← Dirt Talk Podcast
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Foreign welcome back. Build With Dirt Talk Podcast. Build With Update. This is number six. We are going. I've heard great feedback from everybody so far. Appreciate you all listening. I'm glad people are enjoying these updates. So we're going to keep the ball rolling. If you have questions or comments on any of them, you can write me anytime at Aaron A A R o n@buildwit.com would love to hear from you. And with that, let's get into what the heck happened last week on the travel side of things. It was a crazy, crazy busy week for the Influence team, which is me, Jack and TJ From a travel standpoint. Monday night we flew out to Albuquerque and then drove an hour east Tuesday morning to catch Blattner Energy performing some wind turbine top out at the Sun Zia Project, which is America's largest energy renewable energy project ever. It's scale is incredible. However we got there and there was a problem that was it was windy and you can't build wind turbines when it's windy. Go figure. So we pulled the old switcheroo and drove from here an additional three hours to visit with another Quanta services company, Winco, who is performing aerial work on the Sun Zia transmission line. So the Sun Zia project is the generation the wind turbines and then the transmission line taking the energy from New Mexico into Arizona over 500 miles. Both projects are enormous in scale. And so that that Tuesday, instead of seeing the wind turbine construction, we saw the transmission line work. They were using a little helicopter doing aerial line work. So the guys were tying themselves off to the to the rope down below the helicopter. The helicopter would plop them on top of the transmission lines. They would go to work. Once they were done, they'd radio to the helicopter. The helicopter would pick them up again. It was nuts. And then the next day we crossed our fingers and hoped that we could then see Blattner with favorable wind conditions. And turns out, yes, there were favorable wind conditions. We're glad we switched everything. So we drove back out into the middle of the New Mexico desert and caught what they call top out. That's the third section of the shaft. So the main shaft, there's three sections. One crew can set the first two, then the top out crew sets the last section. They set the nacelle which is like the big box on top of the shaft and then the turbine blades, the three blades with the really big cranes. It was spicy, spectacular. So very happy about that. And there will be a big video coming soon. Then from there we opted instead of Flying which was our original plan to drive from New Mexico to Loveland, Colorado. However, when we were about an hour from Loveland we got another phone call. The project we were going to had a switch up. So instead of paving that Thursday, they were going to be paving Friday. So for the second time in one week we switched two visits and instead of visiting the dam project Thursday, we drove to Aspen from Loveland about four hours to see my good friend Shay Stutzman who's the leading contractor in in Aspen. Leading civil contractor. So absolutely fantastic. We went from the middle of nowhere New Mexico to hundred million dollar homes within 24 hours, which is totally a classic buildwood move.
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If you're looking for another industry event that is a snooze fest, this is definitely not for you. But if you're a leader looking to elevate yourself, your team, looking for like minded individuals that are hungry, then look no further than the Ariat Dirt World Summit November 5th through the 7th in Dallas, Texas. In our third year we'll have about 1500 hungry industry leaders from about 500 companies looking to learn, grow, teach. It's going to be fantastic. We also have a world class lineup. We've got Jesse Cole from the Savannah Bananas, James Clear, Atomic Habits, Kim Scott, Radical Candor, Mark Miller, Chick Fil A Leadership Tim Grover who is Michael Jordan's trainer. You will not hear from a lineup like this anywhere else. So check out details now dirtworld.com you can use code AARON10 for 10% off any registrations and we'll see you November 5th through the 7th in Dallas, Texas.
- [05:16]
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And then finally that Friday we did see Barnard finishing the final asphalt placement for the new Chimney Hollow reservoir. It's a spectacular project. They have been working for years. It was my third or fourth, maybe fourth time out to the project. I saw it before they had even started placement. Then about midway up the dam, this was almost when they're done, it's supposed to be getting filled up later this year and to make it all happen they had to build the one of the largest quarries in the entire United States. And it's all temporary. Once completed, it'll all be underwater again. The the scale and scope's amazing and we'll have a video on that project as well coming soon. Next up, we launched a new update for Build with Improve which solved the major bugs I've mentioned in past updates. As we use Build with Improve internally it's functioning fantastic now, which I'm really excited about and our customers are delighted. There's still plenty more Work to go. But seeing progress on the new product is, is a lot of fun. So we've been battling those bugs. The team has been working through those different releases. They're, they're getting solved those, those issues, performance issues and the platform not, not performing as it should. But we're, we're getting those resolved and then now we can start to get into more functions, features, et cetera, making it better rather than just fighting fires. Our new business development team started this week which should result in more booked meetings for our sales reps in the coming months which in, in these meetings they'll ask questions, they'll learn about each construction company and then they'll explain how build it improve can help them upskill their people while creating training records for each employee. So we've got this newer, more entry level team going out finding qualified leads companies that we would be a good fit for build would improve. They're, they're getting them interested, they're booking them for a time for then our sales reps to, to just walk them through, learn about who they are, walk them through, see if it is indeed a good fit. So that's a very exciting development there. We have also moved one person from support to account management to build better relationships with existing customers, help them develop their people more successfully and build learning cultures. The support and account management side of things is something we haven't quite been able to figure out. We're, we're better on the support side of things, but really just building necessary relationships with customers now that we have hundreds of customers, civil contractors across the United States on software, it just requires a level of effort, focus, dedication that we haven't had because we haven't had one, even one person dedicated to it. Now that we do, we can at least start to establish some of those processes we've been lacking. So that's a very exciting move. We have narrowed in on an option for the 2027 Dirt World Summit location, which I'm very excited about. 2026 will be in Phoenix, this year, is in Dallas. But until now, until we're ready to talk about it, 2027 will remain a surprise. But we have found a location which is exciting because it's a lot harder than you'd think to find a venue that fits your event that has enough space for 1500, 2000 people. There's not a lot of options and so you'd think it's easy, but it's really quite challenging and we're, we're fortunate to have a great option. And then finally, speaking of the area Dirt World Summit, we have been gathering testimonials from past attendees to better convey the events of value instead of just talking about how great it is ourselves, which is what we've done in the past. And here's one from Herb Sargent of Sargent Corporation as an example. A lot is happening at the Ariat Dirt World Summit. We made more great industry connections in one summit than at a dozen Con Expo events. And that's not to suggest they compete. It's more to suggest the contrasts. A packed agenda with great speakers and growth opportunities for everyone from the Superintendent to the CEO. It's now a must attend for our company. So we're trying to do a better job telling these stories. We're great at telling the industry story. We're not always great at telling our own story. So we're trying to leverage these stories, explain the value of the event. I'm a huge believer in it. We have at this point thousands of people that are believers in it as well and we're trying to get the word out via them rather than us. That is everything this week. Those were the highlights. I appreciate you all tuning in as always. Again, if you have questions, comments, feel free to write me anytime. Aaron A a R o n@buildwit.com and we will see you on the next one. Stay dirty everybody.