How Engineered Wood Changed Construction (And What COVID Did to Supply Chains) — Bertin Rioux, Clyvanor

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1:22Welcome back to the Atlantic Construction Podcast. Pleased to have our guest with us today — Bertin Rioux. So that's Bert Rioux. We have him tuning in from Grand Falls, New Brunswick, on behalf of Clyvanor — manufacturer of wood truss and beam engineered structural components, around since 1977. A very well-known name, with their headquarters in Quebec, and Bert's tuning in from New Brunswick. So thank you — thanks for being with us today, Bert Rioux. It's my pleasure, Dan.

2:00We were chatting before the show, before we went live here, just about our mutual love for music. You're finally a musician — tell us a little bit about how those skills, being a musician all these years, carry over for business development and sales. You said you're a drummer, play some guitar. How do those skills carry over? I think that's an interesting connection. Maybe we could chat about that — give us your

2:34thoughts on that. Yeah, well absolutely, man. That's a question I get asked a lot — you know, why are you so good in sales? And I just tell people I'm not really good in sales, I'm just good at relationships. I'm good at talking to people. I like meeting people, I'm interested in meeting people. And being a musician — I mean, that's what we do on a nightly basis. You're out playing bars, you're out playing the

3:00clubs, you meet people, you get to talk to them. And you meet a lot of interesting people in that business — in both businesses. In the structural business as well, you meet a lot of nice people. And it's just a matter of getting to know them, talking to them. In the business world, what we do is we're problem solvers — that's what we do as a structural company. So that's how I get to

3:28talk to people and just let them know — what can I do to help you? What's your biggest pain right now? And I try to see what that pain is and try to fit how we can fix that pain for them, and hopefully do some business. It's the same thing in the music world. You know, people — especially after COVID, everybody was locked down for a couple of years — it was

3:56crazy. We were all going stir-crazy. We all had cabin fever. Being musicians and not being able to play — we were doing live Facebook feeds and stuff like that, just trying to give people some fun, some semblance of normality. And being back now for a little over a year, playing live — a lot of people just come at us and say, hey, thanks a lot for sharing that, thanks a lot for

4:26sharing your tunes. As musicians, you write songs, you put them out there, and Lord knows you don't make any money at it. You don't do it for money. Someone told me a long time ago — how do you make a million dollars as a musician? You start out with two million! But you do it for pure passion. And the passion obviously is the music, but why do you play music?

4:56It seems it's to move people, it's to inspire people. That's why I do it, anyways. Maybe some other people do it for another reason, but like we're saying, you don't do it for money — you do it because you love it. You love practicing, you love just putting stuff out there. And it converges, just like I said, into the business world. Pretty much the same thing, because that passion for people — if

5:23you have that passion for people in the business world, it really serves you as a salesman, as an employee, as whatever you do in the company. Sure. Yeah, no, I really appreciate everything that you just said, Bert. I think something about being a musician — they call music the universal language, it brings people together. So musicians kind of have a natural desire to bring people together, which is very similar in business development too. You're kind

5:49of putting yourself on display, in the spotlight, right? And everybody's there and they're kind of feeding off the energy. Sales can be like that too — you've got to put yourself out there, you've got to put yourself almost on display in the spotlight a little bit, and have yourself heard and have your voice heard and talk. But then you've got to be focused too. As a drummer — you know — you're carrying the rhythm, they're carrying the melody. You've got to be zoned in. But when you're in the rhythm, it can

6:12be a lot of fun and people are connecting. So there are a lot of similarities there. Trying to think of a better word to articulate it, but that makes sense — what I'm trying to say. Absolutely. And you know what the word is? I love this word — it's a word that's come out in the last couple of years. It's in the

6:33flow — you get into that flow. It's a psychological term. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It really is. And speaking of the zone — I remember back in the day I was a huge Chicago Bulls, Michael Jordan fan. And when he got into that zone, I mean, hey, it was crazy. Yeah. And that's how I feel when we play music. And you don't see the time go by — all of a sudden the gig's over and you're saying, geez, what happened? This was great.

6:58Same thing in sales. In a sales environment, when you're pitching something, when you're responding to questions — and in sales, that's the fun thing about sales, business development. Yeah, it's business, but like I said, to find out what the biggest pains are for your potential customers, you've got to touch a little bit of everything, right? Yeah. Because a lot of our customers — we do most of our business B2B — so I mean, these guys are

7:27buying truss packages — walls, floor truss — on a daily basis. Obviously, a lot of these guys are one, two, three-man operations, so they're doing sales and service after the sale, they're doing the contracting, they're doing the project management — they're doing everything. So by touching base with these people, finding out what their biggest pains are, you automatically start to get to know

