From Luggage to CA Logs: AIA Aspire 2024 Recap

In this episode, Matt Brennan shares his experiences from the AIA Aspire 2024 conference held in Asheville, North Carolina. He discusses the beautiful landscapes he explored, highlights from keynote speakers like Erin Brockovich, and the importance of sustainability in architecture. The conversation also delves into the role of AI in the industry, networking opportunities, and the significance of maintaining proper construction administration logs. Matt concludes with a personal travel story emphasizing the need for organized data management in construction projects.

Takeaways

• AIA Aspire 2024 was a fantastic conference with great insights.
• Exploring Asheville offered a mix of nature and culture.
• Erin Brockovich emphasized the importance of sustainability in architecture.
• AI tools are becoming essential in the architecture field.
• Networking and mentorship are crucial for professional growth.
• Travel experiences can teach valuable lessons about organization.
• Construction administration logs are vital for project management.
• Using technology can streamline construction administration processes.
• It's important to review and improve your data management systems.
• Proactive communication with contractors can enhance project efficiency.

Chapters
00:00 - Introduction and Overview of AIA Aspire 2024
03:03 - Exploring Asheville: Nature and Culture
06:09 - Keynote Highlights: Erin Brockovich and Sustainability
08:55 - AI in Architecture: Tools and Applications
12:10 - Networking and Mentorship at the Conference
15:00 - Travel Troubles: Lessons from the Airport
18:50 - The Importance of Construction Administration Logs
27:14 - Conclusion: Streamlining CA Processes

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Transcript

0:00

Have you ever lost your luggage? Well, I've got a story for you and also a recap of AIA Aspire 2024 in beautiful Asheville, North Carolina. So stick around.(upbeat music) Hi, I'm Matt Brennan and welcome to What the RFI, the podcast that talks about construction administration from the lens and perspective of an architect and a project coordinator. So let's begin. So last week I had the privilege of attending AIA Aspire 2024. This was located in Asheville, North Carolina, beautiful city. And they actually do this event every year. It's always kind of middle of September. They have already released the dates for next conference. And again, the September 15th to the 17th in 2025. So if you've never been, you never heard about it, definitely check it out in amazing conference. And we're going to go into why it was such a great conference. So let's talk about the event itself. So I arrived a day early and I really wanted to explore because there's a ton of amazing places to go hike and check out a lot of movies were filmed in some of these locations. And I just wanted to check it out. So I rented a sporty car based off enterprise's website, but in the end I changed it to a Jeep because I didn't know if I was going to hit any rough terrain. At the end of the day, all my hikes were actually accessible by the road. So I think that sporty car would have been a really cool approach. Next time for now we had the Jeep and it was still fun. So I just, yeah, just for fun. Let me just kind of go over a couple of things I did. Cause if you're ever in the, in the area of Asheville and you want to check out some things like I went hiking, I went to DuPont State Park, Triple Falls. This is where the hunger games was filmed. The last of Mohicans was filmed as well. Just great hikes, amazing parts of it. One thing I didn't realize until I got there is that they have poisonous snakes. Me living in BC, we don't have snakes. What we do, we have garden snakes, but they're harmless. There they have copperheads and they got a couple of rattles and sure enough on my hike, I did see one. I came in contact with one. Thankfully we kept our distance. We had a mutual agreement that we weren't going to bother each other and he didn't bite me and I didn't have to go to hospital. So hooray for that, you know, life's goals. Okay. Following that hike, I went up to Looking Glass, checked it out. I didn't do the full hike just because of time, but I definitely took the cheater way down the Blue Ridge Parkway Highway, which is incredible. You can go through this, you know, basically the ridge of the whole mountains in North Carolina there. And you can see it. So many beautiful views there. Eventually I made my way up to Grandfather Mountain State Park and I climbed a bunch of the mountain, the rocks, they kind of these three different tiers and overseeing these rocks, just beautiful, incredible, great photography moments. And too, I just watched the sunset and just enjoyed it. What a beautiful place. And comparing North Carolina to BC, it has some similarities because of again, the rich green forest and everything, the hikes, you know, the mountain ranges, but it just, it's layered different versus in BC, we see this beautiful mountain, but we don't see all the other stuff behind it. North Carolina, you kind of see layers and layers and layers. So incredible. If you're ever out