From VDC to Innovation: Hamzah Shanbari Revolutionizes ConTech Strategy – Episode 9 | AEC Digital

00:27
Erin Khan
All right. Hi everybody. I’m Erin Khan, your co-host of the SureWorx podcast. And I’m really excited today to bring in Hamzah Jambari to speak to us about his experience. And I’m really looking forward to this conversation because, Hamzah, I’ve heard you speak before. You’re definitely a great thought leader in the space. I always enjoy listening to your content as well as reading about it, which we’ll get to a little bit later. But why don’t you start us off first with an intro to yourself, let us know what got you into construction and construction technology specifically.

01:04
Hamzah Shanbari
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Thank you for having me, Erin and Nandan. And yeah, my name is Hamzah Shanbari, Director of Innovation at Haskell. Been with the company for coming up to eight years now, leading the efforts innovation and kind of like tech, emerging tech and like our mantra and Dysruptek is kind of like a subset of the Haskell company is invest, invent and innovate. So we invest times and resources in evaluating construction tech and then we also invest some capital when it makes sense. And then invent is when we have a problem statement that there is no readily off the shelf solution available for it. And that’s when we go to a developer mode.

01:48
Hamzah Shanbari
And then the last is innovate, which is we have a structured innovation program that kind of we get ideas from internally from within the company and act upon ones that make sense to us. Background? I grew up in Saudi Arabia, went to kind of like King Fahd University. That’s where I got my Bachelor’s in Architectural Engineering and then kind of transitioned to the States. I went to University of Florida. Go Gators. That’s where I got my master’s and PhD and then joined Haskell in 2016 as kind of like BIM VDC coordinator.

02:27
Erin Khan
Wow.

02:28
Hamzah Shanbari
Worked my way out from there.

02:29
Erin Khan
Yeah, yeah. Wow. Architecture, PhD and then VDC coordinator. Amazing. What got you fascinated? I’m genuinely curious about like architecture engineering to begin with, if you go back to some of the roots there.

02:47
Hamzah Shanbari
Oh yeah. So I mean, I did not grow up in a construction related family. Or anything. But, you know, I have. Where I was living, there was a house being built right next to us. And I was just fascinated growing up, like talking about elementary school, coming back from school, like with my backpack, throw it on the floor and just watch the problem solving. That’s really kind of what got me into construction is because I’m just constantly watching for hours at a time, all these guys on a job site that’s trying to figure out how to put this house together. Right. Even though they have the documents and everything, there’s always.

03:26
Hamzah Shanbari
Every time I come back and look at them, there’s a problem and I can see them kind of like, you know, scratching their heads or trying to figure out what to do next. I’m just like fascinated. And that’s kind of what led me through that. I thought I was going to be an architect at some point.

03:39
Erin Khan
Yeah. I was curious to hear that you.

03:41
Hamzah Shanbari
Started an architecture design courses and then decided it’s not for me, it’s great. It’s amazing. I love the architects and interacting with them, but I just did not have. I don’t think I have that artistic aspect of things. So that’s. I went more like the analytics and kind of more concrete route.

04:05
Erin Khan
Yeah. To that point, there’s never adult day on the dub site. For sure. I also relate to that problem solving, like, oh, wow, that’s neat how we all bring it together. So with that, tell us, expand a little bit more. So the first, I guess, foray into construction tech for you sounds like it was as a VDC coordinator. And at least from my experience, I’ve seen that some of those roles are fairly new ish to the industry or departments are still kind of emerging for some of the companies that are still figuring out how to get digitized. Tell us a little bit about that experience and how that role kind of shaped where you are today.

04:47
Hamzah Shanbari
Yeah. So, I mean, again, going back to like master’s degree is when I first got introduced to like Revit and Navisworks and all these different tools. And to me I was like, that kind of like connected all the dots, so to say. Right. Because you don’t want to rely on a 2D drawing to actually build the facility. Right. There’s a lot of things that can go wrong with light table coordination. That was back in the day.

