were supposed to draw a structure of some sort. This was like the first foray into actual, can you build something that's going to stand up? And so I was trying to draw something structural and the only kind of structure I really knew about for some reason was two by fours. And we had to build a model of what we were doing and we had two of them we had to do. It was three o'clock in the morning, I built my little two by four jail cell and I kind of, I mean, I'm looking at it and looking at the structure and going, this doesn't look architectural at all. It's like a jail cell. And so then I had to think about what was my second structure and build a model and it was three o'clock in the morning and the project was to do at eight o'clock the next morning. I'd never turned anything late in my life and I was kind of freaking out about it and I didn't even know where to start. I didn't know anything about structures. And all this time I'd been taking building science classes. And so I thought, you know, I really am not happy in the architecture program. I'm just going to switch into building science. And so that's what I did as in I like, I literally left a note on a piece of, I don't know if they still call it trash paper, but a piece of trash paper, the, you know, tracing paper stuff. And it said, I don't know if you're probably not old enough to remember this commercial, but it was some little girl going, I just don't want to do it. And that's the truth and she sticks out her tongue and kind of blows her raspberry. And so I literally wrote on this. I just don't want to do this. And that's the truth and drew a tongue with like spit coming off of it. And I had it kind of like stuffed up. And it was, it wasn't a message for anybody other than myself, like talking through this. I'm like, I'm just not going to come back. Like I'm going to go as soon as class starts in the morning, I'm going to go straight to the dean's office and I'm going to switch into building science. And so I did. And that was kind of a funny story in itself because the dean, if you can, I'm 58 years old and going into construction, you know, when I was in college 30 something years ago was not the thing to do for a female. And so I went and talked to my professor and he said, literally, he said, yeah, you know, you can, you can probably be an estimator or something. He said, I can't see you telling some 50 year old hard hat wearing man where the hell he can put his steel. Then I said, okay, all right, I'm good with that. Estimating, what is estimating? Yes, sounds good to me. I'll do that. And so like three days later, I went to gather my stuff up and the professor had found that little note with the tongue on it and said, is this a message for me? And I just remember kind of being a little bit embarrassed and like, you know, no, you know, gathering up all my stuff, packed it up and kind of like disappeared and just didn't go back. But I will say that being in construction has been a phenomenal career for me. I think it was definitely the right move. And I've had a, you know, had a really good career in it, so. So you came out of college, you went straight into a construction company after that, right? Yeah, I graduated from college and I ended up getting a job at winter construction. Okay, yeah. Two owners at the time, Arnie and Bob Silverman, had bought the company, they were from New York. So they were a little bit progressive. And I was my last name, my maiden name is Bernstein. And their last name is Silverman. And so I have since asked Arnie, you know, did you give me a chance because I was Jewish, because I had interviewed several places and nobody wanted to have anything to do with me. Yeah. One construction company at my interview, it was at the placement office. They actually like packed up their stuff when I walked in the door. And I was the last interview. He asked me three questions. Like, you know, what's your name? What do you think you're gonna do, you know, when you graduate? So. Why do you think, like, just why do you think that is? Like, do you think that was because you're a woman in the industry? Oh, absolutely. It was a relatively new thing. There were literally only three, there were only two women in the building science class program or the building science program at all. There was only, and then anybody, even in architecture, there weren't as many women. They were mostly in the interior design program. And so it was, yeah. I mean, I'm not going to mention names on that one, but it was a really well-known construction company out of Atlanta and Birmingham. And it was the owner's son who was still involved in the business. And literally I walked in the door. He started packing up his stuff. And I was just like, okay, this is, I don't think I even ever sat down. I think I was standing in the doorway, so. Good grief. So I thought I'm never gonna find a job. Yeah. And I had this interview at Rust Engineering and was told they have to hire a female. They got dinged by the federal government. All they do is federal government work. And they flew me and the other girl out there. Neither one of us got the job. And I just thought, I'm never gonna find a job. And then when this winter construction offered me a job, I was just like, oh my gosh, this is absolutely amazing. So. Yeah. But it was the best thing that could have happened. Fantastic, the Arnie Silverman's just a fantastic mentor. And we hear stories like that. I feel like some, sometimes, but they're kind of like off to the side kind of stories. Like, yeah, okay, yeah, this happened. That sort of thing. So I'm glad you said that. Because it's just an example of like kind of some of the things that you've had to deal with, especially in your time. 'Cause it was 30-year career, right? Yeah. At least. Yeah. Have you seen any progress in that? Oh, absolutely. Yes. Are we still dragging our knuckles? No, definitely not dragging knuckles or anything like that. And I have definitely seen lots of improvements. And there are so many women in the construction industry now. And I will say it's still a much lower percentage, but you see a lot more women actually in the trades. Have a friend who is an electrician. Have another one who's a plumber that works for one of the local plumbers in Athens, Georgia, and they are doing phenomenally well. People are fostering it now. And if you can find somebody that's interested in that, and then as project managers and stuff, I mean, there's just a ton of them. So, yeah, yeah. So, okay, so you worked at winter for a long time. Worked at winter. And then after that, how did you, when did you come into UGA? So I worked for winter for 12 years, and seven years after I started working for them, they got a job in Athens, Georgia, it was the Classic Center. And so they ended up sending me over there to do that project, and did that. And then after we finished that project, I had fallen in love with Athens. At the time, I had a two-year-old son, and we were in Atlanta, and you never met anybody in Atlanta, unless you purposely went there to meet them, right? So we go to Atlanta, I mean, to Athens, and I had him in preschool there, and I got to where I liked the town so much, I just kind of ended up staying there. My husband, at the time, he would come over, he worked in Atlanta, and so he'd come over on the weekends, and we would just stay in Athens. And then I was with my son's name is Dominic, I was with him one time, we were at the park on the weekend, and some little boy comes over and runs up, run there, like, staining this far apart, and he's like, "Hey!" And I'm like, "Oh my God, he has a friend." You know, he knows somebody, and so I just realized I wanted to stay in Athens. And so winter let me kind of start an office for them there, and just ran it out of the basement of the Classic Center, and it was an unfinished basement. And so I can really say I paid my dues, had no heat or