there, definitely check it out. You know, you won't regret it. And there's just thousands and thousands of hikes along the Blue Ridge Parkway. So check it out. Amazing place. Let's talk about downtown Asheville. Definitely a cool city, you know, a lot of history there, lots of arts, the, you know, there's all great restaurants. There's no chains, which is nice. You know, it's all individually run in that sense. And everyone takes great pride into what they're making for you and a variety of food and just very creative. Every meal was fantastic down there. Breakfast morning. Yeah, I guess that's the same, eh? Breakfast morning at lunch and dinner. Okay. Everything's filled with local artists, right? A lot of shops are local art or, you know, pottery from local people that are providing it. So again, you want something unique, one of a kind, again, a great place to find it there and music everywhere. Every night, you know, there's music going on. My first night there after getting back from all the hikes, I walked, went for a walk downtown and there was kind of a central plaza there. It was kind of like an amphitheater style. And sure enough, there was a big drum off and what a cool thing there was a spare drum. I joined in and it was epic. Just this surreal moment of like 30 people coming together. Incredible. And we all finished on an amazing beat, cheering, clapping at the end. Yeah, that's going to be definitely my moment in Nashville, along with many other moments. So Aspire, we kicked it off on Sunday and it started with, there was a bunch of tours and of course one of the tours I went on was the Catawaba Falls. Might not be saying it right, but a very cool thing. They closed the park down for a few years to build this massive staircase. Cause people were climbing at the falls and they were getting trouble and it just wasn't a good thing. So they figured they had a, the state took action. They built this amazing staircase platform, bringing it up. And now it's all walkable and you can see the falls from every single angle. All credible views as you're going up to the falls. You know, I think it's about a five mile hike, you know, round trip in that sense. And you know, at the top of the falls, you know, not only you got all these incredible views and all falls hitting, tearing all down different levels, but there was a nice little swimming pool. And of course I couldn't resist. I was hot and sweaty and I wanted to jump in and that's exactly what it stripped down, went in there. I was a little worried about those snakes again, but you know, couldn't see below the water, but it was all good. It was fine, but it was great. I survived as well. And we got back and we had the opening keynote and the headliner for the event was Erin Brockovich. So she shared off her story. It was a great way to kind of start off the kickoff week. Very inspiring the challenges in her career. If you've seen the movie, she definitely made a lot of references. She told her stories, how the movie even became about it and her bets against Julia Roberts that wouldn't be playing. And she had a bet with her colleague and it was good fun. But you know, the ultimate message that came from it was that her challenge to us as architect designers, interior designers is to lead the way with right sustainability materials, right? And again, her battle with pipes and the, you know, the bad water and PFAS and all those chemicals was to basically spec the right products. Don't cheap out. Don't do that. Do your research and that inspiration thing. And you know, I have had some conversations with my colleagues and friends after the event and we definitely have a good conversation, but it is a, it's a triad. You need the businesses to do the thing. You need the government to do the thing. And then you need the developers. And if we all work together as a whole, we can definitely make a good future and into it, right? But if, if one player is not pulling their weight, it makes it much more challenging and that, and that's the same thing. Like when we talk about bike, bike stalls again, you need all three parties to play a role in order to really make a difference. So that's kind of was, you know, she kind of went on, but a lot of excitement or some people are really excited to see her. It was, it was awesome to see. So we wrapped it up, wrapped up the evening and then Monday hit and that was a full blown day of sessions, right? That was just nonstop, got up, had her breakfast. And we had our first Monday morning keynote and it was all by about AI and it was presented by Beth Zeissens and really good. She knows her AI. She knows all the apps and she was given great demonstrations and even doing stuff with taking a word document, write me a blog post, taking that into a PowerPoint presentation, just, you know, great tools for it. And then of course we did a round table later with her and just seeing the take on others. So it was, it was pretty cool in that sense. Okay. Following that the, you know, I went to a mentorship talk and it was great again, just kind of hearing how certain architectural groups are setting up, you know, weekly, monthly little groups of just mentorship and just