05:14
Erin Khan
Yeah.

05:14
Hamzah Shanbari
But I got excited about just seeing things in 3D and analyzing and doing that clash test and coordinating. It’s just really playing the center piece of all these different stakeholders within a project and saying, here’s what works, and here’s what doesn’t. Priorities. So it was. It was an interesting role, but that’s also what got me into looking at the rest of the construction tech ecosystem.

05:43
Nandan Thakar
Yeah.

05:43
Hamzah Shanbari
Because if you know anything about VDC and BIM, it. It is intense and it takes a long time, you know, trying to do a class test and coordination and the 4D sequencing and all that stuff. It’s a lot of work, and it’s very technical work too, so it’s not like something that anybody can pick up. Right. And I went down and started actually evaluating solutions that would help me. This is how it all started. Like, selfishly.

06:10
Erin Khan
Yeah.

06:11
Hamzah Shanbari
Hamzah just wanted to improve his own, you know, workflow. I wanted to be able to walk out of the office by 5pm and go home to my family.

06:20
Erin Khan
That’s so funny. Yeah.

06:22
Hamzah Shanbari
Yeah. That’s kind of how it all started.

06:24
Erin Khan
Yeah.

06:24
Hamzah Shanbari
And then the more technologies that I kept kind of like, interacting with and testing and implementing, now my teammates in the pdc, all, they’re like, wait a minute, why do you get to use that? And how come you walking out at 5pm when we still have some stuff to do? So that’s kind of like, got me to the next level of enhancing VDC as well.

06:47
Nandan Thakar
That’s the first one, Hamzah. Work Life Construction tech for Work Life Balance.

06:53
Hamzah Shanbari
I like that. Exactly. That’s literally how it all started. It’s just I wanted to get my job done as quickly and as efficiently as possible and be able to go home. And the more I kept trying new things, the more kind of got put in more like a spotlight. It’s like, wait a minute, what else can you do? Is there any other technologies that can enhance other VDC processes? So we started, you know, exploring that and implementing other tech and of course, you know, talking about, like, on a company level. So that’s when Dysruptek was stood up in 2018. Like, well, can you do that for the rest of the company? We have so many other tools and the technologies out there that can help in so many different facets, not just VDC and Ben.

07:39
Erin Khan
And pausing there just for a moment, Hamzah, for audience members who may not know what Dysruptek is, could you give us a few more details on that? Because I think it’s. It’s really great what you guys are doing there.

07:50
Hamzah Shanbari
Absolutely. Thank you, Erin. Dysruptek is a subsidiary of the Haskell Company. So it’s a separate group, still wholly owned and operated by Haskell. So we are still Haskell employees, but we have our own Separate entity llc. And we’re constantly just making investments in the space, evaluating technologies, piloting in a very structured way with end users and getting the feedback and reporting and kind of like presenting it to the operations team and saying here’s what tools we think you need to implement. And we also kind of have, as I mentioned earlier, a structure innovation program where we get ideas from across the organization.

08:32
Hamzah Shanbari
And actually this is why I’m not at Autodesk University this week because next week we have big pitch event which is our innovation kind of showcase where we select the top five ideas from across the company and have them pitch in front of the executives in a shark tank.

08:51
Erin Khan
Shark tank style. Yeah. Nothing like it to kind of get the best ideas out there.

08:57
Hamzah Shanbari
Absolutely.

08:58
Erin Khan
That’s fantastic.

08:59
Nandan Thakar
I want to pick up on the state of construction tech industry. So I’ve got a two part question. Given your time in the industry, where is construction take as a, you know, ecosystem at in terms of, you know, you have your large players who done 10, 15 years and they’ve sort of become big and you got plethora of startups trying to make it and then there are scale ups there. So it’ll be good to get because you know, not only you are a sort of practice lead, but you also have a VC board in you. So it’ll be good to get a view of where do you think the industry is at in terms of what’s coming on the table. And then the second part question is where do you think the customers are at in terms of general contracting?

