You are now tuning into the Own The Build podcast. Join Ceiling's very own Paul Heming where each week he interviews experts from the world of construction and asks all the important questions around intelligent construction management. Hello and welcome to episode 178 of the Own The Build podcast with me Paul Heming. Today we missed it once, we're not going to miss it twice, we're returning to the future of contracting series today. As you know for all of the future of contracting episodes I welcome the good mate Christopher Barber into the studio QS turned Chief Visionary Officer at Ceiling Chris, where have you been all in my life mate. Just been waiting to come on to an episode so we can mention it's coming home. Definitely a bit late for that isn't it. This could age real badly. Yeah I mean it's probably not going to come home but we won't go there. So today we're going to talk about tendering, shock horror, we're going to talk about it again right but before I strap in. Yeah exactly it's another one of those interesting episodes where we talk about tendering but I know for a fact I just this week a QS reached out to me and said I come and what the episode was he said that episode was so geeky and so nerdy about quantity surveying. I absolutely loved it so there you go people do want to talk about it as much as we do right. All jokes aside we have talked in the past about digital supply chains, digital pre-qualification, digital contracts and digital signatures on contracts so DocuSign or e-signatures let's call it. What we never talked about was the bit in between right and I don't know why we did it in that order but that's what we did and that is digital tendering so the process of you have your supply chains. You have your supply chain and PQQ in place all the way through did now you've got them with a lovely e-signature. Before we talk about digital tendering what I'd like to discuss with you in the first half of today's show is best practice in tendering as it is today right. So let's imagine that we're procuring a package. What package would you like to procure with me today Chris? Pretty much procured all of them so I don't know that will resonate with my drylining let's say. Alright let's do drylining so I've never procured a drylining package actually. The closest I ever got was on bachelor power station procuring an acoustic sealing package not too dissimilar but I don't think the way I procured that would have been truly sensational let's say so I'm sure you're going to be much better at it. Let's go from ground zero on this drylining package I'm your managing Qs actually I'm going to be I'm your commercial director. And I say to you right we got this new project drylining package you're coming in late. Procure the drylining package for me. What is the first thing I wanted to talk to me through the best way you could procure it. I always dived into the information first hand so spec I'll be tearing into that that'll be like one of my first things I started looking at what's been requested. Going through the drawings and information is obviously is key your drawings your architect drawings as structural drawings as well but also you've got to think about your M&E drawings with M&E with a drylining sorry and the reason is something that quite often gets overlooked is something like the number of access panels that's within a package and you'll get that off the M&E drawings and they're not necessarily coordinated. You take me back to the acoustic ceilings there was loads and loads of access panels in the acoustic ceilings. Yeah and I managed to procure it perfectly as you can work on well done congrats. So yeah that I'll be looking at that information trying to coordinate that and then what does that look like in terms of a scope. Now the best way to procure a drylining package is with a fully detailed BOQ but seldom did I actually have one on a project nor had the time to put one together myself. So the next best solution is spec and drawing so any subcontracts out there be rolling there are always listening to this because it's a pain to take off because there's lots of ways of such so much of a pain that you haven't got the time to do it that you're passing it down. Two things before we move on why was the one I said to his this drylining package going procured to the best of your ability why were you drawn to the spec first. So the spec because I wanted to know if it's equal approved on certain elements so equal approved as sometimes there's different nuances to it but every QS be rubbing hands together when they see that because they probably would have been priced at estimating stages as a spec but equal approved gives you license to value engineered for your own benefit so I knew straight away I couldn't make money out of this and how's the best best way to go about it. And so the first thing you want to do is show us why you were such a good QS the first thing in your mind is and my mind would be different I'd go to the to my scope as contract the first see what my scope was and see how I can pass that down but what you're saying is the first thing you would do is go and look at the spec. See if it was gypsum or whatever it was sin yeah and then say okay it's X or equal approved which means I can do what I want on this or I'm stuck. I have to go with X and this what would happen service equal approved you're obviously