Upgrading The Documentation Processes With Software
[Music] thank you [Music] sure so I'm the co-founder here at CAD maker so we started the company friend of mine from business school nine years ago um and uh so at first we started doing digital construction and then uh Services um kind of bringing kind of scripting and Automation and kind of high-end modeling to construction so we recruited heavily outside of construction brought them into construction ecosystem worked on construction projects and then we've kind of grown and evolved over the years from there and about four years ago we started kind of you know reinvesting every penny we could get out of the company into building a product Suite um which has evolved into basically one main product or focused on at the moment see in builder.io so CM Builder to iOS is a web-based construction planning and simulation product so the idea is it's really making it very easy for sought non-software technical folks uh uh like project planner site managers uh pre-construction and of course the Bim BDC folks be able to do 3D site Logistics and 40 simulation in a much simpler faster way um so yeah so we work a lot on that so we have a service business that's working on a number of projects around the world um and uh and we learn a lot from those projects and then we try to do our best to take those learnings and uh turn them into tools automations uh templates processes that we can continue to get better each day and then also learning on how we can build specific products like SAS products that can solve other problems for our customers it's all the same Target customer construction industry um but just the way we go about solving the problem that the customer may change from a service versus a product depending on what the customer needs so that's the high level we're based in Vancouver Canada and do projects all over the world and it was a mass Timber podcast we do a lot of mass number work it's one of our big Focus areas at the moment I guess for the last four or five years and um and we're really excited about math timber in general and kind of turning construction sites into manufacturing uh problems to be solved um uh which is really exciting so yeah that's the that's the short Cole's notes on on our on us yeah no that's really cool so what are some of the the problems you you mentioned before traditional construction problems that you've already been able to solve through some of your SAS products and what are the other sort of problems around that space which are you're currently solving on and and the most exciting for you yeah so I guess um I'll just highlight a couple for our services business when it comes to math Timber specifically um it's a fairly new thing in the world you know um uh in terms of just like you know you mentioned even with what you're working on there's a lot of historical data that you can leverage like a concrete and steel structure system structural systems um Architects need to design in different ways right like they're used to maybe designing to the last possible second and even you know the joke is build design not design build they're still You're Building you're still designing as you go and and when you work on a master project you have to freeze those things a lot earlier which I know you know well you're well aware I'm sure your audience is well aware of so that introduces some challenges right this um understanding what kind of systems are being selected earlier what's the design of manufacturing assembly type of considerations that need to be taken into you know when you're designing these things um for example we worked on a 26 story math Timber project where um you know every structural system like every flow or as you go up the tower the column size has changed right and at first you're like it doesn't seem like that big of a deal but because the column sizes were changing every time the connections are changing on every single floor almost right and because of that it just adds way more Machining operations more typical you know the not the typical details explode so you need to have Smart parametric automated ways to manage those types of uh changes in in the information and and data and uh and Manufacturing the end manufactured product um so those are things that we're pretty good at you know just understanding how to model those things how to model them in an automated way how to give information that can be fabricated from and that's coordinated and works with the rest of the Building Systems um so this is we have a team of Engineers that just do this all day long um so that's a that's a big area we focus on some things like airports and big complicated projects typically we work on large projects uh where they need larger teams to be able to spun up in a short period of time and deliver a lot of work in a short period of time um High complexity so yeah that's what we focus on there and then on our product side some problems are like 98 of the world when it comes to site Logistics and planning projects is in 2D still um there may be uh some nice looking animations as part of a Pursuit but generally speaking the actual planning is more even the best companies in the world that are most Bim and VDC focused this piece this site Logistics piece is kind of over here uh because it requires a lot of knowledge and know-how from the folks who build the project in real life um it's kind of Standalone crane location host location traffic management you know do you have to retain trees do you have to see them do are you gonna remove trees you can replant trees are you are you getting access to this site are you gonna have to have multi uh occupancy phasing structure so you have to build over here while there's people over there and there's safety considerations so all those things um are pretty much uh there's not great technology being used to solve them there is some Legacy products in the market but generally they're quite expensive and quite complicated so people default back to 2D so we make uh we see them build it to make it really simple for people to you know to model those things in 3DS drag and drop fully parametric it's really easy to do and running on the web they can work from anywhere they can work on their data anywhere and Share work multiplayer mode all these kind of things and drive collaboration at a higher level so there's a few problems we've come