Masonry Is 22% Cheaper Than Concrete? The Load-Bearing Comeback + Why the Average Bricklayer Is 53 | Atlantic Masonry Institute & Darim Masonry

0:03Welcome back to the Atlantic Construction Podcast. I'm your host Daniel Arsenault. On today's episode we have Andrew Smith from the Atlantic Masonry Institute and Darrell Jerrett from Darim Masonry. This episode's all about the masonry trade, Atlantic Masonry Institute's role in the industry and their support of contractors and other parties, Darim Masonry's company history, running a large masonry company in Halifax in Atlantic Canada, working on projects such as the Nova Centre and much more. Hope you enjoy. Welcome back to the Atlantic Construction Podcast. Today we have with us Andrew Smith, a

0:41masonry engineer with the Atlantic Masonry Institute, former student at Dalhousie — bachelor of engineering — and Andrew's been with the Atlantic Masonry Institute for three years. I also have a contractor with us today in the masonry industry, Darrell Jerrett with Darim Masonry. Darim's been in business for 37 years and Darrell's a part owner and project manager. Thanks for being here, guys. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. That's right. Maybe you can kick us off, Andrew, and just sort of

1:16just kind of give us a little backstory to the Atlantic Masonry Institute and sort of what service it provides in the industry. The Atlantic Masonry Institute — it's been around pushing about four years now, I joined the fray three years in. So what it is, it's basically the masonry industry mixed up with contractors, manufacturers, suppliers, and the union members all kind of got together and realized that one of the biggest hurdles that they were coming up against is education — whether that's from the

1:48design community, whether that's from the contractor's standpoint, and not only educating both but getting them both on the same page. The contractors were finding that they'd get on a job site, look at the drawing, see that it's just not constructable, and then all of a sudden everything's heading towards extras and it's just really slowing down the process. So what can we do to educate the design community? What they ended up doing is they reached out — a few of the contractors had a previous relationship with a national group, which

2:15is the Canada Masonry Design Centre. So it was formed by contractors — it is formed by contractors, for contractors — and the suppliers and manufacturers are there to help support them. Whenever they reached out to the national group, which is the Canada Masonry Design Centre, their head offices — at the time they had three offices across Canada. They had an office in Calgary, they had one in Saskatoon, and their head office in Mississauga. They had a team of six masonry engineers, a couple of doctorates on the table,

2:45and they would run and manage the majority of the masonry research across code compliance and clarifications as well. So it just so happened that I was coming through the system. I finished my bachelor of engineering at Dal, I'd gone back and done my master's doing masonry structural research that was funded through the Canada Masonry Design Centre at the time. And it just so happened again that the contractors were now looking for that presence at the same time that I was finishing my research, and it just

3:14was a pretty good match for us. So that's kind of how I joined the fray — it was really a good opportunity for me to be able to come in and join an industry and learn about an industry that for the most part you would consider more on the outside of buildings, where it used to be the main structural element. Like historically, masonry is the best building material for a long lot of years before you get the invention of structural steel, reinforced concrete, and so on. So whenever I was hired on, the Atlantic

3:44Masonry Institute went from just kind of a contractor promotion group to more of an education group. So through the funding of the Atlantic Masonry Institute we were able to open the CMDC Atlantic office over at Dartmouth, at which point I was able to kind of work with the design community, open up a line for engineers, architects, designers, contractor members that were having issues — someone to bounce ideas off of, codes, just making sure they're able to do stuff right — and I was able to use my own knowledge mixed

4:10in with the heavy brain trust that we have there in Mississauga with over 30 years of experience. So the Atlantic chapter — was it 2016? That's — it was 2017. 2017. So the Atlantic Masonry Institute formed in 2016. Right, and then I came on board, and at that point we have a shared AMI/CMDC office, but that's just me wearing different hats on different days. So just for context — you're kind of in the middle of all the players, the contractor, the architect,

4:41and you're there to serve the contractor and all the other parties like architects and the design community and stuff. I'm there to serve the industry. The contractors kind of stepped up and said, listen, we'll foot the bill — we want someone that spends 100% of their time doing masonry, whether it's focusing on the research and where we're going to be in 10 years, or what exactly is going on today and how do we make sure that the construction that we're doing on the job site is kind of on par with the national

5:05group. So we have a contractor here — let's say if Darrell's on a job site and something with the design, the plans isn't matching up for fire rating or for soundproofing or load bearing — are you, do you get involved in the specific project? It depends, kind of. A contractor can reach out to me and they'll say, listen, I got this firewall here, they're saying it needs to be two-hour rated, but it's a 25-centimeter

5:30semi-solid, which we know is at least a three-hour rating. Like, I don't want to lay this. Or if I want to use a specific example — and I won't say where — where they needed a fire rating or a sound rating and they specified full solid blocks. Darrell can talk about this more because I'm not the one on the job site lifting these blocks up and down, but when those blocks are fully solid they're heavy and they're not really that nice to lay. And when you're going towards your fire

5:54rating and your sound rating, or even the structural strength of the wall, it's better to do it hollow and grout it solid. So it still has all the same properties, but if you think about that cell in your cinder block or your CMU, now you've got a nice grout column all the way through, rather than just blocks laid on top of each other and relying on the mortar to bond. And they achieve the same fire rating, the same everything. So it was a little easy example of being able to

6:17reach out and say, yeah, I know you specified these full solid blocks, but if you used hollow and grouted solid it'd be cheaper, it'd be easier on the labor, and you're actually going to get a better product. Okay, now that's a great example — now I see sort of how you guys can collaborate and how it works. Maybe, Darrell, maybe you can just give us like a rundown of Darim Masonry. I know it's a family

6:39business — I mean you mentioned it's the second generation, I know you're third generation mason — and you guys are fully unionized. Maybe just give us like the snapshot of that. Yeah, as you noted there, we're — we've been in business for 37 years. My father started this company from the ground up. He moved up here from Cape Breton. I think how the story goes, it was on a Friday, he came up looking for work, got hired on with one of the local

7:10companies here and started hammering it out to get better at his trade and his craft, and ended up opening up this business. Here we are today, 37 years later, and he's grown it from just himself — and our family, obviously, and all the great employees we have too — and we try to grow and be part of the community as much as we possibly can. So how many guys would you say you're running

7:40crew-wise like through the run of the year? It can vary from our busy times to our slow times. We go anywhere from 50 employees up to 100 employees depending on how much is on the go. You mentioned something earlier about — a lot of when you're doing masonry, it's either you're setting up staging or you're in the hydro mobiles or the different lift styles and stuff too. What are you guys using now for a lot of your

