Tips & Tricks From a Construction Manager | Rayon x Nolt Mathis — Transcript

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1. 0:00my name is james matthysse one of the co-owners  of nol matthysse construction management we're
2. 0:04based here in lancaster pennsylvania we are  a construction management firm focused almost
3. 0:09exclusively on the senior living industry we  renovate existing spaces and build new buildings
4. 0:15that are pretty much only in the the senior  living realm we do get into some projects outside
5. 0:20of senior living but for the most part that's our  market that's what we enjoy our our team has grown
6. 0:25in the last 3 years from two of us to almost 20  of us and uh the the revenue has gone similarly
7. 0:32how would you describe your approach to managing  construction projects our approach is we try to
8. 0:37tailor it to meet our clients needs the nature of  our industry is very fastm moving we are planners
9. 0:43by nature all three of us in the office that are  running jobs are people that like to sit down
10. 0:49draw plans out be very very clear about what's  happening when necessary get into the details with
11. 0:56detailed drawings and be very very communicative  about what's happening um the downside of of
12. 1:03needing to be or keep up with a fast-paced project  is details get lost and so we have good accounting
13. 1:12software to manage that we also have rayon now  that allows us to keep one source of truth for
14. 1:19documenting details and the overall floor plan  that we need to before that would happen maybe
15. 1:27in autocad on somebody's desktop and then maybe  that those folks weren't in the office that week
16. 1:34and those drawings would kind of go into the ether  we would we would you know reconnect with them on
17. 1:40monday or the following week and and try to get  those drawings back and and keep things moving
18. 1:44but now that we do everything inside of rayon one  designer could go off sick or a project manager
19. 1:50might get pulled away to something else and if  it's a simple detail that another pm or or a super
20. 1:55for that matter could handle they'd be able to hop  on rayon and take care of the problem themselves
21. 2:01and communicate hey i've i've updated this file  i just want to let you know it's really nice to
22. 2:07have a single source of truth for our accounting  but it's even nicer to have a single source of
23. 2:12truth for our drawings which is is something we  were lacking before we had rayon a great example
24. 2:17i'm in my truck today be out and maybe forget my  my tablet or my computer in a job site trailer
25. 2:25but i need to go take care of something someone  else might have theirs and allow me to use that
26. 2:29and update it immediately web- based feature is  is huge our accounting software has that and now
27. 2:36we've seen that same value you know rise to the  surface with with rayon as well it's it's a big
28. 2:42deal it's a really big deal what's your typical  process for planning and executing a construction
29. 2:46project our customers are unique because we serve  a retirement community or a building owner and the
30. 2:54projects that we're working on affect residents  similar to homeowners that are moving in so we
31. 3:00kind of have to work in conjunction with them they  have a a homeowner or a resident that's moving
32. 3:05through the system when a unit becomes available  like an apartment we go in immediately and we do
33. 3:13a scan of the unit they're usually 90% uh quality  with a uh you know a liar camera on our phone and
34. 3:23then immediately after that we we take that pdf  file and we lay that into rayon as a background
35. 3:30we draw over top of it we add higher levels  of detail that you wouldn't catch on a scan
36. 3:36like wall thicknesses things that we know are true  insulation locations windows and accurately create
37. 3:43callouts that that help the folks on the ground  understand what's happening in that unit those
38. 3:49drawings are then taken to a resident meeting  where they will review them and see what types
39. 3:55of changes might need to be made any updates to  small details perhaps they want to add a pocket
40. 4:00door somewhere and we update the drawing live in  that meeting with the resident after the meeting
41. 4:07there's a lot of little things that need to happen  updating some finished schedules updating some
42. 4:12accounting pieces and in the interim we're able  to create a set of drawings that's high quality
43. 4:18enough to go out to the field those drawings  make it out to the field at the same time as
44. 4:22all the finish schedules and all the budgets and  all the purchase orders they all go out in one
45. 4:27nice neat packet and i'd love to say that's the  end but there's usually a few hiccups some things
46. 4:32that were overlooked and the really nice thing is  that i can travel to a job site with my computer
47. 4:39with my tablet go onto the job site walk the issue  with my superintendent or foreman understand the
48. 4:47nature of it develop a solution immediately draw  it before i leave the job site publish that to
49. 4:54a pdf text it to them email it to them send it  to the affected subtrades a good example would
50. 5:00be a countertop vendor we recently drew out a  kitchen plan everything made sense but when we
51. 5:06actually looked at the space live after the fact  we realized that there was going to be a crash
52. 5:10between a backsplash and a small countertop and uh  we were able to solve that problem live in person
53. 5:17send that drawing off fix the problem and quite  frankly i probably took it for granted because i
54. 5:21got back to my office later that evening i looked  at the email where all the you know drama and and
55. 5:28frustration about the situation had occurred and  realized just the response with a pdf drawing
56. 5:35answered this whole chain of an email i didn't  need to go into detail and writing it was done
57. 5:41it was solved i think my email was as simple as  here's the solution and sent off the drawing so
58. 5:48even even after the process is broken down like  it usually does in construction that that the
59. 5:54ability to quickly answer things visually and  communicate to our customers and to our vendors
60. 6:01and to our subtrades is a huge deal so that's  usually and hopefully the end of the process
61. 6:08but turning over a unit at the end what's nice  is we usually provide all the job documentation