across over the years and we try to build solutions for them and that's kind of how we scale the business yeah great so uh we referring to the ascent building was that a 24 story yes yes yeah great yes so what sort of design automation can you assist within a project like like that so what sort of ways did you get involved um so so that we don't typically get that much involved in design we're kind of really we do fabrication design assistance um but typically we don't other than coordination and overall constructability we don't really comment or get too involved in design per se we're trying to take the design information which often in these projects back to a problem is design intent you know this is typically um an intent and then a lot of the challenges of actually how to build it gets put on to say the Sub sub trades or the other fabricator which comes in much later so there's a gap there between the two and um and so like things that we'll do is somewhat soft some software related registrative smart ways to manage changes and complexity of models and trying to be very precise with how we work um and using a lot of code to generate things as opposed to manually modeling things as much as possible so that's helpful um but also some of it's just over the years is learning knowledge understanding we work with a lot of them major suppliers around the world if we understand what kind of data they need and what format and how they're going to nest and also and Bill it are they going to Nest through the transportation nesting to send material around the world worked on a project in Singapore a really large project where we had was sending stuff from Europe and you know understanding how to pack the containers and or glue them and these things is pretty complicated so we built up a number of like genetic algorithms that help solve for those things since we can embed those in our services uh to help add value to the project so yeah this you know those types of things it's mostly like what's the problem what's an appropriate way to solve that problem can we leverage some stuff we've done in the past already we'll call it back to the background IP that we have that's great if not we might have to build something new to solve this problem depending on what it is that we're trying to accomplish yeah to be honest it's that there's actually for people listing the podcast for a while now they're probably like there's a couple of things that come up all the time one is around moisture and sight and all that sort of stuff the other is exactly what you're talking about there it's that gap between what the structural engineer documentation process is usually like and then what the uh the the supplier and the manufacturer needs um and then there's a big gap and a scope Gap and it turns out to be the critical path for projects and where all the issues come is like is getting to that you know the design side of a structural engineer to the point of nesting and building so yeah can you elaborate a bit further on on how that process what it is now and how that can be improved yes I think I mean it's obvious what I've kind of come to learn is there's these amazing especially Mass Timber there's these amazing master builder you know long-term Carpenters that are experts in their especially in Europe right you have a lot of this kind of ecosystem of folks that work Carpenters they go do their Master's in Structural Engineering they have practical knowledge they understand would they understand Timber and then they typically either go into Structural Engineering Consulting side or they go work for the fabricator and um and there's just you know specifically because of procurement models and how projects are actually delivered there's often kind of a conflict between the two right you have a structural engineer that's tasked with design and making sure it doesn't fall over and it's solving for some of those wind loads and moisture actually moisture is a big one where we where we are Vancouver Canada because it rains a lot and for example um there's a there's you know a lot like we had a project the first ever big project we did was called Brock Commons uh here in Vancouver it was pretty amazing project to be a part of and there's uh um uh like a joint architect named Herman Kaufman he's out of uh Austria I believe um and he was like in our office we were having this talk and he was going through the model he was just pointing out where all the areas where all the water is going to pool based on the system the assemblies and how things come together and he's like that's where the risk is you know mold and moisture content of wood and and understanding okay well if that's the case then what's the manufacturing um you know constraints that can go into this like Edge gluing versus non-edge gluing for example of panels so some of the Australia the European providers will Edge glue the CLT panels and then press the panels some North American won't right so if they're not then you the way the moisture is either going to get through the panels or not is a consideration and all that knowledge that goes into that is often in the heads of a few Specialists that are out there swimming around in the world and they're usually getting involved in some of these projects and sometimes they're not what we're trying to do is say well how can we embed as much as we can of that inside code inside templates inside in a more scalable way to learn from those things and then be able to apply them on the next incremental Project without having to have you know one or two people be relied on to know everything so yeah the the those are just some examples um but you know CNC time like pre-cutting holes for for piping let's say right so you got a panel you know do you see and see all the openings on the panel before they come to site or do you try to cut it on site well that's a big actually Kai on our team could probably give you all the calculations yeah yeah yeah it's a it's usually yes but it's a depends question actually it depends if it's 3 Pi CLT and you can actually cut it decently you know there's a lot of upfront coordination and work that goes into making sure that you can pre-end pre-cnc panels with all the openings for shafts for duct work and piping and stuff like that and there's more time on the tools right you have more CNC time which is generally the bottleneck of every factory factory