8:08a lot of the higher buildings that we're seeing in Halifax? Yeah, since I came on with the company when I was a little bit younger, a lot of technology has changed over the years — everything from telehandlers on the job site as opposed to a straight mast forklift, or an old gin wheel pulling stuff up, to hydro mobile staging, non-stop. EZ Scale staging. And those have been able to allow us to increase our productivity and keep our labor costs down a lot more than what

8:36they would be using a standard five-foot frame or all-around scaffolding setups. And what's the name of the other kind of lift that you guys use — similar to swing staging but it's — yeah, so it's a little bit older technology but something we've been using, and find ourselves using more around the city as city jobs have been coming up and the city's growing up rather than out and the buildings are getting bigger, is a product called EZ Scale scaffolding. I do believe it was invented in the —

9:03so it's a little bit older technology but let's bring it back to life. Like I said, now that we're going up, it allows us to go much higher with a lot less footprint and a lot less tie-in. So it's basically a heavy-duty swing-stage scaffolding — sorry, swing stage. Yeah, so it's basically swing-stage scaffolding that holds heavy heavy loads, specifically designed for masonry. And what it's allowing us to do is in these tight areas in the city where you normally don't have a footprint of 10 to 20 feet to set up your staging,

9:33you're able to hang this and you can crank it up off the ground to give that footprint around it. It allows us to get into areas where you typically wouldn't be able to get to. Nice. So for recent projects — let's say some of the bigger projects that Darim's done in the last, say, a few years — you mentioned Queen's Marque. Yeah, Irving Shipyard too. Yeah, there's — every project we take pride in quite a bit around the city. We

10:02like to think that we do most of the larger masonry around here, or we try to take pride in that. And some of the projects we did that might be notable is the Nova Centre — that was a very big project for us, took about two to three years for us to complete that masonry, which is a good-sized scope. You just mentioned Queen's Marque, which is a wall of sandstone product on the exterior there — that was a whole new bag of worms for us,

10:27a completely different design that we hadn't dealt with before. Aside from just the veneer, we did a hanging ceiling with that in the parkade. So it's kind of the parkade — it's right off the main street there, you can kind of see it — it's Port Cashier's, what that area of the building was called. And basically we were hanging two-inch — two-inch, one-foot-by-two-foot sandstone as a ceiling. It had never really been done in Nova Scotia before

10:54to my knowledge. I don't think it's been done in Canada before. So it's something that we had to come up with — it was a little bit challenging. But that's hard on your estimator! Well, that's it right there. So for your company and how it's set up — like for Darim, just to give an idea, with anywhere between 60 and 120 site workers with how busy you guys are in Nova Scotia — you have you and your father as owners. So is there just one estimator, a couple of —

11:18There's our estimator Jeff in the office — he's also an owner, so it's kind of a three-way deal. And you guys are all involved — you kind of three sets of eyes. Yeah, and we all wear multiple hats. We could be doing anything from safety stuff to site supervising to estimating. Jeff deals with the most brunt of the takeoffs and estimating, and me and dad basically deal with the site supervision and dealing with the men. There's been a lot of discussion on the labor

11:45portion of the sandstone side. When you haven't used a product, it's hard to gauge — you kind of draw from your experience and how long this might take. Exactly, like we didn't know what we were up against. So we had to take a strong number on it to make sure that we were covered, and it was something that was going to work and that we could walk away from it and say we're really happy with the product, we're happy with the outcome.

12:08And I think we were able to accomplish that. Yeah, we had some hiccups and some setbacks but nothing we weren't able to overcome and work through, so it worked out well. Nice. You mentioned the Nova Centre — so other than all your CMU block and clay brick and stuff there for your scope, was there — there's granite on the outside? Yeah, we did some neat stuff there. Yeah, so it was a little bit of something that we're trying to get into

12:34a little bit more, which was a little bit of landscape granite — not so much pavers and stuff along those lines, but just veneer granite. Putting it on was the first time that we got involved with that, and it was just something that had popped up that we kind of threw out there to get involved with, and it ended up working in our favor. We were able to do it — between hiring the right people and getting some people with a little bit

13:00more experience with that involved — we were able to get that completed, and it went well and turned out, in our eyes, really well. Yeah, well it's an amazing project. And the fact that you were there for two or three years — it's a long haul. Yeah, it was a big one of the bigger projects we've done in the city. Did you remember any numbers, like how many square feet of concrete block? To be honest, I wish I could throw in

13:25the exact numbers — you wouldn't even know everything. That was one of the jobs that was a big eye-opener for us because there were so many moving pieces. Yeah, and stuff was changing — change orders daily, stuff eliminated, stuff added — so it was fluctuating all the time. So yeah, without going back and looking through the paperwork I couldn't even throw a number at you for it. So on a job like that, when Darim gets it, you're the guy project managing — seeing the project through on the site, kind of managing the labor and the bridge between the office and the — It's

13:51a little bit of that. We try to put as much towards our workers in the field as we possibly can. We have a foreman on every job site that we're on, and those foremen — we try to put as much trust in their capabilities. They're the

14:13guys that are doing it every single day, they're the ones that are running into the problems, solving the problems, and they grew up doing it — like yourself, exactly. So they bounce some stuff off of us, and we work together to solve that stuff. But when you're the person that's in the mix every single day, you're the expert. So we lean on those guys heavily, and the collaboration from our experience and our abilities from past jobs and other situations that we run into —

14:39we can throw a lot at them that they can then take, sort through, and we try to come up with the best solution between all voices. Yeah, 100%. I think for trades like masonry and drywall — and just all kinds — the foremen are really the glue that holds it together. If you have good foremen on the sites then you're in a good place. And that's it — the accountability — like when you have someone on there that's working as hard as you right beside you

15:08and the question — you know that's going to get most people buying in. Yeah, you want to shout out to any of your foremen on the show here? I know if I get you to do that you might leave one out. Yeah, I won't go name by name, but I can say — I like to say, and I'm sure most companies would say this, but I like to say that we've got the best people in the industry working for us. I know that might not be a fair comment

15:28coming — we're biased — but we take a lot of pride in the guys that we have working for us, and most of our guys have worked for us for a long period of time. So that's great. How many — Andrew, how many companies are a member? So total, Atlantic Masonry Institute, we're floating anywhere between 45 and 50 members, fluctuating on a year-to-year basis. But every year since we've opened, since we've been an organization, we've always increased our membership. So even in a COVID year,

15:59and if you talk to our members they'll tell you that they're their most expensive membership they have — we were still able to increase our membership. We brought in three new ones, actually all here in the Halifax area, just realizing what we were doing and, yeah, kind of like what you're doing, we want to be a part of it. And so it's always great to be able to get more members in. So of that — we float just under 50% contractors with regards to manufacturers. We have

