119. Gene Hodge, Mortenson - Hardhats & Hackathons

Speaker A: Welcome to the podcast where heavy industrial industries meet the venture capital ecosystem. Interviewing both thought leading investors and pioneering founders to better understand the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead for digital industrial innovation. Your host is Ty Finley and this is the Heavy Hitters podcast.

Speaker B: Gene Hodge joins us today from Minneapolis. He is the Vice President of Innovation at Mortenson, uh, with a focus on innovating the construction industry that includes field automation design for manufacturing, assembly, generative design, data analytics, AI, R&D startups and new technology. Uh, his 23 year career at Mortensen spans starting as an intern to now all the way up to VP with various GM and project development roles in between. Well Gene, it's awesome to have you on the show. I was actually thinking about you last, last week during all this Timberwolves and Spurs back and forth, but, but I promised myself I would not digress us into all the amazing sports and entertainment work you guys do on that, on that side of business because we got a ton of groundwork to cover on all the innovation efforts with i4blue Labs, AI etc that you guys are cooking up. So most importantly, thanks for joining in and welcome to the Heavy Hitters.

Speaker C: Thanks for having me, Ty.

Speaker B: Awesome. Well, same place as always for us. Uh, I give a little bit of a snippet, but there's more of that color commentary in that journey and it spans more than two decades at Mortensen, which is one of the largest, most premier GCs in the U.S. tell us more.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's hard to believe, uh, when you put it in terms of, uh, two decades. But um, I think at the end of my career I will have started my career at Mortenson and ended my career, uh, at Mortenson.

Speaker B: Um, right on.

Speaker C: Started our Seattle office working on some research and development lab projects, did, ah, a couple hospital projects, joined our sports group and we're just able to do a couple sports projects. Then I joined our Denver leadership team and helped lead that business and launch Salt Lake business. And then about four, four or five years ago took on the role of innovation and uh, moved to Minneapolis.

Speaker B: Awesome. Well, I mean it has to be fulfilling to be able, especially in the construction industry, you get to see projects that come full fruition over two decades. Uh, it's gotta be a fun thing to look back on, Gene. So starting and finishing, amazing to say. Um, okay, well let's do this. Let's level set a little bit. Uh, an overview of Mortensen. I'm sure many of the listeners are familiar with the name, but they may not be Fully up to speed with, you know, the breadth of a 72 year old company that serves as a GC on lots of major built world projects across the country. So set the stage however you'd like. The company's, you know, vertical structure, geography, whatever you, whatever you like to mention.

Speaker C: Sure. Um, Mortensen is a pretty diverse company. We've really diversified over the years and it's amazing how much we've changed even just the time that I've been here. But um, uh, we're known in discrete pockets by our customer sets. In those we very large in the energy and infrastructure field, delivering wind, solar, battery storage, power transmission, civil, uh, infrastructure projects. We're also well known in the sports world. We're typically one of the top sports builders in the U.S. uh, we have a broad commercial set where we have regional operating groups all across the country that are doing hospitals, hotels, offices, public infrastructure. Uh, and then we have a very large, not shocking, uh, and growing data center business that's uh, rapidly becoming probably the largest single segment within our company.

Speaker B: Yeah, I've never heard of data centers. Nope. Don't know what you're talking about. But I do think that I saw a stat. You guys, aren't you the largest from a uh, battery development perspective?

Speaker C: If I caught that right, battery storage, I think the last stats, um, we were the largest one there. Um, there's a few things around our kind of strategy as a company. One is our goal has always been to be the best and we never believe we're actually going to achieve that. So we're constantly looking at how do we become better, better partners, deliver better for our customers, deliver better for our team members. We've also really focused on diversification and we've had a goal that we've been exceeding lately to start at least one new business a year. So we got into battery storage really early. I want to say kind of 2017, 2018. Very unproven technology. Loading batteries, uh, um, into the actual assemblies and the housings out in the field, whereas they're all product ties being delivered as units now. Um, and so I think our, our general investment really early on and also be willing to try things that fail has been uh, really key to our continued growth as a company.