09:50
Nandan Thakar
Because you know, there’s one thing about throwing new tools and AI automation at them and second is the change management and the pressures of construction industry. So yeah, sorry, broad question, but I just want to get a 10,000ft snapshot of what you think where we are at.

10:08
Hamzah Shanbari
Yeah, I mean, I think we are at the precipice at a cusp of like. Because we’re seeing this explosion, right? There’s tons and tons of construction technology startups. Yes, there is the big players. And you’re talking about Autodesk, you’re talking about Procore, Hexagon, the big players, right? Trimble, they’re still here, they exist, they acquire some of these startups also. But there’s still so many startups that are coming on in our purview. It’s like, it’s just like peripheral sometimes I’m like, oh wait, what is that? And on a weekly basis we’re discovering new tech startups and it’s exciting to see that because the problem statements are immense. There are so many different problem statements that we can pick and choose and try to find a specific point solution that helps makes it better.

11:02
Hamzah Shanbari
And it’s only going, we think, I think it’s only going to continue to increase, at least for the time being until we get to some sort of consolidation where some companies are going to either emerge or get acquired. And that’s kind of going to, you know, bring that number down a little bit. But I don’t, I see it like still skyrocketing and it’s exciting to see that, but it’s also overwhelming.

11:30
Nandan Thakar
Yeah, yeah.

11:31
Hamzah Shanbari
To say the least. Right. Because when you’re in construction and you have a problem statement that you want to solve for, but then you look at the market and there’s like 17 solutions that does the same thing, like how do you pick which is the best one for your own company? Right. And that’s kind of like the challenge here.

11:48
Erin Khan
Yeah, Overwhelming is a good way to put it, I think, especially from the field too. I’ve seen the end users say there’s too much tech, like please stop, but innovation’s not going to stop that. Like we have to continue the improvement cycle. Right. So 100%.

12:07
Nandan Thakar
And I think the solution is getting more nuanced. Right. So you have sort of general solutions and as the new companies come in, a lot of them are sort of AI native, A lot of them are sort of, you know, five clicks, go down to two clicks and all that matter when you’re gonna trigger that workflow 2,000 times. Right. Yeah, so I think disrupt, creative destruction is the way the industry works and that’s great. What do you, what do you feel about where the customer is at?

12:43
Hamzah Shanbari
Hamzah, the customer in terms of like an owner perspective or us as like an end user?

12:50
Nandan Thakar
I would say both. So just in terms of where they are at in terms of adoption of these things. Right. So you can have a lot of solutions out there, but their appetite to select something, is it still very piecemeal in terms of its solution for that and a solution for this? And before you know, you’ve got seven different solutions and yeah, just in terms of, is it sort of piecemeal digitization or is there some holistic, are they having more top down, let’s go digital first mindset. So yeah, if you can cover that.

13:32
Hamzah Shanbari
From what I’ve seen most of our kind of like Clients and the owner side, they’re very receptive to the use of technologies on the job site. I don’t think I’ve ever come across an owner that says, no, I don’t want you to use this technology. Right. But we’ve seen actually the flip side of that where owners say, I need you to use this specific solution in my project, which is different. Right. But we’re seeing that awareness that is coming from the owner side. So the owner now is becoming more and more educated on what technologies are out there. That helps them mitigate a lot of the risks associated with construction projects and kind of like handing them down to the GC saying, I need you to use this.

14:17
Hamzah Shanbari
And our project managers, superintendents are amazing, but they usually love the route or the path of least resistance, which is like, I know the devil that I’m working with. Even though it’s not perfect the way that I’ve been doing it for the past however many years, I know how it works, I know the limitations. I’m just going to continue to do that until somebody comes like an owner and says, no, I need you to use this because it’s going to, you know, decrease the level of risk for me and you. It’s going to increase profitability for you, probably. It’s going to accelerate schedule, whatever it is. And the project manager superintendent is. They don’t have a pushback at that point. Right. Especially when it’s coming from the owner. They’ll be like, all right, let’s do that.