kind of what can we learn from each other? And then, and what a great tool. And again, I would admire to have a chat with a couple of the speakers afterwards and just congratulate them and just encourage to keep going. Cause I think that's how it is. And that's again, why we are doing this podcast to basically just give another sense of mentorship. Cause again, not a lot of people talk about CA. I discovered that at this conference yet again. Okay. The one thing about the aspire event, which really was slick is that we went from building to building. And I think that was really cool rather than being one central boring conference hall. We went to all these are, you know, local historic buildings one moment or in a theater. And the next thing we're in a smaller theater and next thing we're in a kind of like old brewery or something. Just, it just, what an incredible experience. We did talk about, there was another one about AI from start to finish role. The design stages right up to CA. And that was presented by Akil Hamath. Again, if you take a look at his website, incredible. He's actually developing a bunch of stuff. He's got his own podcast as well. And we talked after the first keynote, introduce each other. So I'm sure we'll be keep talking afterwards and just lots to share again, both of us are focused on the AI market and how to kind of capture it and just how to make our lives better. So yeah, great, great presentation. I'm sure it will be a future podcast and all the, the topics alone, but a few things that came up that interests me. And again, I wanted to share on this podcast was some of the applications out there that are in the CA world that are using AI. And one of them is open space and it's a virtual job site where basically the guy can put a hard hat on with a camera, walk around the site, it all gets recorded and then you can basically generate your field reports. I'm skeptical. I don't know. At the end of the day, you got to have the intelligence to do it. And that's kind of the general conversation about AI, but definitely something to check out and see if there might be a value for it and just a new way of doing it. So I'm going to look in more detail of it and, you know, I'll again do probably a future one of down the road of it. And yeah, and then there was a couple other ones that we talked about. One for toggle AI was for estimating. Very cool. I think I might do QS quantity surveying on the side because this app does it for you. It's incredible. Basically upload your plans. It does all your takeoffs. Again, something I definitely wanted to explore a little bit more in depth, I think it's, it looks like a really, really cool product in that sense. Okay. So amongst the AI tools that were talked about at this conference, again, one thing that we're doing at part three is we're actually using AI to review the specs and review the shop drawings in real time. And it's pretty slick. Like getting doesn't cover every little detail, but it covers the most important things such as manufacturers and testing colors, you name it. And along with some great recommendations, like do I need a mock-up or samples from the contractor? So just another way how AI is helping the construction administration. Okay. And kind of wrapping up a couple of this, the other sessions I went to a speaking, how to kind of be a better speaker talk, really good. We did some amazing exercises, again, great networking tool for it. And one book recommendation that came from it was psyched up how the science of mental preparation can help you succeed by Daniel McGinn. I picked it up. I picked up the audio book because all the travel I was doing and I thought, why not? Let's give it a read. And so far so good, you know, I'll let you know after I finish it. And then one of the things that I took part and kind of the reason why we went and we kind of did a lunch speed dating thing where I did, you know, again, for my career working for part three, I we'd kind of talked about it. It was good. We made some good connections, but what was what I found really cool and what it was, and what we did later was a dinner bites and eats event. And at this event we were, we stayed, we stayed put at one table and there was about 15 tables. And you know, every 15 minutes we rotated and we had a new table and, and of course a new drink would come. So our, when we started, we were really sharp. And at the end, we were kind of more laid back and loose and it was, it was fine. But what we brought to that table and to the groups that attended that little quick little session is we positioned ourselves as leaders in the CA industry, what we're seeing, cause we've talked from architect to architect to architect and seeing how they're doing CA and just kind of doing our research. And we found there was kind of three levels. It was like your lag lids and then kind of your, your middle ground and then like the followers and you got leaders and, and we, you know, we wanted to kind of gauge where everyone was at and everyone's kind of in the middle. There was, you know, everyone in terms of the doing the CA, they're still stuck in the old ways of just getting it, maybe tracking