16:28Casey Concrete, Shaw Brick, we have VJ Rice Concrete Products over in Newfoundland — those would be our main manufacturers here locally. But then we have lots of suppliers too, so all your air/vapour barrier construction products. Bird — you're talking Brampton — Bird Stairs, yeah, sorry — and then Brampton Brick. Sho-Dek is represented through a few smaller manufacturers as well, but we do all the different products and materials. Like we have a pretty good snapshot of what our industry really is — all the people, like air/vapour barrier suppliers,

17:01they're involved as well. So yeah, that's a big part of it. The union as well — they bring a lot to the table for us. Yeah, so what's different about our industry association is the union's a big part of it, but we have non-unionized members as part of our association as well. And the union recognizes that the industry is a mix of union and non-unionized, and they realize that they're fully supporting us because they know whatever we're able to do as an industry is going

17:28to benefit the union and the unionized contractors. So being able to bring in those non-unionized guys just gives us a better scope of the industry, and we're really more of an industry voice rather than the unionized contractor's voice. Are there any architects that are members? Architects are not members, no. The whole idea is our association is there to serve the design community, but just because they're not in the room doesn't mean that I'm not going to their offices and talking with them. And basically the contractors are paying

17:56for my time to work with that design community. It mentions estimating software on the website — MASS. So that's not an estimating software, it's a structural design software. So it stands for Masonry Analysis and Structural Systems. In typical structural softwares today it might be a whole-building analysis or a finite element model going through stiffness matrices, whereas what our MASS software does is it designs individual elements. So if you're talking a partition wall in a parking garage, that's an out-of-plane wall —

18:26you can apply your loading, it'll run the structural calculations that are based out of the CSA standards. Or if you want to talk about a more intricate design, like a multi-storey masonry design or something like that, the newest version of the MASS software — when it came out with version four — has multi-storey design functionality in it, all the way to seismic design considerations as well. So it's really there for the structural engineer, or if, say, you're an architect and you might not be the one to sign off on this design, you can

18:54quickly run the numbers and get an idea. Okay, before we send it to the structural engineer, I know it's a 20-centimeter wall and I can start doing my floor plans based off that. So not a whole lot of architects use it, but just for quickly running the numbers and getting an idea it works really well for that. I want to piggyback off that and ask you, Darrell — I know your position's not technically full-time estimator but I know you've done lots of estimating and you've been in

19:16the trade forever. I think masonry is a lot harder to estimate than people outside the trade realize — just for little things like all the accessories: your mortar, your brick ties, cell vent, wedge lock, and all that, and then you have your calculations for grout and mortar. And you guys use soft insulation, tie-ins — yeah, it's just endless. There are so many different accessories. Jeff in the office — I'll tell you, man, it's — we've made leaps and bounds

19:48since he's come on board with new types and styles. Is he using software? No, he's not using any software — all by hand. All by hand. And you're surprised how much that still happens? Yeah, and I think you can't lose track of having that to double-check and go back on certain stuff, and you have your stuff in-house — how you guys like to calculate, you know, how many square feet of eight-inch block and this much mortar for fire rate, if you're filling all the

20:12cells — exactly, exactly. And then like you said, there's a lot of moving parts to doing that takeoff. I don't know — not that I've been familiar with it — but to my knowledge there's nothing that we've used in the past for technology in terms of doing those takeoffs. It's just one of those things — for us, I think it's a comfort-level thing too, where your right hand's on it and you're diving in, it's right in front of you on the paper. I'm not saying it won't get

20:39to the point — obviously all technology can be super beneficial to anybody in terms of productivity and getting through stuff — I don't think there's anything to replace getting your nose dirty and getting right in there. I mean that's a great point. I think there's just something about having the hard copy of the drawings in front of you where you can just kind of look through it and make notes. It's just when it's all done on computers it's hard to transition for a lot of people that are used to doing it that

21:03way. Absolutely. And not just from an estimating purpose, too — whenever you're going through and actually really focusing on the drawings you might be able to pick out things you didn't expect at the start. Like even with some small little detail, like, oh freak, I didn't see that in the specification. And the other thing I think that gets overlooked with estimating is every estimator has their own style, their own way, and their own procedure, and you develop those habits. From what I see,

21:28like you said, I'm not in it every day looking at that stuff — Jeff really takes the cake on that for us — but from what I see, it's just that habit of every day: you know your process, you're getting your drawings, you're opening them up the same way, you're taking your notes and writing your information down the same way, you're going through them the same way. Those habits are making sure that you're hitting everything — that you might have

21:52missed something on the last drawing. Well, this is why it was missed — all right, I'm going to put this into my process while I'm doing this estimating so I don't miss this area, or catch that quantity. Yeah. I think too, unlike some other architectural trades — let's say painting or millwork — when you're pricing masonry you really have to look hard at the structural drawings for all the different details. Like every two feet you're tying in a firewall with different steel accessories into structural steel.

22:19So it's like it's one of those trades where you can't get away with just sort of looking at Section 9 — you have to dig in. And that's where I think AMI and CMDC come in huge for us as contractors. Our opinion and how we read something can be very different, and where we can bring them in to be almost a middleman, or acting on our behalf, they can explain those things a lot better so that we don't take on costs that we don't need to be

22:48taking on, or vice versa. Yeah, I got a good example of that actually. I think it might have been you — I can't remember if it was you or another contractor. They sent me drawings and it was about a brick veneer, but it was a stack pattern. So instead of the units all overlapping by 50%, they were all stacked on one another. And the note on the drawing was "installed as per CSA A370," which is the installation standard. And any time you have a stack pattern, according to CSA,

23:14it needs to have joint reinforcing in it — whereas it wasn't called out in the drawings at all that there was joint reinforcing, and it wasn't called out in the specs. It was just "installed as per CSA A370." So whenever — I think it was Jeff that reached out to me and he asked me about it: is there anything special I need to think about when I'm doing this stack pattern? Well, yeah, you need joint reinforcing every second or third course. Oh freak, I didn't bring that, I didn't

23:36carry that in my numbers. Well, that's just what's going to be required. So then he was able to include that in the bid. And that's a lot of reinforcement — depending on what the square footage of the wall is, that can be a lot of wire. Yeah. So that's just like being able to quickly bounce that idea off. Whereas I stare at the standards for probably three hours a day — it's part of my job. It's not fun — it's the best read you've ever had — but

23:58having someone that does stare at the standards that much, it can be helpful in certain situations. Well, I mean, if I was that contractor I'd be so grateful that you were there to help me. No, and that's happened on numerous occasions for different stuff. And sometimes it's great, sometimes it doesn't go the way that we want, but at least we have that backing. At least we've gained that knowledge, at least that's been brought forward. And then the next time that we're having that same conversation, or the next time we're