7:57them on a personal level. Theoretically, you should not make friends from your customers — the great business people would say that — but I think you do automatically, just because you get to know these people. They get to ask you questions and you develop some sort of rapport with them. Just like you and I did — you talk music, and all of a sudden we've got two big smiles on our faces and it's like, hey, we're friends. So it's the same thing, it's the same

8:24exact same thing. Once you get into that flow, man, it's absolutely great. Absolutely, man. I couldn't agree more. I think we're in the zone here now — we're feeling the flow. So tell us a little bit more about yourself, Bert. I mean, you've had lots of sales background. I think you have some education in the forestry sector, which can't hurt in your current position. Maybe just a little bit about your journey on the business side. Sure. Well, you know what — yeah, I actually

8:54when I came out of school — I came out of high school in the late 80s, and back then it was a different world compared to what it is now. You were looking for one career path, and you figured you'd do that career path and it would take you to retirement, you'd get the pension. But the world's changed a lot. So when I came out — I was a musician back then, I had actually started playing clubs back in the mid to late

9:2380s. And when I got out of high school, I had just met my wife, who was the singer in the band. So I didn't want to go out and do the four or five year university thing, go down to Fredericton or Moncton or whatever. I wanted to do something where I'd be around here locally. And I always liked going out in the woods — just a nature guy. I was a sports

9:49guy, I loved nature. So I decided I'd go take a forestry course. I did that, and actually, when I got out of there, I was hired by the forest rangers in Northern New Brunswick to do some thinning and surveying. So I was sitting on a log having my lunch one day, and I sort of realized I was talking to myself. I scratched my head — I had a full head of hair back then — and I said, oh my God, I

10:23don't think I'm going to be able to do this forever. The squirrels were getting to me — yeah, it was crazy. A red squirrel had already taken a bite of my sandwich and I said, you know, what are you good at? And I said, not much — I'm a people person and I like music. So how can I do something with that? Right then and there I decided I was going to jump into sales. So I started with Pepsi Canada, then I went into the garage door

10:52business, then into car sales. And back in 2001, I got into the modular construction business, recruited by a company in Quebec. So I moved from New Brunswick to Quebec and was there for 22 years. I actually owned a modular manufacturing plant for a little over 10 years. I had a lot of experience doing the U.S. market. Were you someone of an early adopter, then, at that time in the modular space? It could

11:24seemed to be around that time where it kind of started to evolve. No, yeah, well — I always believed in modular. I figure if you're getting something done in a factory by people who are doing that same thing day in, day out, I sort of figure it's probably going to be a great product. Normally that doesn't mean that being on site

11:53construction is not good — you've got great contractors, you've got great builders. And I think a majority of my business now is people who build on site — that's what we do. But yeah, as far as early adoption — in the modular business, when I was hired there, I was hired specifically to develop the U.S. market, which was a very higher-end sort of custom housing, and that was our niche product. And the reason that they came and got me — well, obviously in

12:26Quebec, there's not that many people who speak English. But we had a great company with technical knowledge, bar none, second to none. And we developed that. I was there — I absolutely loved what I did — and got pretty good at it, to the point where they said, hey, we want to bring you on as far as ownership. One thing led to another, and in 2007 I ended up buying the company. And I was there

12:53until — I sold it. I bought in 2005, but 2007 I became sole owner. Ran into a little issue back in 2012, 2013, and decided to sell the company to a group out of Quebec, which is the biggest manufacturing group out of Quebec. Stayed on with them for four years, and in 2018 I made the move to go to Clyvanor and learn the other side of the business — the structural side, the component side — which I've been doing now. And it's great. I

13:27met a lot of people, it's opened up a lot of knowledge for me that I didn't have just doing the modular business. And it got me to meet a lot of people and a lot of builders who I wasn't selling to before — I was selling to promoters and whatnot but never builders. So for the last five years I've been dealing with builders directly, which is a completely different world — learning what their pains are, what gains we can help them

13:56have. So yeah, that's pretty much what I've been doing. Yeah, no — thanks, that's quite a journey. It's hard to sum all that up in a few minutes, Bert, but you did a good job. So when it comes to Clyvanor — you've got kind of three different tiers with your wood truss: roof truss, open web joists, and then wall paneling, modular panels. And when it comes to the commercial

14:28and residential, you're definitely into both. Multi-residential, multi-unit — schools and institutional jobs as well. The focus for Clyvanor — based on lots of stuff south of the border in the northern states — you're located in New Brunswick but you're handling a lot of clients not necessarily within Atlantic Canada, but sort of Quebec and the northern states. Is that correct? Exactly, and we

15:05touch a little bit on the Ontario side of it as well. And yeah, you did a good job doing your research. We do have it all — we do floor joists, open web wood joists, we do the wall panels, and the customized roof trusses. Our business — from year to year it changes. Like this year, residential is down

