How an Association Beats Brutal Construction Contracts (OGCA President on Tender Risk & the Labour Gap)

0:00Welcome back to the Atlantic Construction Podcast. Very pleased to have our guest today from the Ontario General Contractors Association — president Cautillo. Thanks so much for being here, Giovanni. This is a Procore-sponsored episode, so we're welcoming Giovanni from his office at the OGCA in Toronto, Ontario. Yeah, thanks for being with us today, sir. Yeah, I very much appreciate the opportunity to be able to talk to you guys. I think it's

0:32imperative that we as general contractors kind of share ideas and pain points, because sometimes you're isolated in your own geography and you think, oh, I'm the only one going through this. When in essence, when you start talking right across the nation, you find out that everyone's going through the exact same issues that you are. So it's fun to share not only the gripes but also the possible solutions at the other end. Absolutely, sir. Yeah, we're really looking forward to dive into some

1:01hot topics and, like we talked about pre-episode, a lot of the problems and issues and current trends that general contractors and all contractors are having throughout Ontario — it's not that much different from other provinces. So we'll draw some threads from central Canada to the east coast. Maybe we can start, Giovanni, just with an overall summation of the association — what it means to be a member.

1:32Obviously it's been around since the '30s, I think if I'm correct on that date, so a long, long history. And obviously a huge facilitation for a lot of complex issues that come through for these contractors who are generating these large projects all throughout the province. You're facilitating all kinds of relationships — new things in the Construction Act, contracts — just there for the member to navigate and

2:04guide them through all the ever-changing things throughout the year. So I'll let you just give us an overall view — how many members currently, things like that. Okay, so you're right, the organization was founded in 1939, and clearly I was not even a thought in someone's mind at that time when it was developed. The preceding notion of why these companies came together back in 1939 was on the basis of health and safety — improving health and safety for

2:36workers from the general contracting side of things. So we've got really good foundational roots in that aspect, and it's still one of our foundational pillars moving forward today in our strategic plan and everything that we do. Health and safety is central to everything that we do. Now, to bring that back up to today's things — your other question was how many members we have. So in Ontario we've got 200 members, but they represent over 70% of the GDP

3:05that is generated in Ontario on an annual basis — like over $14 billion plus. So are you talking about GDP as a whole, or just within ICI construction? No, as a whole. GDP as a whole — shows you just the massive take and share of the economy that this sector has, right? Well, and you think about what this sector employs, not only directly but indirectly. When you look at those members, the 70%

3:34of ICI holistically — we can employ up to 500,000 individuals in ICI only, right? And we've got 70% of that chunk because you're looking at sub-trades, direct employees, secondary and tertiary markets. It's an incredible number. But again, construction is a main indicator for GDP when you look at how we relate. Just look at the projects that our members do: all infrastructure, all the transit projects that we're involved in —

4:06hospitals, schools, water and wastewater treatment plants — you name it. When it comes down to facilities and buildings and community centers, everything the public could possibly need, be it on the public side or the private side, our members are able to facilitate. And it goes from the smallest contractor who does a park for the City of Toronto — or name that municipality, municipality X — all the way up to the hundred-billion-plus job where you're

4:36doing multiple rail projects right across for both Metrolinx and Infrastructure Ontario. So there's a lot of diversity in our membership. We represent small, medium, and large contractors — we don't just focus on one. We represent every geographic region in Ontario. And even though our offices are based in Toronto, we're not Toronto-centric. Our board is representative — we've got members from Timmins and North Bay

5:07and whatnot on there, as well as Niagara. We've also got representation of 50% unionized and 50% open shop, so we don't discriminate against any general contractor. We welcome them all in because we want to share and to assist general contractors in moving their issues forward — removing impediments to how they do their work, bettering society, and contributing to that portion of GDP that I spoke of. Yeah, it's interesting too — the inception in 1939, like you said. Basically these founding fathers

5:40of company XYZ — I'm sure there are people out there who know these companies, and maybe some of them are still big names in the industry. But they come together — they're competitors at the time — but there are so many issues that need to be tackled, there's such a huge market share that's there. And basically these competitors are coming together, and you see that on smaller scales. I don't know how all associations start within the construction industry, but it's basically

6:06the founding fathers coming together and saying, you know, we need to solve these problems. We might be competing with each other on large tenders every six months or every three months, on closing dates, but we need to get together and have a hub where we can solve problems and collaborate. So it's neat just to hear about the inception. And the funny part is, if you were to take the minutes from

6:32any one of these meetings back in 1939, you would find a lot of the issues are still relevant today — contracts being one of them. That's one. Except people not turning their cell phones off during the meeting. Well yeah, that one's probably something totally different — that predates it. It would be like, my horse is not pulling enough, or whatever the case may be. But no, all kidding aside, I find

6:57that there's still a lot of relevancy to the minutes and what they were talking about back then and how it's still part of the vernacular today. Health and safety hasn't gone away — it's only become more and more entrenched into how we do things. Advocacy — always wanting to talk to the buyers of construction and inform them — that was always part of their ideology as well. And then obviously we

7:26expanded upon that — stakeholder engagement being another pillar of ours right now, which is making sure that we're talking to stakeholders like yourselves and all of your members in Atlantic Canada, but all stakeholders like the consulting engineers, the architects, the decision makers, the people that are actually issuing out the tenders on the procurement side. We want to make sure that everyone's on the same page so that they understand why, when they

7:55write a contract, we come back to them and say, this isn't working for us for the following reasons — and by putting that language in you may be diminishing the pool of prospective bidders. So if you change it to this instead, you'll get a wider net that you can expand upon. And I guess the fourth pillar of our strategic plan — and what you really want to highlight, because it is a Procore event — is the whole innovation side