62. 6:14including the drawings including the changes and  updates that happen during the process all in one
63. 6:20nice neat package and say here's your completed  work completed unit and all of the documentation
64. 6:24that goes with it that's what a normal process  usually looks like for us so one of the things
65. 6:28that we we noticed when we started to use rayon  was that we weren't going back into legacy systems
66. 6:34like autocad or even revit we have subscriptions  active subscriptions for them and in the process
67. 6:41of updating some servers here and updating some  of our computers you know 3 years after starting
68. 6:46i intentionally logged out of autocad with the  intention of checking back in to see have any of
69. 6:52the other users that we pay for log in and time  had passed probably about 2 or 3 months and it
70. 6:58occurred to me that the subscription was coming  up here actually in april so i logged back in to
71. 7:02check and realized that nobody had logged back in  that level of precision that i was afraid wouldn't
72. 7:11be there with like a web-based solution i don't  know why i had anxiety about that or or worry
73. 7:17because it's unnecessary what we found is that  in our projects which are primarily design build
74. 7:23but we do engage with architects we do engage  with designers the level of documentation that
75. 7:27we need is more than met by using rayon and the  expense of number one having multiple softwares
76. 7:34is unnecessary and so we will we will very likely  here in the next few days uh be cancelling our our
77. 7:40autodesk subscriptions because they've just become  unnecessary and redundant they're also uninviting
78. 7:46to go log into and use again i know there's  going to be a tremendous amount of updates i
79. 7:51haven't used it for 3 months so there's going to  be updates when those updates happen my styles
80. 7:56and all the things that i have built for the last  15 years will be outdated and i'll need to update
81. 8:02those again and fix my blocks and my fills um  i'm so used to it but i'm very happy uh to to
82. 8:11get ready to delete it uh it's a little bit of a  little bit of a uh unusual feeling to stop using a
83. 8:18software that's such a staple to the industry but  almost entirely unnecessary at this point for our
84. 8:24level of documentation even on larger projects  shira the the ones where we are engaging with
85. 8:29an architect we found it's faster for us to take  in a pdf or a dxf from the architect upload that
86. 8:38zoom into the area where we need a detail change  make all of those changes inside of rayon and
87. 8:45then send it out from there it's less cumbersome  there isn't as much confusion about which set of
88. 8:52drawings we're on we're drawing outside of the  autocad system they're using so we know what
89. 8:57set we're on and quite frankly it allows them to  also work with us at the same time is drawing or
90. 9:04visually see what we're doing and we find that  if we're in a meeting with an architect or an
91. 9:10interior designer they have a harder time hopping  onto their system making changes and communicating
92. 9:16them quickly than we do as the contractor using  rayon drawing over top of their drawings turn
93. 9:22their transparency down draw over top of it with  big black lines a lot of red notes and we usually
94. 9:28have a solution so yeah it' be interesting to to  delete our autodesk subscription after all these
95. 9:35years so look forward to it which ram features  made you decide to start using it for construction
96. 9:41uh planning and management i think early on we  like the idea of something web- based which i
97. 9:47don't know if you'd call that a feature or not  but it definitely is for us the simplest feature
98. 9:52in rayon that has the biggest impact for us is  the wall tool we have used and we we still do
99. 10:00for some things when we need it but we have used  sketchup revit autocad and all of them are missing
100. 10:08a high quality wall tool i know revit's got its  own version of that but unfortunately it's really
101. 10:14really really bulky i'm just trying to communicate  a 4 and 1/2 in wall with insulation it shouldn't
102. 10:20be much more than two or three clicks to get there  and i remember the first time i used that and
103. 10:26built out a room that was a big deal the second  that's really really valuable for us is something
104. 10:33as simple as dropping doors in the first time i  did it i realized right away all the little micro
105. 10:41moments that i'm going to get back in my day i'm  not going to have to drop a door in uh you know
106. 10:47type in trim drag a line to say what walls to trim  and then go back and fill in the bumps that that
107. 10:55got trimmed so that i have an area that'll still  create a fill instead just hopping onto rayon you
108. 11:03know dropping a door in where the owner wants one  and changing the hand of the door by just moving
109. 11:10to kind of the one of the four corners it's a huge  deal that's a huge timesaver i wish i could see a
110. 11:15statistic of how much time has placing door yeah  how much time has been saved from placing doors
111. 11:21in rayon versus autocad and i think it's probably  enough to justify deleting autocad then the third
112. 11:28feature that's something we're taking to the next  level right now is developing our own template so
113. 11:34that our drawings still look like nol matthysse  drawings so that our drawings have the appearance
114. 11:40and the visual kind of brand identity that our  drawing should look like no matter who draws them
115. 11:45inside of our company i want our customers and  quite frankly for my own sanity i want everything
116. 11:50to look the same it should it should have the same  title blocks it should have the same callout font
117. 11:56the line thicknesses on our wall should be  the same no matter and i think that level of
118. 12:01consistency although some of it might just be from  a little bit of uh ocd that level of consistency
119. 12:07has a much bigger payoff which is that we don't  have to have our vendors trade partners and owners
120. 12:16uh relearn our style or our drawing types when  they receive them it's a oh this is another
121. 12:21math drawing this is this is easy to work with  and and understand so we're going through that
122. 12:26process right now of building out our templates  and trying to standardize how everything looks
123. 12:32uh now that everybody's on it we need to make  sure everybody's finished documents [Music]