15:05
Nandan Thakar
Yeah. And what are you seeing in terms of AI native solutions? So that’s. It’s an overly used word these days, but how real is that in construction?

15:17
Hamzah Shanbari
I’m going to, I’m going to flip that question back on you. Like, what is an AI native solution?

15:23
Nandan Thakar
So something that you can, a solution that presents, you know, workflow automation solution that is not overly heavy on admin setup for new project solution that is dynamic in terms of, you know, you don’t have fixed dashboards, but dashboards can be queried. So you can put a chatbot and say, hey, can I have all the defects from Project X between these three months? And it just produces the dashboard, so whatever label you put on it. But, you know, no fixed dashboards, dynamic workflows, easy to use, crispy ui, essentially everything that saves time and you’re able to dig through nuggets.

16:10
Erin Khan
Yeah, there was Ultraman here. There’s a good analogy I heard once, like where AI native is. Where the AI is actually the meat and potatoes of the solution versus where you have a solution that maybe didn’t start out with any AI, but now they’re sprinkling on condiments or toppings to add some AI flavoring.

16:33
Nandan Thakar
Yeah, that’s.

16:34
Erin Khan
I had remembered that. So that might be relatable maybe.

16:38
Hamzah Shanbari
Yeah, that’s great. But that’s kind of why I mentioned I kind of like flipped the question is because to me, like, as we’ve seen in the past year and a half, maybe two years, the overuse of AI, Right. It’s like everybody’s saying, yes, we have AI. And to your point, Erin, like, it’s just probably just a sprinkle of salt on top, just saying, yeah, we got, we got the thing. Yeah. But the way that we’re seeing, like even a lot of the tools that we’re using today that are quote, unquote, AI, you can’t really treat anything as, you know, AI is not its own entity. You can’t just say, I’m going to use AI to do X. It’s a layer of, as you said, automation that helps me automate different things. But there’s still a core of what the solution does, right?

17:28
Erin Khan
Yeah.

17:28
Hamzah Shanbari
And that’s kind of, to me, like what I’m trying to differentiate between somebody who just kind of like added an AI layer that, yes, we have the thing that solves for the problem, and here’s an AI chat bot that you can just chat with it on general aspects. Well, that’s not going to help, right. If it’s not really pushing and automating something or getting me faster results. And that’s literally kind of what we’re seeing is like it’s game from point A to point B, much faster. Whether it’s finding information, whether it’s spinning out words or like articles, paragraphs, whatever it is. That’s really kind of where we’re seeing a lot of the different interactions with that AI layer. But it’s literally becoming embedded.

18:18
Hamzah Shanbari
It’s like infused in a lot of these different solutions rather than it being its own entity, so to say.

18:25
Nandan Thakar
Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, that’s correct. Good.

18:29
Erin Khan
Following up on that topic, what are some best practices you would say your team has found with looking at these different solutions, especially in light of AI and finding the right matches for the problems that you’re prioritizing looking at?

18:48
Hamzah Shanbari
That’s a great question.

18:50
Erin Khan
Yeah.

18:50
Hamzah Shanbari
Because you know the story, right? It’s like we first started chasing the next shiny object. Yeah, that solution looks great. Let’s implement it, let’s see how it works. Right? But we have since changed their approach where we literally, I sit down on at least three demo calls a week of all these different new solutions that I haven’t seen before. And it’s all trying to understand what the value prop for each solution is, right. And we log it out in our kind of like what I call reverse CRM, but it’s a CRM that tracks all these different solutions providers and what the problem statement is, what the value prop is and having access to it.

19:37
Hamzah Shanbari
And the way that we’re approaching this is like we’re not trying to push that on potential end users and saying, here’s what I need you to use is we’re kind of like passively advertising and talking about it internally until we get somebody who is excited about solving that specific problem statement. And we’re like, here you go. We have seven different options to choose from. And we sit down again on demo calls and kind of introduce them to the solution, select one or two to pilot and then kind of go from.