24:24bidding that job, we have that information: okay, now we know we've got to carry that. Because like Andrew said, it can be very vague, or you're jumping between structural and architecture. Now that that's brought up, it's sort of like I can see more clearly what the purpose and the mission of the Atlantic Masonry Institute is. Because you have — like you said — it's like one of the oldest methods of construction, like back to the stone age, no pun intended,

24:51but it really is. So you have an architectural product here that's also structural, and that's where you've got to come in, because you're balancing two different disciplines. And you just kind of come in and make life easier for the contractor. An architect needs to understand thousands of different products — the technologists that work in that office need to understand thousands — they don't have the time to really focus. So being able to have, like, all right, we got this big veneer project coming up, let's reach out to Andrew,

25:17let's do a lunch and learn — he can kind of walk us through the process of all the things we need to think about. Yeah, that was the goal in mind when AMI first formed. Yeah, it's really neat. And I think we were talking outside the room before we sat down here — like, why isn't there kind of an institute for other trades? Well, masonry is kind of unique in that way. Yeah, and it's unique because it's

25:36an architectural product, it's also a structural product. Like I think the example we were comparing to — why is there not the same kind of industry presence for plumbing, let's say? Well, it's because of that structural aspect. And not only that, it's a structural aspect the universities don't really do a lot of education on with regards to masonry. If you compare it to structural steel or reinforced concrete, it takes such a small portion of the design pie, you know — if they were really accommodating all

26:02the different amounts of time designing in each material, masonry would still be a very small chunk of that. So UNB currently is not doing any masonry design with regards to their structural program. Dal has some small masonry components but it's still not much. So being able to kind of jump in — like a structural engineer, they understand all the concepts. Masonry design is very similar to concrete — it uses a lot of the same concepts — but just being able to go through a couple of examples and

26:31show what the differences are. Exactly — masonry is not concrete, even though the units are concrete and the grout is, and the mortar is, all technically coming from Portland cement. Those are three different materials and they're all going to behave differently. Yeah, and you just got to accommodate for them. And that's interesting you brought that up because I think Darrell mentioned earlier about how the union here is different in Canada and Atlantic Canada than it is in the States, where all the trowel trades are part of the same union —

26:59concrete, stucco, exactly. Yes, it's a little bit different. That's more of a comparison between Canada and the States, but I mean we still have — through our union, through our trowel trade — you still have your tile setters and your masons. So it's a little bit different in comparison to the States, where they are doing concrete work. But you know, we have our hands full here with the amount of masonry work we're doing, just with laying material.

27:28So it's not something that, as a masonry company, I don't know if we'd have the bodies here in Nova Scotia to be able to do so. And so Darim's been a union company since the start. Yeah, I think there was a brief period there when my father was just starting off — the local — wasn't it Local 1? The Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers. And we also draw from the LIUNA — the Labourers' union — yeah.

27:55Yeah, so maybe just chat about the union — the masonry union. Obviously you guys have a close relationship with them. I mean, you're probably part of the union yourself. Yeah. And so, often contractors are either union or non-union. What are the benefits? I think at the end of the day the benefits are the manpower, and the accountability, and the skill level overall. I think when you get to that step

28:24where guys are looking to get in — they're getting pensions and they're getting health plans and they're getting the top wage for where it's at — it allows you to buy into your career a little bit more. Yeah. We work closely with the union, and it's got to be a good relationship because it benefits both of us. And wherever we're able to help in the industry it's going to help them, and wherever they're able to help us in the industry

28:49it's going to help us. Is there anything going on for training in that regard? Yeah, so we just got a new president — Jeff Preeper — put in for the bricklayers union, and he's been doing a great job stepping up on safety. He used to be an employee with us, so he kind of has a great idea of where the needs are and the stuff that we've got to work on and focus on to keep improving as a trade

29:12and helping the union grow. So it's not just in regards to safety — it's in regards to safety and technology and training and stuff like that — where it's an older trade and most of the people in our trade are much older. They're, you know, their late 40s, mid 50s. Yeah, you don't see a lot of young people getting into it. That's got to be something that concerns you. Yeah, and it is. And that's something that we've been working on with AMI and

29:40throughout all the trades, all the contractors in the industry — we've been working hard trying to get into the schools, trying to get masonry out there, because masonry is right in our backyard and a lot of people don't even realize the amount of suppliers that are from Nova Scotia relative to all of Canada. And you can step in if I'm wrong on any of these numbers, but I think that across Canada there's 14 block — I think that number would be a little bit higher than others.

30:11So the materials are local — the material is all made locally. Every different location will have their own block plant. The only thing that's a little bit different is when you start talking about clay brick. I believe there's only two or three active clay brick plants in Canada right now, with Shaw Brick being one of them. But as far as block manufacturing, those are all done locally. So even just if we talk about the Halifax area — you're getting supply from Shaw Brick, you're

30:34getting supply from VJ Rice, you're getting supply from Casey Concrete, and these are all companies that have their manufacturing plant within a 200-kilometre radius. They're all local. So it's right in our backyard. Yeah, it's right there. And like — as a mason, it's making as much as anyone in the carpenters' union. Yeah, 50 plus dollars an hour with your benefits that you don't see on your paycheck. So it's just like,

31:03I don't know — what's the reason? I think with where the world's at now, with the advancements in anyone being able to go in and get information on their phones about different things, I think it's human nature to look for that easy road — like, easy money. You don't have to go and work hard all day for eight hours and get a paycheck — what road are you going to take? Yeah, for sure. And like, what I'm

31:33wondering is — why aren't more young people going into carpentry, going into plumbing? Well, I think if you really think about it — how many teenagers know what a 2x4 is, how many teenagers have worked with a 2x4 in one way or another? Probably I'd say like 80, 85 percent. How many of them have held a brick before? Other than thinking it's just the chimney or the outside, it's just not as generically out there. No. So even if like their

32:00school was built of brick — oh, I know I can throw a ball at it and it'll bounce back — that's the extent of where their brain is going to go. Yeah, but as far as a craft or a trade, it's still as old as carpentry. And it is. And I think the industry — and it's not just locally here in Nova Scotia — through the apprenticeship agency, look at the stats: the average age of a bricklayer is 53 years old.

