The AIA Mid-Year Consensus Forecast was just released, and as you could expect, the numbers were adjusted downward overall. You can see it all HERE, but for me, it's fascinating that office numbers are bullish while education is not. There’s a fly in the ointment somewhere because I really feel like those education numbers are undercounted. In any case, no matter what the numbers are, our job remains the same. Know your costs, be close with your supply chain, communicate more than ever, and stay resilient!
Elsewhere... and on to the Summer Series
Reminder- GlassBuild registration is open- use code LV26 for free show floor entry! Register now!
NOTE: Links of the Week and Project of the Week are below the interview!
This week on the summer “Catch Up” series, I get with the brilliant Omar Maalouf of Momentum Glass. Omar absolutely brings it in all that he does, and in our talk, he really provided tons of fabulous content and actionable items. And there was so much good here, I had to break it up into two parts.
MAX: The last time you were on the podcast was 2021. In five years, I'm assuming a lot has changed. You made the bet on yourself in 2011, and we talked about that. Still happy with the way things are going? What are the biggest things that have changed at Momentum Glass in the last five years?
OMAR: Yeah, really happy. Love where the company is, love where we've gone in the past five years, and frankly love where we're heading. I don't think there's anything that we've done that I would change. Part of what we did in 2018, late 2017, was take on a private equity investment group. We completed our agreement with the private equity group and exited. And that was a big deal for me. I learned a lot, took on some challenges that I wasn't aware of when getting into private equity, and exited successfully. And I think to find a glass company or trade partner that has taken on private equity and exited successfully is very rare. And I pride our team on being able to do that. That's probably the biggest change in the past five years.
We've also really focused on technology. I am of the position that we need to be the leader in our industry in technology. That's something that I really believe in. I think doing things the same old way over and over again will never advance any company. So we hired a gentleman, and he's now our chief technology officer. And part of what we've done is I give him my ideas, and he executes, and it's awesome. I don't know how to do any of this stuff, but I know what I want to do, and he and his braintrust get it done. And I'll give you some examples. We developed... The first thing is BIM. Our big thing going forward was knowing that BIM was going to be a major player in the construction industry. And as a glass company, I wanted to be a leader in BIM technology.
We have seven full-time BIM professionals in our company, and so we don't outsource our modeling. We also don't outsource, for the most part, any of our shop drawings. So we keep everything in-house, and part of that is to manage expectations and goals. But having the BIM team in-house, and having the BIM team as our team and not outsourcing, allowed us to do multiple different steps from modeling.
We developed a manufacturing software system. We are basically able to track cutting, assembly, glazing, bunking- I mean, everything from start to finish inventory. And we do it with QR codes and tracking. Then we said, "Okay, let's take it one step further." We have a model. Now we take the model, we export all of our fabrication from the model to our CNC machines. We've created a manufacturing tracking system that tracks every part and piece through quality control, through the bunking, through the installation.
So we've done this with the BIM team's lead. And so you model a building, you produce cut lists, fabrication drawings out of it. You have software that tracks all the parts. You have a QA/QC section that manages the quality. And then when it goes to the field, we scan our parts or units as they get installed, and we can track production. So then what did we say? Well, we want to share this. So, we took it another step forward, and we now have transparency where we share the model with our client. As we cut something, the parts and pieces turn a different color. As we assemble, they turn a different color. As we glaze, as we ship, as we install. So our clients have access to our manufacturing process and our tracking. And so there's never a... “Hey, what's going on? Hey, where's this? " You can see it full-time, real-time. Every three minutes it's updated. And we share that with our client. What's the goal there? Well, the goal there is when you turn in your pay applications and your requisitions for money, you don't have to fight for, "Hey, are you really this percent complete or not? " Just look on the app, go look and see what we're doing. Go look and see what's installed. You don't have to worry about it anymore because we're transparent. We share every bit of data with you. And the best thing about it is we share the good and the bad. So if there's an issue, we can say, "Hey, look, we've stopped fabrication. We have an issue. We need to make some adjustments," and we can show them full-time where we are. The things that we've done from our manufacturing, our BIM, that part of the technology is, I think, cutting edge and industry-leading.