20:07
Erin Khan
There and getting someone who’s excited. So that phrase there excited me because I always go back to, well, it’s all about the people, because you can have the coolest thing, but if nobody’s psyched about it’s not going to go too far. Could you expand a little bit more on how you find those people or know they’re excited in the first place? Or how do you match up, you know, the enthusiasm with the tech?

20:33
Hamzah Shanbari
Yes, that’s the U and builders, which is U stands for users. Builders is the framework that I have in the book Paperless Filter.

20:43
Erin Khan
There’s more here. Yeah.

20:46
Hamzah Shanbari
And the idea here is that I don’t want to bring a technology to an end user and say, what do you think about this? Right. I want them to come to me or even go to the web to Google and say, I have this problem statement, what solutions are out there? But if they come to me, they’ll find the solution much faster. I’m just saying, to me, that indicates that they’re excited about solving it because they are seeking a solution. They’re actively trying to find a technology to help solve for it. Sometimes technology isn’t necessarily the solution, sometimes isn’t like necessarily a technology. It’s more like a process or an approach or whatever it is. But they’re actively trying to solve a problem.

21:37
Hamzah Shanbari
Solving, to me that indicates that excitement because as soon as you start showing them the solutions, they’re like, yes, that’s What I’ve been searching for this time.

21:48
Erin Khan
Fantastic. Let’s see. So I want to hear maybe a little bit more. I know you kind of mentioned it very briefly there in the book. Could you tell us a little bit about some of the work that you’ve been doing?

22:03
Hamzah Shanbari
Yes. So kind of going back to my selfish desire to improve and then improving VDC and then improving Haskell. So the next step for me is like me trying to share a lot of these experiences with the broader industry for the betterment of the industry. That’s kind of the mantra there. And that’s what drove me to write all of these things that I’ve learned in the past eight years and compile them all in one book. It’s called Paperless Builders, the why, what and how of construction technology. It has three different parts in the book. Of course, the part one starts with why, like why do we need technology? So it starts explaining the problem statements in the industry, starting with safety and then communication, progress tracking and ending with risk.

22:49
Hamzah Shanbari
And then we talk about the second part is what technology types are out there that can help solve for those problem statements. And I have six different categories in the book that explains without mentioning any specific solution providers by name. And that’s all explained in the book why I don’t mention that I don’t want it to become office salesy. And also things change quickly.

23:11
Erin Khan
Things change so quickly, very fast, especially.

23:15
Hamzah Shanbari
In startups, the brands, the acquisitions, the mergers. It’s like there’s no way to keep up with it. The third part of the book is the most exciting to me at least, which is how the. How do you evaluate technologies and implement them to have a more profitable and fun organization to work for. And the framework that I came up with is called Builders, which each letter stands for different aspects of the entire digital transfer information kind of roadmap, which.

23:45
Erin Khan
I love a good acronym.

23:48
Hamzah Shanbari
B is benchmarks. So you have to understand your processes, you have to understand the bottlenecks and where you need to implement some of those solutions. And then U is for users and that’s the people. And there is like a big cycle here between the benchmarking and the users, because it’s all happening concurrently. Even after you find a solution, you still need to still back to the users, back to the benchmark 100% until you find the right users, the right project, the right technology. And that’s when you go to the I, which is implementation plan. So here you want to outline what are we doing? Why are we doing it, what does success look like? And then you move into L, which is learnings. You have to teach the people how to use the technology before they can use it.

24:30
Hamzah Shanbari
The D is one of the most important parts, which is the driver. You need somebody that is a champion, that is a super user that can actually take that implementation to the next step. And then E is evaluation, continuing to get that feedback. And R is reporting, compiling all that stuff into one report. And then S is in parentheses because it’s optional, which stands for scaling.

24:54
Erin Khan
Fantastic. I’m like, oh, that is super solid. And I seriously do love the acronym. So, yeah, we have a lot in the industry, but that’s a good one to.