8:23of things. We introduced innovation as another foundational pillar in our last strategic plan last year, because we found it to be so advantageous when you go speak to kids in schools. Because you want to entice them to come to construction — how are you going to do so? Money is one way, but you also want to say, we're technologically advanced. We've got Boston Dynamics' Spot the dog on some of our job sites, walking around and doing the readings and

8:51collecting the data. We've got drones on other sites that are picking up things from a 3D view for video capture and whatnot. We've got tablets being utilized by site supers and foremen — when we receive a load of X that comes into the site, by the press of a button the entire company is made aware of its receipt. It issues payment and it issues a PO for the next truck. This is the kind of stuff that we

9:19want to make sure we talk to the next prospective individuals that want to come into construction and see it as a viable career. Because we've had, for the longest time, a big challenge where academia is only feeding into academia, and construction was always seen as: if you can't make it in university or college, then you go to construction. It is the farthest thing from the truth. I do a lot of talks at schools, and when I walk in

9:49the first question is: how many of you have thought of construction today? No hands go up — unless it's some Italian kid going, oh yeah, my dad's in it. In your experience, what are they thinking when they think of construction? What's the first thing that comes to mind? What's the stereotype? If you can't make it in university and whatnot, then you go to construction. Yeah, it's a plan B — it's not status, it's the last plan. And I hate to say it, but some

10:14guidance counselors say, well, if you keep grades like this you'll end up in construction. They should be talking to the A students saying, if you keep grades like this you're going to end up in construction — good for you. Yeah. Because during the course of my talk I'll invariably turn around and say, who likes to make X number of dollars during the year? And all the hands go up. I said, then you want to be in the trades, you want to be in construction, you want to be a project manager. And

10:38it's a generational thing. I remember growing up — my dad is a stonemason from Italy and he instilled a sense of pride into me. He would drive around the city and say, I built that building, I built that building. We did 832,26 bricks in that building. He knew so much about it, and there was just that oozing sense of pride. The kids today don't have that connection. There isn't that pride aspect of look what I've accomplished,

11:04look what I've built, I'm part of the GDP of Ontario. That's the kind of thing we really want to get back into it. Yeah, I couldn't have said it better. There is, at the same time — and it's a funny paradox — a lot of highly passionate builders where there's a lot of passion and fire that goes into having our cities and communities

11:32built. At the same time, there's the catch-22 of that stereotype — construction is still not seen, and it does come from education and the academia world. And if we could bridge the gap and mesh it so that it's on the same kind of status page in people's thinking — because we're going to talk about labour shortage, right? And there are all these ways that

12:02OGCA is solving labour shortage, and everyone else is being innovative — anyone within the industry, it doesn't matter if you're on the more white-collar consulting side or the blue-collar trades side. There's a labour shortage in everything. We're looking for estimators — there are labour shortages everywhere. So there are ways to create pathways, and how do we get more students involved — diversity, women in construction, all these things. We're all trying to solve immigration. But to change

12:29the thinking at that level — it's hard to measure data-wise, but the problem will be solved in that regard. I think, maybe more so if within a ten-year span we can change people's thinking. People in the industry already know what it's about, but people that aren't — how do we get them over? Great points. I think we were very fortunate to have a Minister of Labour — it's the Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development — a number of years ago. We

13:06embarked on conversations back and forth with the minister and impressed upon him the need for basically a campaign to communicate the skilled trades as young as kindergarten. Because we are finding, going into high schools, that the message is mixed, as I noted. So we wanted to get in there, because the removal of shops really put us back — the removal of having shops in schools

13:39and having people exposed to tools and cutting implements and mechanic shops — all that stuff is now relegated to some aspect of the past. We wanted it to be talked about still in schools. There are kids — my own kids, for example, are 16 and 14 — they grew up watching Bob the Builder, and I was tickled pink because at least there's a cartoon that talks about construction and all of the aspects you can do in construction. The

14:09guy walked around with a hard hat all day long, and it was normalizing it. It was okay because the kids' grandfather — my dad — would walk around with a hard hat, and so they could make the correlation. This minister took it upon himself to really drive the campaign, and this is Minister Monte McNaughton — so I've got to give him a shout-out and all the kudos. Because under his guidance he was able to really formulate this campaign, and there's been a real push

14:34and thrust on the trades, on the construction side, the supervision side, and the management side. The OGCA is taking certain steps in order to help. We can get into that now — we can get into it a little later on, it's entirely up to you. Why don't we just dive right into that? So we saw a need and we did round-table discussions with our members — and what is the most important aspect for general

15:00contractors? That's supervision, as I noted. And there's really no cohesive program — there's some construction management, there's some project management, but there's not one cohesive course that blends all this together and curbs expectations. Because that's another thing I didn't mention just yet: a lot of the graduating students that come out of university or college in these programs are expecting to be CEOs the next day, expecting to get paid billions of dollars for

15:31doing no work, or expecting to climb up the ladder quickly — like, I started today as a junior, I'll become a senior in three months. And they're like, no, no, you actually have to put your time into it. So we curb expectations and focus on fundamental skills: communication, conflict management, scheduling — stuff they're really going to need, and we really focus on that. And so what we've done is we've gotten grant money from the Ministry of Labour through Skills

15:58Development Fund. We're into our second year, and we're really focusing on bridging the gap from the new graduates that come out as project coordinators who want to be project managers — or any newcomers to Canada that fall into that category as well — who really want construction as a career choice and want to be coordinators that could become project managers. So we have two bridging options there, and then we have a third one, which is a train-the-trainer aspect, where we take super-