AC, it flooded periodically, and it was just one of those things where I just was staying there until we got our office established. And then finally, felt like we'd made a name for ourself, people were starting to trust us, 'cause it's small town, it's hard to get people to really feel like they're invested in their town. We were this big construction company coming in out of Atlanta. And so we were starting to grow, and then we're just a whole bunch of politics, things going on in the background. And at some point, we did have an office there, and then they decided that we weren't making enough money for them, I guess. And so they asked us, they basically told me I could stay there, I could work out of my house, keep my three superintendents, and just do stuff that way. But I felt like I had worked so hard to get a name for ourselves, and people were starting to really invest in me as a contractor there. And so the short version is, is when that happened, I ended up partnering with a local construction company there, Whitsill Construction. And so Curtis Whitsill was the owner of that, and he made me vice president, and we had a partnership deal that we structured, and so we were in business together for about eight years. So I worked for Whitsill Construction there for the next eight years, before I got over to UGA. And basically, I'll just be honest with you, the economy tanked, it was 2007. And so I ended up, I had three kids in private school because unfortunately the school system in Athens is, at that point was not very good, and has since you started to like really change. But at that point, it was a terrible school system. And so I had my kids in private school, and economy was tanking, and I needed some security for my kids. And so this job, a job came open at UGA, and I applied for it, and then they found out that I had applied for that job, which wasn't necessarily the right job for me, and they said, "Hey, we're opening up a job "that we've been trying to get started "for a construction management position here at UGA, "and apply for that." And so I applied for it, and ended up getting the job. And so I've been there for the last 16 years. - So at UGA, what's your function like? What do you do as senior director of construction there? - So my role is I oversee all of the construction on campus, and I wanna clarify, there's a facilities management department, and they also do some minor construction projects, and they do the major infrastructure projects, but we do all of the major capital projects, and we do all of the major renovations. And so my job is for those projects to oversee all of the construction. So when we award to a contractor, once they are actually engaged in the project, then I make sure that everything is typical, quality is good, we're staying within budget, and schedule and making sure that all that. But there is a project manager assigned to each project from our office, so I'm working in tandem with them. I'm kind of like the extra set of eyes to make sure that things are doing what they're supposed to. And then the bigger picture is just making sure that there's some continuity across campus. - Today's episode is sponsored by Dell's 5,000 series mobile workstations, powered by Intel CPUs and NVIDIA GPUs. One thing I've found in reality capture is that the process is very data-heavy, and it demands a lot out of a machine. I need to be able to get up and go, but I also wanna be able to take the horsepower with me. The 5,000 series is meant for that. If you're a project manager on the go and you've gotta have the horsepower with you, go check out Dell Precision 5,000 series mobile workstations. If you wanna learn more, go to Dell.com/proscism. - So that we are managing everything the same way. - So you guys have got a new softball facility going right now. - We do. - We imagine you're right in the middle of this. - Yes. - And you're trying to get that open for SEC championships, am I correct in that? - Yes, yes, hopefully so. I mean, and when you think about all of the national championship stuff, I mean, just construction world and athletics at our campus just exploded. So we literally have construction going on with every single athletic sport that there is on campus. So not only are we doing the new softball project, we also have new indoor tennis facility for the same reason, so they can host some of the matches there. And then we have, we just tore down the one that was there building a new one. We are doing an expansion to the stadium, which is a fan-friendly concessions, bathrooms, like those types of additions. We have just did some stuff for basketball with the new weight training room. We're about to renovate. We've got a master plan going on for Sigma Coliseum right now. So about to renovate some of that. I don't know if you've heard about the new track and field thing, but we have a huge new track and field complex that is gonna be built across the street from where the soccer softball is. And that we're in master planning stages to sell the initial drawings for that. - How many projects do you think you have going right now? Like you just, you're at it off quite a few, just there. - A lot. (both laughing) There's a lot. We have, I mean, we're redoing the whole science and agriculture hill right now. All the old 1950s, 60s, 70s buildings, we are completely gutting and renovating like a domino thing. We just finished those new I-STEM facilities to enable this. I could spout for hours about everything we have on going on on campus. I wanna imagine like, and the biggest priority has to be scheduled for most of these things. 'Cause like you have athletic events happening. - Yes. - Especially like you talk about UGA football. I mean, come on, like you can't be in the way there. - Yeah, no. That's gotta be brutal. - It is, you have to get things done for a timeline for those and same thing with all the buildings on campus. They are based around their completion date is based around when is a semester supposed to start? What do we have to have done so that we can get students in there? All of we have a lot of summer renovations for housing facilities and for the dining facilities as well. So those are, you know, and then obviously stuff that has to be done for road construction or anything we've got to do any kind of improvement stuff for students to come back. - Yeah, volume of projects that you're dealing with. And then the complexity of, you got some that you're trying to renovate a building from 1950 something and you've got others that are new ground up construction. - But that new ground up construction's going probably in the congested areas. You don't get like some free and easy open field. A whole lot I wouldn't imagine. - Not often we have a couple of those on our farms. Riverbend farms were doing a new facility out there and those are kind of fun. We did a lot of people are familiar with Iron Horse Farm and on Highway 15 built a whole huge complex out there. And those were my favorite projects. I've got pictures of us sitting around like the silo in the background. And then us sitting in metal chairs, having our meetings outside. And those were my most favorite days because you've got your meetings out on the farm. And it's like the whole pace of the world just changes. But we're about to do a new dining wellness facility and a new what we call our, it's kind of funny 'cause we just last year finished up, opened up the new first year residence hall. And now we have another new first year residence hall. We have really great creative names for our projects when they start. And both of those are going right in the middle of campus on congested areas of stuff and a new West Campus parking deck. And so I call the West Campus parking decks thing one and thing two 'cause we already have a West Campus parking deck and now we have another West Campus parking deck. And it's gonna be parking deck one and parking deck