The Construction Tech for Architects to Enable Real-Time Rebuilds & Save Millions - Benjamin Urban

0:00 [SPEAKER_02]: On this week's show, Beyond D if a May, to design for disassembly. [SPEAKER_02]: With Benjamin Urban, from Dirk. [SPEAKER_02]: All right, we're back. [SPEAKER_02]: Nathan Wood. [SPEAKER_02]: I like the new backgrounds. [SPEAKER_02]: We had them on the last show. [SPEAKER_02]: I think we'll have them on for a little while.

0:21 [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe it's a teaser of some things. [SPEAKER_02]: People might have heard already. [SPEAKER_02]: We'll see if they've heard it by now. [SPEAKER_02]: If you haven't, check out the newsletter guys. [SPEAKER_02]: All right. [SPEAKER_01]: What you doing, buddy? [SPEAKER_01]: Ready to get dirty.

0:34 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm actually cleaning up the house. [SPEAKER_01]: But ready to talk about some dirt. [SPEAKER_02]: It brings us to Benjamin Irman, Benjamin. [SPEAKER_02]: I like the background. [SPEAKER_02]: I like what you do and where you coming at us from today. [SPEAKER_00]: It's just, hey, Nathan.

0:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm coming to you from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. [SPEAKER_02]: All right. [SPEAKER_02]: I love our Canadian connection. [SPEAKER_02]: We get you guys on once in a while. [SPEAKER_02]: It's good to digitally cross the borders and talk to people from other places. [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to get in.

1:01 [SPEAKER_02]: Guys, you are going to love this episode. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm really excited to get involved in it. [SPEAKER_02]: Before we do though, remember, check us out on the social media. [SPEAKER_02]: Follow us. [SPEAKER_02]: See what we're up to. [SPEAKER_02]: Love to see you guys out there on the road.

1:14 [SPEAKER_02]: You know we're going to be in some cool places soon. [SPEAKER_02]: So check us out. [SPEAKER_02]: All right. [SPEAKER_02]: We are back. [SPEAKER_02]: Benjamin Urban, so very rarely when someone, you know, just kind of hits me up and is like, if you heard about this, do I go, ooh, I got to talk to this person, but before we dive into this design for disassembly, I want to get a little background on you, tell the people listening, kind of who you are and how you got here.

1:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah Jeff, thanks for that. [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I've been at Dirt now as a CEO for the last three years. [SPEAKER_00]: Previously to that for about fifteen years, I was managing our largest construction parker, which is the distribution side of Dirt at a Houston, Texas, and previous to that, spent some time with my own families construction company based out of Los Angeles.

2:08 [SPEAKER_00]: I worked for a company called Information Anneling Services, which is now a division of S&P global for a few years. [SPEAKER_00]: I also spent some time with Johnson and Johnson in international business development. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, as some continued development and construction work with a casino gaming operator outside the US.

2:27 [SPEAKER_00]: So diverse background. [SPEAKER_02]: I was gonna say that's a diverse background, but hey, you know, I have some family members include in my dad who retired from J&J. [SPEAKER_02]: So I did not catch that in the beginning, but we've got some connection back in there somewhere. [SPEAKER_02]: So a diversity, but, you know, a common thread we see on the show a lot, which is a family business focused on construction.

2:50 [SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, there's always this tie to the industry. [SPEAKER_02]: talk about that progression and what it what it sort of taught you along the way that you know we can then dive into a little bit of what's going on right now. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah for sure Jeff you know I've always had a passion for construction personally obviously through my family but also just a passion for building things and uh... honestly I was fortunate enough to come across dirt uh... in two thousand seven uh... kind of at the very beginnings dirt was actually created in two thousand five [SPEAKER_00]: and what attracted me to a Jeff was not just the construction and the prefab kind of lens of it but really the technology crazy enough no one was doing anything even remotely close to what dirt was doing twenty years ago and to this day there still isn't anyone that has the breadth of

3:47 [SPEAKER_00]: operations as well as, you know, technology advancement that dirt has. [SPEAKER_00]: And so that ice software was a key component in what attracted me to become part of this organization. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's what's so different about it, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Is that. [SPEAKER_00]: coming from technology as our origin, right?

4:06 [SPEAKER_00]: And then, you know, how do you go into DFMA and then we'll get into design for disassembly separately? [SPEAKER_00]: But I think it's important for you guys and the listeners to have a little bit deeper background on the genesis of dirt or origin story, if you will. [SPEAKER_00]: and that when the founders had this vision for what could we do if we started with technology to configure, automate, engineer, manufacture with mass customization, the only way to do that is through technology.

4:39 [SPEAKER_00]: and for those of you don't know one of our founders of Jeff Gosling he still is with dirt helps us through a lot of our industrial design and progress but it was actually himself and his brother who was also key in a lot of the technology development so his brother James Gosling is actually the inventor of Java [SPEAKER_00]: And so James spent about ten years on our board of directors as well.

5:07 [SPEAKER_00]: So you take some of that technological force power and then push it through this lens of how do you apply that to manufacturing and construction. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's a big component of how we ended up with where we are today. [SPEAKER_02]: That's a heavy technological background and it's funny because you think, you know, that's about the origin of any technology and construction.

5:32 [SPEAKER_02]: It's pretty most any move and I would say that the only company when people think about what you guys do [SPEAKER_02]: Not the same same of course, but who who think about they think about Katera, which was an absolute epic failure when, you know, we were out there looking for it and who knew dirt was there all along.