Speaker B: Yeah, well you guys have expanded in so many amazing projects. I just encourage listeners, check out the website. Um, you, you mentioned sports so I do have to brag right what you guys are building for the athletics out in Vegas or I don't know if I should give some praise here of the amazing Renderings I saw for the Oklahoma City Thunder Stadium, you guys are doing Flintco, but just amazing stuff you have going on. And so I will digress us into the technology and innovation side of this show which is really going to probably power a lot of those job sites in some ways in your efforts Gene. So let's do this, let's get into it right off the bat here. Uh, you're leading your group I4 uh, which I believe, uh, as you described being responsible for in quote, integrating company wide transformational innovation efforts. So we have tons of listeners that are not near as far along the curve. So let's help them just understand a little bit more about that journey. How'd the group come about, how's it structured? And then maybe some of the examples of the, you know, its work in action, including what I think I saw is the 40,000 square foot blue Lab R and D facility last year you launched just to make it more tangible for listeners. So just set us up Gene, how this all come about.

Speaker C: Yeah, so I would say the company has had some sort of innovation function for at least 10 years. But it was typically one person or two people kind of trying to do some culture building, getting people excited about stuff but without really central resources to action, any of them. And so what I, when I um, bounce around a little bit here but when I, when I took over the function I think we'd had 900 ideas that had been submitted to our innovation portal and zero advanced. Um, and we had, we had um, we have a advanced leadership development program where we run 20 to 25 high potential leaders in our company through it. And we had one year was how do we really accelerate innovation At Mortensen? The feedback from that group was we're treating innovation like a hobby and not uh, we say it's a strategic priority, one of our focus areas. But we're not resourcing and investing in it the way to really make meaningful change. Um, and then we had, every eight to 10 years we do a new long range strategic plan. And we're actually going through that right now. But in the 2017, 2018 timeframe there was a group that was really, it was looking at Katera, it was looking at vertical integration. What's happening out in the market, what does it mean for Mortensen? And we had a team that kind of offshoot of that that was really focused on how do we deliver industrialized hotels and multifamily housing. Uh, we learned a lot from that journey. What was happening during COVID wasn't A didn't really help us accelerate that in the way we, we wanted to. And uh, at one point the company approached me like 20, 21 probably time frame and said hey, we've got all these different pockets of things going on. We have industrialization and solar, we have innovation happenings of different groups. We've got this, this i4 thing that's been trying to work on multifamily. We've got innovation. Like what would you think about kind of bundling that all together and really leading this strategy for us at Mortensen? And I was like, wow, that was uh, out of the blue and super interesting opportunity. I would love to do it. Um, so that's really, that's really how it came to be. And then over the course of time uh, we've added functions. So it really started with uh, physical R and D. We opened a, I don't 15,000 square foot, pretty, pretty rough down and dirty R D facility. We started doing stuff, we immediately grew out of there. We're making new, new products, trying out new tools and equipment, uh, all kinds of different use cases. And we said we needed a little bit larger one. And so that's grown to 40,000ft. And we actually have recently doubled the 40 to 80,000 so that we can do some low volume production out of it in addition to the R and D. Um, and then we started adding additional functions. We said okay, we've got a great team that's doing physical innovation products things for our construction sites. We had a small data analytics and insights function that was within our finance team. Said, you know, I think there's opportunity to bring this more to the center and more connected to the business. And so we shifted that team over um, to overall part of the i4 team. And they've um, they've really taken off. There's some really fascinating stuff with generative estimating and project planning and uh, predictive analytics. Um, we added a new function last year, um, market intelligence. It's really researching where are the markets we're interested in going, where should we maybe expand, where our customers or competitors moves and what are the implications for Mortensen. And then we had a couple years of working on an AI kind of business plan that was across a bunch of groups and ultimately decided we need an AI team, we need to put a director in place. Uh, and so we did that last year and we've added that function as well. It's been really fun to kind of connect all those different functions, see them work together and help uh, enable success. For the company.