with it with their own logs, if anything, that some are kind of putting the pro core level and you know, then there's a, you know, kind of where you're using some kind of automation tool to really streamline your CA. So we kind of talked about that. We heard them, we joked around the fact that no one makes money in CA. And it was just really some really good, rich conversations. Even one person talked about shop drawings being brought out in, in boxes and shipped to review and they were really dating themselves. But it was, it was fun to see just hearing the, the stories that related to that. And this kind of ties in just for a future little update. I will be speaking at A4LE in the A4LE and the interior group. So I'll be going up to Clona and near the end of October. And my topic is, you know, construction administration, where have we been and where we're going. And then I'll kind of cover some of these deep conversations and details. So if you're in that area, check it out and you're part of the A4LE group, join me. So wrapping up of the event, we did our, you know, it was tons of networking, made a lot of great friends, friends, colleagues, you know, just new connections as normal. And you know, of course, that always leads to later night drinks. And I even went for an AK run with an individual and we had a, what a blast. We had a great time. It was pouring rain, but it didn't matter. Great conversation and that's what matters. And you know, before I headed home, I saw Cedar and skillet. They could did a kickoff tour and I thought, why not? Something a band that I loved back in the nineties and why not? It was, and it was a great show. Had a fantastic time. So wrapping up the event and kind of where are we going to talk about CA, Matt? Here we go. So my flight home, my airport, my flight left Asheville at 6 a.m. So I was up at three getting ready, traveled to the airport. And it was immediate. Once I got there, it was automatically delayed by 30 minutes. You know, the plane, you know, plane was there, but I didn't understand, but it was kind of frustrating as the captain put it, he opened it up to everyone and said, Hey, whoever wants to get off, you know, that wants to jump, you know, get off the plane, you're welcome to do that. Well, the moment that happened, you know, about, maybe about five, six individuals did that. Well, now we had to wait for someone to come pick them up off the airplane. Right. That took time. Then we had to go fish out their luggage. Right. Cause we didn't know who was getting off the plane. And because of all this, my flight was, I missed my connecting flight and very frustrating. There was a few others were in the same boat that had connection flights. And we all missed it because of this, this option, the airlines did. And once I finally arrived in Atlanta, before I go into Calgary to I was heard, I met with Delta and say, look, you missed my flight. And what are we going to do? And the confusion, I couldn't believe how complicated this was. They wanted to put me on four other flights before getting home, you know, going from Atlanta, Minneapolis to another location, then Calgary. And it was like not a chance. There's, I did my own homework and said, look, give me, give me two flights, you know, from here to Calgary, it's just going to be a late day, long day, but that doesn't matter. You know, at least I'm going to get home. That's, that was the intention. Okay. So when I was talking with the individual, with the airlines trying to get this figured out, there was, I was not confident my bag was going to arrive home. And I mean, you know, just the way it was between these flights. And then when they're giving me my final tickets, I hear you go, you know, see you later, you know, the ticket wasn't even right, right? They were, they gave me the same boarding pass for my flight that I just missed. And eventually they gave me a little piece of paper that I had to go do my own homework. So afterwards I called WestJet and got and talked to them, got it all sorted out, got my, my boarding passes email to me. So at least that was all good in order. And the bag I was told it would be going from Atlanta to Calgary, then back to Abbotsford as per this new arrangement. Okay. So I chilled out at the airport for about eight hours, got a lot done, you know, caught up, did some, you know, calls, you name it. So what does this have to do with CA Matt? Like let's get to the point. Give me two more seconds and then we're going to get there. So I arrived in Calgary and I haven't never flown into Calgary airport. And we were, as soon as I arrived, our plane was selected for a surprise screening, right? Random screening, right? So we went into the room, looked at these big TVs up on the wall. And we had, if your name came up, then great, you're golden and then you could move on and get to your connecting flight. Well, my name didn't come up and I was thinking, I don't think I'm being selected. You know, I, maybe I am and who cares? It's just a bunch of stinky clothes. But I have a feeling that this, that my bag's not there. So when I checked in with the individual that I was doing the screen thing, saying, look, I don't, my