5:52 [SPEAKER_02]: So how do they connect technology? [SPEAKER_02]: And as somebody who was using the system, how was it? [SPEAKER_02]: How is the systems, how were the systems, what problems were they solving for you that eventually made you want to then come over and be like, listen, it's great using it, but I want to go, I want to go be a part of the solution.

6:12 [SPEAKER_00]: It's hard not to be drawn in once you've experienced it as well. [SPEAKER_00]: The technology itself does multiple things. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, there's, and there's various reasons you would use it. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's also been part of the reason it hasn't been reproduced or recreated.

6:28 [SPEAKER_00]: It's not easy, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, Kataris is a really good example of how it can go wrong. [SPEAKER_00]: But what we've been quietly doing incrementally over the years is this evolving this platform. [SPEAKER_00]: And it really does answer all of those problems that from a construction or an A con, even going broader than that challenges.

6:50 [SPEAKER_00]: So it's solving for speed of manufacturing. [SPEAKER_00]: It's solving for mass customization. [SPEAKER_00]: It's solving for which we'll talk about in a little bit, designed for disassembly, right? [SPEAKER_00]: We're talking about reconfigurations or circular economy. [SPEAKER_00]: We're used.

7:07 [SPEAKER_00]: There's a whole sustainability discussion to be had, which ties in greatly to that circular economy piece. [SPEAKER_00]: But the other piece, which I think a lot of your listeners will find fascinating is, [SPEAKER_00]: It solves for labor and how it solves for labor, I'll get into a little bit because that's part of that design for disassembly and how we actually install.

7:28 [SPEAKER_00]: And then I'd say the last piece, Jeff, is it solves for cost certainty. [SPEAKER_00]: So the software itself effectively, it's doing a few things all at the same time. [SPEAKER_00]: So when you're used to using any typical or standard configuration software, [SPEAKER_00]: Which you're super familiar with it may be you know for a drawing opponent or rendering or some sort of conceptualization right well as you're doing that this where that Java piece comes in and why they chose that at the beginning is [SPEAKER_00]: It's also doing a few other things in real time.

8:01 [SPEAKER_00]: It's also creating the bill of materials. [SPEAKER_00]: It's also creating the language that needs to be said to all of our CNC machines, paint lines, et cetera, such that it effectively skips the engineering, right? [SPEAKER_00]: It bridges that because it's programmed into it. [SPEAKER_00]: And then it's actually going from there straight to the manufacturing floor and then out and ready to ship.

8:24 [SPEAKER_00]: And so while you're drawing, it's doing all those things in the background, but it's also creating not just billin' materials, but effectively your RFP, your proposal. [SPEAKER_00]: So, and it doesn't matter how big it is, how wide it is, what the finishes are, it will actually output a number that is so accurate that we're talking about it today.

8:46 [SPEAKER_00]: We drew, and we actually use this when we have customers come visit us. [SPEAKER_00]: It's actually one of the first things we do is we do a nice demo of the software, and while we're there with whoever the customer is, we draw a piece of case work, we draw a wall, we add power, we add plumbing, we add all that into it, [SPEAKER_00]: and it shows what the cost is, and then two hours later, let's they finish the factory tours, whatever it is that they drew is actually sitting in the room with whatever colors it was, whatever size it was, and that's the exact price that it would be.

9:20 [SPEAKER_00]: So the power of that technology allows us to do all those things, and we've been doing it long enough now that we've been able to prove not just the cost piece of it, [SPEAKER_00]: as we're going to kind of dig into a little bit more the design for disassembly components. [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm curious because I mean this sounds amazing almost too good to be true and I think a lot out a lot of that where the industry tends to push back is when it's cornical disruptive to kind of the status quo of how we do it and I feel like so much as DFMA all this stuff is like you have to sell it so far upstream but by the time you do it's like the folks downstream tend to not like it by the time it's gotten to them like are you facing that like how have you dealt with that what what is the

10:01 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the supply chain approach to what you're doing. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I know for sure, Nathan, and that's, you know, we've been doing it long enough that the headwinds were much stronger twenty years ago than they are recently and that a lot of this terminology was not common, right?

10:17 [SPEAKER_00]: And so we were trying to educate and really create a market and change it. [SPEAKER_00]: And you're right, it's, it is an uphill battle. [SPEAKER_00]: I'd say that's been part of our partnership with ICMA as well in, [SPEAKER_00]: I'd say our perspective on prefab for the industry has changed a bit and that we are now trying to outwardly move the industry with what we've learned, right?

10:44 [SPEAKER_00]: And that to your point, a lot of the people that come visit us, one of the first things we'd say is I didn't believe you. [SPEAKER_00]: right and so when we show them these things they're like yeah you told us that but we didn't believe it and honestly we've we as an industry have worked to do I wouldn't say dirt but others of okay we've promised things but we never delivered right but with dirt because we've been doing it so long when people see it they just don't believe that we could accomplish what we said we could and so that's been a big piece of okay how do we take will we've perfected [SPEAKER_00]: and now help apply that to the entire industry.

11:20 [SPEAKER_00]: And that ICMA partnership was the beginning, it's of that of how do we create a common language amongst our peers of this is what true, not just DFMA, right, but also designed for disassembly looks like. [SPEAKER_00]: And how do you then take that as a metric such that you can quantify it across our entire industry to create that language, okay?