Speaker B: Yeah. Well, I think it's an amazing case study too. What'd you say 17 or 18 is when all the confluence of conversations said, hey, Gene, do you want to just pull this all together? And now look, now look where things are after just, you know, use the word pounding the rock for years and years. Um, because one of, one of the, uh, maybe I'll tie it back to what you mentioned. Like at that time you were looking at Katera for all intents for. Is it Blue? Blue Vera, that's now more of your manufacturing kind of modular approach. Is that under Mortensen still correct?

Speaker C: It is, yep. Yeah, yeah, it's a, it's a wholly owned part of Mortensen. Yeah. And that is my team that's working on the physical innovation and new product development is super integrated with them. And so we look at it. Blueberry is actually going to run the low volume production that's joined at the hip with the R and D facility. So we can transition things, you know, more quickly and smoothly from a proof of concept prototype pilot to scale.

Speaker B: Well, there you go. I mean again, case in point out this, you know, we're sitting here in 2026, uh, just consistent effort along Mortensen really institutionalize that innovation muscle. It's, it's really impressive, Gene. And um, we could go on and on, but you, uh, brought up this director of AI. Is Brian's last name Nahas. I want to make sure I get that right.

Speaker C: Nahas.

Speaker B: Nahas. Excuse me. Um, so let's put the spotlight on AI. And again, I think that's just indicative of how far you guys are pushing the boundary to really invest in that type of talent. Um, so I want to ask about how you're approaching embracing AI, but not just from the technology development side because that gets a lot of attention. We just talked through some of the efforts you guys are working on, but there's also a huge change management side to this. And I can tell you, the listeners, this is where the feedback loops always come back. Like, yes, I think we can figure out the technology side, but I got this cultural inertia that I got to figure out. And so on stage at Con Expo a few months back, we were both out there in Vegas and whatever that madness was, but it was awesome. And I was listening to you speak about the critical role of culture and change management in AI adoption and you dug in on the importance of an inclusive approach to rolling out all this new tech. So workers in the field don't feel like innovation is just happening to them, but rather they are the driving force behind it. So let's, in uh, essence I just wanted to cheat and bring that conexpo discussion onto the show. Have you share some of those tactical strategies for how you implement a more people led approach with adoption. So just give us some words of wisdoms and lessons learned that you've seen, uh, implementing this change within Mortensen.

Speaker C: Well, I wouldn't say uh, we have it all figured out. I would definitely say we're still, we're on a journey figuring it out. But I will say to your earlier point, the two things that are taking the most effort to deliver successful adoption are the data infrastructure, data quality and the uh, change management, culture development, the technology. I don't want to understate it, but the billions or trillions of dollars that are being investing what's the advancement of models by uh, others obviously outside of Mortensen is really, that's the easiest part. It's those other two that are really critical. I think we've really tried to lean into where um, there's an abundance of opportunity and shortage of people, where our team members and our leaders are going, oh my God, if you could help make my job easier here, I would love it. And so that gains early adopters, things like I look at um, even just a year ago to produce a, an estimate for, call it 100 megawatt typical solar project takes two people, uh, four or five days. And what we've been able to do with machine learning connected with our data, um, we're delivering those kind of estimates with one person in under an hour. And our solar estimators go, I find no Joy in producing 10 estimates at a conceptual level for only one of the projects to go forward. I want to add, I want to spend my time where I can add more value. Can you help here? And so we've really leaned into that. Or I ask a scheduler, like, you know, someone goes to a scheduler and they say I need a high level, you know, kind of took me four hours to put together schedule. And the schedules are like, that's not really a thing. Right. But you, you get machine uh, learning hooked up with data and all of a sudden you're able to, anybody, a design phase manager, project manager, superintendent, is able to produce that kind of four hour high level, rough schedule, you know, in a matter of minutes. And I think that kind of empowerment and really democratizing data and making it accessible to people's fingertips is really driving a lot of, a lot of uh, cultural, cultural change.

Speaker B: And Jean, can I jump in for a second? Because I think those two examples. I didn't hear the word replacing jobs once and hopefully we're coming around on this. Boomerang. AI is changing a lot of things, but like, stop using the word jobs. There's an occupation and has a lot of activities. I think both of those examples were shining case studies of the people that are in those occupations actually wanted this AI because it helped those activities go faster. They didn't want to do that type of particular work, but it allowed them to go, be more productive, do more, you know, faster, go onward and onward. Did I get that right? Just to make sure we keep echoing this point for all the the AI boogeyman out there.