25:07
Nandan Thakar
Yeah, Remember, especially quite holistic in its innovation. Yeah. The whole life cycle of, you know, the need, either it’s created or it’s, you know, distilled.

25:20
Hamzah Shanbari
Yeah.

25:21
Nandan Thakar
Finding the solution and then driving it through change management and good adoption practices. The S scaling is also good because you don’t want one solution to have a pretty good life with one project. And it’s not repeatable across other projects and other geographers.

25:38
Hamzah Shanbari
This is 100%. But s again is in parentheses in my framework because a lot of the implementations and the pilots that we do not end up going to scale. Right. Because the reporting found that one, it either didn’t provide the value prop that were hoping for or it’s like it didn’t work. Whatever happened that got us to either inconclusive or failed results. You can take it to scaling, but you just got to keep harping on it and finding different solutions.

26:11
Nandan Thakar
I do want to pick one of those. Well, the strain across a couple of those acronym letters. So what are you proposing in terms of good communication between people in the back office and the frontline staff building things in terms of the feedback, the evaluation. Because I’ve seen a lot of companies, either people on the site feel solutions been pushed to them and not enough feedback’s going through, or someone with a credit card pick a SaaS solution on site and the shadow, it sort of overwhelms, the head office is not aware. So how do you make sure that there is good quality cohesion between the two groups? I mean, so that they dovetail for a great outcome?

27:05
Hamzah Shanbari
Yeah, that’s the E in builders, which is evaluation. And I mentioned there that this has to be from day zero. Really not even day one is you have to constantly be in contact with the end users, seeing the struggles, the wins and documenting all of that. If you don’t document any of it’s really going to dissipate and kind of disappear. And just keeping track of all pilots is challenging. Another way that I found that works is having good relationships with the technology providers, especially the sales team. Because what happens is when somebody kind of broke, goes in rogue and tries to implement something, they’ll come back and tell me because they want the bigger pie. Right. They want more projects, they want the next step of it.

28:00
Hamzah Shanbari
They don’t want to just work with the project manager or assistant project manager that started working on that. So having that relationship also will help you stay in visibility of what’s going on in the rest of the organization.

28:12
Nandan Thakar
Yes. Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. Thank you.

28:15
Hamzah Shanbari
Yeah.

28:16
Nandan Thakar
And. Yeah. What are the things you are most excited about as we move forward into, you know, like, if we are 5, 6 out of 10 in terms of digitization and the vision you’ve laid out in the book, what. What are the next logical steps and what are you most excited about?

28:34
Hamzah Shanbari
The most exciting thing for me is I cannot wait for the day that we’re going to have zero RFIs. I am. I get so excited about that. I have my sticker up here. Yeah, I have to show you my sticker. This is from Jeff.

28:50
Erin Khan
No RFIs. I love it.

28:55
Hamzah Shanbari
There is a different type of RFIs, which is like existing conditions that we didn’t know about, that we need to change something, that’s fine. Or we need to suggest a different material that may be more local or works better. That’s different. RFI is what I’m referring to is this doesn’t make sense. The design doesn’t make sense. Something’s wrong or something is missing. And I think that should be a thing of the past. And especially with generative design and the new AI tools and the design phase are really going to take that off the table because you’re not supposed to send anything to construction issue if it’s not complete, if it’s not reviewed, if it doesn’t have all the information it needs to be built.

29:39
Erin Khan
Yeah, yeah, can that.

29:42
Nandan Thakar
That’s the Holy Grail, isn’t it?

29:43
Erin Khan
Yeah. I’m like, dream big. Don’t RFI’s. Although there are some projects out there supposedly that claim, hey, we’ve. We’ve only had maybe like just a handful of RFIs. Or maybe some will even boldly state we’ve had zero RFIs. So it’s. It’s not a pipe dream. Right? We can, we can do this. It’s like, it’s like right there at our fingertips.

