102. The Importance Of Estimating With Tom Lawson

Estimating can be so many different things for so many different people because it's all tailored to sort of suit the way that you need to run your business.

Welcome to Professional Builders Secrets, the podcast for building company owners wanting to grow safely and securely. I'm your host, Will Blunt and today I'm joined by Tom Lawson. From Vision to Estimating, an estimating service provider that generates accurate residential building estimates using 3D technology. Tom, welcome to the show.

Thanks Will. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, really excited to have you on today. Interesting topic, creating estimates from 3D technology. So do you want to start by giving me a backstory to how you ended up at V2E and how V2E came to exist?

Yeah, sure. So look, V2E came to exist from our managing director and business owner, Michael Reed. So he. His background has been in the construction industry for about 30 years. His background has been in owning frame and truss plants and miter 10 stores and working with local builders and things like that, which is where my background come from. So I started working with Michael as a frame and trust detailer. So we've worked together for a few years in that. And then when Michael was getting out of that business, he's looking to stick in the construction industry. Saw the need for estimating because being on the end of supply flying is always see the issues of people missing things in the estimates and then having to make things up later to try and make builds work. And so saw an opportunity to maybe help some builders and. But do it with a point of difference, which is where you mentioned using our 3D and things like that. So he started this company in 2020 and I came over with him from. To sort of help him build up to where we are today. Yeah, at the moment we've got about 15 full times estimated in our staff and yeah, we sort of operate around Australia. We've got plenty of local work in Adelaide SA where we're based, but also we're branching out, doing lots of work in State as well and a little bit of start to get a little bit of international work based in the US and things like that as well.

Very cool, very cool. So why is it so important to accurately estimate projects?

So look, the thing with estimating is that when you say the word estimating to builders, it all can mean a different thing to different builders. And the word estimating has become so far from probably what its traditional sense or meaning was, especially in a builder's office. So estimating in a, in a modern builder's office usually means a Handful of different things. It can mean creating quantity takeoffs or counting the items that you need measuring, things like that. But nowadays estimators also seem to have the requirements to be able to schedule orders or chase up trades for quotes and, and keep price files under wraps, keep up to date with pricing. Also maybe dealing with clients on some points of views. You know, things aren't working out, things are too expensive, so they have to relook a budget. So a job for an estimator in a builder these days is not just focused on the one task of, you know, doing quantity takeoffs or things like that. It's actually a whole range of different things. So where we sort of saw the need is that, well, if you've got somebody in the office who's trying to do estimating, but you need an estimate to do 10 different things, like how much time are they going to be able to give to each of those different things? That kind of makes sense. And how, how, how reliable are they going to be on, on one part of it because they're so focused on some of the other parts. Not only that, a lot of what you find is that there seems to be a rush with builders to be able to get a price back to somebody. Somebody inquires about getting a house built. I've got this project I want to do. First thing here is now we need, we need a price. So we know, we need a price to know how much it's going to cost, if we can afford it, see whether we want to use you. And so what that's done is it's mean builders have fallen into that trap of, well, I'm just going to give you a rough price based on a square meter or, you know, we hear the classic, it looks pretty similar to the last job I built. The last job I built I did for this much. So it looks a bit harder. So I'll throw an extra, you know, 20 grand on top and that should cover me kind of thing. But the point is, even if you're going in at that level to be able to get a price, and even to the point where if you have a little bit more sophisticated in the upfront estimating, where maybe you break it down so you do, you know, a few more linear meter or square meter or, you know, area coverage, takeoffs, things like that, there's still the point that you're still going to have to go back and explode all that data down so that you actually know what you need to buy to get in the job and actually figure out how much it's going to cost you to build labor and materials. So estimating can be so many different things for so many different people because it's all tailored to sort of suit the way that you need to run your business. I guess. So, yeah, that kind of makes sense.

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Is V2E typically working with an estimator in house at a building company, or are you replacing the estimator with your team kind of thing?