thinking yes that gives me the flexibility opens this up are there circumstances where it said product X is the product that we're going with. And you would still try and change that like would you as in I actually did that again didn't expect the conversations with the acoustic ceilings we actually changed the product and it took ages but it ended up being worthwhile. Is that something that you would do as well. I've been known to push the envelope ball so yeah I would try it definitely I think for certain elements of buildings you can push the envelope on it and say look there is like for like out there that's the thing with the with something like you know like window systems you know the very similar there's like minor differences and you can use a different product does not much change in them but there could be a massive change in the cost. And yeah it's something I did and it was it helps to identify I mean once you've done this a few times you realize where you're going to spend your time as a QS. So if something heavily specs like kitchen whatever just get it done you can't you're not going to make any money on that just get it done go through the motions mean just get it done well if it's like kind of client specs. You know you just lock it in it's going to be on a long leading time there's going to be designs and like the approval is for that kind of element just get it procured make sure you've done your own due diligence on it and make sure like the coordination is all sorted out so do they need it off loading etc you can go through that make sure that's rock solid but don't waste your time of trying to make any money out of it. But that's where kind of dry line is a bit different I guess yeah because if it's a kitchen me as the client I won this kitchen I've chosen it was part of the interior design part of the architecture this is my dream is what I wanted with a dry line I care a lot less which is why I guess it's a dry line package first place I'm going is the spec because I want to say you've got a license to do it I mean the client's only bothered about the foreign ball paint they've got on the dry line you know at the end so it is just really identifying those areas of where you can improve your position financially. And then to that extent therefore there are certain packages dry lining being one where you would be tendering doing your procurement with a view to not only do I need to do my procurement here but I need to do some client and architect and design team management not manipulation but I need to get this how would you identify the contracts it says X versus X or approved how would you identify the process that you needed to go through. I've just I'm your managing QS just throwing you on to this job and the first place you've gone is the spec and you're looking at it right up on opportunity. What would your next steps be to actually go and get that changed to bring the value. So then I'd be looking at who are subcontract partners that have delivered the scheme with or who's in our supply chain and try you know get those guys together then I'd be putting together my tender documentation. I probably having a call with them anyway saying like it's British gypsum or whatever and say look you know I'm going to get you can price it option A and option B you know option A as per spec and an option B will be. You're preferred alternative because they've got better they can get better buying games with maybe a different supplier or someone like that. So you're it's a benefit for everybody involved at that point so you buying them into that process that you've got a secure tender coming out. There's going to be an opportunity for them to make more money out of it as well and use the systems that they prefer using. So you buy them into that process and you've got this you know three to four five maximum people that you're going to send it to. And then you put your tender tender documentation together then so that I'll incorporate like I said I would love a BOQ but we didn't have them very often and I didn't have any time or resource to put one together. So your default is spec and drawings so spec and drawings goes out but what I would be listening out within that I would be very explicit line by line. I'm looking for this type of a fire rated board it needs to meet this specification. I need a provisional quantity for 60 access hatches to this just fire rating or whatever so I'd be really explicit in what the requirements were. So that would help them to guide the subcontractor on how to price and what I am looking for. And talk to me about why you would you've said I would do spec and drawings because the BOQ I'm going to time for it. But best practice is BOQ why? Because there's a lot of measuring involved and you will no doubt come down to a re-measure or some think some argument about what was included but wasn't. And it speeds up the returns particularly like dry liners. Imagine them having to take off a whole job all the time especially if they're like the floors aren't repetitive and they've got you know different layouts on different floors. It's a lot of work that the client really should be putting into. It's a net negative for the industry though isn't it? What you're doing there right? In that you could go as QS you're saying you haven't got time for it which I appreciate. You could go and do a BOQ or spec