15:34pretty much everywhere, so it's a lot more focused on commercial, multi-units, renovations, bigger renovation projects, and whatnot. Like we're saying, we do have a modular division in our group that does hotels, multi-unit stuff. So that's pretty much what we've been doing. I'll be honest — it's a lot harder. We sort of — I wouldn't say we got spoiled, but during COVID,

16:07everybody was just running after their own tail. There was just too much work, just not enough people to do it. And the price of materials was stupidly out of control — just changing on a weekly basis. So on the sales part of it, it was extremely difficult — not getting the jobs, just keeping the jobs, because everything was just changing so fast. Now it sounds like a return back to the

16:38pre-COVID normal, where we actually have to work to get the sales in. We have to follow up — that's something we haven't done in 30 months. So it's like — that sucks, man. Yeah, it sucks, because it's just not coming in like it used to. But you know what, that's what we do. Sales is sales and you adjust to what the market is. The market changes. Unfortunately, it's not like — I tell my mom, who's not that old, she just turned 72 — she's always questioning me: well, how's business? And you know, how's this and how's that? How come it's not as busy as it was last year? I said, mom, we don't sell sliced bread. It's not like food — it's not the food business. So if the economy is struggling, people don't build. They hold off, they wait till it picks up.

17:10If interest rates are high, people are a little bit more hesitant. So we have to double down as salespeople — extremely hard to get those jobs in, and follow up, follow through, answer questions. It's just a lot more legwork than it has been in the last couple of years. But it's a return to normal — that's what it was beforehand. Yeah, for sure, for sure. And I'd like to take a deeper dive into some of those points you just made. But maybe for context for our listeners:

17:37you have a plant — Clyvanor has a plant in Massachusetts, a plant in Quebec. Just as a 30,000-foot view of the company and the operation — I'm assuming several employees at these plants with the assembly line and manufacturing trusses, joists, and modular wall panel systems. Maybe just give us an overall view of what the company looks like operationally. How big are these plants?

18:06All right, well — the group together employs about 250 people. Our plant in Massachusetts is a relatively small plant compared to — you know, everything is bigger and better in the States, they say that in Texas — so compared to the multinationals, we're not that big. We do about — we've got a capacity of about 10 million dollars of sales in that area. It's a great

18:35little factory, great people. We're about 30 minutes from Springfield, Massachusetts. It's a great little company, great people — just completely dedicated. In Saint-Georges we have a bigger plant. We have a capacity there of about — well, depending on the pricing, numbers were crazy high — but in normal times, about 16 million dollars. So maybe a little under twice the size of what we have in Palmer. And then in our

19:08modular factory, well, the capacity there — sky's the limit on that. Operations-wise, we have our design teams: some are based in the plants, some work from home. We even work with people out of Vietnam right now — designers — because of outsourcing. Yeah. Outsourcing. Because in this business, the design is crucial, and it's getting harder and harder to find people that

19:44are willing to do that work. So you have to find other solutions. Do you have a lot of CNC elements integrated with your designers, or is it mostly people assembling in the plant? Oh no — we have a fully automated — we're the only plant in North America. The owner, Stefan — he's an engineer and a pretty creative, pretty innovative guy. And we're the only

20:17truss manufacturer in North America that has a fully automated roof truss line. I mean, it's fully robotics. I'd like to go down and see your plant — that'd be pretty cool, I bet! Yeah, no, it's actually super cool. As far as the rest of the stuff, it's still a lot of manual — you have the saws, the lasers, and whatnot, but it's still a manual world. But Stefan is

20:50working on doing a fully automated wall line and a fully automated floor truss line, but that's going to be down the line. We do have right now that fully automated truss line, which is super cool. And we have those people designing, obviously we have the workers in the factories, the salespeople are out on the road. And we have a

21:21management committee that is centrally based. We have an operations manager for all three plants, I do the sales for all three, we have the head of design for all three, HR for all three. So you get to optimize a little bit. Yeah — rather than having each individual plant manage their own. Yeah, so you get to optimize and really integrate — backward integrated into a full supply chain, logistics, and your own fleet for

21:50delivery. So it's a pretty turnkey experience. Yeah. And we even do — like in our modular manufacturing, typically modular manufacturers build their own walls, build their own floors. What we do is we send a kit — it's sort of like an IKEA kit — so we build it at Clyvanor, we send it to our modular plant, and that plant is purely an assembly plant. There's no actual building of components there. So once it gets online, you start

22:19and the boxes start taking shape. So it's pretty cool that way. Yeah. I'm no expert, but I would assume that with such a complex modular offering, it'd be really hard to not offer the further service of assembling it into a kit — in certain parts and pieces onto the truck — with a crane element to it, off to the site. Or maybe one or two points of contact or changes, and then have it go to the site and be

22:52handled properly. I'm assuming that's kind of a necessity — maybe not every company has that, but I'm assuming it is. Absolutely, absolutely. And again — that's something that pretty much every company is having issues with right now. So it's getting rough — drivers. Not only in the construction world. Yeah, yeah. Getting — alright, hey, we're back to the labor shortage, which is something we talk to every guest about, whether they're a