No. So sort of what we like to say is that, like, let us. Like that example I just gave before of an estimator is probably doing, you know, a handful of different things as part of the business. Well, we sort of look and go, well, why not take the grunt work of pulling the plan out, measuring either with software or you'd be surprised how many people are still doing takeoffs and material counts by. Get the highlighter, get the pencil out, get the calculator out, you know, keeping track of it in an Excel sheet. But the problem with doing that is, you know, number one, you got no way to decipher how you come up with your results. So I don't know about you, but like, sometimes when I do quick sketches or quick counts or something like that, if I gave my markups to somebody to say, now you interpret this to figure out what I've done, it's not always going to be the easiest thing. So, you know, especially some of those guys who, the old school way of doing it, young guys that are coming in to try and learn some of that process, you know, hard yaka to kind of understand that stuff. So what we sort of see is that, well, why don't you get your estimates to spend more time on keeping your pricing up to date. So that way you know that when you do have your quantities come in, you can be confident in the pricing you're putting against to things, labor and materials. It's on timing. So we always sort of say there's, you know, a good estimate can have two parts to it. You can have a really good count or a really good quantity takeoff, but if your pricing doesn't match it and your pricing is out, then the price for your job's going to be screwed. So, you know, we hear examples of builders who, they get quotes back and it doesn't match their. What they're doing and they're having all these arguments about, you know, that doesn't match the invoice and things like that. And it's because their price bars out of date for what the suppliers got to be able to sell them. So there's that side of it, but the other side of you could have all your pricing file really, really good, really up to date, always being reviewed. But if you got no skills into being able to accurately count and measure what you need in the job, then your price for your project is going to be out as well. Because you've got no way to accurately apply that pricing to what's in the job. So breaking it down into that part, we sort of see where we see ourselves. We want to eat, trust the count, trust the quantity takeoff with us so that we can accurately do the measuring, do the groundwork of sitting there and counting the light points, measuring the length of walls for you, all that stuff that just takes time. But you need that data to be able to price your project and give it to you. But give it to you not in just a full dump out data, give it to you with some more advanced technology, which is our 3D software and things like that.

What are the implications for builders if they're not getting their pricing accurate on all their projects?

So like the implications can be subject to, you know, VO orders that sometimes you can get the clients to come and pay that extra if it's something that the clients picked more that's gone over of a budget. But other times if you've just stuffed up the, you know, the bricks actually put the wrong pricing and the bricks are, was out of my brick count by 500 bricks or things like that. Those are things that you can't, you can't hang that back, the builder can't hang that back on their client necessarily. That's something they're going to have to wear that cost for. So having as much that accuracy of knowing what's in the job as well as the pricing is where it's really important and, and also finding out at what stage in your build do you want to know that information kind of thing. So you know, some builders, they like to be really accurate as possible. They can really early in the piece. So they'll have things like standards for tile heights on rooms or you know, select standard selections. You can pick from things like that. Whereas others will wait right till then they'll write until they've got all the selections done, everything's been figured out and then they'll do a full working BOQ on everything once all the decisions have been made and signed off on from their builder, from their client.

Yeah, interesting. And I imagine as well, like I mean that 500 brick example, you got 5, 10 projects all with one example like that, that's just going to have a huge impact on your business.

Yeah, that's right. And I think it's the people miss don't understand how easy it is to. When you're doing, when you're just trying to manually do things, work off plans and things like that, how easy it's going to be to be able to miss some of those things. Like we always give that example of brick rebates in your. On your concrete slabs and things like that. If you don't know what rebate you're using. Like that could be a whole run of bricks around the whole edge of the house that you've missed. Which on a huge house that could be that, you know, 300 bricks that you're short because you didn't realize you got to set it down that bit further. So it's a whole run of bricks and mortar that you missed on the whole house. But that's something if you're working off somebody else's plans or you're not really understanding the trade plans that you're getting, it's a really simple mistake to make.

Yeah, I guess that adds an extra complexity for you guys. Are you working with primarily design and build companies or are they builders coming to you when they've already got someone. Someone else's plans and trying to build out the estimate?