for CNC for for Mass numbers the CNC so you're trying to remove the amount of time you need per panel on the CNC so you're adding more time so you better make make sure you're saving a lot on site when you do these things right so there's all these kind of things that you got to consider when you're in that kind of designed fabrication manufacturing assembly kind of dfma discussion um that you know can be done with software it's also just done by experience and understanding where's the best place to apply these kind of tools and templates yeah I used to work for a CLT manufacturer and the pricing model is pretty difficult because you're trying to balance a lot of things you've got the material feed stock price and then it's hard to model exactly how how the panel is going to go through a factory and how to price it properly and because there's uncertainty there probably you know increases going forward but if you've got that solved where you're from the very start you know exactly how fast it's going to flow through and what a volume per shift can be pumped out of a factory I mean that can really drive the cost down I'd imagine what do you reckon yeah so that's a great insight and my what I've learned and I'm not on involved in every project anymore but one thing I'll say is uh you know how does a so you work for fabricator how does a fabricator make money right they make money by shipping panels like turning raw materials into finished products and and setting them maybe not even installing them right they might just be producing panels and generally speaking your their utilization rate drives their business right how utilized are their fixed assets so you know if you can as a as if you're an owner if you're an architect and you want to work with some of these big players they're quite happy to be delivered a very accurate detailed model with build materials and information to be able to just produce right because that shop drying time that modeling time they're going to make some money from that but it's typically not the core business right it's typically not what keeps the lights on and to your point it's an extremely volatile Risky Business like a couple years ago here in North America there's a massive spike in Timber prices right and all of a sudden you know you need you need raw Lumber you need lumber to go into big panels right and so how do you hedge that and that's beyond my pay grade I'm sure this Futures contracts and different things to understand but generally speaking with all that how do you de-risk things right de-risking means better information the ability to um convert machine code run on the machine CNC parts that make sense that are shipped and packed in a container in the most efficient way maybe there's the lifting of those panels is into consideration one project we had a script that would calculate the center of gravity of each panel and just put a little code in the inside of the g code this add a little bit where the grooves would be for the for the lifting lugs lifting and where they could just lift the paddles flat so depending on what the panel looked like if it's an edge panel it's cornered it's got an opening for a duct the center of gravity could dramatically change so the idea of just being able to rig that panel quickly and safely fly it up flat and bring it in is super valuable right so those types of things especially if they're on the installation side of that whole equation is going to save them labor it's going to save some time it's going to allow them to make a little more projects so generally speaking this is a very difficult businesses to run and um and you know better information that can be delivered faster and more efficiently is going to be a big driver in terms of keeping that CNC running and keeping that raw material being turned into panels and shipped out the door yeah that's so good what are the what are the overall new technologies that you see coming in which is gonna you know you might be jumping on the back of but are sort of moving the industry forward in this direction you know I I I I I see lots of interesting seems like everyone's working on um you know kind of like uh your kid of Parts based dfma based like uh um you know generative design solutions that can say hey based on a standard eight of Parts um you know here let's generate a bunch of different options that an architecture designer can choose from and I think that's all very helpful to work through the early phases of the design phase uh I think Downstream there's a lot of work that needs to be done in the industry at large to standardize things which is hard this is like a really hard problem to solve um and what we see a lot is you know a design team who are amazing and they've done a pretty good job to rationalize the design down to something that's fairly optimized and they handle there's only going to be 10 types and then you start working on it you're like well there's a bulkhead over here and there's a notch in the panel now that's another type and over here you're going to need to have um you you know we're going to use a pre-engineer can we've changed to pre-engineered connections so we're going to change the way the end the end style of that of that beam is going to be so there's a new type so it's just so hard to have only a few types really when you get into manufacturing terms and um so I think anything that can help streamline the design phase into detail like the schematic into detail design phase with machine operations and different types of machine code type of implications built into it nesting and these types of optimization things and they can go from design to fabrication uh in a seamless way is really valuable seeing a lot of people try it both on the software side or the process side katera you know is famously tried to kind of vertically integrate to do some of these things and I think you know without seeing a little bit of that close up front it's just extremely hard it's extremely hard uh to completely verticalize the whole building process and I'm not even sure necessarily it's the right thing to do I think most people yeah okay well that might maybe that's not the right thing to do I think there's a lot of amazing people there trying to build stuff that there's no knock on that I think it's just extremely difficult to do what they were trying to do so then you see what that you know that what I've seen