and drawings means your three subbies go and do it. So it's three BOQs versus one and it then creates for you an environment where you have a much more difficult tender analysis. When you reflect on that and you were unequivocal about it I haven't got time for the BOQ. You haven't even done it for years right? But you were still like I haven't got time for the BOQs on your own spec and drawings. That's what you did. Did it save your time overall? Not having the BOQ. Well you basically said I can't do it. BOQ let's say a day to do the bill for the drylining and you said I haven't got time for that. I'm going to send it out. When the tenders came back and it maybe took longer for those tenders to come back and it took you longer to do your analysis. On reflection does it save your time? I don't think it does save your time but in terms of is it your expertise? To do a bill? I'm not an expert in doing bills. I can put some together. I know you were pretty good at measuring. I'm not too bad but then there's different ways of measuring certain items. There's different ways of how a subcontractor might measure it versus how you might measure it. That's why you're better off getting someone who's adept at doing BOQs and documents and measuring. Having a resource I remember working with or know someone who worked at an organization. They were largely spec and drawings but they had budget to go and get bills and quantities put together things like drylining. Things like that because they want it absolutely rocks on it absolutely accurate and speed up those returns because they were doing massive buildings. It makes a lot of sense to do it for, I mean it would be great to do it for all buildings and all packages. Some people are actually noticing if we did it for these packages we could really really help our team and the industry generally. And so the best practice is why you think drylining should have a bill because it's so much complicated to take off. It's more arduous than a lot of other items. And therefore then and this talks to I guess some of the problems that we have as an industry generally. Because you're saying me as QS I'm doing the procurement on this. I don't have the skill to do the bill right I might as well give it to the three specialists. The three specialists do it I guess they're all within like a margin of error but they're all slightly different right. And then it's a bit like I said it to you on one of the last shows that we were on right where as the specialist. So as the curtain warning specialist if someone said to me you tell me what it is because I don't have that specialism. There is a bit of an art isn't there to creating what's the word you know creating an environment where you can generate more revenue from that fact. So it's funny isn't it that that is the feeling that you would have had as QS I haven't got the time for this. But it's actually wrapping up quite a few other facets to it. Yeah it's like I could do it but I'm not going to be efficient at it and I might make an error. And all these other things and what making tractors should be doing really is giving their QS teams a budget to go and out sorts of BOQ for certain packages. And that's the best way I would say around it. It's funny because you've been quite honest there about why you personally wouldn't do one like it's not your skill set. A lot of people will say to me and I hear it all the time and we've talked about it on this show a lot. I wouldn't do a bill because I'm not taking responsibility for that measure. And I've always thought that's such a, it's such a, I want to say it's bullshit isn't it right? Like you don't want to do the bill for the reason that you've just outlined actually right. Haven't got the time, haven't got the expertise. This risk thing there is a component of that which is true. But almost all of those companies where they say I don't want to do a bill because I want to take the risk will be procuring subcontractors on fixed price lump. So it's not an issue anyway, right? Because you've contracted them on that basis. So I am a huge advocate for doing the bill and creating an environment where you're doing one bill, not the three with the subbies and they're having all the challenges of building it. And then if you're the main contractor or the lead procuring company, just say fixed price lump sum and you've got rid of all that risk anyway, which is no doubt what they would do anyway. So okay, going back to best practice. We've got the contractors that we want. We've created the tender document. What's your process from here? So calling them all before, just let them know it's coming out. And so it's not like it's just landed in their inbox. So quick, as you call, give them a just a quick overview and say that I'm going to send this out. Do you want to meet on site next week or the week after? So they can come and visit the site and meet up, go for any kind of queries. They might have a bit better to address it in person and genuinely get engaged there engagement really of the scheme. Are they that interested? Do they want it to suit them, et cetera? So if they don't turn up to a site visit, they're probably not going to return a price for you or they're not going to put that as much effort. They're not worth your time, aren't they? Yeah, yeah, they're doing all that interest. It works both ways. I always advise subcontractors