32:23That being said, a bricklayer typically works up until their 70s. Like, I know a lot of really old bricklayers — they love the trade and they'll stick it out. And it's labour-intensive but, well, masonry is one of those good things. If you look at what everybody's doing as they get older, as they get further on — most people are trying to be more physically active, get healthier. And you have that with these trades. You go into

32:48masonry, you know you're lifting anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 pounds a day. I know that sounds like a lot, but your body gets used to that. So you see someone that comes in starting as an apprentice starting with us — from two weeks in where he's really struggling physically, then a month later he's caught up, he's in shape, and he's able to do that work. So I think, you know, these guys that — like Andrew said — are 53 years old or 55 years old,

33:18but they're doing this physical activity every day — you don't got to get to the gym, you don't have to do these other things, because you're doing that work every single day. So, Darrell, what are some of the things you'd be doing on a job site to help your workers just with regards to ergonomics, to help with their bodies? Well, again, going back to the staging — like the mobile stage — that's allowing the bricklayers to work

33:41at one level. So you're not bending over or reaching up all the time — you're just constantly at the same level, both productivity-wise and health-wise. You're never overexerting. For people who don't know what a hydro mobile is, just explain that. So a hydro mobile is a hydraulic platform — basically if you want to think of it as a 60-foot-long scaffold that guys can work off, with two towers that go up, that climb through hydraulics pulling it up each rung. And what's changed for us

34:17for that is that now you're not upping plank. So workers aren't upping plank and having to stop — get the bricklayers off the wall to up the plank, to get up to where you need to go. Now you're starting a motor, pushing a button, you're getting up the levels you need in small increments. So it's allowing the labourers not to have to lift as much, because these platforms are holding more weight — you can stock more material on it. It's allowing the bricklayers not to have to bend over or reach as much. So

34:41they're not overexerting themselves or putting themselves in awkward situations. Some of the stuff that we're laying — you can be laying a concrete block that's up to 55 pounds, 50 pounds, and to be in an awkward position trying to reach to lay that over a line, under a thin bit of mortar — you're putting some real strain on your body. So those things have really helped in terms of the industry and the lifecycle of the health of your workers. Yeah, exactly. And

35:09just from a research standpoint as well — at the University of Waterloo, I believe that's the university right now, I might have that wrong — we have research going on through our national group about ergonomics. So we have bricklayers that are going into the university and they're wearing a full sensor suit, and we're saying: okay, if they're lifting it off the floor, how much force are they putting on their back, how much force are they putting on their shoulders? And then we're comparing that to waist height —

35:31what if it's at waist height and they don't have to twist? Or what if it's above their head? And then we're taking all that data and giving it to the colleges that are teaching these young bricklayers that are trying to enter the trade: this is what you really need to be teaching them for proper technique, this is what's going to put the least amount of strain on their backs. And it's what's ultimately going to create people that enter the trade and

35:51stay in the trade if they're doing it right. That's amazing. It's been a lot of advancements and it's only going up — now you're seeing different things coming for technology, like SAM — like the semi-automated mason — and robots and stuff that are building buildings out of this stuff now. That's just where it's headed. So it is getting better, but it's something I do think that we've got to keep improving on. And as we get more knowledgeable for

36:19health stuff — like one thing with these older gentlemen that are working for us in this trade, they don't have the same mindset for health and self-care as some of the younger guys coming up are doing. So to introduce this stuff to them, or lighten the load on them — it's extending their careers a little bit further, or keeping them a little bit more healthy, or reducing the downtime from missing time. Yeah, because those

36:47same people, they've got to bend over and pick up their kids when they get home. That's it! Well, that's great that that attention to detail is happening — it should be, that's so important. I want to get back to the load-bearing masonry, and we were going to talk about something happening in New Brunswick right now. Yes, I'll rewind a little bit. Just before we get started here — it would have been early 2019.

37:16It was myself and a contractor, Ron Cormier from Acadia Bricklayers, and we started talking: okay, there's a lot of construction happening around Moncton that's in that four-to-eight-storey range, just the way the city's been moving. The population density is rising. I think we have a real opportunity in Moncton to bring load-bearing masonry. Whenever we look to Halifax and HRM especially, in the downtown you're not doing four-to-eight-storey buildings, you're doing 20. That's a little bit outside our range,

37:47although there is an opportunity when you get out from the downtown — when you start talking like the Larry Uteck area, yeah — there might be a real opportunity there. But anyway, so we realized there was an opportunity in Moncton. So the Atlantic Masonry Institute started off by spending some money and sending a local engineer to our design course in Ontario to really teach them all the ins and outs of structural design with masonry. So after he finished that course — which is not a small amount of work, it's like

38:11a fourth-year undergrad structural that we post at our head office there every year — then we came back and then worked with the Canadian Concrete Masonry Producers Association to fund a study. And what we wanted to look at is: let's say we have a four-storey building in Moncton — we got a footprint from Spitfire Design, who came in and designed it for us, they're a mover in the Moncton market — and let's design this building with load-bearing masonry, let's design it with conventional wood framing, and let's design it as a reinforced concrete

38:40building. Let's see what the numbers say at the end of the day. Where we ended up for this four-storey building — and it actually gets cheaper as you go up — is that compared to wood framing, by the time you incorporated the time savings that you're going to have, because you're so much faster with masonry — and I'll talk about the system in a minute — masonry was only a 4% premium over conventional wood framing. And we can go into the benefits of one versus the other, but the main thing is

39:04just the non-combustibility of it. So if you're an architect or a designer, you're very familiar with what I mean just with regards to the valuation of your building, the durability of it. If a fire ever breaks out, it is going to have nothing to eat from floor to floor. It's not that wood is super flammable, but a fire is going to eat at it — it's combustible — whereas if you have block walls between every unit, when the fire hits that block wall, sure, it might eventually eat away at

39:30it, but it's going to take an awfully long time. The walls that we needed to hold up the structure are going to give you a minimum two-hour fire rating, whereas the code minimum for that building was only one hour. So you're spending that 4% premium — now you have superior sound transmission between all your units, you're never going to hear your neighbours, you're going to have twice the fire rating or more depending on the comparison — it's a wood-framed building. Mould is never going to be an issue if

39:56you have any kind of flooding event — like a tenant overflows the toilet and leaves it for a few days, and all of a sudden the moisture soaks in. If you have a wood building that's just going to create a situation for mould. Not going to happen with concrete. And for the Moncton market specifically, we were about 22% — give or take — cheaper than just a reinforced concrete building. And that's going to be very different if you take that to the Halifax market. People

40:23know that concrete forming is quite a bit cheaper here in Halifax compared to Moncton, but will it eat up 22%? I don't think so. So I still think even in HRM it's a very viable option. So we went through that process, we developed that report, we pushed it — it's on our website, you can find it there — and then we found a developer that was willing to give it a shot in Moncton. So currently right now there's a building — it's called the Fox Creek multi-res — it's got its foundations poured, they're about

40:54to do their grade slab and then masonry is scheduled to start in April. It's currently five storeys — they're pushing to get a bylaw switch to get it to six, I have a feeling it's going to be six — but it's going to be a six-storey apartment building. It's all going to be load-bearing masonry. The CMU blocks are going to be holding up the entire system. The floor system that typically works best for us is a precast hollow-core plank. If you've seen them before, they just

41:19got all these circular holes along the edge. But what's really great about them is, since they're precast and they land on the masonry walls, you just got to lay them down, grout them, and you can keep moving. So what we say for load-bearing masonry is: if your contractor understands the industry and they understand to have the right amount of manpower on there, you can go up a storey every two weeks. So if you start your project in the spring, even if that's a seven- or eight-storey, you can have your building completely

41:45enclosed before wintertime hits, and then you can work on your interior finishes all through the winter. And then whenever the spring comes you can go on and put on your veneer. And it just really speeds up the process. So I think — if I recall correctly for the total construction time — we got Acadian Construction, which was the general that ran that project, and they ran project timelines for us. The load-bearing masonry total project completion was somewhere along the lines of 16 weeks faster than both concrete and conventional wood framing.