two. So I kind of joke I'm like it's thing one and thing two. - It's fair clever. - Yeah, so all right, our whole purpose and our whole thinking behind this is, I mean, obviously it's just fun to talk to you and just like hear about everything that's going on. We have a lot of PMs. I mean, we have a large swath of people that listen to us across the industry, but mainly our mom, but also project managers specifically. And so you bring an interesting perspective as an owner as somebody that's got all these projects going. Like we're looking for feedback. Like what can project managers within construction companies do better? What, I mean, take it beyond project managers if you want to, what are kind of the thorns in your side in your day-to-day operations? What grinds you gears, I guess? (laughing) - In day-to-day operations. It's one, you know, a lot of things we do now are construction management based and so you have time to plan. And so like with the chemistry project for renovation we're doing right now, it's called Science and Ag Hill Phase One. We renovated the whole chemistry building. The building sat empty for I can't tell you how many months before every's moving out of it, do your research ahead of time. Go investigate everything. You are part of the planning and design team and what grinds my gears is not going and looking at existing conditions and paying attention to what needs to happen. And I will say the contractor that's on that did a lot of that, but there's like things that you run into and things that you now, the project's five months from being completed and we're still encountering things. And it's not just that contractor, it's all of them for the most part. And it's like there's so many things that you can plan and think about ahead of time, but you're so busy with all of your other projects that you don't allocate the time to be able to do this with this one when you could avoid a bunch of stuff. And so it's those types of things that I feel like are problematic and the other thing is just the communication. I want everything to be open book. Tell me if you have a problem because I can help. So just for instance, on this one project, all of the switch gear came in and it was supposed to come in disassembled so you can fit it into the room and it came in all put together. And so trying to get in touch with the manufacturer to get them to come out and disassemble it so that you don't avoid the warranty, get it into the room and reassemble it. And don't ask if we've already thought about cutting the door way bigger because we have, but it's a solid thick concrete structural wall. So by the time we got the engineering done on that and then tried to cut it, they're going to be able to get here. But what I'm being told is they're not going to get here for a month to be able to do this in its schedule critical, right? And so why didn't you tell me about this when it first happened because we have some pull. UGA is a pretty big entity. We use a lot of equipment by this manufacturer and maybe we can help. And I find that across the board that they want to keep things to themselves. They want to solve the problem because that's what project managers do, right? But it's okay to ask for help. And that is one of the biggest lessons I had to learn going to work at UGA after being a contractor was that there's a whole team there. My background's contracting, but in our office, we have architects, landscape architects, historic preservation as civil engineers. You name it, we've got somebody on our team. And relying on those people for their areas of expertise was a hard lesson for me to learn 'cause I wanted to wrap my arms around everything and take care of everything. But the contractors that have been in our campus for a while, no, hey, maybe Melanie knows somebody. She's in a lot of times I do just because it's not like we, this isn't the first time we've run into this problem, right? - My perception of like maybe how the university would be almost mandated to business would be more of a hard bid type of thing. But I'm hearing that you've got a relational side of this business. - Absolutely. - How do you create that relational side? I mean, is most of your work like you see him on most of your work you're saying? - Yes. - Okay, so but you're creating relationships out of that. So you've got people that are coming back and working with you on the regular. - Yeah, absolutely. So there are still some universities in other states that have to bid everything. Auburn University is one of them. And I know a lot of the facilities guys there and we talk fair amount about, you know, how do you do certain things? And then there are still some entities in state of Georgia that are private sector campuses that haven't bought in yet to construction management or, and I'm not sure if I'm familiar with task order contracting, but that's an avenue that we have as well. Are you guys familiar with task order contracting? - I'm not, yeah. - So one of the things that we do with this whole construction management initiative and this is state approved, top down, I'll just be honest with you, Georgia Tech was doing it before we were. And we learned from Georgia Tech, we have a really good working relationship with them between our different entities. And we share a lot of information, do the same thing with Emory University. And so they had this task order contracting where, if there's one of the things that's very difficult about working for government agency is getting things done in a timely manner. And if you follow the whole process of bidding something or doing qualifications-based selection, which is what this construction management approach is, if you follow all of that, it takes time. You have to advertise for 30 days, you have to get in your proposals, you have to evaluate them short list, then you have to have interviews and then you can select somebody. And so on these smaller projects, we don't necessarily have the time to do those things and still get the work done. So a task order contracting is where you have contractors that you already have as an extension of your staff. We have selected them on a qualifications-based process. And now I have this pool of task order contractors that if we have a smaller project that comes up, it's typically a project under a million dollars. If I have one of those, then I can just pick a contractor that's already on our extended staff and we can award the work to them. And so we have several task order contractors and we spread the work around based on what their niche is. Couple of them do metal buildings. And so if we have a metal building come up, then that's somebody who I would call on to do that. Some of them do interior renovation only. Some of them do lab work and that's their specialty. Some of them want to do exterior site and hardscapes and those types of things. And so we have these contractors that I pull from to do that. So we have definitely have relationships with them. And then we have other larger contractors as well that aren't a good fit for these smaller projects. And there's some that come work on our campus once and wasn't a good relationship and they don't want to come back. And honestly, sometimes we don't want them back, but then we have others that have been there, done work a few times, and seems like it's a really good working relationship. And it helps because they know our design standards, they know, and that's one other thing talking about what's helpful for people know our design standards. They're online, anybody can go and look at them. So if you are familiar with those, I mean, that's something you can pitch in a qualifications based selection. So it's making sure that we are being good partners for each other. - I would imagine that there's a lot of work that falls under that million dollar umbrella. - Absolutely. - So you've got a lot of work that you've got a short list