to do the same with make attractors is go and meet them if they're interested in you above price and they'll be willing. And if they're interested in best practice, they're going to be there. So that would be the phase. Then you'd cringe, but yeah, if they email it out, so it gets probably lost in someone's junk mail or something like that. And they've got to open up the information, et cetera. I would then be really like pushing for that meeting and I try and block a site visit out that for a day and then try and meet those subcontractors all on the same day at some point. Hopefully not too close to overlapping with each other, which has happened a few times. But yeah, try and space it out and meet three of those contractors that day, go through it. Check the attendance list, what are you going to supply? What are they going to supply with them in person? Yeah, so you've created the tender, Doc. You've issued it to them. You've invited them to site. Are you walking around the site with them and saying? Yeah, we worked on a lot of fit outs and stuff, so existing buildings at hundreds of years older than so the buildings were there and you don't necessarily have that with new builds. But you're still showing the site, the access, you go grab a coffee with them and just take, you know, this is where you can unload here. We might have emotionally. Yeah, so where the hell is the bill? What is this bank of drawings nonsense for the last time? I'm not going to do this again, Chris. I know. So you might have an access lift on the side of the building to help with deliveries and you just go through those bits. It might only be a half hour conversation, but at least you've met. You've broke bread together, as the Italians say. Yeah, you take it forward from there and then say, look, the return date is also really communicating that date. You need it returned by. And they might be saying, "Oh, can I have an extra few days because of this?" And you'd be receptive to that as a QS if someone's asked you in person when definitely comes to me. You always narrow in their deadlines so you can hit yours. You've hit on an interesting point now. And so I'm the lead surveyor. I'm the lead on the commercial director on this particular project. I was trying to hand it over to you and I've just been given by the architect rev to information, right? And you've just yesterday done all of your site visits and met all the guys, gone away. You've kind of started to agree. The tenant says, "You're narrowing your scope, I imagine," right? Actually, I'm not going to give them X. I'm going to give them Y. And you're thinking about changing it. I then come and say, right, there's a load more information here now. How do you manage that? Oh, tender addendum. I didn't like them because you've got to manage it in two ways. There might be a variation or change you've got to manage. And how do you capture that change, not variation within a new set of information that you've sent them? So there's always that gray area when that comes around. So you're worried, sorry, just so we're clear. You're worried about -- because we're midway through the project on this drylining package, right? You're worried not just about how do I make sure I get all the information. So there's no variations down the line. But actually, I've gone from rev zero to rev one with my client and there is a variation. How am I going to get that priced while at the same time down the line? Pecure it as well at the same time. And it's also just making sure you can track that change. It's happened because it could just get captured. The subcontractor price is it. I know you could go back to rates and kind of pro-rater it. But it might just skirt around a couple of things that you might not have picked up during that process. So you are -- that is a consideration. But doing a tender addendum again is almost like doing another tender again. It's the same process. Apart, you still need to review the information, identify if there's any key changes to them, rather than just dumping it on them for them to assess. And is there any -- any environment where I don't come to you the day after that meeting with all you guys on site and say there's a lot of new information that's gone from rev zero to rev one? That doesn't happen. But you come away from those three or four meetings. Someone has said three things that have really resonated. Another specialist has said two things that really resonate, and the other one hasn't really said anything. But you think, oh, those five points. I want to clarify that in my tender where you actually come away from those mid-tender meetings and you wish you a tender addendum anyway, saying I want you to include for X, Y, and Z, or I'm no longer going to give you the hoist you can use cradle, or is it -- like, how would you manage -- is there anything to learn from the mid-tender, the site visit, that you then regurgitate and make sure that the subbies get that before you're actually -- Yeah. I wouldn't label that as a mid-tender necessarily, that site visit straight away. It's more of a kind of cursory. Let's go and check out the site. You can build mid-tenders into, particularly if it's like worth high value. And there's lots of specification and systems that are required. Like for something like M&E, you would definitely dive into like a mid-tender and make sure they've allowed for