It's actually interesting. It's actually a bit of both because a lot of custom home builders won't necessarily have their drafts person in house or drafting resource kind of thing. A lot of what they're doing is they're getting plans brought to them that a client has drawn up by an architect or a building designer themselves. And sometimes as well, the building designers and architects, especially here in Australia, they will organise like the full building rules certification pack, which means the architects taking control of organizing the engineering, organizing your timber framing documents, organizing energy reports, things like that. But what that means is that sometimes a builder might get a full pack of fully certified documents to say, you know, we need a quote on this job and builder. But what just because the people that, that architects used to come up with those documents might be actually so far away from what that builder standard building is. And so then you get that real disconnect of well, I don't build that way. So the documents you give me, I can't really give you an accurate quality quote on it. I need to adapt it to suit my building style as well kind of thing. And it could be something as simple as people like to use 9045 top and bottom plates on their timber walls instead of 1935. But it could be something completely different in terms of, you know, we like to use waffle pod slabs, but the engineers design as a rough footing slab. So we want to get that redesigned for our energy purposes or for. Because that's the preferred way to build in. In the way that we build our houses, things like that. So. So there's all those variables that come into it. So what we do is we like to work with our customers and really learn so much about our customers and that we feel like we become a partner in their business kind of thing. So we like to keep detailed what we call our builder specifications, but detailed lists on our builders. And basically what we like to learn is all the aspects that are going to affect how we can give you an estimate back that's going to be usable straight away and also suitable for what you want to do. So that's trying to understand things like preferred materials, you know, preferred design capacities for. If we're doing structured designs, things like that. But also the way builders cost their jobs, everyone's slightly different. So the way you pay your trades can be slightly different. Some people might pay trades on. If we think about carpenters, for example, some builders might have an agreement with their carpenters to pay them on the linear meter of wall frames. They've got to build the number of hip corners, they've got a frame up, square meter trusses, they've got a frame. If they use ceiling battens, it might be a square meter rate to, you know, to install ceiling battens. Whereas some other builders, they might actually just have an agreement with their carpenter, which is they just want a square meter count because then their carpenter gives them a right to frame and roof the whole job and then he moves on kind of thing. So what we try and do is go, well, how do we tailor that estimate so that you don't then have to sit in the office and then go, oh, they've done it this way. But I actually needed to come out like this. I've got to go in and manually change it or work that out myself. We like to learn all that so that we can make it as close to how you want it as possible. So it really is like having that extra estimating resource in your office. So there's that kind of thing which coming back to what you're sort of mentioning is that what it means is we find that variance of, you know, builders who are getting plans brought to them. Half the battle is then interpreting those Plans to suit the way the business wants to do it kind of thing, a fair bit of back and forth sometimes and things like that to get it to where they want it to. But the flip side is it means that when they're looking at our 3D that we give them to be able to see how we've done the job and see how we've recreated that, they're going to feel more comfortable because they can see, actually it's been redrawn to suit their build style and remodeled in to suit that. And then the guys who have got their own plans or bring their own plans in, they're now usually going to have their set of standards or standard details on how they construct with different materials, things like that. So it's a fair variance between the two. But we like to think our service can help be as accurate so that if you get thrown either situation, you can deal with it, I guess.

Yeah. We recommend design and build business models for our builders in the members of apb. And this is another reason as to why that's so important.

Yeah, that's right. And I think that's the thing. Like, you find architects have that tendency to, you know, draw something that looks amazing and present something, but, you know, the construction side of it and constructability, buildability, costability, you know, can you actually construct that for your budget? Things like that. That. That is such an important thing. And sometimes it can be a little bit of a reality check when it comes to the builder, when you come across. Yeah, we've heard like, you know, stories of somebody getting an architectural render and it looks really great. And it's got a parapet on the front porch, something like that. And then a gets the site and the client goes, what's that big ugly thing on the front porch? And the builder goes, well, that's the downpipe, because it's got parameters, so I need to run the water. And they go, oh, our render that we've got here doesn't show any of those pipes on it. And the builder's going, well, you can have a leaky roof if I don't put that there. So what's going on? So, you know, understand that difference between constructability and, you know, pretty pictures, I guess, kind of thing as well.

So what are the most important factors of estimating, like getting an effective estimate out there?