42:13So you're saving them four months on the schedule. You're 22% cheaper than concrete in Moncton. And you're far more fire-rated than these other materials. Correct. So it provides a lot of benefits. Now, masonry is not a one-size-fits-all kind of solution for every project. I'll talk about what some of our downfalls are. If on the first storey you have a big commercial space, that's going to be tough for us from a structural design

42:43perspective. We need wall continuity from the top floor to the bottom floor. So if you're imagining this mall system — or all these offices — that's not actually bad because you can still have those walls in the same place. It's a typical layout to what you'd see for residential. But that's not ideal for us. Whenever you run into underground parking, which these buildings that we're looking at have, you have to be a little bit clever with how you do your underground parking, because again we need that wall continuity from top to bottom.

43:08So you can't just stick a load-bearing wall in the middle of your building, because if that gets down into the parking garage, all of a sudden you lose your driving lane. So it can be done — that's why we really work from an industry standpoint with the designers. If they're willing to consider load-bearing masonry, all right, let's go into a meeting room and let's talk floor plans and wall layouts so that you don't get 20 hours into this process and realize you put a wall where you shouldn't have,

43:32and all of a sudden you've got to go back to square one. Yeah. So obviously, with the Atlantic Masonry Institute and the contractor that's involved — which I think you said is Ron with Acadia Bricklayers in New Brunswick — you were very instrumental in making this happen. Like I know we were talking about it earlier, but it's been a while since there's been in Atlantic Canada a fully load-bearing building, right? Yeah, like 15 or 20 years, or maybe more. Might be more. Like it can be typical to see a structural

43:58masonry wall, but as the primary structural system in your building — at least 15, 20 years. I know a lot of the old ones — might be a little less. I think the Andrew Hall residence at UPEI might have been a load-bearing masonry building, and that would have been 10-plus years ago, pushing 15. So it's just not a very common building material right now. So you're obviously very proud of that — are you hoping for like a bit of a spinoff from that, like

44:24maybe you could see more, and not just in New Brunswick? Yeah, well, we've got this first project going. There's one aspect which is showing that the numbers work — the second is actually backing it up and proving that concept. So whenever you start seeing this project go up in Moncton, I hope that you start seeing other developers seeing this like: what are they doing, that's going up with masonry, I didn't know you could do that? Yeah, maybe some questions about that. And even here in HRM,

44:49like I mentioned, right in the downtown you're probably not going to see these buildings, because 20 storeys is pushing it for us — we're limited by our compressive strength, we just don't have it. But if you're talking Dartmouth, Larry Uteck, Bedford — there are quite a few eight-storey buildings that go up in those areas and we are very cost-competitive. And the concrete is a lot cheaper here, but even with that you still see a lot of wood-framed buildings going up. Whenever I mentioned that 4%

45:13premium that you get with masonry over wood framing — those numbers were taken in 2019. So the drastic increases that you've seen in lumber prices, that doesn't incorporate that. Not that masonry's gotten cheaper over that time, but masonry is consistent with its price increases because we have that supply and demand here locally. We're not relying on other industries' lead times, not relying on lead times — our block producers aren't shipping to Quebec, they're not shipping to the US, because they all have their own block-producing plants. Yeah, you know,

45:42so we have the materials here locally, we make them here locally, we have our labourers here locally — we're not going to get those lead times that other industries are going to have. That's where I was going to jump in and say that — you have to take a look at that, especially with COVID right now. The lead times on materials — so far we haven't had too many interruptions in the masonry industry, aside from a little bit of disruption — exactly, due to the fact that it's local.

46:09And from what I'm hearing — and I could be wrong on this — from what I'm hearing in the carpentry side, even holding the price points right now for wood at this time, I don't think it's any longer than a week that they're holding prices on it. We're not running into that. Steel's two weeks. With the masonry, right, so I mean there are obviously rebar and steel components and stuff, all kinds of things,

46:37but insulation, it hasn't been so bad yet. With our schedule, I think that will be a huge advantage moving forward, especially coming out of COVID — you know, when all the restrictions are loosened, how much more business is going to pick up, and how much more demand is there going to be, and more lead times with that. And it's not just that — it's a possibility, right? There's volatility in other markets. We have a little bit more consistency than some of the other building

47:03materials would have. Yeah, that's for sure. You mentioned earlier you guys worked on the shipyard. Yeah, so down past Barrington and Water Street here on the shoreline — you're driving by and everybody sees the big — you know — where the ships — you guys did all the interior block work? Yeah, it was a big project for us. That's got to be about six years ago now, five or six. It has been a little bit of time. Yeah, man, time flies. But that's been a good

47:36one — that was a great project for us. We've never done any block work to that scale. I think the next closest one to that scale would have been the helicopter hangars at Shearwater base. How many bays are in that shipyard? There's got to be — oh, there can't be that many though, because I mean I know it's huge, but they need the space for one ship. Well, that's it though. So down the main — that whole thing basically was wide open. We were

48:05there, I don't know what gear they had or something, but I walked it and it takes a while — it's one end to the other. It is, it's a lot. It's a lot of hike. And I know a lot of my guys, when they were working there, once we got up to the upper floors — walking those stairs every single day and doing the work. But that was a big project, it went well for us. We hadn't run — well, I hadn't anyway,

48:25run any crews of that size. I think we had 30 to 40 guys in there at one time, we were running three crews through the winter. So yeah, it was a learning process and it was a great project for us. Yeah, that's amazing. What about — you guys mostly do stuff in Nova Scotia, but have you done some stuff in other provinces? We've done stuff in New Brunswick. We haven't gone to Newfoundland yet, but we do stuff in Cape

48:47Breton — our family is mostly based, because your dad's from Cape Breton. From Cape Breton. So we have some roots there with masons out of Cape Breton. And any projects that fit our schedule that we can get down there to do, we never mind going down to Cape Breton or going around wherever we've got to go. But we like to — I mean most of our core guys are around Halifax or HRM, so we try to keep it close there for them. And you mentioned you're third generation —