30:06
Nandan Thakar
Yeah, I think the key part that Hamzah mentioned, which would be my strong observation too, is start from day zero, if not earlier. Because if you are sort of building the plane as it’s flying, it’s almost too late and you’re going to be reactive. So you got to be deliberate, you’ve got to plan up front and then you’ve got to track it. You have to have that feedback loop and.

30:30
Hamzah Shanbari
Yeah, absolutely.

30:31
Nandan Thakar
Right. So I look forward to Ready?

30:36
Erin Khan
Yeah, I have I guess to kind of wrap it up. Hamzah, let’s say for teams out there that are maybe a little bit earlier on their innovation journey and they’re, you know, looking for ways to get started, maybe they don’t have a super huge team. Maybe it’s just one BDC person saying, hey, how can I go home on time? What are your like top three tips or you know, things to take away that are easily applicable to promoting innovative practices and finding good solutions that solve real problems for the field.

31:13
Hamzah Shanbari
Yeah. Chapter one of the book, which is ironically is change is hard.

31:21
Erin Khan
Yes.

31:22
Hamzah Shanbari
Nothing’s going to happen overnight.

31:24
Erin Khan
True words.

31:24
Hamzah Shanbari
That’s number four. It takes time and it takes effort. I’d say focus on the problem statement and the end users and the technology will follow. Like there’s tons of technologies out there. Don’t focus on what the tech is and where does it fit. Right. Look at the problem statements, understand the users, talk to them, see what their pain point is. If three people are telling you this is a pain point, here you go, you found something to solve for and now you go look for the solution. Right. And that’s something that I’ve done in my past year. It’s here, right? When I first started here, that’s how I worked. It’s like wait a minute, that’s shiny. The other company, our competitor is using this. I need to look at it but it’s not a scalable approach. Right.

32:14
Hamzah Shanbari
You want to focus on people, process, then technology.

32:21
Nandan Thakar
It’ll be good to get your thoughts given. You hear a couple of pitches a week and couple of hundred in a year. Some common themes of what you are seeing, what successful the inklings of a successful startup into a scale up and any advice you have for builders who are sort of into MVP and just have their couple of foundation customers. Conditions for success in startup world.

32:50
Hamzah Shanbari
Yeah, I start usually like when I talk to a technology provider the first time salespeople hate me. It’s okay, I don’t care. Ask them three questions. One, what is this specific problem statement that your technology is solving for. If they can’t articulate that in one or two sentences, if they’re just rambling on and on about what the problem statement is, that means they don’t fully understand it. And I kind of immediately raised a red flag there. Question two is like, who’s your competitors? They hate that question. But if they don’t answer it’s one of two things, right? It’s like, one, they don’t know their competition, which is problematic. Two, they are lying to me and they’re telling me I don’t have any competition, which I don’t like. Or maybe.

33:42
Hamzah Shanbari
So maybe in the, you know, 1% of times out there that they are the only available solution for that problem. Well, maybe the problem doesn’t need a solution, right? If there’s no competitors. Or maybe you’re barking up the wrong tree is all I’m saying. Or you’re way ahead of your time. Either way, it’s still early. Right. The last question is, sometimes we don’t get to. Is like, what differentiates you from your competition? And to me, that is the keys to success. Any. Any technology that we’ve scaled within Haskell is having that differentiator of, you know, being people oriented, driven, having that customer success team that constantly work with you before you sign the dotted line.

34:26
Hamzah Shanbari
There’s a big difference here between, like, oh, yeah, let me close the sale and then I’ll introduce you to the customer success team, or the customer success team is actually part of the sales cycle. And we’ve seen that when you include customer success team early on, your expectations are aligned with everything that’s going to be implemented. Everything is just going to go smoother. You’re going to have a smoother transition from sales to implementation. So there’s a little bit there that you can kind of like unpack and take a look at.

34:57
Nandan Thakar
Yeah. Yeah. Good. All right. Thanks for that.

35:01
Erin Khan
Yeah. Solid tips and taking some notes on the side as well, because this is some good stuff.