Yeah, so look, I think with estimating, there's probably like the three sort of main points that I like to sort of talk about as like, really main factors that are really going to help you be as accurate as possible, but not only just being as accurate as possible on your estimate, but hopefully help your project all the way through as well. So having a real understanding of the project that you're building. So knowing your project inside and out, because knowing the intricate details are going to help you pick up on not only ways that you might be able to, you know, build certain sections that might be complex or understand what's going into the job before you sort of get to site and start building it kind of thing, but also it creates opportunities to be able to open up conversations on cost savings, on more economical ways to construct things that are drawn, things like that. So having a really good understanding of what you're trying to achieve with your project and what where you want to get to with it is really important because you can't, you know, being able to make decisions in the office that can help you on site earlier in the pieces makes it so much easier than trying to be making decisions on site on the fly because you come across something and I didn't realize this is how this was going to be built and I didn't realize that's what it was supposed to be doing. So having a good understanding of your project inside and out is a really key one from that as well. One thing I really think is builders to know all the materials, know their materials and their supplies and things like that that they, that they have available to them. Cause again, like I said, knowing the reality of what materials are available in where they're available. Just because we find this all the time with that example we gave before, just because somebody's nominated their materials on a plan doesn't mean it's actually available in your state. You'd be surprised the variance of, you know, timber sizes or cladding finishes, sheet sizes, things like that, that variance what's available state by state, even in Australia. So, you know, having a really good understanding of what's actually available can help you not get caught out when you're ordering things or not get caught out. Having to quickly, oh, we can't do this, so we gotta figure that out. But also what we found is understanding what materials give you the same results or similar results to what you're trying to achieve can also open you up to more things like, well, how can I actually provide a cost saving or how could I actually provide this maybe construction to be easier on site, but still get the desired results, still get the reside look, still get the desired effect or result of what I'm trying to build here. So knowing your material so that you've got that opportunity to be able to swap and change if you need to without compromising your project. Last one is really understanding your trades and your suppliers on how they're set up. So like I mentioned before, having a real good understanding of how your trades are going to quote you or how they need to be costed for their labor, what trades are going to supply and install, what trades are going to be install only so that you're not on the hook for. I thought the trade that was included in your price. No, it's not. So now I've got to run off the hardware store to grab this because we haven't gotten enough of that. Things like that. And having a clear understanding also, you know, in the trades that you use just simple understanding like, well, how many team members do they have? So that way I can time how many days are they going to be able to do this task in or, you know, then I can start flowing my schedule of my build a lot easier because I know well this guy that I use, yeah he's got a team of three, which means he could do a job in this size of this size in two days or three days. Which means then I can schedule my next trade to come in after him. But you know, having that understanding and working really closely with your trades can help build that relationship with the builder as well. And I think what you find is it also makes it a lot easier to when you do have things come up on site, if you've got a good relationship with your trades on site, you know, working through to find a solution that's going to be best for everybody, I think is it makes a lot easier when you've got that understanding, that mutual respect as well.

Yeah, I like that. So three parts to effective estimating. Knowing your project, knowing your materials, knowing your trades. Is that right?

Yeah, yeah.

Nice one. So you've spoken a little bit about working in house estimators, I guess outsourcing to you guys, the software that's involved, what options do builders have when it comes to estimating and what are the pros and cons of all of them?