everything. But you do find when you meet the subcontractors on site, they might have different questions. And you're like, "Oh, actually, can you allow for this?" You know, like in the next -- in the follow-up. So you're right about that information you might get from contractor A. Is contractor B thinking about it? Yeah. And D, whatever. So you do have to feed that in at some point. And where you fit that in is also tricky. It's like maybe an email. Is it a phone call? Is it a text? Is it -- Yeah. At least in my opinion it's got to be relatively formalised. Yeah. Because if it's an email, a text or a phone call -- It gets lost. Where does that go? What's the audit trail? You don't even -- It's something to do with attendances. Well, I should just update your attendance list and make it clear. That's almost kind of what I was thinking. Like maybe those -- yeah, maybe you're right at the site because it isn't -- maybe a mid-tender is, but you would update the schedule of attendances or whatever to reflect those conversations. Yeah. If you're down the line as well and you're doing pre-let meetings with, say, two contractors, you've got two favourites. They're in the running. And there's differences between their offer, like, slightly. And you think, well, can I -- and you can communicate this through, like, the meeting minutes and stuff like this. It's discussed actually, can you price up this, isn't it? And then you can take that forward as, like, a small price change or whatever that looks like. Almost like a variation, but extra right, including the contract. And that's how I would deal with that in a smaller scale operation. Got you. Okay. So also, we missed tender return periods. Okay. Got to give subcontractors, particularly on something that's complicated for weeks. Like, unless you've got a B.O.Q. and even if it is a B.O.Q. You've never got one, mate. Yeah, I never got one. But I always gave decent time periods to return. So it was always on top. It's difficult, isn't it, because I was speaking to someone today -- well, sorry, yesterday, who was saying, "My tender return periods aren't that bad, right?" And so they were showing me, and this was a relatively small project, right? It was actually a drylining package, and I think one of them was M&E. And on the M&E he'd given three weeks on the drylining he'd given two, which, to my mind, probably isn't that bad. It's not overly generous, but it's not horrific either, right? But the challenge he had, and again, I think this was six or seven flats, but was that the M&E return date was, let's call it, the first of July, and the start on site date was the 20th of July. And I said, that in itself is a problem, right? Not only as a reflection for the specialist, right? They look at that and think, hang on a minute. This job doesn't -- it doesn't feel like this job is well-run, if that's the case, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't have people starting necessarily. I might not have placed the order right up until a couple of weeks out, because it would have been negotiating well in advance, communicating that, but you shouldn't be tendering with people who need to start in two weeks' time. Okay, so what we've discussed in the first half of the show is a pretty rock-solid analog version of the tendering and procurement process. What we'll do in the second half is talk about how that could change, how that could be improved, how it could be bettered digitally. We'll do that, mate, after this break. Right now, there are between five and ten thousand QS vacancies in the UK. Loads of main contractors that we speak to are struggling to recruit and find QS's and also struggling to recruit and find high-quality subcontractors, given the skill shortage. Having worked as a QS for many years, I've seen first-hand the challenges of managing subcontract procurement, and I understand that many projects will fail by getting procurement wrong. This is why we built C-Link. With C-Link, you will build resilience. You'll centralise your supply chain data, automate procurement and access digital contracts to present yourself as a world-class contractor. To find out more, you can now go to the show notes, and you will see that we have included a video and a demo link so that you can meet either me or meet the team and understand better what we do. I look forward to speaking to you all. Thank you very much. Christopher Barber, so second half of the show, I'm going to do something that I hadn't intended to do, don't worry, and actually almost press repeat. I want to ask you that exact same question I asked you before, but I'm going to ask you it in the context of you now have a different way of working. You've just joined this company where I'm the managing QS commercial director, the commercial lead, let's say. I've just said to you, there's this project that you're going on and I need you to procure the dry line in May. By the way, we do all of our procurement digitally now. Don't use word, we don't use Excel. Everything is digital. I'm very happy now. Is that why you joined? Okay, I thought it was because I was such a charming interviewer. So I'm going to say to you, right, and I want you to imagine we're in a future world where the world is different, say to you, right, dry line in package. I've done everything up to this point, but you take on the job now. What to you about the best