11:43 [SPEAKER_00]: If dirt is a platinum-adallion, one percent top one percent of people doing off-site industrialized construction, how do we then take that to the rest of the industry? [SPEAKER_00]: Because it's not just us, right? [SPEAKER_00]: There's other trades, other manufacturers out there that are trying to solve for the same thing that we already have.

12:04 [SPEAKER_00]: So I hope that that answers your call. [SPEAKER_01]: It brings up another question, which I think is really interesting, this idea of flexible design or design for disassembly. [SPEAKER_01]: And we just recently did a news episode with Upcodes. [SPEAKER_01]: And it's all about keeping up with changes in permitting and code compliance and things like that.

12:22 [SPEAKER_01]: And let's even just take an office building and you talk about fire rated walls. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm curious how this is maybe blurring the lines or maybe shifting the lines of [SPEAKER_01]: Where does, quote, like, renovating or, I guess, just changing your room, I guess, redecorating your room versus actually renovating what you need to permit for.

12:44 [SPEAKER_01]: No one seems like you're advocating for ways to almost DIY change your rooms, but yeah, does it impact permits? [SPEAKER_01]: Have you impacted that? [SPEAKER_01]: Because I'm sure listeners was thinking that in the background too. [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to unpack that a little bit because there's there's a help us there.

13:00 [SPEAKER_00]: I would say on the multi-family side we have not not been a big player in it because we didn't have a demountable fire rated petition. [SPEAKER_00]: To be frank, that's been one of the biggest barriers for that entire vertical to adopt prefab. [SPEAKER_00]: We have since solved for that.

13:16 [SPEAKER_00]: So I think you'll see some great things come of that. [SPEAKER_00]: Kind of back to the, how does this impact the life cycle of a building regardless of type in a permitting perspective, right? [SPEAKER_00]: and we've been doing it for years on the commercial side. [SPEAKER_00]: So commercial office a little bit easier to predict and that you can create corridors, you can create life safety egress such that you don't need to pull permits every time you're going to do one of these changes, right?

13:44 [SPEAKER_00]: However, it's not always just about those, we'll call them micro changes post occupancy. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to share an example of a project with you that's quite fascinating that [SPEAKER_00]: really demonstrate what design for disassembly can do. [SPEAKER_00]: So we did a project, and for those that your list is of heard the story, apologies you're going to hear it to kit, but it's quite good.

14:08 [SPEAKER_00]: We did a project for, I'll just call it an energy company to keep it generic. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's a million square feet, two towers, five hundred thousand square feet each brand new construction. [SPEAKER_00]: This is decade ago. [SPEAKER_00]: And the first tower, we were the first subtrades on site.

14:28 [SPEAKER_00]: And what they said was, OK, we just topped off. [SPEAKER_00]: We want to see a mock-up of a quarter of a floor. [SPEAKER_00]: There's nothing to measure. [SPEAKER_00]: There's those ceilings. [SPEAKER_00]: There's a flooring. [SPEAKER_00]: It's just raw space. [SPEAKER_00]: And whatever you build there, you need to be able to relocate it to the exact same spot once we actually begin construction.

14:45 [SPEAKER_00]: So normally in our world, no problem. [SPEAKER_00]: And so we get to the site and as you guys know, buildings are never, we'll say, plum and level. [SPEAKER_00]: And so the floor atopo wasn't even necessary. [SPEAKER_00]: So unfortunately, there was a miscalculation in the engineering and the building mat was sinking slightly.

15:06 [SPEAKER_00]: And so in the fifty foot core to curtain depth, we had a five inch draw. [SPEAKER_00]: And so that only was there nothing to measure, but the floor was coming off at five inches. [SPEAKER_00]: And we needed to build something there that we could take and then disassemble and then breathe and back and reassemble in the exact same location.

15:24 [SPEAKER_00]: So we were able to accommodate that with just ability in our base, such that we could take in five inches. [SPEAKER_00]: In reality, the steering committee that came to review the mockup had didn't even notice it. [SPEAKER_00]: It looked just like reverse code base to them. [SPEAKER_00]: That's not the most compelling part of the story.

15:40 [SPEAKER_00]: What's the most compelling part? [SPEAKER_00]: And I love the story because it didn't happen during COVID. [SPEAKER_00]: This happened during years prior, the oil crashed. [SPEAKER_00]: And so they'd spent two years programming this million square feet of space in this first tower and literally overnight, all the sudden, the narrative change.

16:00 [SPEAKER_00]: And so architect raised their hand and said, hey, what happens if we pause for thirty days? [SPEAKER_00]: Because [SPEAKER_00]: everything is wrong now and so effectively what happened and this gets to your question about permitting a little bit as we basically began a five hundred thousand square foot restack in the middle of construction.

16:20 [SPEAKER_00]: So we had built out eight floors. [SPEAKER_00]: We had ten more floors. [SPEAKER_00]: They were in some form of manufacturing. [SPEAKER_00]: Either they were on the assembly line. [SPEAKER_00]: They were in a truck going to the job site. [SPEAKER_00]: What have you? [SPEAKER_00]: So we hit the pause button and then we began restaking five hundred thousand square feet from the bottom up and then bringing in new material to also complicate this.

16:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Those floors were roughly, twenty five hundred to twenty seven hundred linear feet of petitions per floor. [SPEAKER_00]: So super dense. [SPEAKER_00]: So it wasn't like it was an all open space, open plan office. [SPEAKER_00]: And ultimately, thirty days later, [SPEAKER_00]: We had in the not thirty days later, but effectively what happened is as they were giving us the permit sets, we would be getting the restack.

17:07 [SPEAKER_00]: So when we finished the actual project, the the architect said, hey, I just want to comment that if we hadn't used dirt for this, this never would have happened. [SPEAKER_00]: You would have moved in. [SPEAKER_00]: You would have gone floor by floor over twelve to eighteen months. [SPEAKER_00]: You would have torn out all your drywall and everything else.

17:23 [SPEAKER_00]: You would have built it all back. [SPEAKER_00]: And the net effect of it was they pushed their occupancy by thirty days and it cost them five hundred grand. [SPEAKER_00]: total, the restack, that entire building. [SPEAKER_00]: So when you talk about design for disassembly, it's not necessarily, and they chose dirt knowing that on the other side of it, which they have for the last ten years, they reconfigure every single weekend.

17:46 [SPEAKER_00]: So it's two offices to one, one to a conference room, conference room to a huddle, what have you. [SPEAKER_00]: But where they benefited the most ironically, was in the middle of construction because something happened at a macro level that they couldn't predict. [SPEAKER_00]: and design for disassembly, allow them to do that at a fraction of what that would have cost them just in material let alone time.

18:08 [SPEAKER_01]: There's that concept that, I think, you hit on there where the architects have to think about, like, what are the major things, egress? [SPEAKER_01]: And obviously, about things, whatever, but in a commercial office space, yeah, like, you can actually put the power into the hands of the customer, you say, yeah, like, you guys decide and change how, because things do change all, especially in construction, oh my gosh, general contractors, the amount when projects, a big project ends and everybody comes off the job site and comes into the office.

18:34 [SPEAKER_01]: And then other times, everybody's out on a job site and the office is totally empty. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you can totally take advantage of redesigning your office and being flexible based on, especially in today's remote world. [SPEAKER_01]: So that makes a lot of sense. [SPEAKER_00]: So Nathan, what that also does, right?

18:50 [SPEAKER_00]: It drives innovation and design, right? [SPEAKER_00]: If you don't have those capabilities available to you, you're never going to change your lean into your design to adapt to what you could do if you don't have it as an option. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, those lack of options absolutely limit what people can think of and be creative with.

19:09 [SPEAKER_02]: So it allows a level of creativity and problem solving. [SPEAKER_02]: And that's a great one because a lot of times what we're thinking about and throwing at each other is just like, oh, the whims of so and so and the whims of such and such and it's like, no, these were major changes to the industry itself.

19:26 [SPEAKER_02]: that we're way out of everybody's control and brought back in, but what I want to take you down into is you this little nugget in there that now they still reconfigure on a regular basis. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm pretty sure people driving down the road just like yelled at you like that's a load of words I don't say so that they can keep driving down the roads with their kids.

19:48 [SPEAKER_02]: How do you do that? [SPEAKER_02]: Like what does that even look like? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so this is a really interesting piece of it, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So if you think about how you go about it and this is where it gets really [SPEAKER_00]: not complicated. [SPEAKER_00]: I'd say just interesting with dirt.

20:06 [SPEAKER_00]: So if you're building out any type of building, any vertical, you'll usually have, okay, I need attic stock, right? [SPEAKER_00]: I need this much of this because I might make a change or something like a broken or whatever that is. [SPEAKER_00]: But if you really are doing full off-site prefabricated manufacturing at costumalization, and you have a ten-day lead time, you don't have to store anything.

20:31 [SPEAKER_00]: You don't need adext stock. [SPEAKER_00]: Most people are most businesses know within reason. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I need to [SPEAKER_00]: affect this in thirty days, right? [SPEAKER_00]: If you've got thirty days, why would you store anything? [SPEAKER_00]: You can order exactly what you need if you need something new, right?

20:48 [SPEAKER_00]: In reality is you shouldn't need anything new if you're programming for that knowing what's coming, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So most of these commercial offices easier to articulate or quantify than I would say at some of the healthcare applications or even education ones that we do. [SPEAKER_00]: but effectively what they'll do Jeff is that it's all go back to that specific project.

21:13 [SPEAKER_00]: It was designed around very strict modules, not just the petitions, but the actual floor plan design such that you have multiple circulation corridors and you effectively have dedicated footprints to your remaining MEPs, right? [SPEAKER_00]: If you're going to be doing these weekend changes, that means there's certain things that can't happen over a weekend, right?

21:37 [SPEAKER_00]: And so if you plan for those such that your lighting system is gridded appropriately, your and because we do modular power, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So the power piece is actually easier than your [SPEAKER_00]: strobes, lighting conditions, mechanical, so your return areas and whatnot. [SPEAKER_00]: So those were programmed around such that if you retain or you remain within these thirty foot by twenty four foot blocks and allows you to effectively have ultimate flexibility on how you utilize that space.

22:09 [SPEAKER_00]: And so truly on a weekend basis, we will go in and we could take [SPEAKER_00]: If you wanted to an entire corner of that building, you could take down twenty offices and create all open plan. [SPEAKER_00]: You could create three conference rooms, whatever it is you need. [SPEAKER_00]: So working hand in hand with the architect and designer to create a robust program and I think Nathan you touched on it at the beginning, right?