Yeah, no, that's a real good point. So, yeah, estimating, like I said, there are estimating like we've talked about, it can be a number of different things and there are and have been for a while different options on to be able to get assistance and things like that. But I think what's really important is trying to find the right way that suits your style. That suits you as well. You've got to be comfortable with what you're doing. So like I said, one option could be hiring in house staff, which is really great for need somebody in the office that can sit and do quantities or can do those other tasks that you said. And like we mentioned before, a company like us that's doing the quantity side, you still might need someone in the office to be able to do the pricing side, do the ordering, do the scheduling, those kind of things. But then again, if you get to that point where you need a team of five, six people just to sit there and count quantities so that you can get your jobs moving, there may be some other options to be able to do that so that you're not wearing labor and wage costs, you're not carrying all the things that come with that you're not wearing. Training time. You'd be surprised how many stories we hear of. I'll put two estimators on straight out of uni. They're great. Spent six months training them and they were just starting to be able to do things on their own perfectly. And then somebody else came and offered them a job for more money because now they've got six months experience. So hiring more staff, you really always run that risk of training and losing training and losing. And so you can go from being halfway there back to square one really quickly. So trying to find that balance of how many people you employ compared to what you can potentially outsource or look at software as a solution. So the other two options are outsourcing, finding partners that you can send some work to and get the results back. But like I said, the thing with outsourcing, there's always that thing of, well, I don't want to give up my, my DNA. I'm not sure how do I trust what I'm getting back. If I'm getting back, you know, something that somebody's done, how do I trust that it's right without having to go back through and basically redo the job myself from scratch kind of thing. So that's where finding partners that can hopefully understand you build when this is where we like to promote ourselves is that really tailor the exports or the deliverables to suit your business kind of thing. So that way you're more than that, just 50% of the way there. You know, again here stories of I got this estimate done and it was a line, you know, 350, 500 items. But I spent just as much time going through and filtering the list and oh, no, I don't need that, or I Need this to change here and I need this to sort of say this instead. Took me just as much time as it would have. I'd done the estimate myself kind of thing. So, you know, just because that service is there, if it's not going to fit with your business, then it may not be the best option either. So looking for, if you're looking to sort of outsource some things, looking for somebody that's going to be willing to work with you and give you stuff that's going to be useful for you, that's probably a big point. The other point is looking at software. So there's so many different software, project management software, estimating softwares that are out there at the moment. And they all, it's funny, they all kind of do the same thing, but then they all kind of do different things as well. Again, it's that decision of finding what one's gonna suit your business better. But also I think what people fall into the trap of is thinking that if I buy a piece of software it's gonna solve my problems for me. And they don't understand that. One thing with the software is that a lot of them don't come plug and play. You still need to put all your items into it, build it up to suit your business, you know, put that work into it, which some builders like, especially younger builders, they're getting a lot better at it. But a lot of older builders like you, tell them to sit there, I'm going to put this software in, but then you've got to spend, you know, 20 hours setting all your stuff up. Then nobody's going to want to do that. That's why they bought the software, so they didn't have to do that. That's the way they sort of think it. So understanding what you're getting yourself into and then maybe understanding how you can utilize the best parts of each software. So hey, I'm going to buy this software because it's got a really good client interface, got really good project management, but it doesn't handle another part. The, you know, the estimating side might not be the best. So maybe I need to look at a way I can amalgamate something together or bring something else in to suit that. So just having that, that sort of eyes open look of softwares aren't going to solve every little piece of your business for you kind of thing. So if you are looking at that, be really keen on what parts you do want to solve and what you can get out of the one that you pick. So and we also find that, you know, from the estimating point of view, a lot of software, they also need a second software to be able to do measuring. You know, so there's one software will handle your pricing side and your budgets and your ordering, but you'll need something else to be able to measure the plan, to be able to come into it or count or do it manually. You've still got to feed that data into it. So, you know, it might be that idea of, well, I'm going to buy this software but I still need something to sort of drive it as well. So which again can be tailored that into, well then do I put somebody on or do I look to outsource? So I don't think any option is, is a perfect option kind of thing. But what you, what, what builders should be doing is looking at, well, how can I streamline my process and how can I improve my process in the points that I'm falling down so that I've got less touch points for myself, so I've got less time that I'm spending myself as the builder going over each individual job where I can put some things in place. That means I can have more trust and more confidence in what I'm, what I'm doing.

Yeah, that makes sense. Leverage for the builder. That's, that's what we want.

That's right. That's exactly right. So yeah, and I think the thing is builders, they don't seem, I know you guys are really big on promoting that for builders and I think it's great because lots of builders don't value their own time anywhere near as much as they should. And so, you know, we hear stories that, oh, I don't need to do this because that's part of what I do. But we look at that and go, well, you as the builder, if you're spending 12 hours a week, 15 hours, 20 hours a week in the office, doing, estimating that's 20 hours a week you could be developing your own business, training up your staff to handle some of those day to day tasks more, spending more time with your clients, spending some more time with your supervisor, with your construction team on site, making sure things are going smoothly. But you know, they, people don't seem to value their own time. And from that high level builder, how much more or how much more work it's going to be for them to be doing some of those other tasks? I think.

Yeah, that's a great point. That's a great point. You guys also use 3D technology. Can you talk to me, a bit more about how you use that and what it does.