of contractors that you're going to that you built relationships with. That's interesting. - And we have to renew those every five years. So I mean, everybody, if you don't perform well, you're not coming back quite frankly. And then there are other contractors that always want a shot at it. And so when these roll off, then we look as well, you know, are they the right fit? Or are there some of these others that are applying for it that are, you know, we might, we actually had that coming up that we will be advertising in January for a new round of task order contractors. Cause we have, I think four that are rolling off. - It's interesting you brought up Auburn cause I know we've, well, we talked to Gordon over at Bailey Harris. That's in Alabama. Like that's a state of Alabama thing, isn't it? Like the way they contract actually like state law. So that's a little different in Georgia we're able to do a little different. - Our state law used to be the same. And then there were modifications made based on I assume lobbying, all this was before, you know, I was at UGA and Georgia Tech is the leader in that in, you know, discussing that, presenting it. And so now the state of Georgia state law does allow for qualifications based selection as a process. It also still allows for hard bit. And there are plenty of entities that still want to hard bid things. But what we have learned, we have this amazing case study where the cabins at Rock Eagle, we have, there are a whole lot of cabins out there. And we took them offline six at a time and built, tore them down, built new cabins. And we did several of those hard bid and several of them construction manager based. And we have, we actually presented this at a co-conference in Georgia. And you can do literally a compare and contrast what were the pros and cons of both. You know, there's definitely some, you know, cost savings benefit in the beginning, potentially on a hard bid. But what you pay for in either change orders, schedule extension, aggravation, you know, lawsuits. I mean, it's just a world of difference. And so it just depends on, you know, are you willing to be one of those people that wants to stay in a fight the whole time and you're okay with the schedule, you know, the ones that were hard bid, they ran over on schedule every single time. At least that's my recollection. I know for sure, two of them did. And I think maybe we bid three, hard bid three of them. So there may have been one that did not run over schedule. But the relationships, the ease of the work, the quality of the work was just vastly different when you do the construction manager based. And so it's a fantastic case study. - Well, hard bid, you're going with a lot of times somebody that you don't know. So like you're actually with CM, you're actually able to bring somebody else to the table that you, it's a known entity in that you know that you work well with. Am I misunderstanding that, I guess? I want to make sure that I understand the differences here. - So sometimes hard bid are people that you know and are familiar with, especially in Athens, where you are kind of, it's a small town. And you have contractors that are the same contractors, you know, in the mix and some choose to hard bid and some choose to CM and some do both. CM, it's not always somebody you have a relationship with. So we're always open to new contractors coming in. So we recently just shortlisted for a project that we've got coming up. And there's two contractors that we shortlisted three, there's two contractors that we do know and a third that we don't know. And their qualifications were better than for this particular type of project, than two other companies who we did know, there were five people that submitted, we shortlisted three, the two that we didn't accept. We know them. - This episode is brought to you by QuickPace. Tell you know what, I'm the world's worst at. Other than literally everything. - Spreadsheets. - Yeah, I make them for everything. - You do, it's your crotch, man. - They are tools and I like them a whole lot, but they're not very customizable and you don't share them very well a lot of times. That's where I'm learning about QuickPace is really cool. You can take material tracking, personal management, equipment maintenance, bidding, estimates, and what's best about it is that much like a spreadsheet, only better, you can actually customize the app. And you can do that to make it how you want to see it. - And you can share it out with people. It doesn't have to just sit on your machine somewhere in isolation where nobody can get to it. And that's my main beef with your spreadsheets there. - Yeah, and then you're not chasing spreadsheets around, you're actually getting more work done. - And guess what? I hear that even a moron like you can build an app in QuickPace. - Thanks. - And it integrates with apps that you're already using. Things like Procore, for example, which I hear a lot of people are using now. So guys, don't be like Eddie. Go to QuickPace.com and start your 30-day free trial today. - We think very highly of them and they do great work, but their qualifications were not as good as this particular firm that's new to us, that's submitted. So we're going to give them a shot, you know? And if nothing else, if it doesn't work out, at least we know what they're like. We get to know their personality. We find out what their interests are. We see how they present. And you talk about contractors and project managers and what do they want to know. One of the things is take the opportunity to ask for feedback. So I am always happy to provide feedback. So when we get done with interviews and they call me afterwards and they go, "Hey, can I have some feedback? Absolutely." And maybe they don't want to hear it, but I am brutally honest about things. And I will tell them, what did you do poorly? What did you do well? What do you need to improve on? What do I want to see? Do you know what type of thing do I want to see again? And we're allowed to do that as long as there isn't an actual open thing that they are submitting on right then. And there's not one that's been advertised. So if there's one that's been advertised that they could potentially submit on, I can't talk to them during that window. But any other time, fair game. Does the door swing both ways? Both ways, does the-- Absolutely. OK, so do you ask for that feedback after you close the project out? It depends on the situation. I can't honestly say that I'm going to go to somebody and say, hey, tell me how I did. But I feel like I've established relationships with some of these contractors enough that they are-- some of them will tell me. Some of them won't. But they know that I'm open to it. I mean, I try to be very fair about things. And I don't have a problem with somebody giving me constructive criticism. I know that I need it sometimes, because like I said, I'm brutally honest. And sometimes people don't want to hear that. And it's hard for me to step back from that. I mean, I think being brutally honest, I mean, many times the personality that is brutally honest, values that honesty and return as well. And so-- But that's-- I mean, one of it is part of the heart of our show, right, is this feedback loop making each other better. Right. A lot of times, it's easier to digest the feedback in a situation like this than it is in a one-on-one. Well, sure, you know what I mean? Like, you're not as tense. Oh, yeah, read the room. Yeah, read the room. Yeah. If you're toned after the situation, everything's really tense. And you're like, let me tell you all of your transgressions. It's not going to go very well. I mean, come on. I'm curious with just the initiation of projects. I mean, maybe it's a little bit of an enigma to me. Like, you have an idea that comes from somewhere on campus. Like, it gets initiated by somebody. And it finally makes it to the place where you're shown