name's not coming up. You haven't called me up to come get my bag screen and have a good discussion about it. I think, I don't think my bag is here. So they looked up on their system. They said, Oh, it's on the carousel. Okay, great. I'll go grab it. Went to the carousel. Wasn't there. Walked over to West jet, um, you know, the baggage claim and asked them what's going on. And you know, after doing a little research, looking at my bag tag, like, Oh yeah, no, it's on route to Abbotsford. It's yeah. Okay. Well, that's how it should be. Here's the information. Great. Thank you so much. I'll wait and board my plane and basically get to Abbotsford. So, um, at that point, uh, I flew it at 11 and I got back in Abbotsford 12 to five long day, almost 24 hours of doing this and no bag, nothing waited till the end. Last one standing. The bag wasn't there. The carousel stopped. I met with West jet again. And after doing a little bit more digging, the bag never left Atlanta. It got canceled. So I filled my claim and two days later, my bag finally arrived up and it got completed. My crazy thing. So what, what can we learn from this, this little adventure on the planes and that, and I think simple matter logs, your construction administration's logs and CA are so important because just like all these airline individuals saying, Oh yeah, it's here. No one had the correct data. Nobody. The only person that knew at the end was the final result. And I don't know why, how he figured it out different than compared to the others. If everyone was sharing a simple log, then this mess would probably not have happened. So my question to you is how are you managing your construction administration logs, your CA logs? And when I'm talking about this is saying, I'm tracking all your RFIs, all your shop drawings, your COs, ASIs, pricing, where is these documents stored? How do you manage this on a day to day basis? This sounds complicated. We just speaking about right now, try doing this for four or five, 16, even 15 jobs. At one point, I had 15 CA jobs on my plate and there was a way I was tracking. And we'll get into that. And not only just with these logs, it goes beyond that because we need to know who's actually looking after this RFI, whose court is this shop drawing in? This information is really critical because when you're at that site meeting and when you're going through your monthly site meeting agenda and you're saying, RFI 15, I'm waiting on mechanical and mechanical looks at you and goes, I emailed it to you. Uh, my emails are up to date, but I guess so. Can you resend it to me? It's embarrassing. So how can you be better up top with that? So, and another thing that might be happening in your CA world is that let alone, there's the logs that we're going to talk how to manage them, but now you're getting thrown into a whole nother world when you're working with a contractor that is using Procore. Now, for the ones who don't know what Procore is, Procore is basically a construction administration tool for contractors. It does all the RFI's from the contractor side. They all distribute to the architects, the engineers. Um, it also coordinates with their sub trades, which is really important. It has some kind of drawing features, but it's, it's for the contractors, not for the architect. You can't even buy it as an architect. Um, because the way Procore's pricing is, is they want to take a piece of the pie in that sense of the project, a profit of the project. Well, as an architectural firm, that doesn't apply to you. You can't, you know, and the last from I was that we had almost 200 jobs in the office and half of those were in CA. So there was no way that we didn't even know if those jobs were going ahead. So there was no way we'd be paying the Procore price. And again, it was totally geared to the contractor. So that wasn't an option to buy that software. And two, when you're working with a contractor using Procore, you're in a data with so many emails. I've had so many clients of my own that have set up separate email inboxes to maintain these garbage emails. And it's a nightmare. And again, we'll get into that in a second. So yeah, I guess the question, if you are on a project that's using Procore, how are you managing all these emails, right? How are you doing your own logs? So let's talk about the tools that you can use right now to basically control your life with these data logs. And the first one that everyone has part of their system is probably, you know, you've got Outlook and you got Excel. And that's how I did that for years. I used Excel. I had an RFI tab, I had a shop drawing tab and so on. So anytime when a document came through, so say, if it was an RFI, a shop drawing, I would take that, I would log it into my Excel document saying I got it this day, it's due this day, by the way, it went to mechanical on this day, received on mechanical this day and all the consultants. And you can already see the challenge that had, and it took time, but I'm very proud that I did it. That's the word to use. It was needed. It was necessary. Because if I was ever at that job site and I wanted to know where all these were at, this helped keep my