Yeah. So the way we do our estimates is not by manually counting, you know, printing plans and highlight and things like that. What we do is we will take a set of plans and we'll actually bring it into our 3D drawing software. We'll basically create a full construction model of the project. And from that construction model, that's how we get generate our quantities for our estimate. So drawing in 3D is fantastic because it gives us like so many different things that you don't get from a 2D plan. So being able to actually get inside the house and see what things are going to look like, what things are going to fit, what isn't going to fit. Simple examples of, you know, is a. Is a beam going to be sticking out of the roof board? Does it need a chamfer cut on it kind of thing? Because we need a structural beam here to support an upper level. But there's a roof coming in like this. So being able to pick up details like that, we, you know, we had a job recently that was for like an NDIS design kind of thing. So they're potentially having some ceiling hoists for disabilities, things like that. So modeling the on 2D all look great. Where they're going to put the hoist, where they're going to put the ports, things like that. But when we model in 3D, we realize we'll test support these ceiling hoists. You've got it right at the lowest point of the roof, so you actually haven't got room inside your roof to be able to put structural members to support them. So. But that's something that in the past, you would have got all the way to site and then realized, oh, this isn't going to work, this isn't going to fit. But I've already got roof trusses on, I've got wall frames built, you know, now I'm going to have to go back and amend things and try and rectify things on site. So not only does the 3D give us those kind of touch points to be able to look at connection detail, you know, intricate how things are going to fit together. What it also does is it helps us and it can help the builder visualize the 2D projects in 3D on site. So we get lots of people say, you know, it's really hard. Some of the younger guys, they find it really hard to take what's on the flat plan and imagine what it's meant to look like in 3D, what it's meant to look like in reality. So being able to look at a 3D model and actually see, oh, that's what that's going to look like kind of thing is really good benefit. We actually had an example of a job where we did a 3D estimate for a builder, sent it off to him, sort of, you know, how'd we go? How'd you go with the estimate? How'd you go with your client? Bit of a follow up. And he goes, oh, I've got good news and bad news. Good news is, yep, three day was great. The estimate was great, perfect. Bad news is the client went, that's not what I thought the house was going to look like. But he actually saw it as a benefit because he was a builder in a small country town and went, the best thing about that is now they're going to amend the plans now, before we've even started anything on site. Because if I went and built that house small town, what's going to happen is people are going to realize, oh, you built a house that you didn't want. You know, people start to talk and you. That kind of thing. So see all those benefits that you get and through us doing it in 3D, we kind of can give builders the benefit of all those things that you get from having a 3D software or doing that without actually having to drive it yourself and learn to draw and do all that kind of stuff, you kind of get the service to handle. The other thing the 3D software does for us is the way that we build, our estimating to sort of do it is that it's going to read the data in 3D, but it's going to read it the way that we want it to. So when we're measuring things, that example I gave of the brick rebate to be able to do your brick count, rather than just highlighting on the plan where it's drawn. You know, maybe the Architect's drawn a 50 mil set down, but you use an 86 mil or 100 mil set down, things like that. We'll draw it to suit the way you build. So if you need a full brick set down your brick walls, we're going to, are going to have that full brick set down. So it means when it measures, it's going to actually accurately measure what we've drawn in and then we've built all the smarts in behind it to be able to take those measurements and spit out the results that, okay, this builder needs a full brick count of number of bricks, tons of sand Bags of cement, bags of lime, things like that. Whereas another builder might just. Actually, I just pay my bricky on a square meter rate of coverage, but I need that accurate coverage with the windows taken out. So I know exactly how much I'm going to be charged when he comes in to do the bricks on that job. So the point is we can get the accurate measurement for you and we've got the smarts to spit it out in the way that's going to suit your business a bit more. So what we've done as well is with our software is we've built our own 3D portal, is what we call like a viewer portal. And what that means is that rather than me trying to transfer you a 150 meg 3D file and then you having to have a certain 3D software to be able to open it and view it, and then not only have the software understand how to view it, understand how to control it, things like that. So we've built on our website, which we, we give as part of our deliverables, is the 3D viewer, which we just send you a web link and that takes you straight to the 3D model of that project that you're looking at. And inside that 3D model you've actually got a Costco viewer that you can strip down the Costco so you can strip back the layers of the drawing to see where the items are in that job. So that example I gave before of, you know, getting a huge estimate, 500 items and going, how am I going to check this? I'm going to have to redo it myself. Builders, I think I should be smart enough that if I gave them the estimate and said if you want to check the structural steel on the job, find the structural steel cost center in the drawing, open that up, look at the estimate and look at it and go, actually, I'm pretty confident that what's in here matches what's in there. Move on. So it brings that checking process down from two days, three days to an hour, hour and a half, because you've got a visual 3D representation of what's in the list. And not only that, the list has been tailored to suit the way that you build as well. So it gives that really good two point checking process as well. And the other thing we like to do is that because the way we model our or do our models is from a construction heavy point of view. It means you can pick up constructability issues, but also get your construction managers or your construction team supervisors thoughts on a job before it actually gets to site because rather than trying to make sense of, I've got all these documents, trade plans that are going to marry up and now I'm on site. And that actually doesn't work with this. And nobody's picked it up because nobody's cross referenced it. You actually give yourself an opportunity before you even get to site to look at the job and go, hey, actually, I can see an issue there. That's not going to work with this because clients just pick this kind of fireplace. So we actually need to provide more space for the flue or things like that. So you're giving yourself more opportunity to avoid rectifications and on site issues earlier in the piece as well. So that's kind of a bit about how we've built it. And the other thing we've tried to do is just make life easier for builders. Like I said, that example of, I said to you, yeah, we can do it in 3D, it's great. But you're going to need to buy this software so you can view it. I'm going to need to give you a Dropbox link with this huge file. You need somebody to be able to change it, you know, do all that kind of stuff. It's going to be way too hard. So the fact that we give it to you on a web link and then our web link also can automatically link to a QR code that we can give you. So what we do is we can put that QR code on your, on your structural plans or on your plans, or provide it to you guys so your guys that are on site can scan up the QR code on site on an iPad or a phone and actually bring up the 3D model and be looking around. So if you're stuck on site trying to figure out how something's going to go together, you've actually got a resource for you that's readily available that you can use and have a look at and cross reference and talk against rather than trying to scratch your head and go, there's no detail on the plan here. I guess I'm just trying to figure out something myself here kind of thing.