this idea from somebody. I don't know who that comes from, but they say, guess what, Melanie, you're going to get to build something. Do you get handed that designed? Like, does that all get taken care of beforehand? And all of a sudden, you just have what designers have already done and it's yours to take, have hold and do something with? Or do you get to be a part of that, too? So the way our office in particular works is exactly what you said, that there's a project that comes into our office. Sometimes we're on the front end of that and helping to orchestrate that, because we have a master plan on the campus. But sometimes there's a project that just pops up out of nowhere because one of the colleges has had a vision for a while and a legislator wants to figure out how to fund this, or they get private funding from somebody. Perfect example. There was at our botanical gardens, there was a woman who had a porcelain collection. And when I thought porcelain, I was thinking it was like little porcelain figurines. Like porcelain dolls or something like that, yeah. But it's amazing what all is made out of porcelain, including some toilet seats and all kinds of stuff, shaving bowls. And so she had this incredible porcelain collection. She was very elderly and she had a fair amount of money and she wanted to donate this porcelain collection to the university, so she also donated some of the funding, a large portion of it, to build a building to house the porcelain collection. And then it was up to the botanical gardens to figure out how can I relate this to the botanical gardens. And they chose to focus on the materials that came out of the earth that were used to fabricate some of this porcelain and did an amazing job with the architect that was hired to figure out how to translate this into meaning on the walls and in the displays. So project that gets handed to us. So our role then is to find the right designer and the right contractor to build this building. So I personally do not have any say in the selection of the architects. I have some say in the selection of the contractors. You know, I'm one of the voting members. But the design professional, we have right now an open position for senior director of design, which we just had the interviews for that. But my immediate boss, who's the associate vice president of our office, she's an associate vice president for design and construction or facilities, I guess officially is what it's called. But she is the one who's been steering the design for a long time because this position has been vacant for a while. And so she's the one who kind of oversees the design selection. And then my involvement comes because we select a contractor so early, kind of the key to get Melanie involved is when is the first set of pricing due? Because one of my main roles is to review pricing, make sure that it seems realistic for what we're doing based on the state of the economy, the size of the contractor, the scope of work. And so when we get our first set of pricing in, which is sometimes there's a budget price analysis and sometimes it's schematic design pricing. And then they bring me in, I get to get caught up on what does the design look like? What are all these things? Does this seem reasonable? And so to some extent, I'm involved in all of that, but really on the front end of things, it's for constructability type of reviews. It's for, you know, the pricing type of thing. It's schedule, impact. It's all of those basic contractor type of questions, not so much the fun design part. - That's interesting. I would have thought I'd have been a cradle to grave sort of thing. So I'm glad you asked that. - It is for the project manager. - Okay. - So the project manager assigned to each project stays from very beginning to the end. - Okay, okay. - And then the director, the senior director of design will provide some continuity across campus for the design reviews, and then I provide the continuity for construction reviews. And then I stay, once it's, the senior director of design stays involved during the design process and all the meetings, and then once it transitions to actual construction, I try to go to, especially for our major capital projects, I go to all of the owner architect contractor meetings, and I try to keep my mouth shut and let the project manager do what they're supposed to do, but sometimes I don't do a very good job of that, I will admit. That's one of those, give me some feedback, I'm sure all of my project managers would say, sometimes stop stepping on my toes, sorry. - Give me your opinion on design build. - Do you really want my opinion on design build? - Yes, I desperately want your opinion on design build. - Based off of that response, definitely. - Yeah, yes, please. - I am, I personally am not a fan. We do some design build projects. If it's a metal building, yes, I'm in favor of it, but if it's anything else, I'm not in favor. And the reason being that you lose some control and because whoever is under the other person, if the contractor takes the lead, which is usually what happens, then the architect, a lot of their information doesn't get translated over to us, and all we're seeing is the contractor side of things, and the architect is not afraid, but they're trying to be loyal. They're trying to keep the chain of command, running up through the contract chain of command, like they theoretically are supposed to, but you get a different building in my estimation, then you would if the architect was driving some things. And everybody accuses me of being contractor friendly because that's my background, but it's more about, I think everybody can agree, contractors, and they're probably gonna get some people upset about this, but contractors are more practical most of the time. I mean, they see schedule, they see the budget, they're, you know, that's just how you're trained to think. And architects are like, yes, I'm gonna put everything I can out there that I wanna see in this, and then leave it up to the contractor to try to have to cut this out, right? And so I think you don't have a good balance when somebody is underneath somebody else, regardless of who is the entity that we're contracting with. That's my two cents. - You want builder and designer looking at each other as peer? - Yes, absolutely. - Yeah. - And I want the owner to be one of those peers. I want everybody to be able to say what you feel, what do you think makes sense? I think there are times when the design should be more than just the practical functionality. I mean, I love looking at buildings. And when you look at the older historic buildings and what they, you know, the craftsmanship, you know, I wanna still see some of that in our buildings. And if we're leaving it up to the contractor, a lot of times, you know, they're just not trained that way. I mean, there are some, I feel like I have some design sensibility, but certainly I don't see it the way an architect does. - Yeah, you say you get a different building. And I immediately, when you said that thought, I wonder if that building comes to you faster and cheaper? But at the cost of some of the things that you would want to see, like that an architect would, well, maybe prioritize more, like the aesthetic of the building, the feel of the building, maybe even how environmentally friendly the build was, the lead status of the building. - It's all of those things, but it's also when you think about a contractor designing a building, they're not having been in this myself and, you know, trying to do, we used to do mechanical electrical plumbing design as a contractor. I'm like, our subcontractors can do this. We don't have to hire an engineer. We can do it less expensively. These guys are licensed to be able to do it. And so when I first came to the University of Georgia, one of the first projects I did, they were short on funds and I said, well, let's just do a design build