22:36 [SPEAKER_00]: This was the concept from beginning to end knowing that that was the outcome that they were pursuing. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, that is an ultimate ability to create this new modern space. [SPEAKER_02]: So you guys were way, way, way ahead of this. [SPEAKER_02]: But we've been talking about this for a while, given [SPEAKER_02]: Now we'll go in, you got COVID now, right?

22:56 [SPEAKER_02]: We've gone through that. [SPEAKER_02]: We have a shift. [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks to COVID, but also it was starting to happen on its own of a shift of people moving away from the office, then coming back to the office and an inflexibility in anyone given commercial building, being what it is today.

23:14 [SPEAKER_02]: and not being able to adapt and that adaptation being always behind, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Like I know a few people that during COVID, you know, they took the opportunity to rebuild their offices because they were open spaces, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Now we got COVID, so wait, we better put walls in, better do some things.

23:30 [SPEAKER_02]: They did all of that and then not everybody came back to the office. [SPEAKER_02]: So now they have a whole bunch of empty offices that you have to walk by. [SPEAKER_02]: That wholesale stuff doesn't have to happen. [SPEAKER_02]: You now can design for a little bit of, I mean, I was just thinking like can you imagine being, you know, doing a project of some sort Nathan creating sort of a big room.

23:53 [SPEAKER_02]: And then when you leave that big room becomes like space. [SPEAKER_01]: we just toured Miller Electrics office down in Florida. [SPEAKER_01]: And they were talking about the giant wall that they built, where they cut their, you know, training and big, you know, an open room in half for all their bim engineers.

24:10 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, who knows how long they're gonna have that wall before they tear that wall down and just make it all bim engineers or something else. [SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, they're all these examples where that happens all the time. [SPEAKER_01]: And Benjamin, you got me thinking, so are there any dirt walls that have actual drywall in them or is everything kind of like panels [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like, yeah, you couldn't have drywall, right?

24:29 [SPEAKER_00]: It would defeat the purpose of it, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So there's a reason we don't use drywall beyond the environmental piece of it is it's not meant to be moved, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So it doesn't function well in this type of environment. [SPEAKER_00]: And so to take this kind of a step further, if you think about the commercial office that, like, we'll call that surface level with back to design for disassembly.

24:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Part of the reason we're seeing such greater penetration in healthcare, life science, education is, and in all of those industries, they have one common thread. [SPEAKER_00]: Part of it's time, right? [SPEAKER_00]: The other is access. [SPEAKER_00]: And so on the time side, either if you're in the service world, right?

25:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Every day you open up a day earlier, you're bringing in revenue, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And so if by using dirt as an off-site premanufactured solution, if you could decrease the amount of time it takes to open a hospital by half. [SPEAKER_00]: Think about what the returns would be from that from a revenue perspective.

25:33 [SPEAKER_00]: But then one step further, and this is where I think people have a misconception in healthcare. [SPEAKER_00]: It's unlikely you're going to move rows around, right? [SPEAKER_00]: You're not going to be moving walls all the time. [SPEAKER_00]: What you are going to do, and we've seen it live real time on projects where all of a sudden it wasn't a cue care nowadays, or it was dermatology, now it's cardio, right?

25:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, the needs of those rooms change, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And so if you can do that on a dime overnight while you're in construction or even more importantly, after you're actually occupied and operating, if you go in and say, hey, I need another med gas or I mean, whatever it is you need in this exam room or even better, right, or operating room, you have to shut down everything around it to do any sort of work in there.

26:24 [SPEAKER_00]: So if I can go in without shutting down either of the rooms on either side of it, open up the wall through layered modularity and make whatever changes use a quick connect modular med gas power whatever it is you need. [SPEAKER_00]: button it back up and in an hour. [SPEAKER_00]: You took down one exam or or other room within the hospital down for an hour and turned it back on.

26:46 [SPEAKER_00]: It didn't turn down anything else around it. [SPEAKER_00]: Those are the sorts of on the operating side where you see design for disassembly really horsepower. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, and that really connects to some of the problems that exist post-COVID for that industry. [SPEAKER_02]: And I don't mean in the actual, this was new to me and a friend of mine kind of explained this to me and explained why we were seeing this kind of shift in the way a lot of the healthcare facilities we're thinking about growing, right?

27:18 [SPEAKER_02]: During COVID, a lot of those doctors retired. [SPEAKER_02]: They took the opportunity to retire. [SPEAKER_02]: health care's a business like just like everything else health care's a business and they have a bottom line they have to take care of that and a lot of them pulled back on building out new offerings new oncology departments new services because they lacked a number of doctors in which to grow that business so they decided to double down on things they already did and they knew they could make the money on [SPEAKER_02]: You're saying they can actually do both because they can continue to expand and fill what they have with what they currently have, start that new business unit and that new group.

28:00 [SPEAKER_02]: And as it grows overnight or weekend, cut these rooms to facilitate the new needs for the new oncology department or the new [SPEAKER_02]: dermatology department or the shift to other things on a really rapid basis, which falls in line with also their financials because the financials to cut things like that, you don't just shut down like you said, you don't just shut down [SPEAKER_02]: that area, you're shutting down tangential areas because the infrastructure doesn't exist.