23:22supplier, whether it's truckers, whether it's accountants or architects or blue-collar workers on the site, vendors, and any number of the trades. Labor shortage is hurting everybody. Yeah, it is, it is. Although — you know what, I think this is just a blip — since COVID, since this year, it is a little bit better. But we have workers from Mexico, we have workers from Colombia, that come in and work

23:50for us, and we have to go to do that. But as far as the delivery guys and the truckers, running the cranes and whatnot — we have to be creative. That's historically how we did it, but now contractors are getting a lot of equipment on their sites — they're getting their own lifts. They will often use cranes to get it off our trucks, because we have to

24:22outsource some of that delivery as well. So yeah, that's part of the adapting process that we have to do in this business. Great — that's a great explanation. So, back to what you were saying earlier with the prices during COVID. Obviously a big thing was the price of lumber was four times as high, and you're ordering sheets of plywood that'd be a dollar a square foot and now they're four dollars. Just a lot of softwood lumber costs, and

24:53the same thing with hardwood. But for your materials coming from the mill into your shop, where it then enters the assembly line — what kind of species of wood are you usually using for a lot of these? Is it hemlock, redwood, Douglas fir, pine? And would it be the same case with the structural wood element side of things throughout the last few years — the jumps and fluctuations in prices with those species of wood, as it was with typical plywood and

25:17lumber? It was exactly that, you know. Honestly, man — the business side, the sales side was great — but the whole supply chain side was a nightmare. Prices were changing. Is that why your hair is gone? Yeah, it's gone — the little bit that I had left! Sorry about that! It would kill me. But yeah, the supply side was just nuts. Prices were just crazy and there was a lot of speculation going on. And like you said,

25:45MSR wood, plywood, just regular lumber — absolutely. And that's when you could get it. Most of the time you couldn't get it. Engineered lumber was a nightmare. In our business, if you don't have any LVLs, you're not building — you know what I mean? You're not building. Yeah. And it was a nightmare. You couldn't deliver product because there were no LVLs. There are just so many horror stories — one just really leaps out at me.

26:22We had ordered — for our modular business — Rockwool insulation. We were doing a big project for Hydro-Quebec. We had the gun to our heads, like everybody else does on those public jobs, big company jobs. We were starting to build that Monday, and we get a call from our sales rep. That order had been confirmed — I don't know, around April — pretty much a year in advance. It was like early May. The order had been confirmed in January. It was going to be delivered that following Monday. Thursday we get a call from our rep: hey guys, I'm sorry, but we're not going to be able to deliver that. We don't have the capacity to produce it, and the plant is shut down. We won't have any capacity for the rest of — this is three days before we start building, man. This was absolutely nuts. And of course, Hydro-Quebec

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28:25making the pivot today. Book a free consultation at pivotbookkeeping.com. You know, they completely understood. We went all through Quebec buying — and this is not an efficient process — we were buying off the shelf, whatever we could get. A bag here, 10 bags there, to be able to get that. So that one screams at me. But that's what happened — a lot of people were just cancelling last minute. There was no — at that point there was no

28:56loyalty. How should I say it — what's the word I'm looking for? Loyalty. If somebody was going to pay higher, and they had the product, it would go to the highest bidder. So it was a crazy, crazy time. And for us in sales, it was crazy because we weren't just selling the job once — then we'd have to sell the job again because the prices went up before it went into production. And then we'd have to sell

29:24the job again, in the sense that once it got delivered — the PO said it was ten thousand dollars but you invoiced 17. Well, yeah, if you remember, we had to. So it was just a crazy, crazy time. Yeah, and you talked about relationships earlier, and how in business development or sales, that's really all about relationships. I think you can almost relate it to your friends or your kind of micro-nucleus of people around you — whether it's your

29:57spouse or your partner or your friends and colleagues. You find out who people are when you go through a crisis, right? Same thing with your business associates. You might think, hey, this is a long-standing relationship, we're good — but you really find out who people are through a crisis, right? Exactly, exactly. And in everybody's defense on that — because we, as a manufacturer, we messed up some orders too, for sure. Was everybody dead set against us? But in everybody's

30:24defense, everybody was so busy. Everybody was trying to get water pressure that should take a six-inch pipe to get through into a three-inch pipe. So everybody was just crazy busy, trying to help as many people as they could. Financially speaking, I think they were good years for most people, but as far as pure business and relationship-wise, not the best. Yeah, that's right. That's a good point. And while we're still here, we're still trucking.