with the MEP and that'll be a great idea. And there's all those things that they just aren't trained to think about and to do. And so we had a few hiccups with things and things that, you know, we were adding in after the fact. And I know you do some of that anyway, but this was a lot that just wasn't really thought about because I was the one kind of leading the charge and it just, the forethought wasn't given to it. And so the other thing that I see with the design build is that if a contractor is leading it and there's not enough meetings with the architect and the end user, you know, are you getting all of the thoughtfulness in about the layout and how things are planned and how it's really gonna function at the end? You know, what's the ease of getting to, you know, another space, do you have to circumvent it and go around? I mean, that's kind of a simplistic thing to say, but. - Yeah, so I'm gonna, I wanna brainstorm with you a little bit. We were involved in a, what I'll describe as and what I have previously described as a golf entertainment venue series of builds. And that was initiated by somebody who was out of Georgia Tech. They were the person in charge of construction. The setup was that the architect was hired by the owner. The consultants were hired by the design builder. And it was an interesting thing because, and it didn't dawn on me until you were talking, that's why I wanted to bring it up. The architect and the design builder were in a peer-based relationship with the owner. The consultants, which were, if we're honest, this like structural NMP consultants were, they're much more, that's constructability-based design. They were under that design builder. So there was a lot of attention to cost and just economy of design and things like this. But that wasn't at the expense of gutting the building and making it look ugly. What is your thought on that? Because I've been a participant in public university work around the state here. And I have seen what architects put out. And then I have also seen the coordination of those designs. And I'll bet you, what is your feeling on an architect's natural ability to be the manager and coordinator of the consultants? - So I think that, I mean, that's a role that they play well in general, because they know what's supposed to happen. But what you're talking about sounds very much like what I was talking about, where you have, the subcontractors are the ones designing the MEP, except for the fact that these are engineers that you're referring to, so they can see the design better. But what you made me think of is the design assist with an MEP firm, where the contractor, there is a consultant that's hired by the architect that does the MEP design. But you have your MEP design assist partners so that they can help lend some practical perspective on things about how are we really going to build it? And I've seen that work really well. So what are my thoughts about what you said? I think that, you know, from a, like you said, it's a practical perspective of things. And I think that in some sense could work really well, but the architect also doesn't have the control that they need to have to be able to get, because they're not under them, to be able to, you know, wrangle them in. I mean, you're kind of like a step removed. And so when you're trying to get responses out of the engineers, or you're trying to get the drawings produced just really what I'm thinking about, trying to get all that information there, I think it's harder when they're under somebody else. And the communication is not going to be as free flowing. And so I could see there being more disconnects in the design if you approached it that way. But it may not have, that may not be the case from what you encountered, but that's my immediate thoughts. - Yeah. I mean, many times, I guess if I notice, I'd probably notice because something's off, right? I mean, you don't notice when everything goes right. When everything goes right. - Right. - Yeah, I'm awesome. - Move on. - Yeah. Isn't that the funny part of construction? As we notice all the bad things, because those are the noticeable things. - Those are the new senses during our day. - Yeah. - Or the bad things. - That's whatever the good thing was, right? - Yeah, things that don't come up, but you get your lessons learned from all the things that go wrong, and you're like, why did it go wrong? - Yeah. - Because it went right here, and I never noticed it before, just exactly what you're saying. - Yeah, so I mean, I guess by nature, I notice when the consultants and the architect aren't on the same page. That's when it comes up. So like when the grids don't match, when there's a blatant and obvious bust between the systems like the architect and the engineer don't look like, they've really even been in the same room or talked to them one another, gaps created by a submittal process is a common one. Just the cadence of submittal, like who got to be the last person to put their pencil down? Can matter when it comes to an incomplete set, which anything, the 50%, the DD set, whatever it is, like who got to put their pencil down last? - Well, so I have to tell you something. Okay, and for your sponsor, Bluebeam here. So I'm gonna tell you a funny story, but I'm also gonna say, when you talk about, you know, Bluebeam and you have the capability of comparing the drawings, like the things that you're talking about, column line being off or something, like those theoretically shouldn't happen anymore, right? Because you have a way to check all that stuff and it should be easy enough. And to the submittal stuff, we, a UGA, a lot of times if there's a critical submittal or something that's complicated, we put it on Bluebeam and all of the consultants are allowed to comment all at the same time. So it doesn't matter, it's an open working session. Doesn't matter who's last, because we're going back and forth and putting comments, but the engineer is ultimately the, you know, the person that has the authority and the person that is the engineer of record and it needs to be their decision, right? But how I found out about Bluebeam is the funny story because you told you how old I am. And so I was working at UGA when technology started really taking off. And I guess I should clarify that Whitzel construction that I worked for was a very small farm. We did historic preservation restoration and everything we did was we, you know, did stuff on computers, but it was Microsoft Word and Excel and that was all I knew how to use. And I was, we were in Danielsville, Georgia and I was in, you know, cow country for eight years. And so then I go work at UGA and I'm like, wow, there's all this technology that has occurred because we were doing smaller projects. There's all this technology that's occurred and I didn't know a whole lot about any of it. And so I was kind of playing catch up with all this stuff. So I'm in a meeting on the vet school, huge $70 million project or so. And the contractor was talking about, was kind of telling the architect, hey, you issued this interim set of drawings that wasn't really a four construction set. We were doing, you know, things and phases. And then when they finally sent out the set of drawings, there was an error where they hadn't clouded. So here's your set of drawings, is you have one set and then you have an interim set that's issued that they've clouded everything between that and the first set and that set. Then then when they went to the next set, they clouded the changes between that interim set and that and deleted all the other clouds, but the subcontractors had not seen that interim set. So you had a bunch of missing clouds and it caused them to make a foundation error. And so then they're talking in this meeting with like 20 people about this error that was made. And then it kind of gets glossed over and I go, wait a minute. I mean, let's talk about this for a