16:30superintendents on site and give the toolkit to our own members, who can then identify and point out: well, this individual — he'd be a great, or she would be a great, add-on to our management team. We want to give them the skill set in order to develop. And so it allows contractors to facilitate within themselves the training covering those fundamental skills again. So we got this grant money and we did it — we had a cohort that had gone through,

17:00and now we're into the second year of it, which is the placement aspect. We're looking to place them with companies. So we've got those two aspects plus a third aspect, which is focusing on women in construction. We're doing the surveys and the data collection now to ensure that we know exactly why women aren't entering construction, and if they are entering, why aren't they staying in construction. There are a number of aspects that we're looking at to

17:30really make sure that we're filling the void for our members, who really need us to continue the conversation. So overall, it's been very fruitful in the sense of gaining knowledge and insight, and then providing that to a generation that hopefully will be the next project managers and site supers on our sites. Overall, we are still in infancy — we're only in year two — but we're hoping

18:00to keep advancing this so that we can have a pipeline of dedicated individuals from schools and newcomers to Canada that we can then place in our companies. You're solving the problem from a lot of different levels there too. There's diversified effort — there's no one size that fits all. And you have to look outside of it, because if we don't have enough graduates that really want to enter into supervision at the ICI level, maybe they have their sights set on

18:29high-rise residential, or residential, or heavy civil — there are so many different aspects to construction. We want to make it easier for them to facilitate entry into what we need right now, which is supervision at the ICI level. And we've got a pool of individuals — newcomers — we want them to be able to find their path to us as easily as possible. You mentioned immigration at the onset, 100%. You mentioned getting the word through schools — that's another thing we're facilitating.

19:01And we're connected to all the universities and all the colleges. We just want to be able to facilitate for our members a pool of talent that they can draw from. And that means the students know that there's placement, and so there's a job at the end of the tunnel. By tying these two together, I think there are real synergies here. And that's why we took it upon ourselves to get this grant money, because it is all about

19:30skills development. Yeah — was there not just legislation passed this year or last on high schools in Ontario or another province in Canada regarding having trades count as credits? Am I correct? Yeah, you are correct, and again that's a big step. It is a big step. That Minister McNaughton — we, for the last number of years, have been working with the Toronto District School Board, and the program that we facilitated with them is called Step to ICI

20:01Construction. The Step aspect of things is we place students onto job sites for an entire semester. They work under the tutelage and supervision of, say, a super or a foreman, whatever the case may be, of the company in question. So you've got Company ABC — Company ABC pulls them under their wing, places them with a site super. That site super shows all the aspects. We could have 26 trades on site, whatever the case may be. They place them with each trade for about a week. So as they're

20:38experiencing these trades, they get a taste of what each trade can deliver. Most students unfortunately only know the compulsory trades — electrical, plumbing, carpentry. They have no idea that there's a plethora — there are 144 different possibilities and trades. And a lot of these kids come in going, yeah, I think I want to be a plumber, and next thing you know, when they go through the program, they're like, oh my God, I want to

21:06be a sprinkler fitter, or I want to be a tile setter, or I didn't realize how cool this aspect would be or that aspect. And I go to these graduation classes, and the only problem is that they're limited to 88 students per semester because there are only so many classes that can actually get this done. We are trying to implore upon the Ministry of Education to really expand upon this, because we believe that having this program in every single school board throughout the

21:40province — or throughout Canada — would be phenomenal, because your entry point, the amount of students coming in — it's 88 students per semester times 144. So you're starting to get to the point where you can actually start solving the shortages on things, because you've got people interested in the trades but they don't know what they don't know because they're not given exposure to the trades until they actually enter into it. So that's why this is kind of a concerted

22:08effort. We talked to the Ministry of Labour in order to make sure there's a campaign just to start talking about it and for it to be known as a viable career choice. Yeah, I wonder — this might sound a little far-fetched — but I wonder what kind of impact that might have on the immense amount of mental health problems there are with kids between the ages of 16 and 25. That's a

22:35fact. Within the mental health community, a lot of kids are struggling with depression and anxiety, the suicide rate is really high. I just wonder, when it comes to some kids, the way we're kind of thrown into this machine-like education system and society — I remember watching a TED talk about a couple of examples that this speaker had given about young kids who, instead of, you know, they'd be

23:05throwing some medication at them from the counselor, when all they really should have been doing was being put in dance class, or having an outlet. So I'm thinking of the trades in the same way as an art form. You mentioned your father was a stonemason, and these are art forms. This isn't a sexist comment — I'm talking very

23:28masculine traits — and feminine too. For someone to be able to build things with their own hands, and the satisfaction you can get from that — when you don't do it for a while and all your work is white-collar — it's a different mental energy. But the satisfaction you can get from just changing a tire, or from doing something with your hands,

23:49it's like you can look back and say, this is what I did today. And the point I'm trying to make is: if kids who are more geared toward that within their personality, their psychology, their makeup — if some kids who are meant to be working with their hands, or even thinking more when it comes to building and envisioning and trades and the creative side of it, who aren't given that opportunity and

24:13are kind of stonewalled into other things that don't suit their genetic makeup, and things that kind of make them come alive but also serve as a release for them — it might sound far-fetched, but it's too bad that that's not there as an option more often for some of these younger kids. And like you said, you're solving the problem from the age of six, seven, eight, even

24:42younger than high school. Parents who want their kids to be in hockey because they want them to go pro — they're starting them at three, they've got skates on them when they're four years old. You need to solve the problem kind of there too. And if that had been done the last 50 years, we wouldn't have the labour shortage we have today. You know what, I think that analogy is a perfect tie. And I think

25:03every parent wants their kid to do well and to make money, so they put them into hockey because they hope they're going to be discovered or they have the talent to be in the NHL. The sad fact is that only a small percentage actually gets that break where they can gain access to the NHL. The trades have a much more welcoming demeanour. If they're put into trades, or at least exposed to it, I