30:50That's right, we're still trucking. We're working our behinds off. The show goes on. Bert must go on, as Freddie said. I had something else I wanted to touch on — it was in the back of my mind. Yeah. As far as — obviously people are going to be used to seeing a lot of these elements — open web joists, roof trusses — for residential. And certainly here in Atlantic Canada — you know, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland —

31:20you're going to see a lot of multi-storey buildings that are wood structural elements. And that's pretty — I'm not sure, when it comes to central Canada, Ontario, Quebec, northern states south of the border, what the typical engineering trends are for design, building codes, and things like that. But when it comes to commercial — what are you seeing? Especially with Clyvanor and the unique scenario where the

31:53you can easily have an 80-foot-long truss or beam for some kind of a warehouse or barn-style building. Commercial is a big part of what you guys are doing, right? That's a big revenue stream — commercial construction. So just tell us a little bit about the types of buildings you're doing other than multi-res, because I'm sure there are lots of those. And then what are

32:28some barriers? Like, why can't a certain type of building be considered for engineered wood as opposed to structural steel or a butler-style building with other structural products? There are different variables — pricing, timing, supply. That's kind of long-winded, but yeah. Absolutely. It's a very good point. And with the markets being the way they are and land becoming a super premium now, the

33:03trend is to build upwards. And when we say upwards — in rural areas it's not too bad, but if you're in Montreal or Boston, you're building towers. Yeah. I mean, you're building six, seven, eight stories. So what we can do right now with engineered lumber — you can do up to six-story buildings, which is pretty cool because not too long ago it was only three. So

33:32that opens up a lot. We do a lot of hybrid projects where the first floor or floors are steel or concrete, and then we build up above there. So why — what would be the typical reason for that? Like, why would an engineer change material for the structural elements? I've seen those too — before buildings close in. What's the typical reason for that? Not expecting that you're

34:09an expert on that side of things, but why do you see those mixed — structural steel and wood on some? I guess it's — you hit the nail on the head — it's a matter of cost, right? Nowadays with the pricing being what it is and the availability of the different products that are out there, people are a lot more sensitive to the pricing. And with the

34:35interest rates being what they are — man, we haven't seen this in a long time. So a lot of what's driving that is the cost. Engineers are becoming much more price-sensitive. It used to be, hey, we just do it in steel, we don't care. But for the past 20 years or so, the

35:05wood industry has really promoted a lot of what they're doing. The green building issue, the ecological side of it — they really promoted that a lot. And I think that had the effect of making people all of a sudden willing to scratch their heads a little bit more and say, okay, let's just work at this and see if we can do this as a hybrid project. And

35:32you know what — there's — like we were saying, there's LVL, laminated lumber, engineered lumber. A lot of that stuff is getting more and more prevalent in the building process. Like Nordic Lam and stuff like that. So that allows a lot more — how should I say — weight transfer, which in turn allows you to go higher. And so when you say LVL, are we getting

36:02into the space of mass timber? Or is that kind of a different arena? Whenever we get a lot — yes, I know mass timber. When you use that term, it's structural wood elements, but there's also an aesthetic value, you know, with the beams exposed and open. Does that qualify under the term mass timber? Yeah, well — yes and no. Mass timber typically is what would be apparent — it'll stay, yeah, it'll be part of the design.

36:32Exactly. Which is super cool. It is, absolutely. I personally love it. It's absolutely marvelous. And in what we do, typically it's encased — it's in the walls, it's strictly structural. The architects don't care that much about what it looks like underneath. So yeah, not when it comes to that. So back to — you mentioned a project in New Brunswick. I think you said a casino in Edmundston where you supplied —

37:04was that joists, roof truss, and modular? What was that? That one was a hybrid project because it was built on site with wall panels, and that was done there. And then we did the modular units for the second, third, and fourth floor, which was sort of like a LEGO box — the crane would just pop them, drop them, and a couple, three, four days later the hotel's assembled. It's like a big show —

37:37everybody's like, wow. Okay, so that's the casino hotel in — my Blackjack days are over. What's the name of the casino? Yeah, it's the Grey Rock. Okay, the Grey Rock. Yeah. And it's a very — I mean, the casino itself is very, very nice. It's got some of that wood feel to it. And the hotel — yeah, it was quite a project. And we

38:14installed it during COVID. That was a whole other issue — trying to get across the New Brunswick border from Quebec to get your workers in there. I bet that was another struggle from the beautiful province! So do you have any intuition on where Clyvanor's raw materials — those wood species — are coming from? Like, is it the Boreal forest? I mean, this might seem like a kind of a crazy

38:43question, but with your background in forestry and your journey throughout different parts of the wood business — do a lot of your raw materials come from the same place? Even knowing which forest area they come from? Can you speak on that at all? I wouldn't say a hundred percent, but a large part comes from — I mean, right here — for the most part, from Quebec. Yeah. Back in 2006, I was the first manufacturer at our modular plant that