Speaker C: Yep, you definitely got that right.

Speaker B: Awesome. Okay, keep going then. Because I have to believe that helps build some of this, uh, break down the cultural inertia and gain the buy in. Right? That's what it's got to be. Yeah.

Speaker C: Yep, for sure. And uh, I would say in our innovation portal there's a way to submit AI ideas. We have 200 active ideas in there right now that we're clustering into focus areas to advance the development. We had, um, we just. Every year we have an operations summit where we bring in. This year was around 350 Mortensen project and company leaders for two day summit in Minneapolis. Going through best practices and sharing success stories and really leveling up everybody. And this year we decided to run an AI open lab at the conference alongside it where we had a bunch of our AI and its teams really kind of holed up in a conference room next to the summit. We had the whole summit. The first thing we did, I stood up on stage and asked them to vote out of like, I think we had six or eight ideas that have been boiled from the 200 they voted on them. We had no idea which ones they were going to pick. And that team ran for a day and a half and got really close to solutions on both of them. We had subject matter experts from the group. Like I think probably 35 different operations people dropped in and contributed and provided feedback. Uh, and I think those kind of things, like you just got to try some stuff and engage people and have them remember it's people at the center and we're delivering value for them to make their jobs more rewarding, more impactful. Um, get rid of the stuff that doesn't cause joy and allow them to focus more on where they're really making impact for our teams and our customers. Amazing.

Speaker B: And that was a Company wide. It wasn't an i4 gathering that you all were able to inject that into something as big of a magnitude of getting everyone together. That's amazing. Um, and then maybe back to let's give a, ah, little airtime for Brian. So Brian's role as Director of AI, I think I caught. He's got a long background in Mortensen and Gilbane before that, and he was doing VDC before now taking on this role of Director of AI. So tell us more about what that means in practice and how he fits into those efforts you just mentioned.

Speaker C: Yeah, so we, um, he and his team are really driving our AI strategy at Mortenson. And then we have counterparts within our IT department that are delivering at scale. So they're doing the data engineering work, all the infrastructure work, software development. But Brian's the one that's really connecting the business and its ideas with the infrastructure to deliver. And Brian is, first of all, he is wicked sport. Um, but he's also extremely good about bringing people along, change management, involving them clearly communicating where we're going, which I think, as we talked about a little bit on this podcast, are really the things that are most important. And so Brian actually, um, as we were going through the AI journey and the first couple business plans, really leaned in and took initiative around development of it. I think we talked about should we hire someone from outside the organization or someone inside? And we just kept coming back to the conclusion that we needed somebody that knew Mortensen, knew the people would know how to navigate things. And Brian's been a huge addition, uh, in that regard. And it's been fun for me because I actually hired Brian as an intern when I was out at Penn, uh, State University building an ice Hockey arena in 2012. And so, wow, that's a small world. Work with him daily is, uh, super cool.

Speaker B: Is the first time I've heard the Ice Skating Intern. Ice Skating rink project. Intern to AI. Uh, that's right.

Speaker C: Yeah. Very clear journey right there for sure.