life in order. And of course, not only with the job, the RFI or shop drawing coming in, I would not only log it, but I'd also file it onto my server in the right kind of, you know, having a folder for all of my RFI's and then RFI one, two, three, et cetera, and then any correspondence that would be all filed. Very organized, very neat, but it took time. And if you're on the road and kind of, we were talking about that in the last episode about CA on the road, you'd be VPNing it if you were even lucky, if you had a decent connection because now you're connecting to the server and dragging like a, you know, one megabit file, it can take a long time based on the speed of the internet you're working with. Okay. So Excel is an option to tracking this. It's manual input. There's human error, but it's an option. I have one client and they're a whole Mac base. They were vector works and they could use Macs, which is really cool. But what they were doing, and it was kind of a neat approach as they were using the Mac tags, right? And I've never really played with tags. I've done, I've, like, I've played with a little bit, but I've never really found a creative way to incorporate it. And this is what they were doing. And I thought that was really slick. Again, manual input, room for error. If, you know, if someone went away or if they'd kind of deleted the tag again, it was just an interesting approach and, you know, something to take a look out if you're on a Mac base. I met one individual user that was using window folders and they were renaming the folder all as they went. Very archaic. Again, trying to know where you're at is a difficult, difficult thing. I've heard about a program called FileMaker that you can program it and you can kind of do some slick stuff, meeting a client in the future weeks that is going to show me kind of how they've been doing it. But the only challenge with that is that you need a dedicated IT person to control that. And if they leave, then you're kind of, you're relying on that one person. That's always the challenge of doing something in house. That's really creative in its own system. And of course, the, the, the salary that you're paying for this individual, just to make sure that they're running it and keeping it moving is, can be a challenge too. And the other one is there's a number of email sorters out there, but I don't know how that really helps you with your CA just because even though your email's coming into, so rather than you sorting it, you're now trying to make it intelligent and push it. But if it's something, if they don't have the right, um, um, they don't have the right subject line or, or, you know, if you've got that same contractor and multiple jobs, that's where I've heard of those kinds of systems become very clunky and they don't work. And then you're back to the old way of manually doing it. And that's where, you know, that's where I discovered part three and now I work for the company. And again, I'll keep this sale. This is not a sales pitch, but this is just a really more of a testimony of my career that three years ago, this company approached me and said, Hey, here's a software that automatically sorts and organizes this. I was skeptical, but we took a approach at it and I tried it for, um, two years professionally in the field and it was blown away because it did do what, um, the promises were. It did sort all the automation to it. Like it took the RFIs and then automatic organized it in a clean interface. And just again, a testament of why I feel it was the right solution and still is the right solution is like, I went from three to 15 CA jobs because of that. And I even got back into design because everything was being pushed. If you are working on a project with Procore, then wonderful because this actually does, um, connects with Procore and attracts when the RFIs come in, when you've returned and when the contractor has closed it, I've been at too many meetings and I've had clients at those meetings where there's, you know, there's a number of RFIs that have been returned, but not closed. And the contractor is giving me a hard time. And yet the ball is actually in his court and having this data at your fingertips at any moment is really key. So those are some of the tools that we can, that you can use today to really help manage your, your system. So in summary, like at any given moment, you need to pull up this information, right? And going back to my story of the airlines, if they were able to determine that the bag was not moving, cause everything is being automated through the system. Everyone's looking at the same day data points, then my bag probably would, you know, I don't know if it would have made it with me, maybe, maybe it would have right. But at least it would have arrived so much quicker. It may have just been a one flight just behind me and it could have been delivered, you know, that day. So that, that's kind of my thing cause nobody knew where the bag was. Next time I'm going to put an air tag in my bag and at that, that will be the ultimate truth. Where's my bag? Always here in Calgary. No, it's actually Atlanta. Here's my proof. And that's kind of the same