49:11third generation. So basically everybody in my family has been involved in masonry one way or another. My grandfather was a bricklayer, my father's a bricklayer, my father's brothers have all been labourers involved heavily. Even my dad's oldest brother — he does all of our safety now, he came back on board and consults with us. He has his own safety company doing training and stuff, but he came on board. And that would be our estimator Jeff's father, so it's kind of a — it's very family. Yeah, exactly. And that's

49:41all across the board too. He is third generation — that's special. But if you talk to most of the bricklayers out there, and this is a good story and a bad story — a lot of them have known a bricklayer, whether it's their father or their brother or their uncle. There's some connection in that masonry industry that kind of guided them: you know, you should try this. So it's great that our bricklayers are kind of talking and trying to groom the

50:05next generation, but it also means that we struggle from a communication standpoint getting our trade out there for new bricklayers. Yeah. So it's awesome that they're talking and they're generating interest in our industry just through kind of their family and personal connections, but we also need to find a way to bring more people in — to continue that generational thing or create new family generation lines within the industry. Yeah, it kind of needs to revamp the image of that craft somehow. And that's what we're trying to do.

50:33And we're trying to do that within our company as well, with AMI and within the industry. But within our company we're trying to start it from that pride point. You know, showing up and taking pride in your work. Because masonry is that trade where you could show up to work today and have the worst, hardest day you've ever had, and you're happy that the day is done and it's gone. And it's that same trade where you could work your ass off all day, yeah,

51:02and you're ecstatic about how much you got completed because you visually get to see what you've completed at the end of the day. When you walk away, you know you built that wall, or you put up that brick or that block. And the reward that you get from that — once you start doing it on a regular basis — you can't beat it. Yeah, if you ever go for a drive with a bricklayer, he'll happily — or she will happily — point out every building that they've worked on.

51:27See that building there? Yeah, I did that. I was over on this elevation, I was working over there. Oh, you see that building? I did that over there. Even Darrell could look out the window here and probably point out 360 degrees, about four or five different buildings. And believe it or not, that's a big thing, especially for the guys that have kids. When you're driving out with your kids — oh, Dad worked there today, or you know, I go downtown with my father

51:48and, oh man, I remember we were up 50 feet, 100 feet in the air working off that building, laying this and doing that. And you get to hear those stories and how the jobs used to go — and that pride. So it's one of those things where you know you're driving downtown Halifax, you get to see brickwork, you get to see masonry everywhere, whether it's stonework, whether it's brickwork, whether it's block work. It's not just new construction, it's old construction too. Like it's not just the oldest

52:14material, but it's durable, it lasts. If you worked on that building 70 years ago — unless they reclad it for some reason — odds are it's that same masonry on the exterior of that building. You just get such a longer lifespan with masonry than with some of the other traditional materials. And I think masonry — it's very blue-collar and it has that certain aura about it. No matter how far advanced the industry gets in technology and stuff, you're still going

52:37to need people doing masonry on job sites. And it's like — I think, like we said earlier about estimating — there's so much that's entailed in masonry estimating, and also just the site workers and how skilled some of those guys are that have been doing it for 30 or 40 years. The quality of the work — but it's like you show up to do masonry like you show up to hockey practice. I mean you've got to show up ready to work.

53:02That's hard work. Well, when I got into this trade — I never planned to be a bricklayer. I always loved masonry, never planned to be a bricklayer. I was going to school — I was taking urban design and planning — and I was going to try and play hockey at the next level after I finished university. And before I went away to tryouts, the bricklayers' union approached me and they were doing a promotion. So they came to me and said, listen, you've been doing it your whole life — get involved with this,

53:30we'll take care of your schooling, we'll take care of your tools and stuff. And I sat back and I looked at the benefits and what you get, and that's what drew me into masonry. I had no plan whatsoever to get into masonry. And then, you know, he started looking at what it gave back to me, what it could provide me — summer work, steady work, whatever — and then now it's going to be able to provide me a trade. And it all stemmed from something that started just as a

53:58summer job when school was off, with the family. So it's just one of those trades that people don't realize — I thought when I got into it, oh man, I've been doing this most of my life, I've been surrounded by it, I've got a great advantage here. And then you're five, six, seven years later before you develop that skill. Like you go to school for three to four years while you're doing your apprenticeship, but it takes you that long to get to the level where these journeymen are

54:23and their abilities. Yeah, six to seven years of you know putting in the work. That's no different than tapers and drywall or people doing EIFS and stucco — if you haven't done that for 10 years, you can't even let them go to the job. And that experience level — I think that's part of the reason why we have such a hard time getting people into trades now, is because everybody wants it now. Like the first thing I hear from someone coming out of

54:49school — it's not "hey, how can I get better?" — it's wanting a senior position as fast as possible. How come I'm not doing what the guy that's been doing this for 50 years has been doing? Yeah. And you're going to experience a gap in that too if you don't have a crew of young people being trained currently. And that's it. I know we said the average age is 53, but really masonry is a young man's game.

55:14Like you're relying on the young guys to come in to do the heavy lifting, to do that little push as the older guys are declining. And if we could get to the point where we've got a good influx — right now it's just sporadic. I don't think we have any more than seven to ten people attending in a school year. So there's been a few changes there. The school's really struggled — at NSCC, over the last ten years or so. But we recently made a change. Did you

55:43say NSCC? NSCC, yes. So they're doing our pre-apprenticeship program. Like most apprenticeship trades, you have two pathways: you have direct entry, or you can take a pre-apprenticeship program and go in. So they were really struggling with their attendance, and they came to us and said, what can we do? Like, we're really stuck here — you guys are the industry, we need some insights. So through the Nova Scotia Apprenticeship Agency, we formed a trade advisory committee. I sat on it, Darrell sat on it, a few

56:09other contractors, the union was on it. And we talked with NSCC — the community college — like, what's going on? Explain to us the way you work and we'll try and help you do a better job. So what we ended up doing is we actually increased their course from 22 weeks to a full semester of 35 weeks. So we added 13 weeks to their program. And in doing so we switched them from — I can't remember what their classification was before — but now it's a core program, and core programs are government-funded

56:37because they're developing people into the trades. So they dropped their tuition from about $9,000 to about $3,000 by increasing their program by 13 weeks. And those extra 13 weeks — we formed a side committee with some good masons here locally and they really developed: all right, what do we want to really focus on in those extra 13 weeks? And Darrell will say it better than anybody — whenever you get someone to first land on the job site, the amount of safety training they need is pretty significant.