Now, after helping our manufacturing. Next was helping our field and our back-of-house folks. We need to support them and create tools to make our superintendents in the field more productive. So, what did we do? We said, "Let's do a facial recognition app." So we created our own facial recognition app. Why? The team clocks in and clocks out when they get to the job site. Now, when they get to the job site, they clock in with facial recognition, and when they leave, they clock out. So I know exactly when you showed up, and I know exactly when you're leaving. You don't always get eight hours every day. It's not any of these handwritten time sheets. And what does that do? We get accurate time, which then automatically populates a back-of-house time sheet, which automatically feeds our payroll processing. So I've eliminated people having to handwrite, people having to do data entry, people having to do all these manual steps with mistakes and errors because everything is done automatically with facial recognition.
Then I said, "What else can we do to help our team?" Well, one-week look-aheads. It's the simplest thing in the world, but we've created an app for it. We told our superintendents, “All I want you to do is plan your work one week, just one week ahead." And we have this data-populating app where all you have to do is use the drop-down menus and plan your work. If you plan your work and send it out, we're having every one of our project managers review it and walk the job, which forces them to get out of the office and walk the job with the superintendent who put together the one-week lookahead. You're able to see, oh, I need to have this material. Oh, I need to make sure they have these pieces, or they need to have this caulking or this background or whatever miscellaneous items. It's all part of the one-week look ahead, which is the most simplistic thing to do. But now we're automating it, and we're putting it on their iPad so they have an easy way to do it and to force the PMs to walk out and make sure they walk the job with their superintendents. The biggest problem I have right now is our PMs are covered up with work here, and they never get to see the progress and go to the jobs.
We also created two different superintendent-based forms: a non-conformance form and a material request form. How do most people do this? They send a text to their PM, or they send an email, and it gets lost or backed up, or there are 42 texts, and you never remember the first one. We created an app where they fill in the blanks, they send it to the PM, it's tracked, and there are open logs. And until it's completely closed out, we track every MRF or every NCR report so we can address it every Tuesday or Wednesday in our staff meetings. So it's helping our field team keep up, be successful, and be proactive in our approach. I would tell you, if you ask me what the biggest advancements that we've done at Momentum were, closing out a private equity deal was huge. The technology that we have adapted and created, I think, is paramount. I think it's helping this company become more successful, faster, and more proactive rather than reactive. And that's something that I think is very important. And then I think expansion. We continue to talk about where Momentum wants to go.
Next week- Part 2- covering industry advocacy and more.
LINKS of the WEEK
What a waste- a lawsuit over what is a “window” seat on a plane https://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/sf-lawsuit-united-windows-22339061.php
The GLP-1 trend is huge… but are there long-term effects? https://www.wsbtv.com/news/2-investigates/georgia-woman-part-lawsuit-claiming-link-between-glp-1-weight-loss-drugs-blindness/KIGRAQR6NJF7LA6CNCS5OEKWZI/
The true costs of living off the grid https://people.com/couple-explains-why-off-grid-living-isnt-as-cheap-as-people-think-exclusive-12022597
PROJECT of the WEEK
To the awesome country of Canada… and this one is a rare “in progress” one for me, but the project looks amazing, and the backstory deserves some pub. From the feed of Rob Wood from C3 Specialty Glazing a project long in the making… here it is in his words:
After four years in storage, the jumbo glass is finally being installed at the new Estonian Centre in Toronto! Designed by Kongats Architects, the centre features a public courtyard shaped to reflect the outline of Estonia. Its bespoke structural-glass façade, designed and installed by C3 Specialty Glazing, incorporates insulating glass units measuring up to 3m × 7m - without vertical supports or fins.
Huge stuff! Now, in the comments, someone asked Rob about the delay, and the answer really got me:
Our client wanted to mitigate risks from inflation during COVID, so we agreed to have the glass fabricated and stored. The expected start date then got pushed back a few years due to site delays, largely due to issues with proximity to the TTC line.
Now that’s some proactive and next-level thinking. Wow. Anyway, congrats to all on this one, and hopefully I’ll get a picture when it is all done!