39:14did a LEED-certified building. Picture this: we had to get our FSC lumber — which you needed to get that accreditation — and we had to get it from BC. So it was shipped on a train from BC to Quebec, and then we assembled it and shipped it down to Boston. So it wasn't really all that ecological or environmentally friendly — you know what I mean — just to get the carbon footprint certification. Yeah. It was not. But nowadays,

39:41pretty much every lumber mill and whatnot gives you that certification. And as you know, in Canada we have a lot of lumber. In Quebec we have a heck of a lot of lumber. So most of the stuff comes from right here. Well, that's a nice touch, right? It's local product — right down to the back end. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So do you — what happens in the States? Are you involved with clients south of the border too, or do you stick to central Canada, and then when things come up throughout Atlantic Canada, obviously you're —

40:12Yeah, no, no — I'm very hands-on in the south, south of the border as well. So you're getting down there for some Bruins games? No, not this year — not anymore, not after last night. And I'm a Leafs fan, so I'm happy to see Florida take that one, playing the Bruins.

40:45So I struck a nerve there — are you a Bruins fan? Oh no, hey — I, you know, this year I can proudly say I'm an Oilers fan. I've been an Oilers fan ever since they came into the league. I remember being a young guy, seeing this number 99 — what an odd number to come out in — I was an Oilers fan throughout. My dad lived out there in the era of Gretzky and Messier and

41:17Coffey and all those guys. He had season tickets one year, so that was just absolutely great hockey. But yeah, our business down there in the States is a little bit different, because 100 percent of our business is lumber yards — we don't sell directly to the builder. Okay, for the lumber yards — which is sort of a different model than what we do up here in Canada. But yeah, so

41:49we get a lot of a feel for what's going on from our customers, because they sell lumber obviously, but they sell the materials — windows, doors, trim, moldings. So we know what's going on. We get a lot of feedback from them. So when they are slowing down on the rest of their business, we know that there's a slowdown coming for us as well. Right, right. That's sort of like — we can get a feel for it from

42:15that. Can you take us through onboarding a new client? Whether it's someone in New Brunswick or Atlantic Canada or Ontario, Quebec — a contractor, they've got a PO for a large project. Part of their scope: all the framing, joists, beams — maybe there's some modular stuff too. Are they giving you guys a call prior to the closing date if it's a tender on a commercial job? If it's residential, when they're ready to build are they calling you in

42:44advance, saying hey, we're going to need this stuff on site in a few months? What's the turnaround? Then it goes into your system at the plants — design phase, manufacturing, ready to go on the trucks. Just kind of walk through a typical situation when a client comes to you with a project. Yeah, well — it depends on the size and scope of the project. Building a garage, it's not quite the same. But if you're

43:15talking about larger projects — yeah, more often than not, if you're bidding on public projects, it's one thing for the builder. But for developers, promoters, whatever, they'll give us a call and say, hey, we have a project coming up in six months — a 24-unit building, we'd like a price on it. We do the bid, we do the quotes, we look at the plans. Obviously we want to have as complete plans as possible, but you'd be surprised, because

43:42a lot of them don't have a full set of plans when they ask for bids — they just want budgetary pricing. What they want to know is: is it feasible? If you're lucky, it's 75% complete. Yeah, that's right. So we do the bid, and once we present the bid, we're obviously not the only bidders. And that's the thing about this industry — nobody presents their bids the same way.

44:09Nobody builds the exact same process, so everybody's got their own little tweaks and their own methods. Absolutely. Yeah, it's not like buying a Ford F-150 XLT with a certain package in bright red — you can buy that in Ottawa, you can buy that in Halifax, you can buy that in Fredericton, and it is the exact same truck. Yeah. And the pricing becomes an issue because you can get it cheaper in

44:35Fredericton — or maybe cheaper — but then the service — it's a whole other game. But in our business, no two companies present themselves the same, so there's always some haggling: this is not clear, can you do this? So once the job is — okay, hey, we like you, you respond well to us, we have confidence that we can build with you guys — then we sign up, they give us a PO. Once we have the PO, we place

45:01the order in the system and we work by requested dates. When do you think your first delivery is going to be? Well, it's going to be September 1st. So we work backwards — we reverse engineer the whole project and say, okay, in order to be able to do that, we have to have our final drawings by this date. Once we have the final drawings, we get the design process going. Once we get everything approved — floors first, walls,

45:31and roof trusses — then we order the materials based on the final plans, then we build, and we deliver. It's a timed process. As you know in this business, you don't deliver the roof if you don't have any floors or walls. So you deliver — start with the floors, then the walls, then floors, then walls, then roof. And we're there for the technical side — more often than not: hey, I've got an

45:57issue, can you check this out? I'm not sure how this goes. And from our end, that's pretty much where it ends, unless there are service issues later down the line. But yeah, for a big commercial project, a six to nine-month process is pretty much normal. If you're talking about a residential house, you'll call me up and say, hey Bert, I've got a house that