35:06
Hamzah Shanbari
And that’s all mentioned in the book. You don’t even have to take notes. Just go read it.

35:10
Erin Khan
True, true. I do.

35:14
Nandan Thakar
Sorry. And when’s the book going to be out, Hansa? Is it out already?

35:17
Hamzah Shanbari
The book is available. The release was September 18th, so it’s almost a month now. The book is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, wherever you get your.

35:26
Nandan Thakar
Can you. Can you show us the COVID Have you got one handy around you?

35:29
Hamzah Shanbari
Yeah, here you go. It’s Paperless Builders.

35:32
Nandan Thakar
Excellent construction.

35:33
Hamzah Shanbari
Yellow Construction. Yellow. Yeah. The Y1 half construction technology, it’s not even that big. So you can read it in two settings.

35:41
Nandan Thakar
You can squeeze that through it on a weekend or a long plane flight.

35:45
Hamzah Shanbari
Yeah.

35:46
Nandan Thakar
Excellent. Very good.

35:49
Hamzah Shanbari
I try to make it an easy read too. So there’s tons of stories in there about what worked, what didn’t. There’s a little bit of humor there here and there. So it’s easy to kind of follow along, hopefully.

35:59
Nandan Thakar
And the intended audience for that is anywhere from an exec through to a site manager. You covered the spectrum there in terms of users.

36:07
Hamzah Shanbari
Yeah, absolutely. But the idea is like, especially when you get to part three, that’s like speaking to somebody who is going to be implementing kind of the digital transformation journey. Yeah.

36:19
Erin Khan
Or change makers.

36:20
Nandan Thakar
I look forward to reading that.

36:22
Hamzah Shanbari
Yeah.

36:23
Nandan Thakar
Over to you, Erin.

36:24
Erin Khan
As a last, I guess, prompt for Hamzah, why be a digital builder? I mean, you know, we’ve had quite the journey in AEC in general. A lot of contractors, however, and firms in general are kind of still stuck in their transformation journey. So do you know, why be digital? Why actually go through all this effort to kind of get on this innovation cycle?

36:54
Hamzah Shanbari
Absolutely. It all goes back to the people that last thought. Yeah, it all goes back to the people. You want to ensure that the people in your company are productive, are excited, are happy. If they are not, then you don’t have a profitable company, at least not in the long run and safe as well. So it’s really focused on kind of digitization. It’s getting rid of mundane, dull, dangerous tasks and embracing the new generation of technologies, the new generation of how to do things, how to build things in a better way, an overall better way.

37:40
Erin Khan
Fantastic. Love it. So I think that was a fantastic summary. I definitely owe you at least a plane ride of reading, getting my nose into the book. Really looking forward to seeing some more of those details and thank you for your time. Mamza, anything else you want to add for closing comments?

38:01
Nandan Thakar
Just tell everyone where they can find you. I mean, LinkedIn would be logical, but yeah, you do a number of things. So what’s the best way to keep in touch with your blogs and your podcasts?

38:12
Hamzah Shanbari
I’m a big LinkedIn guy, so if you follow me on LinkedIn, Hamzah Shanbari, you’ll hear everything new from me.

38:19
Nandan Thakar
Yeah. Right.

38:20
Erin Khan
Awesome.

38:20
Nandan Thakar
Good to have you.

38:21
Erin Khan
Thanks, Hamzah.

38:22
Hamzah Shanbari
Thank you. Thank you so much for hosting me.

38:24
Erin Khan
Thanks for our listeners. We’re excited to bring you to the leading edge of innovation in construction over the course of this show, we will be hosting leaders from the industry as they share their experience and insight. Finally, if you’re interested in being a guest on the SureWorx podcast, don’t be shy. Please send us an email at podcast@sureworx.io, that’s podcast@sureworx.io to connect with us. Thanks again, and be sure to tune in for our next episode. I’m Erin Khan, and this is the SureWorx Podcast.