Yeah, seems really valuable for both the builders and the consumers because the consumers get to visualize, as you mentioned, the example you gave before. They get to see something before it gets built and the builders get to identify those issues that could be coming up with the way it's built as well.

That's right. And I think the other benefit we've found from a lot of our guys is that they've said lots of young trades coming up and especially with how volatile the market's been with home build, especially in Australia, home build grant and material shortage, things like that, how much work there's been and the trade shortage, you've seen a lot of people bringing in trades that they haven't used before because they need to get jobs done. But how are you going to know that that trade is trained to build to your standard or to build the way you want it to? That's what I see is, yeah, you're getting the job, moving and getting the job done. But it's more time your supervisor has to spend checking and supervising on site, less trust you've got in guys who actually constructing the job for you. But what we found is that some of our bureaus have been giving the three day to some of those new guys, especially younger guys, and the night before they get this job to get the job to start building, or a couple of days before they have a look at it, at least they get an idea in their mind of what they're meant to be doing. Because I tell you, a young guy like, you know, if you said to him right before he gets his job, I need you to print out the plans at home, get your head into it. But you know that's not going to happen at all. And then they're going to get to site the next morning and go, oh, I didn't realize we're doing this. Oh, okay. But you send them a web link and you say, hey, here's the construction model of the job you're doing. You're, you're chibi, you're doing the framing. What I want you to do is look at the framing layer. Here's the cost center. Have a flick around on your phone the night before, have a flick around on your laptop. At least get an idea of what the house is going to be look like and what's, what you're going to be in for. Starts are going to run a lot smoother and it's going to be a lot easier for guys to understand what they're getting themselves into as well.

Yeah, great. Well, Tom, tons of great information there. I'm sure we could talk for hours about this stuff. Well, you certainly could.

That's right, mate.

But you know, there's been heaps of great information about estimating and especially the technology you can use just to make everything more accurate and just keep your projects kind of running on schedule and on price as well. So thanks for coming on the show today. Is there any final advice you'd like to give builders out there about estimating?

I think just the final advice I like to give is that like I said before, you got to really value your own time. And really builders should be really looking at how much time they're spending doing their own grunt work and things that could be handled by somebody else. And just if you value your own time as a builder more, then you're going to see where you're spending more time and where you're actually costing yourself more time. Estimating seems to be one common denominator where lots of builders have too many touch points in that space. So builders should really be looking at that and valuing their time so then they can look at, well, how do I actually streamline my business and make improvements in my business so I can be spending more time doing things that are more valuable to the business?

It's a great message. And for anyone out there that wants to learn more about Vision to estimating or V2E for short. They're an APB Preferred Rewards partner, so I'll include the link on the show notes there. You can get an 8% cash rebate as an APB member on any V2E services, so it's a great service if you're looking to outsource your estimating. But Tom, thanks so much for coming on the show today. Really enjoyed the chat and hopefully we can send a few people across to V2E.

Yeah, beautiful. Thanks. Will appreciate it.

No worries. Also, thanks so much for our listeners wherever you are in the world. It's been fun today. If you like the show, please leave a review on your platform of choice, but otherwise have a great day and speak to you next time.