28:34 [SPEAKER_02]: So if I'm hearing you right, I can have my cake and wait to eat it too when I'm ready to eat it and it's kind of stored in the fridge. [SPEAKER_00]: You're absolutely right and it gets back to that comment that I made around innovation around design, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So if you look at, I'd say, again, just off the cuff here, I'd say, at least half, if not more of any new hospitals that are being built, even if they're regional, right?

28:59 [SPEAKER_00]: So they've somewhat spread out into suburban areas. [SPEAKER_00]: It's a lot of the large MSAs in the US. [SPEAKER_00]: is their building out let's say it's a two hundred fifty thousand square foot regional hospital. [SPEAKER_00]: I could pretty much bet that there's seventy five thousand square feet of that that will be shelved right that they're not they don't need it yet but they're going to build to it right but then when they do build to it then it's this huge long again it's going to take years for them to do the programming the design the build out [SPEAKER_00]: in reality by using dirt, you could build out, all right, I'm going to build out five thousand square feet because I need this much more space for this specialty.

29:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I need to build out an ambulatory surgery center. [SPEAKER_00]: All right, I'm going to take that space. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to build out just that space. [SPEAKER_00]: And what it does is it creates in this really interesting. [SPEAKER_00]: It helps create a relativity. [SPEAKER_00]: And so if you think about construction in general, right?

29:55 [SPEAKER_00]: It's this kind of jigsaw existence of, okay, you begin the project. [SPEAKER_00]: Let's say you're even constructed, where you're in construction, you finish construction by the time you occupy, and it's even more pronounced at health care, all of the sudden, whatever you designed for five years ago, is it relevant to what the means are today?

30:14 [SPEAKER_00]: And so what happens is you live with it long enough till something painful enough happens and then you have this event and then you start over again right so you're on this kind of saw tooth existence with dirt because now you can have a [SPEAKER_00]: basically humming along a relativity line such that you can make micro changes overnight, over a weekend, you can expand, you can contract, whatever that is you need.

30:40 [SPEAKER_00]: So it allows you to remain relevant without having to have these huge swings in capital expense, construction, downtime, all the above. [SPEAKER_00]: But it gets back to that innovation around design. [SPEAKER_00]: It requires people to approach these projects differently. [SPEAKER_00]: And unfortunately, over the years, we haven't created enough opportunities or examples of this outside of dirt to get the A&D community and our customer base to think that way.

31:06 [SPEAKER_00]: However, the tide is shifting. [SPEAKER_00]: I'd say that is much more common on many of the hospital projects we work on. [SPEAKER_00]: One of the mandates from day one from the owner is, I want the GC, I want the A&D. [SPEAKER_00]: I want everybody to be thinking around [SPEAKER_01]: how much of this can we prefab off site and how much faster can we open and how can we reduce my operating costs what's i occupied this got me think about another question now because you mentioned circularity and and kind of reuse and it was to take health care because again i don't want to hold a bunch of addict stock of a bunch of walls and let's say i had to i want to upgrade all my head walls or something and maybe there's another you know

31:45 [SPEAKER_01]: rule hospital or like a, you know, senior care facility that those are great head walls for them. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, is there a secondary market for, you know, so that you're overall cost of upgrading is actually less because you're actually reselling your old walls to someone else that needs that as that happen or is that something you guys have thought about?

32:05 [SPEAKER_00]: It is happening now and it's interesting and it's actually become an amenity, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So you may in certain markets see a building that is, uh, [SPEAKER_00]: you know advertising a space for lease and in it they will put dirt walls and so it's a win-win right it means you can occupy the space faster but it also means for that building owner their outlay is going to be significantly less to basically bring on a new let's see for that space but you touched on something else I wanted to give you an example of it's really fascinating so another hospital system that we built out their operating rooms for so those head walls [SPEAKER_00]: So this was one portion of an area.

32:45 [SPEAKER_00]: I think there was, don't hold me to this. [SPEAKER_00]: I think there was forty head walls. [SPEAKER_00]: And where they had designed the belt line, if you will, for all of the devices was accurate when they were in design, unbeknownst to them. [SPEAKER_00]: between when they designed that space and when they occupied, the actual bed changed.

33:08 [SPEAKER_00]: And so when the beds came in, the beds were over enough all the devices. [SPEAKER_00]: And they were supposed to open in like two weeks, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And so what do you do if all of a sudden, all of your head walls are wrong? [SPEAKER_00]: If you had built that conventionally, [SPEAKER_00]: Forgive me, you're screwed, right?

33:23 [SPEAKER_00]: You're basically going to pulse opening for months. [SPEAKER_00]: You're going to have to repurpose, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Because those were dirt head walls with modular med gas. [SPEAKER_00]: That weekend, we went in. [SPEAKER_00]: We relocated the entire belt line for every single one of those head walls in a weekend, and they opened up on time.

33:41 [SPEAKER_02]: People think that's uncommon. [SPEAKER_02]: It's not an uncommon problem to see, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Because of the time in which it takes from concept to delivery of a project in general, not necessarily it can seem like you can get their little faster with dirt, so maybe you'll even eliminate some of those problems along the way.

33:58 [SPEAKER_02]: However, you're never going to eliminate them all because innovation's innovation, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Things change. [SPEAKER_02]: But you hit on something else I want to get back to because this is where I think your biggest challenge is. [SPEAKER_02]: And that is getting architecture and design general contractors and even dare I say the trades to think about this and its impact and its applicability and how they become a part of it without I would say necessarily being disrupted or feel different about it.