is the the uh depend on the swung away over here was like okay we're just gonna have different parts and we're just gonna clip them together from a supply chain and everyone's going to have their own parts and it's going to come together also extremely difficult to do so you know somewhere in the middle it's probably where we're gonna land right and I've seen some really interesting stuff lately with like you know using CLT vertical Shear walls like I'm a structural engineer like yourself so I'm not gonna you speak too much out of school here but like you know before it was always panels okay maybe a core you might do in CLT or maybe you do some some other solution for the core now we're starting to see like a lot of vertical walls you know sheer walls being CLT as well or are penalized as well um if you see the exterior facade DLT panels as some people have been working on that uh obviously a lot has its own challenges um but and generally speaking I can see incrementally that we're marching towards the middle ground between let's do everything in one place versus like let's have everyone do their own things and magically it's all going to click together and somewhere in the middle where you have let's let's automate the systems that make sense to be automated and vertically integrate the systems that make sense to be vertically integrated and then you know have um you know a a middle ground solution where you say maybe the map contractors got racks and they got different types of prefabricated Solutions we'll be running things through corridors and stuff like that which there's a lot of great people in this market like Meadows Plumbing is doing a lot of interesting stuff so yeah so I I think it's like software it's process it's understanding of mass Timber just generally speaking is getting better like when we started five years only five years ago I mean like the owner would be like uh oh we're doing a you know five-story rental building let's just turn it to mass timber in the structure they're the ogs of structure of Structural Engineering for uh for Mass Timber you know in this market it's uh the fast naps and the you know the equilibriums and uh and those folks were kind of like um you can't just like change the whole thing it's like is that how it works you gotta have to design the building from scratch to think this way um and I think people are starting to understand that it's its own thing you know it needs to be treated like differently than this your normal cast in place concrete project or in your neck of the woods there's a lot of Precast it's somebody gets closer to pre-class actually um in terms of like lots of planning up front freezing design in advance getting your supply chain in check understand like we had a project in California it's a massive project at the time it was the biggest in the world I think it's now been built by a few others that we were involved with luckily but they had to pre-fabricate six months in advance the CLT panels to store them on site just because once the assembly process started kicking in they couldn't keep up the production couldn't keep up with the assembly process because it's so fast so this takes a tremendous amount of time so you got to freeze the whole thing year in advance right yeah this is not normally what people do in construction so um so I think I've seen a lot of really interesting steps taken by the industry to understand what Mass Timber is different the owners need to understand that it's different the economics are different everything's different about it and you can't just you know put a square peg in a round hole and say like oh we're going to do a concrete tower building we'll just turn into Timber should should just be where you could do that right well your good spacing changes now you know what type of build you know there's things that make make the project work and um so technology process and understanding I think at the beginning you're working on some knowledge based type stuff that's another thing right there's just people getting good and understanding knowledge based reports coming out as you know PhD reports that are publishing data on what people are learning right these things are critical to assuming report yeah I didn't realize have you you've mentioned so I didn't real you've been part of Brock Coleman's NT NTU ascent and it was saying before this episode you're part of the early Lend Lease projects as well is that right yeah we've been fortunate this is one of the coolest ones is the Portland PDX airport it was it's more recent one it's pretty incredible engineering feat um I highly encourage everyone to go look that up um they basically built like uh you know football fields American football field size um cassettes they call them that were like basically the whole roof assemblies and they just there's like 20 of them and they moved them in the night with these massive uh mobile cranes and uh and like actually so we like did all the modeling and detailing for that for fabrication but also helped with the kinematic simulation of how we're gonna actually move these things safely um pretty incredible some unfortunate to be evolved involved with that so a lot about some of the high profile projects but also lots lots of many not high profile but still equally impressive and you know uh you know projects that are five stories uh that are mixed use projects that are being built in Mass Timber and why I say that is that you know economically like from a performer perspective I used to work on the owner side to pass my past life you know these these projects didn't pencil before right they just didn't they didn't make sense and they're they're starting to make more sense where people are making hey I think we can build this in Mass Timber get a lot of the benefits of the prefabrication process and time the time value of money of delivering a project quicker with higher quality more Precision people like to live in these buildings more probably because of the wood and stuff like that you know so it's that's also a big step I think so it's a lot we worked on a lot of smaller projects that you know that don't get all the accolades and stuff are equally as impressive because they're being delivered typically by the standard trades or SAS subbies as you call them that are not fancy and they're not Timber focused subbies and they're just delivering these projects because the