thing as when it goes for you as a job site. When you're running a project, you're running the site meeting, you have your logs in front of you. That's what I did. I'd bring my logs with me at the site meet, whether it was Excel or part three, it doesn't matter. I would have that information. Cause there's so many times I would have a contractor start to call me out and say, design teams, holding us up. And it's like, okay, please explain. Give me some examples. Well, this RFI, well, I would just quickly go to say, RFI 13 that held us up big time. I'd look at my log and go, you got in two days. Well, this shop drying for the windows took a long time. Yeah. You got it in four days. What's the problem? That's a reasonable time having the logs is just gives you that transparency. And this even goes to the owner. If you got an owner that's making a lot of changes and they're upset why there's so many changes on the job. Well, again, having these logs, having this rich data with you, you can pull it up and it takes time to track. Or again, you have some system that's automating it. And the thing is too, having logs that you can store online, wherever you are, whether you're on the road or a different site to site or in the office, you can always pull that information. And again, very helpful. And some of these tools again is the project health. And that's where again, you know, I saw with part three, it shine. It let me see the project health scene, what was slipping through the cracks and it was pretty slick. So at the end of the day, as you know, it takes time to input this manual input, or you're, if you're using a system that's automating it, it's going to alleviate that. And, but it doesn't matter what system you're doing with, you need to do it. And I think that's the message that's been very, very clear from this. Okay. So my question to you is if I had to ask you how many RFIs are outstanding for a particular job, all the jobs that you're involved in, or your whole company, can you answer it? Do you know where you're at with that? You know, owners, again, going back to that side of the things, owners love these logs. And it shows that you're on top of the project, hands down, it even the reality from that discipline and being part of that, you were accountable and you're being proactive to deliver this project on time, on budget, and with minimal errors and minimal delays. If you're, the contractors love these as well. Cause again, it just, if you can be that proactive attitude and you're working with a contractor, you're going to ultimately put time back in the project. You're constantly putting the ball in the court with the contractor. You're going to be spending less time. We already know that when we jumped into CA, you may not have had a budget for it because it was burned before, or you had a very minimal time. Well, again, the more that you're on top of it gives the contractor less things to, you know, keep bothering you about or whatever the case is. And they appreciate it on their side too. It's nothing better to come out at the end as a strong team and you want to be a team. Okay. So in closing of this, like I said, how are you managing your logs? Right? What tools are using, right? Is there a better way? And I really challenge you to look into this week. If, if you're not using logs, get started now. End of the story. You got to do it, right? You're, you're, you know, again, if you're kind of a junior and are doing CA, your boss principal partner is going to love it. Your owners are going to love it. They're going to appreciate. They're going to see that you value the job and you value the time of the project. And you're just going to come to this meeting. So prepared. Believe me, it pays off in dividends with clients. Okay. And if you are using logs, great, but I encourage you to look at it. Is there a better way? Can you, you know, is it, can you do it in a more efficient way where you don't have time? At the end of the day, you and I share the same thing. We both have the same amount of time. So do you want to be filing all these manual logs or do you want to design? Do you want to be a professional emailer and just, you know, that's who you are. You're answering emails all day and sorting these emails and putting it because it's all tied to these logs. Or do you want to find an automation system that does it and you only have to do that? So that's kind of it. And that's where we're going to end with this. So your homework for this week is basically review where you're at, where your firm is at with organizing these logs. And is there a faster way? Is there a better way to, that's what I want you to, that's my homework. And my encouragement to you. And I think if you have any questions about this, find me on LinkedIn. I'm pretty active on that. Shoot me a message. And hey, perhaps we'll even have you on the show and do that and do a little kind of Q and A and just see it. Cause I want to know if there's a better way of doing it. I'm all ears. I was looking for it 15 years. So and the last guys until next time, architects keep designing and contractors keep making those blueprints reality. We'll see on the next one.