46:23I need you to quote on — when can you fit me in? Typically on a house, you're looking at probably a two-month process. Yeah, that's different. When it comes to your wall panels — your modular walls — just for context, there are so many different modular offerings and the way people do things. When it comes to that wall assembly when it comes to the site — is that just interior walls coming in 10, 12-foot sections, framed at the right height so it fits right up tight to the joists? Is it pre-drilled for electrical, plumbing assemblies? Is there pre-drilling for a connection to concrete? Take us through what a typical

46:53modular wall panel looks like — whatever sheeting on the outside for the envelope and that kind of thing. It depends. We really do that on a custom

47:23basis. In the States, there is never any insulation in the walls — it's always an open wall panel. So you always have 2x6 studs and blocking and whatnot in the walls. In Canada, we do the insulation. So we'll go from strapping to strapping — we'll do the vapour barrier — and it adjusts to each customer. In the States, 10 and 12-foot walls are pretty

47:49much the standard, the norm. Here in Canada, we'll do a 40-foot panel. Really? Yeah. We're more lazy here! Well, easier — and the thing is, if you've been seeing a build in Boston or whatever — when you go to the game or a Red Sox game — it's nuts, man. They have to shut down the street. So having a 40-foot panel just doesn't make sense logistically to deliver it to the location. Yeah, yeah, it does not make

48:17sense. So yeah, we adjust as per request by the customers. And that's one of our strengths — being able to do that customized stuff really opens up a lot of doors and gets us our feet in the door and gets us some of these jobs. Who are some of your biggest competitors, Bert? Whether it's big names or corporations — in the wholesale supply of engineered wood — who are the main competitors for you guys in central Canada? I know you're taking a piece of the market south of the border and that kind of thing, but even in central Canada, maybe clarify who those might be.

48:53Yeah, I mean — it's ironic because there are a lot of manufacturers. It's not like what we have in New Brunswick, where you have a few — like Atlas, obviously, which is very big — and a few medium-sized ones. But in Quebec, just in our area alone — let's say a 160-kilometre radius — there are probably like 13 manufacturers. Really? Oh yeah, it is absolutely nuts. And that doesn't even count the guys from Montreal and surrounding. So is it, in your opinion, a bit saturated in that market? Well, a lot of those are also supplying south of the border

49:26or western Canada or whatever. Yeah, it's a very saturated market. Contrary to what you see in the States, where there used to be a lot of mom-and-pop shops but the big guys ate them up and now they're consolidating. So there are some pretty big players in there. But it's a very saturated market, so I wouldn't say there's one particular manufacturer — we

49:53butt heads against all of them. But having an association — all the owners get together — and so they try to grow the industry. So we're competitors, but it's a friendly competition. It's not really a dirty business or price hacking. The guys really respect each other, they communicate a lot. Hey, I've got this job I'm bidding on — I'm getting feedback,

50:23feedback that we're having issues on — you dealt with this guy before? So it's a very friendly and — what's the word — clean competition, I would say. It's not dirty. Yeah. It's interesting to see — and for people to hear and give context to that — business owners at a certain maturity level, with an understanding of the markets, realize your competitors make you better. Communicate with them if there's enough to go around. A lot of times it does serve you better to have at least an open dialogue with them. It's not like everybody has to be best friends or anything, but just to be able to sit in a room together and kind of steer the ship forward while everybody's getting their piece of the pie. Some industries you don't see that as much,

50:52in certain trades and bigger cities — highly competitive, quite cut-throat, depending on what trade you're in, whether you have a huge labor force or whatever. You don't always see that happen. Yeah. Well, you know what — yeah, it's a good point. Ultimately, when you do have more competition, who wins? The customer. Because more competition keeps everybody on their toes, keeps the price fair, keeps innovation going — because you always try to get better. I'm a strong proponent of that. I believe there

51:23should always be a lot of competition. Same thing in music, right? I mean, yeah, you're out there on tour — it's necessary. Yeah, it's necessary. That's what drives us. Yeah, exactly. And ultimately we're in this business to help people, right? We want to help them with their project. So the more competition there is, the better it is for our customers — because they and the competition need to make sure that they're doing good, they try to do their best all the time. Obviously

51:55it's never perfect. Construction is never perfect — there's always issues. When I meet new customers, especially on bigger projects, promoters sometimes — I'll dive into it: this is the first project we're doing. And I tell them: you know, there are three certainties in life. You're born, you're going to die, you're going to pay income tax — that's number two. And if you build, you're going to have some problems, man. Yeah. So you just gotta be — and I'm going to be there to help you find

52:29the best solutions to those problems. That's my role. So the more competition there is, everybody tries to do their best, everybody tries to put together a better product to get a better project — and ultimately the customer wins. That's what we want. It's a good point. Anything, Bert, that you want to bring up that we haven't touched on — on behalf of yourself or Clyvanor — for our listeners and our audience? Anything you want to shout out or make people aware of that's happening as far as Clyvanor is concerned, or is there anything we haven't touched on that you were hoping to chat about?