practice? You've just described to me, I think it was half an hour of that first half. I've never thought I'd talk about dry line in so much. You just described to me your best practice when you're in that dry line in package in the old world. This is a new world with this digital tendering. How are you going to do things differently? Well, for a start, there's a centralized process that we're going to go through. So I'm pretty excited. I like standardization. Yeah. So what technology won't replace is some of the human elements that we need to do. So that site visit, picking up the phone to the subcontractors as well, you've still got to do those things and your technology won't ever replace that. And also reviewing your scopes as well with the advancements of AI that are coming, you could potentially analyze scopes and say, look, we can suggest an alternative or suggest or pull out a-- But the first thing you said to me you were going to do was you were going to go to your spec. Yeah. And I'd still do that. Yeah. Yeah. I still need to know how much time and energy I want to spend on this, trying to value engineer it and make money out of it. So I need to know that straight away. And what I'm going to ask the subcontractor to do. But I'm guessing-- so with this centralized system that we've got, we're going to have a bank of scoped works that I can dive straight into and pull out a relative spec for a very similar building that's been worked on, built upon within the company. So being a matter of me, not having to worry about, oh, I forgot about access hatches. If you matter of, access hatches are written already in the scope that I've got. That's a really interesting point, actually, isn't it? Because you smugly said to me at the start of the first stuff, loads of people forget about access hatches. And I reflected on my own experience procuring that acoustic C and I probably did forget to do the actual hatches because procuring dryline wasn't something that I regularly did. But therein lies the problem, doesn't it? Yeah. My company had flagged almost X, Y and Z and A, B and C, C being access hatches. Are you thinking about them? Because it also talks to that point that you eloquently put about the BOQ where I'm no expert in drylining. And you've just kind of proven that you're more of an expert in drylining than I am because you know you're not going to do that. But why are the tools of the company not telling me all of the issues that I should be thinking about? And that's kind of what you're talking about with the scope of works. How do you picture that working? So, you know, having a standard set that would highlight things that you need to be considering for projects and then you could have them tailored. So some commercial buildings might have more fire rated and acoustic requirements versus a residential building or house or something like that. So you could almost have like tailored specs for these things that then highlighting to the QS that you need to consider this. You need to review what is your specification saying? Because it could say as per specification, ref, whatever, K, something. Is that right? It's K, isn't it? The drylining. I don't know. I think it's K. I think it's K. Anyone probably got it wrong. But then, or probably for a Q6 might be Q, is it? I can't remember. But anyway, it could have. So then you've got to go and investigate your scope of works. Oh, I need to think about that. I need to put that in. And I always got a fire rated thing. I need to think about that. Where do we find that? And then you're drawing the attention to go and review it. You understand it. You've built a great understanding of how to build a scope together as well. And then you can take that forward into every project. I think, you know, a lot of people have said to me about digital transformation, technology adoption. Well, if you tell people how to do their jobs through automation and X, Y and Z, you're going to end up with a suite of Qs's. Like a generation of Qs's or project managers or estimators who don't know what they're doing. And my argument to that, talks to the points that you've just kind of talked through, which is actually in our fictional company. I'm the managing Qs. There's an ops director. There's whoever else. And they've procured hundreds of drylining packages. You haven't, right? I hadn't, but when I was on Back to Power station. And that meant I didn't put the access panels in. Right. You put the access panels in, but someone with more knowledge of drylining it above you would put in access panels and X and Y and Z. And actually what technology you can do is flag for you those issues, right? So that actually you can learn much more quickly. I could go and procure that. Back to Power station was a great job doing it wrong. But I could have procured that and saved 10 grand or probably whatever it was. You could have procured projects X, Y and Z with a bit more knowledge. There's no central hub though, is there? Yeah, ever. I think construction is always like that, hasn't it? Really? Even for our days at university trying to access the central hub of information was not, was challenging at the time before seeing it came over and it's there. But there's always that, so it's interesting. There's always that excuse in our industries, isn't there? Yeah, every project's different. It's fragmented. No project's the same. Like