Speaker B: I love it. Well, I'll say this because there's no one right way to do any of this. I don't know what it is I'm looking for, but what I have seen is a consistent theme on this show alone. And there's others I'm missing, whether it was Tony Leopold at United Rentals or, uh, John Jacobs at J.E. dunn, that archetype of people that are internal. They know the culture, they know how to bring people along with them. Obviously, Brian came from the VDC group, so very digitally Aware. Sharp guy. But it just. There seems like a pattern there. And again, technology. I like how you said it. We never trivialize it. It's not easy. You got to get. You got to get the right tools. Um, I just, I keep finding this pattern matching of people that are taking on this big task. And no one's claiming they haven't figured out, but you guys are certainly make some moves. So I, uh, encourage folks just to look up more of what Gene and what Brian on LinkedIn. They post all the time. Some great stuff to follow along. So awesome to see the AI stuff moving forward there. Um, one of the topics I also wanted to tie into this idea of new technology is the role of partnerships in construction, which, when we're all doing this, well, in the built world, it can be a pretty connected ecosystem, which is great. And I think these partnerships are only going faster. And, and this was long before all these MCP layers are trying to tie us together.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: This is like real partnership. Um, so you have spoke about, uh, the strong relationship between Mortensen and a great ally of ours, procore, as one example. And speaking of, go online and check it out. I saw a really cool video. How Mortensen participated in a hackathon to quickly spin up agents on the procore platform that streamline and increase efficiencies in your construction project management stuff. So that example, amongst others, again, helping others, you know, kind of catch up to where you guys are. How, how does Mortensen describe and think about partnership overall? And then ultimately, how do you identify what makes for a good partner in the construction ecosystem? Kind of aligned to this technology theme that we're on.

Speaker C: Yeah, I want to hit on the, uh, the partner kind of more broadly first. And it's interesting, the two projects, two sports projects you highlighted are both with joint venture partners, with Flintco and Oklahoma city and with McCarthy and in Las Vegas. And our openness to doing joint ventures and partnering with others and learning from each other and making the whole industry better, um, has been a really growing focus area for us. And I think in places like AI, we've had a lot of open discussion with others in the industry about how are you approaching this or that. And it's not about competitive. It's more about we can all make each other and the industry a better, uh, and so I think, I feel like Mortensen and really a lot of folks in the industry are way more open to collaborating and sharing what we're learning and how it might help others, uh, than we ever have been in the past. And I think a lot of that is related to us all working in the data center space and having just more opportunity than there is, um, supply out there. And our customers really encouraging us to collaborate with each other for the benefit of their overall programs. And so I think there's a base there that's going. In terms of technology partners, uh, both procore and Data Grid have been fantastic partners for us. We've been with procore for a long time. Data Grid is more recent than. Obviously, um, they joined the Procore team. But in the OP Summit AIOpen lab I mentioned to you, we actually had representatives from procore and Data Grid there working with our team to deliver the solutions. And you really couldn't tell who was. I think a good partnership is you can't tell other than maybe a logo on their shirt, what team they're a part of, because everybody's working together in such a way that they're not coming as individuals or they're coming together as teammates. I think we like partners that really see the value in what a design partner can bring. They want feedback. They value us. They're clear on the roadmap. They're honest and transparent. I, um, think the worst thing you can do is sell something that you can't deliver on. And so we're totally good with, uh, hey, we're going to get there, but it's going to be a year. I'd much rather hear that than, um, a bunch of smoke and mirrors and then people be disappointed.

Speaker B: Right, right. And maybe I'm curious, you mentioned those partnerships with other GCs. Dave Burns, great ally at McCarthy for a long time in the Innis Innovation Circle and Flipco got some amazing people as well. When you think about partnering with them specifically through the technology lens, do you have to have some evaluation framework where it's one plus one equals three? Because you're both advancing your digital instrumentation. The way you're integrating project management tools. Is that a consideration when you guys do partner up? Ah, the technology side of this, for sure.

Speaker C: Yeah. No question. It's a standard for every joint venture that we do. And there's some things that are much more important we have a lot of concerns about. And a lot of our customers have concerned about uses of AI and data security and so getting alignment on things like that. So we're not trying a risky tool on a project that's confidential, for instance. Um, definitely a focus area.

Speaker B: Yeah, well. And, you know, bringing it back to then you said it's cool for me to hear. I Didn't really piece it together. The data center work that everyone could fill their whole book with, uh, apparently it is helping drive new muscles, new ways of thinking about partnership. And, um, you know, I was thinking of it from the technology lens, but obviously at that level amongst two GCs, it does have to get tied together on the technology side, so. Very cool. And it sounds like from a partnership perspective, you know, Procore and you know, Data Grid, obviously. Amazing. Tiago and crew now joining up with Procore. Um, more of those to come, you know, as I4 develops it out. Is this a muscle you guys really want to see as this whole digital connectivity starts getting pieced together faster and faster?