52:53Well, no, Dan — you did a very, very good job. I think we touched on pretty much everything. The one thing I will say to the audience is that construction has not really changed over the last century. We still build pretty much the same way. Sure, we have pneumatic guns rather than

53:23hammers now, but the process is pretty much the same. I think the next 20 to 30 years we're going to be seeing a lot of innovation coming — because of the shortage of manpower and labour, because of the different products coming out, the robots, AI, this ChatGPT phenomenon. Yeah. Even for us as songwriters — I mean, they're writing songs now. Where are we going to be in 20 years? So it's forcing the

53:51industries to scratch their heads and say, where are we going, what are we going to do? I think the next 20 or 30 years in the construction business is going to be quite crazy because of all that — and quite crazy good. Because it's going to force everybody to be innovative, to use the new technologies, to create better projects, assemble quicker because of the lack of manpower. So I think it's going to be an interesting

54:22quarter of a century coming up for anybody interested in construction. I just say — keep an eye out for those new technologies. And for the younger guys who are thinking about jumping into the construction industry, whether it's in sales or just being a carpenter or opening up your own construction company — just stay out there, seek it out, do the technological research, and sort of

54:50visualize where you can take this, because it's going somewhere. It really is going somewhere. Thank you so much, Bert. Well said. I don't think I could add to those closing statements to make them any better. Listen, it's been an absolute pleasure talking with you. We got a lot of context on the industry and yourself, and some good insight into business development, and touched on all kinds of things. So I just want to thank you for your time. It's been a pleasure meeting and talking with you.

55:20Thanks for being on the podcast. We'll look forward to this dropping. Yeah, I mean — rock and roll, man. We'll have to jam sometime. If you're in Halifax, we'll stay in touch. I need a good drummer here — yourself!

55:52Sounds like a plan, man. Want to get together for sure. Okay, brother. Thank you so much. This episode is brought to you by Cook Insurance — your trusted insurance broker in Atlantic Canada for 50 years. Insurance is complex and the Cook team focuses on delivering comprehensive solutions for your construction needs, including builders risk, wrap-up liability, performance bonds, and project-specific construction. A Navacord partner since 2020, Cook is one of the largest construction brokers in Canada and offers national strength with a local touch. Whatever your insurance needs are,

56:23Cook has you covered. The team at the Atlantic Construction Podcast has been able to build a strong relationship with the folks over at FCA Surety. FCA Surety is heavily engaged in supporting the Atlantic Construction marketplace and helping contractors build their businesses, and we can't recommend them enough. While FCA has their head office in Ontario, many members of their team have lived in Atlantic Canada and worked in the construction community here. This gives them a unique national perspective with a local flavour. Andrew Curry leads FCA's national surety

56:54operations as Vice President of Surety. Their knowledge of the bonding marketplace and understanding of how insurance companies view your business is unparalleled. In addition, the depth of their team and reach across Canada gives them the ability to draw on numerous experiences to help clients navigate items like sub-trade construction disputes, liens, and supply risk management. These are the things that separate FCA Surety from the pack. Make sure to give the guys a call over at FCA Surety for all of your bonding and surety needs.

57:23Thanks for being on the podcast. We'll look forward to this dropping. Yeah, I mean — rock and roll, man. We'll have to jam sometime. If you're in Halifax, we'll stay in touch. I need a good drummer here — yourself!

57:37Sounds like a plan, man. Want to get together for sure. Okay, brother. Thank you so much. This episode is brought to you by Cook Insurance — your trusted insurance broker in Atlantic Canada for 50 years. Insurance is complex and the Cook team focuses on delivering comprehensive solutions for your construction needs, including builders risk, wrap-up liability, performance bonds, and project-specific construction. A Navacord partner since 2020, Cook is one of the largest construction brokers in Canada and offers national strength with a local touch. Whatever your insurance needs are,

58:06Cook has you covered. The team at the Atlantic Construction Podcast has been able to build a strong relationship with the folks over at FCA Surety. FCA Surety is heavily engaged in supporting the Atlantic Construction marketplace and helping contractors build their businesses, and we can't recommend them enough. While FCA has their head office in Ontario, many members of their team have lived in Atlantic Canada and worked in the construction community here. This gives them a unique national perspective with a local flavour. Andrew Curry leads FCA's national surety

58:30operations as Vice President of Surety. Their knowledge of the bonding marketplace and understanding of how insurance companies view your business is unparalleled. In addition, the depth of their team and reach across Canada gives them the ability to draw on numerous experiences to help clients navigate items like sub-trade construction disputes, liens, and supply risk management. These are the things that separate FCA Surety from the pack. Make sure to give the guys a call over at FCA Surety for all of your bonding and surety needs.