you start fresh and it's not true. You do start fresh on every project. Every project is unique, but only to some level. Yeah. Like it rhymes, doesn't it? The problem on project B is quite similar to project A. And the reason, like I said, I'm being a bit facetious here. You smugly said before we started this, I've got something that people often forget in dry lighting, right? Access panels. That's only because you did project A, that by the time you're on project B you knew. Why, so as main contractors or any procuring business, we're leaving loads of money on the table, aren't we? Because we're not sharing the experience with those senior people who have been through it with the rest of the team. Yeah, and you find actual reporting's all knackered, isn't it? Because you're reporting to your boss. I've made 10 grand on here, but you've missed 10 grand in access panels. So you, everything skewed, the businesses are not performing as well as they're forecasting. So there's a huge element there that you're not just thinking about arts cost being more than it normally, it's like your reporting's all out. Your business is forecasting completely incorrectly and that has long-term effects too. And so mid-tender or site review, I know you're saying site visits, sorry. I know you're saying that they're two different things which I accept. But if we bundle them together for the moment, what is different to your approach to that mid-tender or site visits with a digital tool? How does it differ versus the current way of working? I think if anything's picked up in between those meetings, you can then communicate it digitally through the app. Yeah, via WhatsApp. But you could communicate it and then have it officially logged like when you said, oh, that'll go into the ether, won't it? And that's true. It does a lot of things that get, oh, can you supply this or can you do that? It just gets missed, right? So having it centralized in one place, all the columns, you've got that audit trail straight away of what was agreed for every subcontractor. Yeah, for every subcontractor, for every package. And then when it does come down, it's like, oh, I never said that. And he's like, well, you did. And we've agreed it. We agreed it here. We had it in your meeting minutes too. And we had it in your order. So, you know, it's not that I've just plucked it in and just dropped it in there. I think that's one of the most powerful things, right? Because for me, when you're procuring a big package and it could take three months to procure a massive package, right? And you go through a couple of iterations of your tender, a couple of iterations of your quote. You dread that process of putting together the contract, don't you? Because you think, right, how do I best do this? Do I completely change the scope that I wrote initially or in the tender addendum to include A, B, and C that we've now agreed? Or do I append all the emails? And I've got to find all the emails and make sure that they're all there? Or do I append the meeting minutes? How do I give them like the order of precedence? Have I remembered to get everything in there? Was that subtract the aim included? Or was it subtract the B? And I think that is one of the main points about digital tendering versus analog tendering. And with analog tendering, if you're my QS and you've procured that dry line impact and you go on holiday for two weeks, you'll probably go to the Caribbean or something like you usually do. And I think I actually need to place that order, don't I? Where's your email? Where is it on the server? I can't do it without you, can I? I can't even really progress it 'cause I don't know where you're at. So again, hauling it all back into one space has a profound impact, doesn't it? Yeah, from a risk perspective in just time, we would have to print emails and then save them on the server and then create a folder for them. No one wants to do that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so I've talked a little bit about some of the challenges that I know contractors have with adopting this change. I mean, there's people think that it's like digital tech. When we're talking digital tendering, we're obviously talking about ceiling to something standing right, bless you. And like how that can change things. Subbies can't use tech is what I hear. You know, I build relationships with people in person, not digitally. There's so many things. The way the way I work is absolutely fine. And the way you describe working in part one of this show, I think you've done a really good job of procuring that package. But the way you would do it in part two would just be a cut above. And you'd probably narrow like the non recoverables gap because you've got the scope of works, library. Someone above you has said, think about X, Y and Z. So you've thought about X, Y and Z. They've been flagged to you. You've then logged all the information into one space. Then when you're pulling together the contract document, you're actually getting the entire log as opposed to, God, where'd I put that email? Did they say that or did they not say that? So there's so many reasons why you should do it. When you talk to people about change and digital transformation is a bit of a cheesy term, but let's roll with digital transformation for QS's. What do you hear as like a rebuttal if you like? What are the challenges that these