Speaker C: Yeah, for sure.

Speaker B: Awesome. Um, well, here's a fun question we always like to bring to, uh, our folks that are leading innovation efforts. And obviously you're one of the best GCS in the country. So it's a little bit of a question we call what's hot and what's high. And so there are definitely some technologies and categories, business models out there that are hot, but maybe currently not deployed at scale. We're all still kind of figuring out that where things are going versus, you know, areas of innovation that, um, you know, are really, they're, they're prime time, they're ready to go. So I'd love to hear kind of what's hot in your category and what's hype right now, and not in a negative sense, just like that. Maybe, you know, too early is the same as wrong, but we're heading that direction. Love some themes that you're seeing out of the i4 platform.

Speaker C: Sure. The first thing I'd say would be DFMA, designed for manufacturing and assembly. Like we are seeing very meaningful amounts of work being moved into factories, being moved off site to improve schedules, outcomes, safety, everything like that. That's a very real thing. And that's going to absolutely convince. That's going to continue seeing a lot more, uh, vertical integration where, um, both ourselves and a lot of our peers out in the market are beginning to bring different parts of design capability in house, um, and be more vertically integrated, I'd say. On the hot side, on the hype, I think, um, robotics, humanoid robotics. I think there's a lot of hype. I see in solar, there's a new startup every day that's got a robot arm installing a panel at, uh, 1:10, the speed that it takes humans to do. Um, I think that, I say that all. I think that's going to change. I think field automation and we tend to say field automation versus robotics because there's a lot of incremental steps from, from humans doing all the labor, working all the way towards uh, you know, a humanoid or something else completely working autonomously. But I'd say a lot of, a lot of hype there right now. But I think there's going to be meaningful change and impact in the near future.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think the humanoids, we're going to, we're going to learn a lot about moving technology forward. We're going to learn a lot of innovation from it. But it's, it definitely has some way to mature before we get on job site, especially open air environments or lighting and weather and all that other fun stuff that actuators. Right. Someone said the law of the least actuators to do the specific task. Uh, I think it's held true to me at least so far. But I want to go back to one that, you know, you mentioned right off the bat though, the hot, uh, design for manufacturing and assembly. You know, short of people now using this word, constructuring to bring construction and manufacturing together. I mean just non stop conversations about that reality for all the efficiencies that come with it, you know, what is their gene from what you've seen to be learned from the manufacturing. Right. And I find it funny. And I'm going to bring this home. Um, I'll go to all these construction conferences in isolation and then I'll go do my duties at the manufacturing conferences and I'll go to the transportation logistic conferences. Right. In essence, it's all just one big supply chain that needs to learn how to better integrate with each other.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: That's how you self perform, that's how you verticalize. How are y' all taking lessons learned from the manufacturing expertise, if you will, into all your efforts with uh, that broader ecosystem? I was, I'm curious if anything's really stuck out or how you would advise people to uh, to learn their own, you know, DFMA version.

Speaker C: Yeah. So the, I think focusing on buildings as products and not uh, individual projects and what, what can be standardized and what can be replicated such that you can really infuse it with continuous improvement. And I, I use the term continuous improvement in terms of, if you're, if you know that you're going to, let's say you're doing precast foundations, Right. You're, you know, you're going to do precast foundations on the next 50 projects. You are obsessed with. How do I get 1% more out of this? Make it 1% better each project and then the laws of compounding driving significant improvement. If you're on a project, you're going to, um, I'm going to do 50 of these. I'm going to do the best I can. But the juice really isn't worth the squeeze for me to work to optimize the living heck out of this thing because it's not going to be repeated. And so I think, uh, the ability to repeat and compound lessons learned to make things better in an environment where you're making something over and over again versus every project's a snowflake that will never be replicated. Just that mindset. Ah, is, is really what we're focusing on.