25:30can tell you — I've been exposed since I was a kid. I remember when blueprints were actually blue, and I'd be sitting on my dad's lap and he would explain to me what they were all about. So before I could read, I could read blueprints because he explained stuff to me — with numbers and whatnot. I grew up with my dad as a stonemason, so I became — you know, there were bricklayers over here. I grew up on construction sites. I learned how to

25:54drive a forklift when I was nine. Now obviously the laws have changed, so you can't have a child that young on job sites. But I had such a sense of satisfaction being able to help my father create something. And if it were to be brought back in the schools, I think having shops — having a tactile learning experience like you're talking about — because not everyone learns really well from just reading and that

26:24rinse-and-repeat, memorize this and regurgitate it. Let's experience it, let's build it, let's have something tangible — that's why shops are so cool. And one other aspect: I don't want to necessarily disagree with you, but I want to kind of change the perspective. You said it's a very masculine thing. In the Step to ICI Construction cohort this year coming in — 50% female, 50% male. So I can say we have an equal opportunity for all to come in, and it's not necessarily a

26:54masculine thing — it's a satisfaction that you get out of it. So to your point, you are able at the end of the day to turn around and go, holy man, I did that, that's amazing. With my own hands I framed this wall, painted that, built this — doesn't matter what it is. That sense of satisfaction and pride is what we've got to get back into the trades and into construction, because we're a wonderful community, we're an

27:24amazing destination, but not enough young people know that yet. So our job is to really hype it up — but not only that, prove to them that you can start as a bricklayer and end up in a suit and run an association. It's not that hard. Yeah, same deal — if you're a pro athlete you can end up working as a broadcaster or as an owner of a team later on. It's the same

27:49idea. Or if you don't do things right, you can work as a barista at Starbucks — be the water boy. You can be the water boy? Maybe. Let's take a shift. Anyway, this conversation is very engaging, talking about things from that perspective — invigorating. But maybe we'll take a little bit of a technical turn and talk about the association's role when it comes to your members and all these general

28:16contractors — like you said, small, medium to large — often signing very complex contracts where it's hard for any one person to keep up with the stipulations, protocols, indemnities, limitations of liability, all these kinds of things when it comes to contracts for these GCs. One of the big things you do at the association, and yourself personally, is give governance and facilitate advice and help

28:46with contractual issues. Can you just give us a little bit of an overview? I'm not saying you have to give specific examples, but just how important that is. Because when it comes to the owner groups — whether it's a government project or private monies — there are some very high numbers being signed on these contracts and a lot of risk being taken. So talk about how you help with that. So I

29:14think what your audience needs to know is that this is something that has evolved since 1939. This has been something that we as an organization have been assisting contractors at the tender phase, because once a contract is signed, the provisions and whatnot that you have in there are somewhat locked in. So we always try to be proactive at it and get it at the tender phase. So our members

29:40come to us and say, hey, Municipality ABC or Company ABC has released this tender. We're not quite sure about the validity period, or this period, or whether they can say they're going to pay us in eight months as opposed to 28 days as per the Construction Act. And I'd be like, no, that's contradictory to the Act. So we advise them — they provide us with the tender, we then write to the buyer, because we communicate independently

30:10with each individual that may be a bidder. We communicate with them and ask where are your pain points. We notify and look through the contract as well. We've got a vast array of associate partners — we have an AP committee, an Associate Partner program, comprised of insurance companies, surety companies, lawyers — people who really assist in the betterment of construction but aren't contractors themselves. And we can go out to them and say, is this legit? Can they do this? Can they say this? And

30:42they give us legal responses that we are then able to compile in our responses and submit, saying, no, you can't have a validity period of 90 days for the following reasons — because we as contractors are only getting price guarantees from our subs for up to 48 hours. So how can I hold my price for — yeah, it's not even 30 days at that level these days. 48 hours. And so we communicate

31:09that openly to the buyers of construction and explain to them why, if they want better pricing, they should reduce their validity period back to historical standards, which are 30 days. If you sit there and say you want us to hold our price for nine months — and we had one just recently, it was a municipality that came out and said they want you to hold your price for nine months — I said, you're going to get nobody holding their price for nine months. So we qualify the bid, saying:

31:36change the following provisions and we'll consider a submission, and if you don't change it then I'm not bidding, because you're not in a position to be able to do so. Contractors price risk, and if you make it riskier, the higher the price. Look, we've all gone through COVID. No one could have seen COVID coming. And now, having experienced it, it is now built into some of the contracts — saying if we go through another pandemic, you know, you're

32:03responsible. Well, how am I responsible? How am I going to be able to control the supply chain? We've all seen what it can do. So we make sure that we curb provisions like that. Indemnifications that remove the upper cap and the timelines are things we want to make sure are not in the vernacular of the buyers of construction, because that's a company killer. If you remove the upper limitation on indemnification and the timeline, that means they can come back to you at any one time for

32:34any price point — that's insane. No contractor should, or won't, say yes to that. And so what we do, after talking independently — the contractors never actually talk to each other, they only talk to the association — we submit on behalf of the industry and all bidders involved. We never name the bidders. Confidentiality — yeah, 100% confidentiality on behalf of everyone. We submit saying that if you change this provision to the following — so if you

33:04reduce your validity period from nine months to 30 days, you will get better pricing, or you'll at least attract more bidders. Because the bidders have a choice, and because there's a risk element to it they have to price that in. If they know it's restricted down to a price point where they can actually manage, then it's easier for them to bid and it makes sense. It's logical. I'll give you a quick example — there was a municipality that will remain nameless, just because

33:34— GTA? No, no, no — I'm not going to throw them under the bus. But the provision was liquidated damages, and the liquidated damages said that if the construction is not built by — fill in the date — July 1st, 2024, the contractor owes the municipality the total price of the project. So the price for the project was X million. I'm like, no, no contractor worth any salt, or who's read the provision, is going to say yes to that.