34:28 [SPEAKER_02]: So what are the challenges and what to the listeners that I have who span all of those people? [SPEAKER_02]: What that's sort of the guiding like a lot of them are, trust me, a lot of my listeners are listeners here are leaned in, but they don't know how to articulate that across. [SPEAKER_02]: So talk about those challenges and how you guys are approaching it.

34:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I know you're right, Jeff. [SPEAKER_00]: That's probably one of the biggest challenges and has been frankly since we we started dirt is really on that education side of [SPEAKER_00]: what's different and why it's different, but more importantly, why it matters, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And in many times, this struggle with all of those stakeholders that you just rattled off, and it's not their fault, it's it's all of our fault, right?

35:15 [SPEAKER_00]: They tend to gravitate towards the product. [SPEAKER_00]: Right? [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, what product is this and what product is that? [SPEAKER_00]: And in reality, it has nothing to do with the product itself. [SPEAKER_00]: Right? [SPEAKER_00]: So, if we're designing a space for all of those stakeholders for a certain or for the level, whatever the design is, it's more about the outcome and why you would use dirt as a solution to provide that.

35:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Effectively, and if we've done a really good job and part of that mass customization of the software allows for self expression such that no two dirt projects should look alike. [SPEAKER_00]: And many times they don't. [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, if we've done a really good job, it's hard to even tell that it's a dirt project.

35:56 [SPEAKER_00]: And in fact, there's probably a lot of spaces you've been in, even in amenity spaces in commercial office buildings, lobbies, banks, retail, et cetera, that you would have no idea that those are dirt solutions. [SPEAKER_00]: That means we did a really good job. [SPEAKER_00]: However, to your point, I say it really adopters, but they're not, right?

36:14 [SPEAKER_00]: They've been dirt proponents of ours for many years. [SPEAKER_00]: And once they've completed a dirt project, Jeff, [SPEAKER_00]: That is almost unequivocally the response we get back from, particularly the end user is, why doesn't everybody do this, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And part of the reason is, like I said at the beginning of the call, many times when we tour people through our facilities here or facilities in manufacturing, state side is, and even if they'd been dirt users, someone will say, I had no idea, or I didn't believe you.

36:48 [SPEAKER_00]: And so really, it's a, [SPEAKER_00]: The steepest hill we have to climb is dispelling that disbelief that when we say we have ten, like, ten daily times, when we say we can get you in twice as fast, like, all of these things are real. [SPEAKER_00]: That's the biggest challenge. [SPEAKER_00]: And frankly, we needed the industry also to come along with us.

37:10 [SPEAKER_00]: So like I was saying, twenty years ago, all of this was so novel and idea that it was even more difficult. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, because of, on particularly on the other side of COVID, a lot of the challenges that we have, whether it's lack of skill trades, material availability, lead times, you know, you name it.

37:28 [SPEAKER_00]: The dirt solves for all of those things is allowing people at least the reason to explore another way to build. [SPEAKER_00]: And so when I was saying that I'm starting to see that more frequently, particularly on the health care side where they say, hey, you know, I want to look at every option that's out there that is not traditional conventional construction delivery methods is a tailland for us.

37:52 [SPEAKER_01]: And I guess from, I feel like GC, MEPs, most of folks, it's not going to be that disruptive. [SPEAKER_01]: It's the framing contractor that I guess like, do you guys have preferred partners? [SPEAKER_01]: Do you take all of that on? [SPEAKER_01]: Because it's going to be super different with them, right?

38:05 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, yeah, how's that relationship? [SPEAKER_00]: It's a great point Nathan. [SPEAKER_00]: If anything, and if you're a general contractor or an architect or designer or an end user listening to this, [SPEAKER_00]: If anything, it makes your life easier for GCs and particular Nathan. [SPEAKER_00]: If all of a sudden you're managing one trade instead of ten.

38:27 [SPEAKER_00]: If I've got ten guys on the side instead of a hundred, you can start to see where you're starting to get efficiencies from a management perspective at a GC level. [SPEAKER_00]: But even more importantly, is that, you know, the quality of what we're delivering because it's manufactured in a facility, right, allows for that confidence level of, yeah, with everything we give you, you get a ten year warranty, doesn't matter what's wrong with it.

38:51 [SPEAKER_00]: We will pay for labor and material to come address if there's some sort of issue. [SPEAKER_00]: You can't get that certainty with something you're building on site. [SPEAKER_00]: The framing thing is interesting, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And Nathan, there's quite a few drywall subcontractors that we're working with that are leaning in to dirt.

39:11 [SPEAKER_00]: such that they're re-training their own drywallers or carpenters to become dirt certified installers such that it's a benefit for all of us. [SPEAKER_00]: So as they also struggle with labor, this is a way for them to have a multiplier effect on the labor pool that they already have. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, some of these new solutions that we've recently rolled out like a fire rated amountable partition.

39:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Excuse me, or a non-combustible rated partitions that are all dirt simply accelerate that further. [SPEAKER_00]: And really, that's part of the goal here has been how do we aside from all the stuff that we've talked about, particularly around design for disassembly. [SPEAKER_00]: The market is craving an alternative to drywall.

39:58 [SPEAKER_00]: And we need to find a way to get there. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that in some recent developments at dirt, we've proven that we've gotten there. [SPEAKER_00]: And so I think that's where you'll probably see the biggest impact. [SPEAKER_00]: I'd say over the next probably five years. [SPEAKER_00]: It's not necessarily going to be the adopters that we already have.

