Welcome everybody out to Podcast Number 1158. In this podcast, we have Josh Young, and we have Jen Lacey, actually. I'll see if I can get her to speak up because this is Josh's story in this one. But in this one, we're going to talk about an inspirational story about connecting with and supporting people. Stay with us. This is the Elevate Construction Podcast, delivering remarkable content for workers, leaders, and companies in construction, wanting to take their next step. Get ready to step out of your comfort zone with Jason Schroeder, as he encourages you to do better. Live a remarkable life, and expect more. Let's go. Welcome everyone. I hope you're doing well. Josh, how you doing? Good, how are you? I just live in the dream. Thank you for being on this. Where are we, by the way? We are in Roanoke, Virginia, working on an expansion to Carillians Crystal Spring Tower project. We've been here about three and a half, four years, coming to completion on approximately half a million square foot addition to the Cardiovascular Institute. That's awesome. And real quick, can you do an introduction of you and your experience as humble or extravagant as you would like? No, I've been with Robins Morton going right at 20 years. Right out of college, even while I was in college starting about my sophomore year, I ran into a project team up in Northwest Ohio, where I'm from. Went to school at Bowling Green State University, up in Bowling Green, graduated, and the rest is history. I've been with the company since then. Traveled, this is about the 10th state that I've worked in, all over the United States. And this is certainly the biggest project from scope perspective that I've taken on. So it's been a good ride for the last few years or almost hate to see it wrapping up. Yeah, and what's your current role? Senior superintendent. That's awesome. OK, so real quick. I'm going to put you on this. How are you doing, brother? I'm doing good. How are you? I'm doing great. So this is a challenge. You don't have to fit into this box. But in a word, how are you feeling today? Joyful. OK, I knew that was going to work. OK, so real quick. So thank you for inviting me and for letting me come to the job. You were mentioning something about Josh from day one. He had this certain characteristic. What was it? Oh, wow. Well, from day one, just watching Josh early in his career till now, it's just his care and compassion for people. And in an industry where that usually gets either beat out of people or they don't have time for it, it is what drives everything he does. And when just seeing that and then watching him let also lean into the tools and processes, because that's where most people go. And finding this magic spot in the middle is just every time I'm around him, it inspires me and gets me excited of what this industry could be. I love that. And another shout out to you and Robins and Martin, you were a field engineer to start or you had experience around that? Yeah, and a start as an internship, several of those around the country. And then first job field engineer in Waco, Texas. That's awesome. I could host to you the whole company for continuing that program. I think it's super important. So we're walking this project. What's the project total project cost? Right around 380 million. 380 million beautiful projects, super clean. Jen asked me what my takeaways were. And I said quality of the source, visual communication. And then the most important one was connection to people. So I'm kind of a softy in the sense that like I get tear guide when I see certain things that happen three times today. One with a poster I think that bears talking about. That little poster was mental health professionals coming, having a talk. And then the workers wrote things that would encourage them. Yeah, yeah. One of our, we do several events and include people from the community. And that's whether they're foundations, organizations. And they come down to the basement, what we call Garage Mahal down there, which is all, and they set up. And that instance was some of the mental health professionals from the behavioral health clinic. And they understand where we're at as an industry. They understand, you know, our suicide rates and how they, you know, are elevated more than any industry. And so we invited them in. They spent some time just offering not help, but a hand, you know, to say, hey, we're here. Don't feel alone. So they gave, you know, anybody might not have been comfortable in the moment, just gave some information on where they could go if they were, you know, if they were struggling with anything. And some of the things, can we remember, I'd love to just grab like a couple of the comments from that. I think I saw, you know, stick in there or stay in there. Do you remember any of the other comments, like? You're not alone? Yep. You know, stick with it, keep going, those type of things. Yeah. And it's posted up in the, I call it a worker huddle area. Okay, so Garage Mahal. I remember Garage Mahal. And I was like, I saw it and I was like, oh my gosh, this is so sweet. And then, you know what? Listen to all of this into one podcast. So we can get you in one podcast. So you gave two stories of connection that I thought were really beautiful. I'd like to start with the one where you and an individual were able to form a special bond and help each other. Would you mind telling that story? By the way, just so I know people like you get worried about being humble and not being showy and things like that. And so that's not what this is about. This is about like, it was really sweet. And it's a really good example. And I'm asking you to do us a favor by sharing it. And everybody knows that you're not bragging that this is about a real thing that can lift people's days up. So would you mind sharing