Speaker B: I like it. Product, not project. Um, yeah. Decade into this construction tech investing thing, project site purgatory is what we all do not want to be wandering in too much longer. So maybe this is a big part of how we standardize a lot of things on a lot of fronts beyond just, uh, delivering a unit per se. So. Awesome. Okay, well, uh, Gene, we always love to wrap up here a little bit of a quick hitter section, some rapid fire Q and A. If you're ready to jump in.

Speaker C: Let's do it. All right.

Speaker B: If there was a product or a company in this broader construction innovation ecosystem you'd like to see that is not out there in the market today, what would be that if you had a magic wand?

Speaker C: Um, well, there's a bunch of things, but I would love to. So I'd love to see something that could automate the tracking of productivity down to like, the real fidelity of units per minute or minutes per unit. Something that you could really talk a lot about. Gap to perfect. And if you had a perfect bluebird day with the perfect crew, the perfect circumstances, what's the best we could do in any given. Whether that's installing panels or piles or whatever it is, and we just don't, we don't have that data. And the only way to capture it right now is people, you know, watching the work and ticking stuff down. So if there's something that could automate, um, that process, that would be amazing. Uh, the other thing we'd like to see a lot more is robots as a service. We'd like to try out more different applications, but, um, there's not a lot of how do I try this, at least this for a month kind of option. And I think anything you can do to make it easier to try and deploy, um, automation solutions on site, I'd love to see more of that.

Speaker B: Amazing. And on the first one of getting the fidelity of the productivity, is it a clean data integrated access fidelity or is it, uh, we're putting tons of eyeballs on project sites, hard cams, vest cams, drones. You need more eyeballs, more continuously. What of the flavor is it that would drive that level of fidelity you're looking for?

Speaker C: Well, I think you either need eyeballs or you need telematics or something. And I think there's a lot of focus on video, but I'm not convinced videos always the solution. Like for instance, we've got a. We've basically automated the pile distribution process in solar. Well, I don't need a video to tell me every time the piece of equipment drops, um, drops a pile. I need the piece of equipment to tell me every time it drops a pile. And that's a much easier data source to get. So I think we either need eyeballs or we need proxies that give us the accuracy. But down to a level of it's not the average for the day or the average for the week. It's, it's, you know, on any individual cycle time, what was it? And why? And then we can get to the why and begin compounding those improvements.

Speaker B: Awesome. A lot more discussion on that one when we next get together. I'm curious, um, what's one resource it could be book, podcast, blog, whatever you recommend for audience to follow in the ecosystem?

Speaker C: Um, I really like Construction Physics by Brian Potter. Um, I read that every week or whenever he sends it out. But, um, some of it's more academic and some of it's more real world application. But, um, he's done a lot of really interesting research that I find pretty fascinating.

Speaker B: Awesome. I haven't heard of that one. I'll check it out. Um, who's someone that could be on the show to help us keep waving the flag? We're ultimately here to help build up the ecosystem, share lessons learned. Who would that be?

Speaker C: Oh, boy. I don't know that I have an answer for that. Um, I think, uh, Tom Scarringell would be really interesting. Uh, Tom just stepped down, uh, towards the end of his career as um, CEO at Thornton Tomasetti. And he's, uh, as he's reaching the end of his career, he's got a lot of lessons he's learned across not just the US but the whole world. And I think you have a lot of advice and perspective to share.

Speaker B: Him and Grant are at all of the construction innovation, aren't they? I feel terrible. I got to get Tom on here. I didn't know, just stepped down so he would be fantastic. So let me, let me work on that one. Um, and then finally Gene, uh, for folks who do it thoughtfully because I'm sure they're all startups left, right partnerships pounding on your door. But what's the best way for folks to reach out, make contact with the i4 platform going forward?

Speaker C: Yeah, I would say LinkedIn through me is probably just best or you can always contact us@mortenson.com, but LinkedIn is probably the easiest way.

Speaker B: It's a pretty powerful platform so. Well Gene, thank you for coming on sharing all the awesome things you have going on at Mortenson again. Um, no one's got it figured out but you guys sure as a heck are ahead of the curve from the groups I'm talking to. So let's find more to work on together and keep pushing the innovation ball forward.

Speaker C: Awesome. Thanks for having me on. Tyler.