57:04Like if you talk about masonry — yeah, you've got to work at ground level, but you've also got to work at heights, and it's not just at heights: you're working on tube scaffolding, you're working on the swing stage, and you're working on all these different things. So you need a lot of safety training. So we really wanted to incorporate — when we went to the community college — yeah, it's great that they're learning more hand skills, we can work to help develop that. Please bring more safety training

57:24into that, so that when they show up on the job site I don't then have to send them away for two weeks to do more training. And that's one of the main things I think. And that was the biggest problem that I had — I'd get calls from the school, or get calls from kids that are going to school for bricklaying: can I get a job with you for the summer? Yeah, no problem. Do you have this, this, this, and this for your safety, that I can

57:42put you to work? No? Well, sorry man, until you get that I can't — I have to — can't take that risk on a job site. That's a problem in a lot of other trades too. 100%. So it's almost — I feel as though in a lot of the trades we're skipping that step. Like everybody wants to be at the end where they're a bricklayer, everybody wants to be where they're a carpenter or whatever trade they're in — they want to be there in their profession. But there are so

58:06many steps involved. So out of the 60 to 100 employees you have at any given time throughout the year, how many of these people have their licence to operate the swing staging and the hydro mobile? Most of our guys — most of our policies — the majority of our men are trained. So we'll put different things in place, like for CPR: if you work for us, everybody has to have CPR. It's not what the rule is in Nova Scotia, but if only one person on your site

58:32has CPR and that's the person that goes down, you know what you're up against. So we try to keep everybody as well-rounded in the training as we can, because then you know if a guy shows up sick or a guy can't make it in for the day, you've got someone that can fill that role. Yeah, all right guys, well I think we're almost ready to wrap it up. Do you guys have anything else that you kind of want to mention on behalf of AMI, or

59:00Darim, that you just kind of want to get out there? Yeah, I've got maybe a couple of things. We talked a lot about apprenticeship obviously, but we didn't really talk about what we're doing at AMI in specifics to try to help with this. So we are focused on trying to get into high schools and introducing masonry. What we ended up doing is right before COVID hit, we started our first — we worked with Hants East out in the Elmsdale area, and we got into their high school and we

59:27developed a four-week curriculum to work within their trade school, where they were already building a mock motel. So they were going and doing the stick framing, they were already going and doing the electrical, the plumbing, whatever — why not introduce them? Let's do a little masonry veneer along the outside. Just increasing the scope of what they're learning. And hey, masonry's a trade too, and there's going to be some really cool stuff with it. So we brought a contractor and we worked on hand skills for a couple of days,

59:53then we talked about: okay, here's how you plan out a project. We did level lines for them so it was nice and easy for them to lay level. And then, all right, let's mix some mortar up and let's do this. So they actually started putting bricks on the wall — it wasn't the prettiest job we've ever seen, but I think the kids had a lot of fun. And we did some interviews after and got some takeaways and understood maybe how we would change it differently.

60:15The school board loved it. What AMI did is we donated our contractor's time, we donated all the tools to the school: listen, we'll give you guys five toolkits, you can keep them as long as you run this program every year. And then, okay, now let's move on to the next school. So then we had a school down in Bridgewater that we got all the tools delivered to, we had the mason trainer ready to go into it. However, COVID hit and we weren't able to get in. Here at Dartmouth high school, Darrell was

60:40going to be going in to run that same program. We never got to the tools portion but we were ready to do that. Right now in New Brunswick we just finished donating 12 tool sets to two schools in the French immersion curriculum. So we're going to be in Shediac and Bouctouche, starting high school programs this year, where we're going to get masons in running these little four- or five-week programs, just again to expose them to what masonry is. And I don't really expect all those kids to

61:07join the masonry industry, but it's just starting the conversation. And even the kids that walk past the classroom and they're seeing this masonry wall go up — hey, that's cool, and cool that they're making it. So our goal is obviously — COVID has kind of changed things — because our whole thing is we want hands-on learning for the kids, we don't just want to drop everything off and say have some fun. We want them to do it right and do it safe as well. So we were always trying to

61:28do two to three new schools every year in Nova Scotia, two to three new schools in New Brunswick every year, until we got our program into as many schools as we can. And we're ready to back that up and provide the funding that we need — and me pinching my contractors' arms and telling them to go into the schools and start doing some teaching, because that's their next generation. Have you — so have you been into any schools? I haven't yet. As Andrew said, I was

61:50set up to go and do — I think it was Dartmouth High School — just to do the same program that they had out in Hants East. And it just fell through with COVID. I'm expecting it to pick back up once everything starts getting cleared for that stuff to go. But I'm looking forward to being able to get our trade out there a little bit more and allow people to see masonry is just not brick and block — there's so many other components: there's ties being put on, there's grouting,

62:15there's rebar, there's staging set up, there's insulation — even like you said, all the different kinds of masonry veneer that you can get into. There's just — it's endless. Oh yeah, my grandfather told me a long time ago, he said, "I got 70 years in this trade and I don't know a thing about it." There's that much to it, that much to go. Just that experience — for someone that well-rounded to say, listen, you're going to learn something new every day in this trade. You should get your grandfather teaching

62:42all the young guys! I'd love to — I don't know, I don't think they can. Where can people find AMI online? Is it just the website, do you guys have social media as well? We don't have any social media currently. And what I would say is that any contractors that might want to possibly join, or suppliers that want to help support our masonry industry, they can reach out to myself. And you can find me at the — if there's any architects, designers, or engineers that might have some questions

63:13about masonry, I encourage you to reach out to me through the Canada Masonry Design Centre — it's the same number to call, but you go to the CMDC website, which gives you a better snapshot of what we do on a national level. And you can call me at any time, send me an email, you'll find my contact information on there. And even if it's something super simple like, I'm designing this wall, I've never done it before, do you mind taking a look at it? I'm not going to sign off on it for you,

63:38but I can point out a few things that I think might not look normal. Or if you're talking about, I've got this structural wall coming up, like what are the main things I need to think about — I've designed to the 2010 building code, I've never designed to the 2015 — what are the main things I need to think about? And I'll just tell them. Then we'd talk seismic design and we don't need to bore anyone on this podcast about that. My

63:59family hates how much I talk about masonry is all I know. That's hilarious. So what about you, Darrell? For anyone who's watching the podcast who's hearing about Darim for the first time, or whatever the scenario — for them to reach out: you guys have a website. Website's under construction right now, but I can put my phone number and my email out there.

64:23My phone number is — you can reach me at any time for that. Anybody that's looking for employment opportunities, a little information about masonry, or maybe some information about Darim Masonry — that's awesome. Yeah, listen guys, I really appreciate your time coming on today. I think this is a great dynamic on an episode — to have a contractor from the industry and then Andrew with the institute to come on and kind of get both sides of the coin. All

64:52the company history with Darim, and it's been a pleasure talking to both of you today. Really appreciate your time, thanks so much for coming on. Thanks. Thanks for having us. Yes, thanks for having us, Dan. It was a pleasure.