ecosystem is getting bit better at being able to say well if you're a carpenter you're doing four more you probably could install some panel as well like with some CLT paddles with some with some training and some some coaching yeah that's so good and it sounds like every time you're working on another project because you're using Code base Solutions it's infrastructure and you've got a starting point and it's evolving and you know everyone's doing it in different places do you see this driving down the cost of solutions like this as we go forward I hope so I think so uh you know I I definitely I think the you know it's controversial because I don't want to you know there's a lot of evangelism in the mass Timber space yeah yeah people like it's just gonna change everything you'll ever you know I'm not sure we're there yet I think that there's some issues that need to be fleshed out I think there's some early adopt I think we're getting through the early adopter phase and again I'm I'm not gonna pretend like I'm an expert on all things Mass timber in the world I have been fortunate to be involved with quite a few and I've learned from a lot of amazing Architects instructions you're just being in the room with them and yeah I'm going to say you you've been the you're probably the only person who's been on the most high profile projects around the world so I'll just get a call you out on your humility well that's nice but I think I think as you do more I think you learn how little you know so uh yeah I agree and these things are so complicated and um I think a lot it's easy to just it makes wide sweeping statements and you know owners have a perspective right and then the supply chain has a perspective and um in you know and and the design team has a perspective and there's environmental cases to be made which I'm hearing it changes all the time you know when I first started it was very clear that environmental positive aspects of mass Timber and lately I've been hearing some studies coming out that you know challenge that a little bit like I don't think I'm here to say that it's not good for them everybody there's there are considerations about you know chopping down trees and putting them into buildings and and yet and the net net just you know understanding of what all that means for the industry but I think also cost you mentioned cost like cost is just still a major factor and it's I don't know what I think what I think what it is is we're trying to apply you know again our company has struggled with this quite frankly like we you know we're trying to apply a repeatable manufacturing process like they did in cars everyone says oh it's like cars these are these aren't cars right we're not building cars you know like it there's the Project's different every time you're a structural engineer even if you have the exact same design it's going to be different if you're in a different Market it just is because of structural code and different things you have to do we're in a big we're in a high seismic region so the seismic constraints just make up big it adds a lot of complexity right it has a lot of complexity of the whole thing and you can't just say here's a template run with it like just make the same thing every single time it just in theory it looks sounds great in a PowerPoint looks fantastic but in practice it falls apart you know and I think it's it's not like these problems can't be solved I think they can be solved but it's like what's the right structure to deliver a project to solve it right like is it an owner having a stake in that and and make shared Equity perhaps is it you know is it better for rental where you can have a long-term you know Revenue stream from that asset and you can amortize some of those additional costs over a longer period of time if you're just going to build it and sell it and try to get your money back day one you know you have a lot of risk volatility in the lumber Market uh Supply constraints you know if you look in the market in North America I mean if if all of a sudden all these projects that are being designed actually all went to production at the same time the market couldn't serve it right then now you go overseas to Europe Europe can handle it but then a lot of the reasons why this project got designed in the first place kind of start to fall down because you got a lot like it yeah when you're sending the panels all the way from Austria there's definitely a bigger footprint to that right and there's a different cost so you know and then and then you look at us I'm kind of rambling now but I think it's really interesting to talk about how some of our team have done quite a few um you know like uh visits to the to the various factories in in Europe and stuff like that and it's truly incredible how automated to run in massive factories with just a few people it's very uh um very impressive process you say well why can't we do this here well it took them years and years and years and years to develop that and the culture is different like in Switzerland where we I was lucky enough to see some amazing um factories in Switzerland um Goodell is one of them a few other customers a few other companies are and they just have a culture there as well right this is like many many DEC you know decades and in generations of how they build in Switzerland and you can see that and how they set up their Factory right this is a cultural thing as well as a technologist technology and process thing and a quality thing it's not so easy to just replicate that everywhere in the world that don't have the same culture so um so yeah it's it's it's a fascinating thing I think there's a lot of opportunities um and um we'll see hopefully we can get I think we're out of that early adopter phase now we're into the scale up phase you know you're in a startup this is the hardest part I mean making it repeatedly work is a challenging thing and we're trying to do our part in the ecosystem to help with that as well yeah well how exciting uh if people want to find out more about yourself Javier and what you guys are up to where should everyone go uh yeah so cadmakers.com is our uh company uh cmbuilder.ios our product main product that we focus on
um we have some other stuff there too but uh and then we do a lot on LinkedIn so uh we try to uh post on LinkedIn and try to have some fun with it too so yeah [Music] foreign [Music]
2023-04-13 17:28