companies have to overcome to transform? So I think the, obviously the status quo is always worked. Well, we feel like commercial teams have been thought of last. Smallest violin for QS is, but we've got a few times. Yeah, we do get it out regularly. Episode 178, this is the 176th time that we've got out. But they're thought of last because they kind of tech stack and how they push risk around. It's kind of worked, but they're not seeing a bigger picture and how they can actually prove them. I think it definitely worked, right? Yeah. It's unfair to say it's cut. I completely hear what you're saying. These companies, all of these projects that we've ever built have been delivered, right? And lots of them have made money. There's lots of companies that are doing a built great businesses, right? But could it be better? 100% yeah. I think what we kind of missed with what we were just talking about was the speed. So I've still got to do the site visit and do my review and stuff like that. That's going to take time. It's always going to take the same amount of time more or less. But the bits in between I could have maybe even get it down to like 75% reduction. Like that means I'm going to buy back so much more of my time. So then the next package comes along. I'm going to like, oh, do I need to spend that much time on that to value engineering? You know, or can I go and build a strong relationship with a client? Or can I go and do this with the subcontractor? It gives me, it allows me more time to do that. Can I spend more time on my variations for upstream to the client? So that's the time that you buy back. And that's where you can use it more productively and efficiently. So connecting all those dots and really kind of in one app and then really reducing that down would just buy back so much time. You know, times are out by all the packages you're doing that you would do manually. You know, you're saving weeks on a project. And what the classic is, oh, Chris, how many packages you've got left on there? Can you help someone say, oh, I'm there, drop, do this package? You're like, well, all right, if you need to help kind of thing. But so you could try to stretch resource, different QS's resources onto different projects and not effectively. And what the tech will do will enable you to scale that out effectively, efficiently, accurately, and actually keep an actual track of what people are doing and how they're procuring. No brainer, are you saying? Absolutely. And final question. So we've talked about analog, we've talked about digital. Just describe to me what you think construction procurement would look like in 2030, for instance, like, are we going to have a bill with every? You've got, in fact, you've just told me how much time you've got left, right? You've got left over because all of this, all these benefits. So like, how's it going to look? Yeah, I think you just funny you play on that because I think everyone will have a bill. I think the technology you'll get from design that's going to come from there, that it'll be so easy to generate, build bills or quantities. So it'd be so highly measured. I can see the industry is going to become because there's no reason why it shouldn't be. So I can really see tech having a big impact there. And then also, I think companies are going to start having real market intelligence that they can rely on, whereas now they might have to dig out old quotation from an old file or another project that happened to try and match up rates of these rights, et cetera, getting that market intelligence. I feel you're going to have real-time business intelligence as company, not just making tractors, but subcontractors. And then subcontractors are going to be more efficient in their pricing. They're going to know the rates more closely. They're going to be able to price jobs quickly because they've got bills or quantities. They've got the intelligence. They've got the systems. And subcontractors are going to be more up-skilled in technology than they are today. And I'm going to see it being a much more dramatically reduced procurement time for everything. That's how I look at it in the future. Yeah, because that's really interesting. One of the things I want to, as you were talking, I was thinking, like, it's not -- we're talking about main contracting here, right? And actually, the impact for the main contractors, they centralize everything, they save a lot of time. In doing that, they free themselves up to do a lot of other things for the subcontractors, right, to make the subcontractor experience better and richer, whether that's the bill, whether that's the site visits, whatever that is. So you've got the main contractor having a better experience, subcontractor having a better experience, and in turn, the other stakeholders, the client and everyone else within the project gets a better project. And that's where you think we're going to be. Yeah. Solved it. Solved it. Yeah, yeah. Probably times you have to pub, isn't it? I mean, there's not a huge amount else to say. I think we've covered best practice analog. We've talked about what can be done digitally. You will be back on the show. If he comes back again, I mean, he skipped one, which we were very upset about. We'll be back on the show in a few weeks. Thanks for coming on the show, mate, and I'll speak to you soon. Cheers. See you soon, mate. [MUSIC] [MUSIC]