that story with us? Yeah, so I had an employee still do that. And this one is special to me. I, you know, about three and a half years ago had hired this individual, had a history and a past that some people would be pretty, you know, they would shy away from from an employment perspective. But I tend to, you know, invite those folks into our group just to give, you know, another hand up, right? Not a handout, but give them an opportunity. Things that, you know, people that they don't tend to get these opportunities. And so this specific individual, hard worker, and gains Davis and he would be, you know, happy for me to share this because it means a lot to him as well, you know. And he was going through some, we were, you know, he was a hard worker, about seven, six, seven months in. Like, man, this guy, he's gonna be one of the, one of the better guys. We have hired him as a, a laborer, you know, do anything, anything, yes, would work, you know, sum up, sum down, do it safely. He was great. You know, I'll go home on a, on a weekend. I'm in the airport, traveling, I get a phone call. Hey, Josh, and then people knew that I had a connection with him and wanted to see him and do better for himself. And they say, hey, gains is, is here. He's in, he's in bad shape and I, and I, you know, what's that mean? And he, he's not fit to be here. We'll put it at that. And, and it involved having to get some law enforcement involved and that turned into a really low time in his life. Although he had seen some very low times in his life. And, you know, resulted in a, in a termination at the time, unfortunately, like it was kind of almost caught me off guard. It was like, man, there's no way this guy. And, and, and he had fell back into some things in the past that, that haunted him. So I, I, he knew, he knew there's no, there's no having to tell him he would, he would be terminated. And, and I went home, you know, and I'm sitting, sitting my family and I'm thinking, man, that can't, that can't be the end. I've got a, I've got a, I've got a further this conversation. So I, I get up Monday morning fly back to Rowan Oak and, and I pick up the phone and I say, I'm going to try to call him. I don't, I don't think he's going to answer, but I'm going to call. I'm going to see, I'm going to see how he's doing, really just to check his more of a friend. He picks up the phone and say, hey, you, you okay? And he said, no, I'm not, I'm not okay. I said, can we meet? Can we meet at the, at the park down the street? And at time I still didn't, I didn't even know him well enough to understand honestly, at the time whether that was safe for me to do that's, that's, that's where I was at. I've got a friend, Josh Farr was with me and, and, and, and he stayed in a close distance. It was like, it was that it was, that serious to me. We sat at the park bench and he, he sat down and he just put his head down and, and he said, I have, I've, I need help, you know, and it hit me pretty hard. And I said, what, how can, how can I help to get you that help? He wasn't looking for me to fix his problems. He was just admitting that he needed, he needed help, right? So I said, can we, you know, I don't know the space. I don't know what, but can, can I help find a inpatient clinic for you to go to, for, and he said, I think that's what I need. I don't, I don't think I can do this outpatient recovery. I need to be inpatient for 90 days. And I said, well, if you can commit to that, if you can do 90 days in a facility, get your mind right, get rid of some of the demons that, that have been haunting you. I can talk with, with our company and see if there's something that we can do to get you reinstated, but it's not going to come that it's not going to be easy, it's going to be, you know, making sure weekly, weekly random drug screening, we're going to make sure that you've kind of rid this behavior. And he, he committed to that. And, and I'll be honest, we stayed in touch. He went a few hours away to, to an inpatient rehab clinic. I kept up with the nurses about weekly. I would hear from him and just was thrilled about the progress that he was making up new, new as a long road to go. So he completed that 90 days. I remember us sitting down again and saying, what do we do from here? We can't, you know, how, how do we continue to make sure we're still on the, you know, on the right path? And, and he committed to the drug screening and, and still seeing, you know, the therapist that he needed to see to continue his, his growth. So we're able to find him a path back to Robins and Morton. To date, you know, one of the strongest employees that we have, almost he's acting in a, in a concrete form and role. He's managing several employees, probably, you know, 15 employees underneath of him, gets here at four o'clock in the morning, does his job as good as anybody, goes home, keeps to himself. And just a really, really good story. I mean, we were, we'd, you know, 30, 30 or 60 days into his reemployment. We, we had our, our team launch, which you saw today with, uh, with all of our folks and 50, 60 people in the room. And he had taken a piece of granite that we demoed off the existing hospital. And it was just a, at the time, just a random piece of granite. And he, he, uh, took his, his 30 day sobriety chip and, and pasted it onto that piece of granite, wrote me a note, sits in my house on, um, on a shelf and the place is special to me and just said what it meant to have somebody have his back and not give up. Um, a lot of people had seemingly done that in his life. And, and, and, and, you know, and then, and then hearing from his, his dad, uh, they, they were able to best I know, make it, you know, reconnect to something really nice. You know, they're, they're, they're able to, they're now spending time together. They