minute. I said, so, you know, what are you doing now? I said, are you, you know, they're like, oh, we're taking care of it, we're taking care of it. And I said, no, I want to know. Are you actively putting these drawings on a light table and you are overlaying them and you're making sure you've caught all the clouds that should have been there. And the contractor kind of looked at me and he stuttered for half a second and he goes, well, yeah, well, well, well, yes, kind of like that. So we're using Bluebeam and I said, oh, okay. I said, what's Bluebeam? I said, is that like the electronic version of a light table? And he started laughing and he said, yes, that's exactly what it is, right? And so literally that same day, I get an email at UGA that from the Georgia Museum of Art, which is a UGA campus building. And they said, hey, we have this light table over here and we don't really have a need for it. Do you guys want to have it in your office? Is that anything that you guys could possibly use? And I'm like, perfect timing. And I shot it over to the contractor and I said, hey, look, I said, people still use light tables. I said, there's somebody offered me one today. And he said, yeah, look where it is. It's in the museum. 'Cause it was Georgia Museum of Art and I was just like, okay, too, shit, you got me on that. So that's how I learned what Bluebeam was and how to start using Bluebeam, so. - Well, they're going to have these openings. (laughing) - Clicking the lights came. - This was not planned and they're going to love you. And listen to the commercial for the 20% off that we're offering right now, which is pretty amazing too. - Yeah, perfect plug. (laughing) - Unplanned plug there. That's, so when I see that sort of thing complained about, when I hear that sort of thing complained about, there is the Bluebeam side of things. There's also this Revit workflow that it's the interesting part of all this technology and not having the light table anymore. Processes is much faster. And in a lot of ways, I do miss the tactile side of society. - Yes, absolutely, yeah. - Plans in front and it took, I'll say years before I probably just kind of became callous to it and didn't really remember anymore. The difference between using a paper set and being on a PDF, the efficiencies of the PDF are just like the draws too much. And I do miss that. Okay, point, Revit has a workflow where, I mean, you basically, your designers or design your architects designing, everybody is in a common environment, right? And depending on how you set it up, the models are updating. And there's kind of an understanding that you're gonna be paying attention to model updates. And as that model updates, it's your responsibility to pay attention for those and react to them. And it's insane how much things, good design, well-coordinated design still just comes back to this, like just talking, just talking. Because if I just make a change and I expect because somebody's like kind of, you know, following the model or wearing this common environment that that's just gonna be obvious to you. Sometimes changes aren't all that obvious. And they slip through. So that's the complaining I hear is, will they just expect us to just know on the other side of the thing, you know, the architect, like do I have to spoonfeed you every change? Do I have to, like, why aren't you kind of keeping up with how this is iterating? Talking is still key to just making sure that's cohesive. And we see the ball drop to a pretty good bit. I mean, 'cause frankly, when we're in, I mean, we do still detailing, that's one of the upfront things. Many times it happens. And one times we get released off of earlier documentation than other trades do. So things aren't quite as cast and stone at that point. And that can mean that there's a little bit of gap between the designers. - I don't know, man. Like I feel like, and this is kind of back to the point that you made earlier where we were talking about just communicating, like just talking, just, you know, keeping the open line of communication with all subs, everybody around the table is, I mean, it has to be the most critical thing for you. Like it has to. - One of the things that I run into technology-wise, just basic stuff is email. I mean, talking about, you know, dropping stuff. I get so many emails. I literally cannot keep up with them. And this, I shouldn't admit this, but my email box is almost full. And it's got a lot of space in it. But I, it's not, one, don't have time to file everything all the time. But also, some of the stuff is critical. And I can't necessarily, I know you can theoretically file an email, but am I gonna be able to find it again when I need it? If it's in my email, it's easy for me to find. But I've spent in an ordinary amount of time recently, just deleting old emails, so that I can make room for new emails to come in. My point being communication, sometimes it's better if somebody just picks up the phone and has a conversation instead of four or five emails going back and forth, asking question after question, after more information is provided. So it takes me, you know, 10, 15 minutes to get through the back and forth emails, whereas if you just picked up the phone and called, would be done in like three minutes. And people, and then that's one of the things, you know, with the current generation of students and people coming out of school, is they don't wanna pick up the phone. You know, they're used to emailing, and part of it is also on their own time. I don't feel like emailing right now, but I'm awake at three o'clock in the morning. You know, let me email now. And so then it's hours later, and I get some of these emails, and I'm guilty of sending some of them when I can't sleep, you know, three o'clock in the morning, get all this stuff off my plate. By the time morning rolls around, I don't remember exactly what all I sent out, and you know, what do I need to follow up on, like those types of things. So I can't stress enough how important it is to communicate. - Do you find, and this is, I'm asking a leading question here, do you find that email causes more fights than phone calls do? - Absolutely, because people feel like they can hide behind, and they're not afraid to say things. You know, you see this in personal stuff too, obviously, but yes, I absolutely do think it causes more fights than it needs to. - I think the only times I've had fights are because of an email. - Or in a miscommunication on an email, somebody not understanding, you know, what you were saying or how to take it. Tone in an email is a whole different ball game. - We've recently had a diatribe about this whole like email phone call thing. He was ranting on the whole like, basically his generation and below. Pick up the phone, like it's not the devil. - Well, I mean, yeah, we posted that, I think on, we posted something on LinkedIn, like yesterday. - Yeah, like literally yesterday on email. - It's interesting to back and forth to you. - Freaking hate email, man. Freaking hate, I'm so weird as a millennial that just like, I just hate it because it has caused so many fights 'cause it just tone doesn't convey. - Yeah, no, it definitely doesn't. - You pick up a phone and you're talking to somebody and you're like, I don't really don't want to sound like a jerk here. How can I say this in a more, you know-- - Where you can just say, I don't want to sound like a jerk. - Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. This is coming across wrong and like, you can almost like clarify just really, really quick. Heck, better than that, just getting face to face, being able to see the facial expressions is huge. - Right. - We've had to come up with freakin' emojis in order to convey facial expressions. Like we're going backwards here guys. Like we-- - We have the capability to use your box again. - Yes, it's the same thing with Zoom meetings and stuff. You know, because everybody got so used to it and it's so easy and I can just sit at my desk and we have an internal meeting between our office and the facilities management department where we go through all of our projects together. So we make sure that we're not both working in the same building against each other. We literally, in this, these got prompted because we literally were facilities management was changing out a fire alarm system, finished it. We went in there, we were renovating the whole building. So it was like just complete wasted money, we salvaged all the parts, we could, we did stuff, we're like, we don't need to do this. So we have these coordination meetings. Well, we ended up having them over Zoom for probably two years. And at some point I just said, I'm done. 