34:13That's a company killer. And so by coming at them with this, saying, listen, you should change it to this — we're not big on liquidated damages, but if you do do it, then quantify it to a number that makes sense. And what assurances do we have that you have all your permits, that you've got your environmental assessment done? Let us know to ensure that we can start day

34:39one, that we're not going to be delayed by six months because you didn't do something, and now liquidated damages come into effect because of your shortcomings. This is all something we always write to the buyers of construction, just to inform them, to educate them. Because, I hate to say it, a lot of the procurement departments have changed over — a lot of people retired or left because of COVID. You have that institutional knowledge gone, and you've got a bunch of young people who

35:08want to rewrite how things are done, or they've taken stuff from the past and cut and pasted it. Like asking for errors and omissions insurance on a bid-build doesn't make any sense — it's not a design-build, but you're asking for it. So we educate them to say this is not required on this specific project. A stip-sum doesn't require an E&O, so let's remove that so that the contractor

35:38is not pricing something they don't need to. Right. But to your point, we do this for all contractors — small, medium, and large. We've had some of the larger guys come in even though they have internal legal departments — they see the benefit of working through the OGCA as the voice for all contractors. And it ends up — we're about 85% successful. Yeah. We're 85% successful in changing the buyers' notion of

36:13how the tender should be written, to the contractor's favour. That's a good success rate. Yeah, and it's because of our members — they see value in this and they bring us the issues. Sometimes too many issues, because unfortunately things come in waves at the same time. Yeah. But at the same time, they're working through the association as the voice for the general contractor. We're very unique in the industry in that we're the only organization that is only general

36:40contractors. We don't have any trades and stuff. As I noted, we do have an AP — it's not a membership thing, they're an adjacent group that assists because of surety, insurance, bonding, all of that and legal. But they're only that — they're an assistance to the general contractors. We as an organization speak on behalf of the general contractors. We get their pain points, we get a sense of how solution-driven they are, and a lot of times we are

37:13successful in getting things changed that nobody thought could get changed. So overall we've been very, very happy with how we've been able to effect change for our members to the betterment of the industry. I'm looking at this from a 30,000-foot view. When you're talking about infrastructure dollars in Ontario and the GTA and all the other municipalities around Ontario — so many — you have an outlook of 10 years,

37:45maybe in five-year increments, ten-year increments. You're seeing the government — provincial, federal — pumping money into healthcare. The next so many years could be schools, could be the uOttawa or the university in Ottawa that has big plans for campus additions or renovations or whatnot. You're constantly, as the president of OGCA and OGCA as a whole, facilitating this massive portion of GDP — navigating the political realm for the

38:24contractors who are overseeing the construction. There are a lot of relationships to manage, cross-cutting into lots of different arenas. Can you talk a little bit about your role and how you're constantly keeping your pulse on elections, acts, and things within the political realm — and then coming back to the contractor and saying, this is what's going to happen in the next 5, 10 years,

38:52these are the issues — you've got a lot to navigate there. So yes, we do have a lot to navigate. But I also want to note that the association has a staff, and we derive benefit from the AP program — our associate partners — because they're the ones who send us bulletins, law firms send us notations about stuff they've heard, and then with a phone call you can get even further information. We pride ourselves in

39:21having very good relations with government, because we're actually emailing them, calling them, talking to them. They reach out to us for input. We've just recently had certain ministries ask, hey, if we did this, would this better the system? They want to know from general contractors directly, so they come to us. Meeting with multiple boards, meeting with other stakeholders — we're involved in so many different boards. We're involved with the CDAO, the Construction Design Alliance of Ontario — that's 19 different organizations, from architects, engineers,

39:51to consulting engineers, to every major sub-trade — and we all sit and talk about procurement woes and how to better the system. We sit on health and safety boards, we sit on IHSA, we sit on so many different fundamentally life-changing groups. So the conversation is actually quite easy. Plus we have our committees — we have an Innovation committee, we have a health

40:24and safety committee, we have a best practices committee, we have an OAA-OGCA committee that just talks about how architects and general contractors can alleviate problems before they actually become issues. So this is all kind of a day's work. When you say how do you navigate that stuff — it's part of the gig, it's part of the job. It's being able to speak to your organization and all of Atlantic Canada through you, and saying that we have the

40:52same issues that you guys have out there. We're not trying to reinvent the wheel — we're trying to get better treads on a balding tire, is what we're trying to do. Yeah, it's no different than great employees — good employees are going to tell you what they need and what they want, in the same way that the contractors, as part of the AP, are telling you what they need and what they want when you come back to them with the

41:15news from whatever sphere of the political or economic arena — they're just going to be able to hash it out between all parties. And for the audience out there that doesn't know: construction is a very small community, even though we're so vast. Everyone knows everybody in the sense that there's a respect thing. When we meet as a board, we discuss issues that affect

41:45every geographic region of Ontario, every size of contractor — because it's indicative to general contractors, not just the big contractors in Toronto. It's indicative to all. And the larger companies assist because they may have gone through an endeavour, a protocol, an activity, and say, oh, we've got information on that — let me provide that to your safety committee so you can disseminate it so that everyone's on the same playing field. That's the benefit of having an association where you're sharing

42:19information. Because we don't see things like health and safety as proprietary — health and safety is something we should all be thinking of before a shovel hits the ground. BIM and getting everyone on the same page, moving towards that technological advancement, to better us so that we can look at clash detection and how things are built in the 3D setting, so that — to avoid the claims on the back end — the lawyers are