40:14 [SPEAKER_00]: So half of the Fortune five hundred are all dirt customers, health care is growing like crazy for us as is education and government. [SPEAKER_00]: Where I think you'll start to see adoption is in areas you never would have anticipated seeing dirt. [SPEAKER_00]: Let's say a class be office building somewhere in the Dakotas.

40:34 [SPEAKER_00]: What have you? [SPEAKER_00]: They would have always been drywall. [SPEAKER_00]: I think you'll start to see dirt show up in areas like that where we haven't been before. [SPEAKER_02]: I do imagine that there's an impact on some of the scope for trades, but ultimately you're consuming things that they're running in the general building facade, et cetera, right?

40:54 [SPEAKER_02]: So it's not it's not eliminating on the electrical or the mechanical or sheet metal side of things in some respects. [SPEAKER_02]: It's just about because because we're seeing a lot of them take over [SPEAKER_02]: Like I'm just looking at some of the prefabricated products and I see people building these prefabricated products sort of themselves and going through the learning experience.

41:15 [SPEAKER_02]: That is a shave on their margin in some respects, but that's what we're trying to retrain this industry is there's so much to be done that if you take that off of your books and consume a product like dirt, [SPEAKER_02]: You can do more of the larger, more valuable, more cost effective things that you're great at and do better.

41:40 [SPEAKER_02]: So I think I can go on with you and I want to come see this man. [SPEAKER_02]: I got to see dirt somewhere at some point, man. [SPEAKER_00]: I would I would love to do that and you're always welcome at any of our manufacturing facilities, but as you can imagine, we have active job sites across North America, some in the Middle East currently, we have some in Europe right now happening.

42:01 [SPEAKER_00]: So very much would love to tour you through any of those facilities. [SPEAKER_00]: To be honest, I think the greatest impact many times is when you see it actually going in in installation, it's a bit of an aha moment. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I could see this being really important. [SPEAKER_02]: It's really cool to go all the way back to the beginning and realize that like there was problems in multifamily and you found niches to work in for the time, but that you're overcoming it because the biggest problem we have right now facing the country along with some others is housing affordable housing and housing in areas just like we figured out that can adjust.

42:40 [SPEAKER_02]: Right. [SPEAKER_02]: And they're talking about if you're building the right thing, there's a justibility over time that's cost effective. [SPEAKER_02]: I could think of maybe somebody put again. [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, we're we're seeing such revitalization in urban areas, uh, or in rural areas that, you know, had advanced manufacturing back in the day or manufacturing back in the day.

43:03 [SPEAKER_02]: It left. [SPEAKER_02]: And the economies went with it and really suffered. [SPEAKER_02]: And now these new versions of advanced manufacturing or the EV batteries or the chips, whatever are coming back. [SPEAKER_02]: And we're having to put people there to work. [SPEAKER_02]: And that's one need, and we're having to put healthcare facilities and other facilities there for them that, you know, then when it's done, what are they going to be?

43:30 [SPEAKER_02]: How are they going to support the community? [SPEAKER_02]: How can they change to adapt as these people who actually work in there come and work? [SPEAKER_02]: And you're saying, hey, I think we got a chance to make this a circle and make it effective. [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_00]: And it brings value to those communities.

43:47 [SPEAKER_00]: And in reality, we're living it right now. [SPEAKER_00]: There's areas that are under-service in the U.S. [SPEAKER_00]: particularly from a health care perspective where [SPEAKER_00]: we dirt are part of a subassembly in volumetric deployment for healthcare centers in rural areas. [SPEAKER_00]: And so you're starting to see these things confluence together where it's like, this makes a lot of sense and that makes a lot of sense and we have a lack of access to trades here or material or what have you.

44:22 [SPEAKER_00]: And it's forcing people to be creative, which is a good thing. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: forced creativity never let a good crisis go to waste as the adage might be. [SPEAKER_02]: Listen, Benjamin, we can go on forever, but we're going to have to wrap this one up. [SPEAKER_02]: I do want to give people a chance to figure out where to go learn more about dirt, connect with you and sort of, you know, so they can go see what they don't believe is true.

44:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so just as easy as it sounds, go to jerk.com. [SPEAKER_00]: DIRTT.com is a great jumping off point. [SPEAKER_00]: And within there, there's links to regules. [SPEAKER_00]: People, so we have obviously direct representatives across the US, Canada, Europe, Middle East, Mexico. [SPEAKER_00]: but then also there's investor relations as well so it's a it's a robust website so it's a good jumping off point to get to anybody you need to yeah i think that's awesome and Nathan i don't know man i i feel like maybe a contact crew field trip down the road or something a little [SPEAKER_01]: You know, a little something like that.

45:26 [SPEAKER_01]: Some way to incorporate, yeah, real world problem solving with with dirt walls and maybe we'll bring it to a future integration summit where we can, you know, wrap rapidly, create the space that we need to innovate. [SPEAKER_01]: So this is cool. [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, Benjamin. [SPEAKER_00]: No, you're welcome.

45:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, let's do that. [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks and thank you for tuning in today to geek out for our interview with Benjamin Urban to read all our new stories learn more about our guests and listen to the show. [SPEAKER_02]: Visit the contentcrew.com. [SPEAKER_02]: This is the content crew signing out.

45:56 [SPEAKER_02]: Until next time, enjoy the ride and geek out.