have a great relationship now that I'm, I'm super proud of and is, and his dad, um, is just super proud to have his son back and, and, and, and reiterated that to me. And it is special at, you know, for me, that's, we could build half a million square feet and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of work. I would tell you that one life impacted, I feel like that was enough for me and Roanoke. I mean, just that one, I mean, I don't stop there, but I mean, that, that's how special that, that whole story is to me. That's fantastic. And you also had mentioned that you'll take him wherever you go. You know, when you say that, um, in the book, how big things get done, they mentioned the general superintendent, Frank Crowe, who built the Hoover Dam. And that he was so successful because he had an experienced team of people that he always took with him. And they, he was the number one, uh, dam builder in the, in the, uh, United States at the time. And like when I hear you talk about the story where you'll bring him with you, like, here's an experienced general superintendent with a loyal team, building people before actually building projects, which isn't that the Robbins and Martin way. And, uh, and it just makes me think of like, this is what great builders do. What real quick, uh, go ahead. I'm sorry. I don't know. I mean, that's, for me, it's, and it always has been with Robbins and Morton. It's, and it's impossible to really explain that to people that aren't, that aren't a part of the Robbins, Morton family. And, and this is a lot since I was 17 and a half, 18 years old. I'm going to do 17 and a half, got a job at 18. I've, it's all I know is Robbins, Morton, in this culture, in this way and just the, and, and how were people first? And, and so it's not, I mean, this is a passion of mine, but it's such a, it's such a deep rooted philosophy within the company that it makes it so simple, you know, to be, to be a part of it. Yeah. I love that. And I'd love, that, by the way, thank you for sharing such a personal story, thoughts on, on this, on what you're observing, anything. Um, well, again, I've gotten to see a lot of Josh's journey and, um, a lot of the things that I'm leading in the company have a lot to do. Um, Josh is, you know, you can see it throughout his project. And, um, for me, it's just the biggest thing is it's easy to focus on processes and tools. It's super easy to do that because there's checkboxes, there's checklists, there's things that you can put in place that, um, you can, you can have success. And, um, but it's usually short term. And so when you focus on the people part and we have one of our executives said from the beginning, when you create the right environments that support the people, then they're going to help you have success because they're going to be able to put those systems in place and they're going to be able to sustain them because the people want to be there. And that's just, again, you've gotten to see it today and, and, you know, walking around and seeing it, but that is when you lead with that culture piece and you're creating the environments and creating, and you're supporting the behaviors that people feel that you care about them, then they're going to do better work. I love that. So how we treat our people is how they'll treat the work, which is the closest thing to the client. I love that. So I'm going to ask you, Josh, for your closing challenge. I, so everybody on the podcast, I misspoke. We are going to separate these into two episodes. I apologize. We're already at 16 minutes, but I hope everyone got the perception there the firm. So this is not, I'm not, I don't think my opinion is special and I don't know that there's anything unique about it. But for me to mention connection when doing a job walk is a pretty big thing because typically it would be like I see, and I see all of these things on this job, but like flow or this or I would mention a lean topic. I can't remember ever having mentioned connection as a main observation. And so that speaks volumes of this job site. So in that vein or in any vein, as we close out this wonderful story, what would be your challenge for people listening to the podcast because they take it really seriously? Yeah, I would say, you know, challenge yourself to make culture the priority. I mean, for me, it's culture first. It's the people in the culture fall closely with process and keeping a job clean. But the challenge is to really get out of your comfort zone, find people you saw it today. We put people up in front of groups all the time. We make them get out of their comfort zone. We make them feel appreciated, find the time to do that, make people feel appreciated. You know, I'm not, I really am not attempting to be the word police here. But I don't see you making people. I see you and I just wanted them to hear this. I see you inviting them. One thing I told Jen before, can I call you Jen? Okay. Before we got on the podcast was all the right people are doing all the right things at all the right levels, meaning it's not, it's not just the superintendent. It's, it's the workers. It's the foreman. It's the leads. It's the assistant supers. It's the field engineers. They are enabled and asked and invited to do better and step up. So I hope everyone's enjoyed this podcast. And on the count of three, we say on we go one, two, three, on we go. Please join us next time in elevating the entire construction experience for workers, leaders and companies coast to coast. If you're enjoying the show, please feel free to share with your construction colleagues and help us spread the word by rating, subscribing and leaving a review on your preferred podcast listening platform. We really appreciate it. We'll catch you next time on the Elevate Construction Podcast. [Music]