42:49going to kill me on this one — to avoid the claims on the back end, to fix it on the front end, so that it's easier for us to get and adhere to schedule. These are the kinds of things we're always talking about and always advancing. Having an association like ours really benefits the entire industry, because we're constantly talking about things that affect only general contractors. So yeah, I'm very proud to be representative of this group. I'm very

43:19proud to say — they could have got a better-looking spokesperson, but they got stuck with me. But I'm very proud to say that what they do on a regular basis is really focused on general contractors only. From that standpoint, a lot of your members could benefit from replicating stuff like we've already done, and we're happy to provide assistance in any way we can. Yeah, it's interesting — you're drawing the thread that a lot of the problems your members are having, they are the same problems. Think about big, small, midsize — these issues are

43:47not exclusive — there are lots of similarities. And I think a lot of people might look at the size and the vastness — to your point — how big the industry is, some of the projects that are happening

44:17in the GTA and throughout Ontario compared to Atlantic Canada — but you're still building and you've got the same issues. So we can learn so much just by having conversations with each other. I wanted to go further into that comment you made about BIM. Let's talk a little bit about the small to midsize contractors. I know even in your membership tiers you have GCs at the $5 million revenue mark, and then between $5

44:46and $25 million, up to $150 million and beyond. There are so many different sizes, and companies become different entities at those different points — they take on a different life. They're different types of companies within those different tiers, and that's why they're broken up that way. But for small to midsize general contractors throughout Ontario — and there are lots in Nova Scotia too, lots happening in rural Nova Scotia and New Brunswick and

45:14Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island — these are GCs that might not be right in the core of HRM building the big complex projects downtown, but there are so many great things happening beyond that. Maybe it doesn't get the same amount of attention, it's not as sexy, maybe. But for these small to midsize contractors who could be operating more efficiently when it comes to things they haven't adopted yet — whether it's BIM or

45:44Procore, which is pretty well known — you need to have these things now just to compete. But the time savings — we talked about this last week — to adopt these things you could save the money on one job in 12 months, when you're keeping track of hundreds of change orders on a job. And when you have BIM modeling for the early onset — but I think

46:11specifically for some of the smaller and midsize GCs, they don't see themselves as needing it yet. Like, well, we don't need that yet, we're not that advanced, we're not doing these major projects, we're not big enough. But at the same time — it's the same old saying as a salesperson: you can't sell something to someone. It's sad because they need it, but you can't just tell them they need it. And then

46:39three months later after you've sold them, they say, why didn't I do that five years ago? And so it goes back to the whole premise I talked about — how we can educate all of our members. The larger companies who have gone through these pain points, because they've realized they need a management system, a personnel resource system, or a scheduling system, go through all of these pain points because they required it for the company to run more

47:06efficiently. We're then able to communicate that to the smaller members, saying, if you do X, Y, and Z, you'll be that much further advanced in three months. And it always comes down to price. I can give you this anecdotally — I went to a small mom-and-pop contractor. They do a lot in the school board realm of things, a lot of renovations. For them, a $5 million contract is equivalent to what a $100 million contract would be

47:37for another member — relatively speaking. And they had a pile of change orders on a project. I asked, just out of curiosity, what did those change orders amount to? And based on the time, energy, and money involved in those change orders, I said, had you done BIM it would have paid itself with just half that amount. And so

48:02these are things you also have to look at, because it's all about efficiency. How does a contractor make money? You price a job, you get in, you do the job, there are no problems, you get paid, you get out. That's how a contractor makes money. It's not: I get in, then I look for problems to get change orders because I want to fight with the client at the end and hopefully get pennies on the dollar on my claim. That's not indicative of how we do

48:27things. Yeah. But contractors are so busy doing that — get in, get the job done like you said you would, and get out without too many deficiencies and trade damage and going back for whatever wasn't done right — that they don't have the time. They're so immersed in it. It's a very demanding world — money and time. Money is always going to be the big thing. But in

48:56a sense it's more about that. And we've had guests on our podcast talk about incorporating Procore into their working model, new technology, new accounting software, BIM — any new tool. It's not just about the cost, it's about the time and the change. It's so hard to be open to such a big change to how we've done things. But in a sense that still is cost, right? Because it's going to cost money, it's going to

49:27cost more time. It's going to take more time. It's going to be a frustrating period of maybe a year where all these little key commands — or whatever you're used to doing — are all going to change. And that's a frustrating extra layer of stress for that amount of time. That's why a lot of people don't agree to it. But essentially it's still about cost. Cost is one aspect. I think the unknown and the change aspect also weighs very

49:54heavily in that, because people are resistant to change — let's be honest. Human nature: you know what you know, and when you get into that, it becomes a comfort zone thing. When you drive to work you kind of take the same route every day. You don't go north to go south — that's not what you're about. Why? Because it's comfortable. You know how long it's going to take, you know all of the parameters. When you start changing stuff like that, now

50:19all of a sudden you introduce unknowns. And from a contractor's standpoint — let's be honest — general contractors don't like unknowns. We price risk, remember what I said. Exactly. So when you have an unknown and it's not proven, that's why it's kind of helpful for a larger company to say, look, we went through it, it took us X number of months, it cost us X number of dollars, and then this is the savings you get on the back end. And all of a sudden the

50:42smaller contractors go, oh, wait — I could do that. And so it's almost like an older sibling teaching a younger sibling the ropes, type of thing. It's helpful in the industry. And our group does it really well — our contractors talk to each other really well, even though they're fierce competitors. There is a respect because we're in the same pool. It may not be at the same level, but you'll have larger companies coming to small mom-and-pop shops and saying, absolutely,