'Cause I run the meetings. I said, they're in person, period. And everybody's like, well, it means I may not be able to come every time and I'm like, then I'm sorry. You know, either change your schedule or and I don't mean to be ugly, but I am tired of sitting here feeling like I'm talking to myself and half the people zone out and it's just not worth it to me. So now we meet in person and it works out great. - That's another thing. - Yeah, there is more of a propensity to just zone out or Zoom meeting. - Oh yes. - All right, so a lot of this is great and we could ramble on email for forever. I know I could 'cause I freaking hate it. Anyway, Billy, we wanna ask you our megaphone question though. That's what we ask everybody. So if we gave you a megaphone, the whole industry could hear in around 60 seconds, we might give you more. It's okay if you go over, it's more like guidelines and actual rules. What would you wanna say to the industry? What would you wanna leave them with? What would you wanna soapbox on? - So my soapbox is really just about communication in general and making sure that everybody understands where all in this together and the whole thing I've learned being at UGA is that it's all about team approach I mentioned earlier on about that I had a hard time not trying to be a control freak about everything. I wanted to have my hands in all the details. But if you have your best intentions and you are trying, everybody is understanding of that. And I think everybody trying to foster the best in everybody and be teammates, it doesn't have to be an adversarial situation and who wants to live their life in an adversarial situation. So I think understanding that we know this is about making money. We know that nobody's doing this for free. And as an owners rep, we just want everybody to be fair. And as long as you are fair with everything, cost proposals, changes, et cetera, if you're entitled to it, I have no problem saying you're entitled to it. So I think that's one of the biggest things. And then the other thing I would say is about supporting each other because one of the things that I have learned, I went through this leadership training thing at UGA, it was UGA staff leadership institute. And one of the things that came out of that long term for me is it was kind of the premise for what prompted me to start Athens area women in construction. And that organization, I will be honest with you and tell you that we intended to start a chapter of NAWIC, which everybody is familiar with, but they would not let us start our own chapter because we didn't have the minimum number of people to start it. So we had already started meeting an anticipation of that. I had been in contact with some of the national leaders of that organization and thought we were gonna be able to start a chapter. So we started this homegrown thing. And because we'd already been meeting and everybody was like, "Yeah, let's just do a homegrown thing." And it has turned into such a phenomenal thing for all of us because there are so many women in the industry that really, literally there were women that thought, "We're not sure." The first question we got asked at one of our first meetings was, "Babies, "can you have a family and can you as a project manager "and can you also do your job? "How is that looked upon?" And it was like life changing for them to hear that, "Yes, you can have a family. "My youngest child was strapped to my body "when she was five weeks old "and we went and did a job sidewalk "because schedules require that kind of stuff. "But I want to be able to do my job. "I want to do it well." But I also wanted to be able to have a family. So having examples of things about how you can do those types of things, having people that are mentoring you or that you see as people that you can ask questions of, I think it's important, whether you're male or female, to be a good role model in this industry for the rest of the people coming up. Nobody knows everything when they start, right? And you have to teach them and taking the time to teach them. And I think that's one thing we do very horribly in this industry is it's all trial by fire, sink or swim. There is no formal training process for a lot of the contractors. Some of them do it better than others. But just having a formal training process, it's just shadowing somebody, right? I mean, at least that's been my experience. So I think recognizing all of that and being able to foster that and provide the patience that you need to foster the training in education and mentoring people, I think is really important. - Yeah, that's awesome, man. That's so good. I don't know why. I just got this visual of you walking around with your little baby and had a tiny little hard hat. - Well, I did, it's a little types hard hat. And yes, absolutely. And that kid in there is the one that had, I had strapped to me, but my son has been on job science since he was probably, I don't know, six months old. - I love it, that's very cool. That's awesome. - Melanie, thank you so much for joining us today. - Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. It's a lot of fun. - Hey, I got some bonus content here. - Okay. - Like, okay, so you're gonna get a kick out of this 'cause you went to Auburn and you have been at UGA. But we went over and did our LTJ bot video at the new culinary arts building at Auburn. And when we went, Tyler had the bright idea that he was gonna buy some Bulldog's folding chairs. And we took them over and we had them, and it was a Bailey Harris site and we had them and we got them on site and he was gonna do it. It's like a gag or whatever. - Like we were gonna be up in the culinary arts for Auburn and they bust out the Georgia chairs. (laughing) They did not make it up. They got checked in the dumpster. - They got checked in the dumpster? - And it legit, we had no idea. And I'm sure Georgia has the same thing. - It's amazing. - No, like, no paraphernalia and it would be paraphernalia from another school was allowed on that site. So like Georgia chairs or a hat or whatever it was. By contract, they were like, no, you're not allowed to have it. - Yep, we had an Auburn, somebody that graduated from Auburn also in the billing science program. He was doing an athletics project and he put up his Auburn flag in his office in the job site trailer. - You like that? - Nope, had to take it down. (laughing) - I'm not doing it. You're like, no, by contract. - I'm just saying, I'm not the one who made him take it down that was somebody else from athletics who made him take it down. - Oh, I'm sure somebody was willing to be involved in themselves, I'm positive. Yeah, I never, yeah, I think those chairs are totally one of the dumpsters. It was frustrating, you're brand new chairs too. I like bottom purpose, like on purpose. - You could have gone dumpster diving. - I was gonna get like a shot while we were shooting the J by video of like me just being like folding it out and just like putting it down and sitting down in it or something. I thought it would be hilarious. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, go dog, sit. (laughing) (air whooshing)