51:14we're not competitors, but we see that you're doing really well in this realm — congratulations. Or, if you change this one aspect, you could get that much more out of it. These are all things that I think would be fantastic for other associations and other groups to take on — from both a networking standpoint and an information standpoint. Because that's what our commodity is: it's information. You share information,

51:43you raise the level of everyone. Yeah, it's funny — I'll throw out an old adage. Confucius once said: if you tell me, I'll forget; if you show me, I'll remember; but if you involve me, I'll understand. And that's kind of where we want to be — at that understanding basis, so that a smaller contractor internalizes and understands why switching to said technology is

52:15better for them and why investing money in that technology could better the company for them. To break that threshold — maybe they want to be over that $5 million in gross revenue, maybe they want to be at six, seven, eight — how do you do that? Well, if you incorporate this technology it can thrust you over, or slowly push you over, or whatever the case may be. But it allows you to — and that's kind of like the equalizer. Technology ends up

52:44being the equalizer in all things. All things being equal, if you're that much more advanced on the tech side and you can communicate that much quicker, and you know what's going on on your job site faster and better than your competitor, you've got an edge. And so that's why we're always talking about BIM and technology and advancing and dialing it up — so that we're not a bunch of Luddites, we don't walk around with a wheelbarrow and a shovel screaming at each other. We've got

53:09complex capabilities. Some of our contractors are into 8D BIM. 8D is thinking about how to set up safety on scaffolding before the job is even set up. They look at the parameters of the landscape and the topography, and say, oh, there are some electrical poles over here — and they go to the client and say, if you bury these poles now, you'll save yourself $5 million instead of waiting until we break ground and do that, because we're already going to be

53:37excavating. So for us to excavate that and put it in will cost you nominally as opposed to waiting till after the fact. And so these are the kinds of solutions — because our contractors are problem solvers. That's what they do on a regular basis. You get a bunch of contractors together, they're trying to solve the world. Yeah, they're solving problems before they happen — a year before they happen, or ten years — when they're catching these things long before. Yeah, no, it's

54:03an interesting point you made too — when you talked about the older sibling and brought in that adage. I think a lot of these changes and transitions in companies too often take place when it comes to technology at generational handovers — when an older generation is passing the business to a younger generation. Obviously I grew up in a different time, a different demographic — Gen X or millennials to Baby Boomers — they've just got a different way

54:28of thinking. So that's a big thing too. And I know there are some statistics — I'm not going to name any — but within the next six or seven years, we're expecting a lot of people to be retiring. You mentioned in a different context: a lot of people are retiring from different institutions, from different parts of different associations, from general contracting companies where people have been involved for 30, 40, 50 years, and they're retiring soon. And there's a

54:52big shift coming. What's your take on that? We did talk about the labour shortage already. But site supervision is such a key role, such a hub. What's your take on the next five years or so and filling in for a lot of people who are going to be retiring? And what, in your opinion, makes a good

55:23supervisor for a GC on site? What kind of people, what kind of skills — what's the model? Not the perfect model, but what kind of person is that? Because that's a tough role to fill, and a big role that a lot of GCs are trying to find. There's a real shortage of people who can look after these major projects from a supervision standpoint. There are only so many out

55:53there with so much to offer. I think there's no one-size-fits-all, but there are characteristics that if you want to be successful in the role of site super or project manager: you've got to be a problem solver, you've got to like a challenge, and you've got to like people. I hate to tell you, but you're going to have to deal with a lot of people. So if

56:27you don't like people, it's probably not your thing. And you have to be able to communicate. You have to have a level-headedness about you — you've got to be able to remain calm. It's funny — all the things you just mentioned, and for good reason. You've got to have the experience and knowledge, but we didn't talk about construction at all in those things. These are all fundamental skills. So I was going

56:55to draw on your opinion: as opposed to IQ, what about EI — emotional intelligence? There's a lot of talk about that in the psychology field, in the business world. It's a far greater indicator of success for individuals. Those who have high emotional intelligence — whether their IQ is average, whether their experience level is good enough on the résumé to partake in that specific role — their EI means they're not going to be drawn out emotionally by the

57:31same things. And you certainly have to have a very sound emotional intelligence to deal with that many different kinds of people, on that complex a project, with that many moving parts, on that fast a timeline. That's a big thing you really need. You need to be in control of your emotions, and if you haven't been taught or learned, then your emotions are going to get the best of you, and it's going to

57:56compound really quickly. What are your thoughts on that? You're absolutely right. When it comes to remaining calm even under stress — that itself is worth its weight in gold. Someone not freaking out over the smallest thing, being able to manage from the 85,000-foot level — it's emotional intelligence, or common sense, or fill in whatever adjective you want. It's all a matter of being able to work with all of the

58:34stakeholders cohesively. Not everyone's going to get along — that goes without saying. You can't go into a room and anticipate that ten people in the room are all going to love you — that's unrealistic. But aim for 80%. Try and get the message across to 80% of the group, because you'll find that the other 20%, even begrudgingly, will have to follow suit — they want to get paid or they want to get the job done,

59:00they're going to follow along. I think emotional intelligence isn't something that's taught in school. Relaying back to your initial point about what's going to happen when all this institutional knowledge is gone with some of the people leaving the industry — we are finding that some of the people who have retired, after being retired for a number of years, have come back to the contractor saying, hey, can I even work

59:27for you part-time on site? I'll help and communicate to the next guys. I'm bored at home, I don't know what to do. There's your training program, right there. So that's one aspect of it. From an organizational standpoint, we're trying to parlay that — all the project managers who have been in the industry for 30 years and are now wanting to ride off into the sunset: hey, can we pick your brain

59:55once a month? Or would you like to do a talk in front of some up-and-coming potential project managers? You'll find that in our industry, because we're pretty cordial and pretty obliging, we're absolutely happy to assist in any way possible. And so we are able to pass along that institutional knowledge, at least in a small part. I think as the program grows, we'll pull more from

60:23those who are retiring — specialty people who can do podcasts or recordings like this, so that we can have it in perpetuity and keep playing it. "This person knows this stuff — you want to listen to this, listen to this." And so it can continually — we're using technology, I get back to that point — we're using technology to help train the next group of individuals. And most of the training now can be done

60:48online, so it doesn't even matter geographically where you are — you don't have to come into a classroom to do it. But you do need maybe a retired facilitator to say, yeah, that wasn't bad, but if you did this minor change — because we can't lose the human touch, that's what I'm suggesting. AI and whatnot will never replace what a person can actually do, because AI only learns from all of the past stuff. A person has that emotional intelligence, you know,

61:17to your point. So yeah, I see there's definitely a place for people who are exiting the industry to still assist, if they choose to. Unless they've left and said, you know what, I'm done, I'm riding into the sunset — which is also valid. I can't knock them for doing that either. Yeah, you can't blame them at all. Oh God, no. That's so true. Thanks for sharing your

61:47thoughts on that, Giovanni. I had like ten other things I wanted to ask you — there are so many things we could talk about. Is there anything on your mind that we hadn't touched on, on behalf of the Ontario General Contractors Association, that you wanted to extend to our audience — to promote or draw attention to? I can tell you that from my standpoint, under my tenure, when I came on I'm really trying to focus

62:16on the small to midsize contractor. And I find that if you take care of them — not at the neglect of the larger contractors, please don't misunderstand that — what I am saying is that the larger contractors have individuals who already work in their organizations: internal lawyers sometimes, health and safety professionals, whole divisions. Their IT departments could be vast. So they don't have the same pain points as the smaller contractors. So we work with the larger contractors to assist the

62:51smaller ones in really elevating them. There's a saying that the tide raises all ships. And so that's what we're trying to do — raise all the ships in our association and in our industry, for that matter. To really educate them, provide them with the tools, provide them with the resources, so that when they go in and talk to a buyer of construction, they're confident about their position. They're confident because: the OGCA just put out a bulletin on

63:18indemnification, the OGCA just put out a bulletin on liquidated damages and what we should and shouldn't accept. It's one of these things where information is power, and the more you know, the better able you are to make decisions. Because our contractors make decisions every single day, they need to be fed constantly. And so this is our lot in the entire scheme of things — we move information around. And

63:47when we're given some information, we validate it, we ensure that it's correct, and then we disseminate it through the industry, because we want to make sure that everyone is armed and ready to make that decision properly. By focusing on the smaller contractors, we find that there's a sense of satisfaction for the medium and larger ones, because they're giving back. And for the small contractors, it's not just about the big guys. And for you

64:15know, like I said, since I've taken over in 2020, it's not just been about the larger contractors — it's been about all contractor issues. And the feedback we're getting is we're on the right path. We're not quite at the pinnacle yet, but we are advancing the cause the way it should be. For all other associations out there: don't just focus on one category, make sure you love your children all the same — they're

64:45all amazing. Yeah, they're all different, but we love them the same. Got to love them differently. And certainly the construction association in Nova Scotia and the others in different provinces do a great job of that — serving all the different size contractors that are with them. And to your point, that's often where the biggest impact is made. Like you said, the big companies take on

65:14their own beast, and you don't neglect the efforts there. But this is often where the biggest impact is made — on those small to midsize companies, and not just their companies but the people. You impact those owners in a big way. They can't — that's a strong statement — but what you're facilitating to them carries much more weight: to elevate them, for peace of mind, for minimizing risk, and just being there as an advocate. Yeah. And I'm not going to

65:45say that they can't live without us. I think if anything, we add to their toolbox. Contractors have many tools they can utilize at their disposal — the association is just yet another tool. Sometimes I can be a finesse tool, sometimes I can be a sledgehammer, depending on what you need. Depends on what side of the

66:13bed you wake up on in the morning — depends on what issue we're talking about. I'm Italian, you can't believe it. No, but I think from your audience's perspective, I know that Duncan does a fantastic job out in Nova Scotia — he's awesome. And through other organizations like the CCA, we work together with all associations right across Canada and continually talk about issues. So nothing

66:48has ever been done in isolation. I think for the contractors in your geographic region of Atlantic Canada, they may think that they're the only ones suffering a pain point. And I'm here to tell you they're not. It's being felt right across Canada. I can tell you in Ontario there's probably no issue that you guys are facing — other than maybe flooding, the ocean coming in and affecting certain coastal areas — that would be the only

67:13thing geographically that would be different. We're landlocked here. But from a general contractor basis, you've got to look at things holistically. The more we talk, the more we're invited to podcasts such as yours, the more we share this information, the better we become. Yeah, thank you so much, Giovanni. Real pleasure to chat with you. We could go on for hours, but in the interest of time and your time, we'll

67:44cut things off there. This has been a great conversation — great for our team here at the Atlantic Construction Podcast. Hoping that our listeners throughout Nova Scotia and the rest of Atlantic Canada draw on all the topics we talked about today. Thanks for your time — appreciate it. It's been a blast, an absolute pleasure. And please, by all means, if there's anything in the future

68:10that we can assist with — be it Atlantic Canada, be it any of your other listeners — because I'm assuming this is going to be broadcast far and wide, just because you've got that kind of staying power — I'd be very happy to assist in any way possible. Because that's what we want to see ourselves as: an asset and a resource to the industry.